Did anyone really see the Ripper?

[GregBaron]

In looking over witness statements I think it possible, perhaps even likely, that no witness saw the ripper or rippers. It’s been argued for example, and quite persuasively, than Annie Chapman had been long dead when Mrs. Long spotted her mystery couple at 5:30 a.m. Many of us would have little problem with dismissing Astro-Man, Blotchy and “Hutchinson” as the killer of MJK. It has also been proposed, not without some logic, that neither BS nor Pipe Man was the killer of Stride. Nichols has no witnesses. Most police descriptions can also be dismissed as possibly the wrong man. That leaves us with Lawende and as one excellent poster has put it “the Gentile Sailor”. If Lawende is telling the truth, and not protecting his acquaintance Kozminski, then we have a youngish 5’7” inch fellow with a red kerchief and a Sherlock Holmes cap. It’s a shame we never get anything like he had green eyes or a scar on his left cheek or a crooked nose or buck teeth but we get a dude with a mustache, a coat and a hat….whoopee… that narrows it down! Anyway, even with Lawende it’s possible that Eddowes was already being carved up when he saw his mystery couple. Unlikely but not impossible. But if this is our best description my contention is that it matches none of our prime suspects most of which have dark mustaches and are described as Jews or foreigners. As usual, like most in this case, there isn’t much to give a lot of weight to. We’ve learned over the decades that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable so when we add the darkness of Whitechapel and the bulky period costumes we have even less upon which to hang our Deerstalker hats. I’m not sure what my point is other than to caution against relying too much on eyewitness accounts and secondly, if we believe Lawende, where is our “Gentile Sailor”? Is he the unknown killer of Whitechapel?


Greg

[Phil H]

I'd agree.

I think that Mrs Long MAY have seen a couple, but Annie was sometime dead and "Jack" safely away before dawn.

I think it is purely assumption that Lawende & co saw Eddowes with "Jack" - it might have been another couple.

Finally, as I increasingly believe that Stride was killed by Kidney, I doubt that whomever Schwartz saw was "JtR".

Now I await the eruption.

Phil

[Ashkenaz]

In looking over witness statements I think it possible, perhaps even likely, that no witness saw the ripper or rippers.
Greg

It is often supposed that offenders like jtr start small initially, and their offending becomes evermore serious. This seems reasonable to me.

Previously then, he has probably assaulted women. My guess, is that he likely attacked several, and maybe some if not all of them saw his face.

We need to pay especial attention to those women who were viciously assaulted by a man at this time and location, ie Whitechapel,1880 to 1890ish.

I believe Ada Wilson was attacked by jtr :

"On March 28, 1888, while home alone at 19 Maidman Street, Wilson answered a knock at the door to find a man of about 30 years of age, 5ft 6ins in height, with a sunburnt face and a fair moustache. He was wearing a dark coat, light trousers and a wideawake hat. The man forced his way into the room and demanded money, and when she refused he stabbed her twice in the throat and ran, leaving her for dead. It is reported that nearby neighbours almost captured the man, but he found his escape."

This description is very similar to another's description of a man seen is conversation with a woman just before she became a jtr victim.

This I believe is our man.

At that point jtr was just about to commence his spree, if it had not already begun.

[Rubyretro]

Very interesting thread, Greg -I've often thought the same thing.

I think that Lawende's sighting is the only one that I'd take seriously -but as you say, it's not set in stone and Jack and Eddowes could have entered Mitre Square from the other end.

I thought that Lawende's man had a peaked cap -not a Sherlock Holmes
deerstalker ?

The 'sailor' description could mean anything ; There were lots of men casually employed on the docks around shipping. He didn't appear to be wearing a naval uniform. Lawende may just have mean't that his suspect was the sort of man that he saw around the wharves.

[Jonathan H]

The main point is that Joseph Lawende was used in one, probably two official witness 'confrontations' with Gentile sailor/Ripper suspects. To one he apparently said no (Sadler, 1891) and to the other he apparently said yes (Grant, 1895).

Therefore, rightly or wrongly, Lawende was considered the best Whitechapel witness by the constabulary of the day -- understandably if the tight timing is correct, between the sighting of the youngish, Gentile-featured man dressed as a proletarian chatting with Eddowes, and her being found brutally carved up on the pavement.

Lawende's 'Jack the Sailor' is, of course, a good generic fit for Montague Druitt: about 30, fair, medium-height, lithe, and presumably with a 'silver tongue' to put a woman, perhaps exhausted but surely still wary, off her guard (Montie was, after all, a professional advocate).

Yet Sir Melville Macnaghten, who apparently believed Druitt was the fiend, did not use this sighting in any surviving document to buttress his contention. Instead, he obliterated this sighting from the face of the Earth. It goes unmentioned in the official version of his report, it is muddled up in the unofficial version (a cop seeing a Slavic Jew), and amounts to nothing in his memoirs.

Strange that?

[Monty]

If you believe Eddowes was already laying in Mitre Square when Lewande spotted his couple then you must take on the Watkins factor.

With regards Lewande and Co, Sister Hyde and I did an experiment which bought forth an interesting fact, namely the sighting would have been extremely brief. This due to the geography of Duke Street and Church Passage.

Monty

[kensei]

I have always been a traditionalist on this subject, and oftentimes in the minority. I'd just like to say that it is at the very least not completely impossible that all the possible Ripper witnesses did in fact see him. To people of different backgrounds with different ways of phrasing things, who see something briefly in varied and never perfect lighting conditions (and, also importantly, something they have no idea is going to be important to remember until well after the fact)- a man of around 30 with a moustache in a general dark overcoat and a deerstalker cap (which I do think at least someone might refer to as "peaked") could fit the witness descriptions in the cases of Chapman, Stride, and Eddowes.

Astrakan Man is of course in a whole different ballpark and would have to mean that the Ripper was taking a radical departure after becoming the most hunted man in the world, a disguise that could not have been described as a good idea by any means, but then we are talking about someone with a twisted mind and logic might not need be a factor. Hey may have gotten away with such a disguise only by sheer dumb luck. Admittedly, Astrakan Man is not likely to have been the Ripper, but I like to entertain the possibility. As for Blotchy-Face, he has always struck me as nothing but a carefree drunk with a pocketfull of money staggering through the night having a good time. I think the Ripper was fueled by alcohol as discussed in another thread, but he wouldn't have been flaunting it around on the street and actually drinking while on the hunt.

Witnesses to the Ripper? London is and always has been a city that never sleeps. In the stifling overpopulation of the East End, it would have been practically impossible for absolutely no one to have ever seen a single thing. But if so, doesn't it add fuel to that even more minority view that he was some kind of supernatural wraith who just "dropped through a trapdoor in the earth"? I don't think any of us really want to consider that.

[TomTomKent]

There are people who saw possible or probable "suspects", and in a modern city we would expect Photo-fit pictures based on these to appear on Crimewatch. However, I think modern police would describe the likes of Blotchy Faced Man as "An important witness who may help us trace the victims last steps".

[kensei]

There are people who saw possible or probable "suspects", and in a modern city we would expect Photo-fit pictures based on these to appear on Crimewatch. However, I think modern police would describe the likes of Blotchy Faced Man as "An important witness who may help us trace the victims last steps".

Indeed, but the account of Blotchy has him sharing a pail of beer (a pail? Really?) with Mary Kelly in the street and then her endlessly singing to him in her room. It has all the signs of a couple of sloppy drunks hanging out together for a bit, and if they actually managed to engage in any sexual act that night it couldn't have been very noteworthy. Of course Blotchy would have been an important witness, but the reason he never surfaced may well have been because he awoke the next day with absolutely no memory of the night before.

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
Mrs Maxwell's market porter. without a doubt, but that is taboo on Casebook, because she was either lying/mistaken/wrong day according to the vast majority.
But she was sworn in at the inquest, and we have no evidence that she was any of the above, making the man she saw the last person seen with Mary Kelly, and that would be the starting point in any investigation since day one.
Regards Richard.

[kensei]

Nothing should be taboo on Casebook.

[Wickerman]

Hi,
Mrs Maxwell's market porter. without a doubt, but that is taboo on Casebook, because she was either lying/mistaken/wrong day according to the vast majority.
But she was sworn in at the inquest, and we have no evidence that she was any of the above, making the man she saw the last person seen with Mary Kelly, and that would be the starting point in any investigation since day one.
Regards Richard.

I don't recall Maxwel being able to describe the man with any sufficient detail, but as to the 'wrong day', I doubt that.
Maxwell, along with everyone else in Dorset St. were aware of Kelly's death sometime before 12:00, and she had only seen Kelly between 8:30-9:00 am, not 3 1/2 hours ago.
Has anyone ever confused something that happened 3 1/2 hours ago, for the previous day?
Incidently, the Times followed up on the 'milk' story..

" Mrs. Maxwell further stated that after that she went into Bishopsgate-street to make some purchases, and on her return saw Kelly talking to a short, dark man at the top of the court. When asked by the police how she could fix the time of the morning, Mrs. Maxwell replied, "Because I went to the milkshop for some milk, and I had not before been there for a long time, and that she was wearing a woollen cross-over that I had not seen her wear for a considerable time". On inquiries being made at the milkshop indicated by the woman her statement was found to be correct, and the cross-over was also found in Kelly's room. Another young woman, whose name is known, has also informed the police that she is positive she saw Kelly between half-past 8 and a quarter to 9 on Friday morning."

This seems to me to pretty-much rule out any 'wrong-day' theory, and the fact others also claimed to see Kelly that morning argues against Maxwell making the whole thing up, so should rule out the 'lying' theory.

In reality, all we are left with is two options, that the medical men were sorely mistaken as to her time of death, or the early morning sightings were a case of mistaken identity.

It might be worth mentioning that in the 19th century Rigor Mortis appears to have been associated with the cooling of the body. This is not strictly true, the onset of Rigor is more complicated than that, and includes the build-up of Lactic Acid (that which causes cramp in the living), which is slowed by cooling, but accelerated by heating.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f02/web2/wcarroll.html

Personally, I don't know what to make of it.

Regards, Jon S.

[GregBaron]

Fair of mustache...

Hi all,

Good comments……keep them up……….I must say to Jonathan H I don’t think MJD fits Lawende’s description because didn’t he say a fair mustache?....Druitt may have been fair of skin but the photos I’ve seen show him very dark of eyes, hair and mustache……….and what is his height? He appears tall and slim…that returns to my point……..I don’t think the Lawende description fits our top suspects……..of course we don’t know what some looked like; ie, Hutch and Koz………

I have a hard time believing MJK was wondering at 9:00 a.m. on the day of her death……….so I’ll go with the mistaken identity idea………we know how unreliable eyewitnesses are in this regard….the eviscerating and burning and escaping unnoticed in broad daylight begs credulity to me but that’s probably meat for another thread…

I like Ashkenaz’s Ada Wilson idea………….that this is the same fair faced Gentile that Lawende saw……….maybe he is our man? So this would throw out the middle aged Jew spottings………unless of course you go for the multiple murderers theory….

Again, my main theme is that the value of the descriptions in totality is just a micron above worthless...

Greg

[Limehouse]

Slightly off topic but somewhat related is something that I have always wondered about. If Mary Kelly WAS killed during the night - and the killer made a huge fire (as has been suggested) because it was cold but also for light - why didn't any of the people who walked up and down the court that night seem him through the window? There didn't seem to be any curtains on the windows and we've all passed windows at night where the light of a fire or other lights have illuminated the whole room.

[GregBaron]

Peak or no peak!

I thought that Lawende's man had a peaked cap -not a Sherlock Holmes
deerstalker ?

I think you're right RubyRetro....here's the first news report..

The first publication of the description of the man seen by Lawende was in the Times on 2 October - "of shabby appearance, about 30 years of age and 5ft. 9in. in height, of fair complexion, having a small fair moustache, and wearing a red neckerchief and a cap with a peak".

I'm not sure what such hats with a peak or a double peak look like.....? Does that mean it was pressed down in the center creating the two peaks? I now know that the deerstalker is the Sherlock Holmes........can someone find and post the various hats from the descriptions? I'll try if I have time...

Anyway, as I said I don't think above is Druitt or Koz or Chapman or Tumblety for sure..........

There didn't seem to be any curtains on the windows and we've all passed windows at night where the light of a fire or other lights have illuminated the whole room.

Limehouse I think a coat rack or coat was hung over the window if I remember correctly...

Here's an old Navy hat........no peak!

Greg