Australian newspaper archives online

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks for that very valuable link, Debs, much appreciated.
Just browsing through I note that the Cutbush family of Brisbane - resident and in the hotel trade when TTC visited there - were originally from Ashford, Kent.
And they appeared to have a very good knowledge of the laws pertaining to the Polynesian islanders resident in Australia at that time.
Interesting eh?

[evilina]

It would be interesting to see if Brame and Long were on the same ship. (from press reports on casebook)
Galveston Daily News
Texas, USA
6 December 1897

CONFESSED JACK THE RIPPER
TALE OF A SEA COOK WHO SAYS THE CONFESSOR WAS A CRAZY SAILOR

There is a sailor on one of the steamers in Galveston at present who says he was once cook on a vessel, the Annie Laurie, and among the crew was a chap from London, who, in a fit of lunacy, confessed that he was the simon pure Jack the Ripper of Whitechapel fame. John Long is the name of the narrator who told yesterday of the Ripper. He says his story can be substantiated in every particular, and that if necessary he will do so.

Long says Jack the Ripper died in a hospital at Iquique, Chile, and he made his confession to a priest, and also to him, a short time before his death.

This is the way Long tells the story:

"The Annie Laurie was a bark. When I was a cook on her the captain was named Carstarphen. Some years ago we made a trip from Shields, England, to Iquique.

Before we left a man who signed as John Sanderson came aboard and was to become one of us. A short time after we started on the journey sanderson became sick and was taken to his bunk. He was in no fit condition to work, and we noticed that he was acting in a rather peculiar manner. He would slip out from his bunk and chase over the deck like a wild man. He would scream and say someone was following him. He had to be watched. A guard was placed by him all the time, and finally the captain had to give him an opiate to keep him quiet. When we were rounding Cape Horn the sailor seemed to be getting better, but before we reached Iquique he became so violent that he was sent to the hospital immediately upon arrival.

"Not long after he had left the ship I was taken ill and had to be sent to the hospital, and I was placed in a bunk beside that of Sanderson. He recognized me, and I saw he was still trying to escpae the demons he supposed were following him. One night he asked me if I knew anything about the Whitechapel murders. I did not at that time and told him so. By degrees he began to tell startling bits of information, about those horrible crimes, and at last confessed that he was Jack the Ripper. He made the same confession to a priest."

Long says Sanderson told him that his father was a surgeon and that he knew how to handle the knife pretty well. Long, continuing his narrative, gave Sanderson's confession thus as in Sanderson's language:

"I reached Whitechapel district late one night and met up with a woman, who joined me and we went into a dark alley. There I killed her. The body was mutilated and left to lie in the cold. I escaped. No officer seemed to get on my track, and the idea came to me that it would nice to kill a few others.

Later on I found a confederate who was as anxious for blood as I was, and we decided to go in the butcher business with women instead of animals. We secured a couple of butcher smocks, a kind of dress used around open, and we found this the easy way to do the killing and escape. The smocks were the means of preventing our crimes from being discovered. We were wild for blood. I was mad and nothing would satisfy me but the sight of a bloody and mutilated body of a Whitechapel woman. The people thought we were butchers, and paid no attention to our bloody garments, and I have stood before the police with the blood of a victim on my garments, and none of them were able to see that they had the Ripper in their grasp."

Such is supposed to be only the gist of the confession. Sanderson, having gone into the horrible details and told of how he went into the country later and worked on a farm. Afterward the sea drew him back, and he just happened to sign with the Annie Laurie before she sailed from Shields. The confession, Long says, was written and signed by the Ripper, and given to Long, who was later shipwrecked and the document lost. After the death of Sanderson the body was interred in a little cemetery at Iquique, and Long was one of the mourners.

The story came unsolicited to a News man and at its conclusion Long was very particular that it should appear clear that Sanderson was insane, which is no doubt true, as there are weak points in the tale. One of the weakest points came at the conslusion, when Long asked for a quarter "to get a cup of coffee and a bed." He got a dime, but the passing dime seemed to bear away with it what essence of truth the story formerly bore.

[evilina]

James Brame in the 1851 and 1861 Census in Lowestoft is the son of Samuel and Frances Brame. Samuel's occupation is listed as MD Giessen M R C S E (I think) so that detail at least checks out

[evilina]

There is a similar story on the suspects threads covering a raving man onboard a ship.

Thanks - found it. Chris Scott had picked this up. Interesting to check it out.

[Mike Covell]

There is a similar story on the suspects threads covering a raving man onboard a ship.

[evilina]

How very interesting!

Thank you so much for this! I am sure it will be useful for family reasearch! I had a really quick look around. I did a simple search for 'Jack the Ripper'. I did not realise that the Australian papers at least reported the Dusseldorf stuff as 'Jack the Ripper' too. Anyway, enough rambling - have a look at this!
Canberra Times Tuesday 27 Dec 1927
OLD SAILOR'S THRILLS
"Jack The Ripper" Crimes
MAN RAVING ON A SHIP
There is at the present time an old man in the hospital of an institution in Essex who may have known "Jack the Ripper." He is Mr. J. K. Brume, a bronzed old salt of eighty, whose head is still covered by a thick growth of hair that many a man half his age might envy.
In his time Mr Brume has been everything from a seaman to a qualified chemist. He has fought Red Indians on the plains of America, acted with a "barn-storming" company in Canada and served as a soldier in India. But none of his adventures is stranger than that which brought bim face to face with the man who may have committed the "Jack the Ripper" murders.

"It happened when I was sailing on one of the old windjammers from Lon-
don to South America," said Mr. Brame, in an interview which he gave to the
"Sunday News." "Just before, the world had been shocked by the mysterious
series of revolting murders of women in Whitechapel, London, which were
known as the "Jack the Ripper," outrages. The murders, which terrorised the East End of London, had stopped as mysteriously as they begun.
MAN RAVING ABOUT MURDERS
"About half way out I was called to attend to a man who was in delirium in one of our cabins, and as I did my best for him I was horrified to hear him raving about the murders of women which ho had committed. He gave full and revolting details of the atrocious crimes, but whether he, was the real murderer or was reproducing in his dementia the stories which he had perhaps read in one of the papers, I do not know, and no one is ever likely to know now.
"Still, the fact in that this unknown man-he was, by the way, a man of superior appearance and spoke in an educated voice - confessed in his fever to the murder of a number of women in the East End of London. 1 was tremendously excited by what I heard, and thought that I was going to be the means of clearing up the most baffling mystery in the history of crime. But the man died at Iquique, in Chile, and his secret went to the grave with him.

I am sure it is a bit of hooey, but how very interesting!!!

[Mike Covell]

Thanks for that link Debs, there are quite a few on Deeming on there.

[Debra A]

I don't know if this has been posted before but I've only just come across it myself today.

Historic Australian Newspapers 1803 to 1954 are in the process of being digitised and are available to search and read online for free here;

Australian Newspapers beta