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I read the article below from the Times (19 August 1888) about the material that was returned in 1988. I don't remember seeing previously that the photos that were returned had been used as material for lectures. Also that the police intended to identify the source of the returned photos after consulting the family.
Almost a hundred years after Jack the Ripper struck down his first victim on the east London streets, the case remains, according to one of the many investigators, ``as fresh as new-spilt blood''.
Certainly the unknown and long dead killer still has the capacity to draw a full house.
Scotland Yard had only to say yesterday that it was unveiling linked photographs and documents to prompt a stampede of interest. However, it was unable to shed fresh light on the case, dating back to the death in August 1888 of Mary Nicholls, the first victim.
If anything, the papers add a little more mystery to a case which has plagued the Yard for a century.
For the first time, the police yesterday showed rediscovered papers and pictures missing from the voluminous Ripper files for an unknown number of years. The gaps were noticed last year when the family of a former senior policemen gave the Yard a thick album of photographs he used in lectures.
In the file was a collection of Victorian pictures, including unknown portraits of three of the five victims and gruesome pictures taken at the post-mortem examinations. More recently, the Yard received anonymously a collection of documents bearing a Croydon postmark.
They included the original of the first letter thought to have been written by the murderer in 1888 announcing his responsibility for the killings under the Jack the Ripper pseudonym.
Yesterday, Mr John Dellow, deputy commissioner, would not be drawn on the latest Yard theories about the case as he sat under one of the Victorian police posters which reproduced the letter.
In red ink the murderer threatened to go on killing until ``I get buckled''.
The letter has been examined by graphologists who maintain it shows no sign of the serious mental disorder that must have prompted the murders.
Asked about the fascination with the case, Mr Dellow said that at the time the fear must have been enormous. The pictures from the post-mortem examination displayed on the wall opposite bore testimony to the horror of the attacks and a lengthy post mortem report among the returned papers listed injuries in stomach-turning detail.
Mr Dellow said the discoveries did not take investigators any nearer the identity of the killer. Many of the returned documents and pictures were known to have existed but no one had noticed they were missing from the files passed to the Public Record Office in 1951.
The identity of the policeman who had the pictures would be released by the Yard once his family have been consulted, Mr Dellow said.
Asked for current Yard theories about the case Mr Dellow would not be drawn. The missing papers will be put back on the file for fresh investigators to examine.
Almost a hundred years after Jack the Ripper struck down his first victim on the east London streets, the case remains, according to one of the many investigators, ``as fresh as new-spilt blood''.
Certainly the unknown and long dead killer still has the capacity to draw a full house.
Scotland Yard had only to say yesterday that it was unveiling linked photographs and documents to prompt a stampede of interest. However, it was unable to shed fresh light on the case, dating back to the death in August 1888 of Mary Nicholls, the first victim.
If anything, the papers add a little more mystery to a case which has plagued the Yard for a century.
For the first time, the police yesterday showed rediscovered papers and pictures missing from the voluminous Ripper files for an unknown number of years. The gaps were noticed last year when the family of a former senior policemen gave the Yard a thick album of photographs he used in lectures.
In the file was a collection of Victorian pictures, including unknown portraits of three of the five victims and gruesome pictures taken at the post-mortem examinations. More recently, the Yard received anonymously a collection of documents bearing a Croydon postmark.
They included the original of the first letter thought to have been written by the murderer in 1888 announcing his responsibility for the killings under the Jack the Ripper pseudonym.
Yesterday, Mr John Dellow, deputy commissioner, would not be drawn on the latest Yard theories about the case as he sat under one of the Victorian police posters which reproduced the letter.
In red ink the murderer threatened to go on killing until ``I get buckled''.
The letter has been examined by graphologists who maintain it shows no sign of the serious mental disorder that must have prompted the murders.
Asked about the fascination with the case, Mr Dellow said that at the time the fear must have been enormous. The pictures from the post-mortem examination displayed on the wall opposite bore testimony to the horror of the attacks and a lengthy post mortem report among the returned papers listed injuries in stomach-turning detail.
Mr Dellow said the discoveries did not take investigators any nearer the identity of the killer. Many of the returned documents and pictures were known to have existed but no one had noticed they were missing from the files passed to the Public Record Office in 1951.
The identity of the policeman who had the pictures would be released by the Yard once his family have been consulted, Mr Dellow said.
Asked for current Yard theories about the case Mr Dellow would not be drawn. The missing papers will be put back on the file for fresh investigators to examine.
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