Letters to Police

[Pierre]

As I said Pierre, 'if' he was the one who wrote the from hell letter, then he may have ate kelly's heart, thats what we called Cannibalism, It could be also he said he ate half that kidney to make the letter sounds more fearsome though... but again, I am not sure this letter is authentic, what do you think about it ?!

Rainbow°

Hi Rainbow,

The letter with the kidney is problematical and it is important to research it from all perspectives if one really wants to generate the best knowledge about it.

I have no idea if the letter has any validity at all but people have been discussing that a lot.

Some of the main problems with it I think is to be found here:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-cmdlusk.html

Cheers, Pierre

[Rainbow]

As I said Pierre, 'if' he was the one who wrote the from hell letter, then he may have ate kelly's heart, thats what we called Cannibalism, It could be also he said he ate half that kidney to make the letter sounds more fearsome though... but again, I am not sure this letter is authentic, what do you think about it ?!

Rainbow°

[Pierre]

That's exactly my opinion , and I think he had eaten Kelly's heart too .. cannibalism !

Hi Rainbow,

How interesting. So you do actually think that Lechmere ate Kelly´s heart?

Why?

Cheers, Pierre

[Michael W Richards]

When we are unable to scientifically establish something we still do have some other evidence to assess....in this instance we have the manner in which Lusk handled the package delivery as one example. He shoved it into his desk and told no-one about it for almost 2 days. When he did confide in someone, he asked them to take it away. He was repulsed by it apparently...or frightened, or both. And when they did remove it from the desk, they took it to a medical man, not the police.

I believe Lusk may have perceived this as a direct threat....and who can say whether Lusk had been threatened by someone already...perhaps in relation to his role with the Committee, or not. In fact I believe I recall that he had been threatened prior to the package.

Maybe a personal vendetta.

The "Catch me when you can" does imply that the sender is aware of his role in the pursuit of the killer at large, but there is no specific indication that this message was related only to that factoid.

Cheers

[Patrick S]

Thanks Lynn.

I wonder if the Lusk letter writer was a Victorian version of John Humble, the man who sent fake Yorkshire Ripper letters and a tape to the police. Before he was caught, I listened to the voice and found it chilling. Now we know he was just a pathetic alcoholic, it sounds very different. Yet another example of how we subconsciously want to believe things about a murder case because they make the story more colourful or exciting.

Agreed 100%. My interest in things like JtR/Whitechapel Murders is the fact that we simply don't know. It's the same reason I'm a student of history. I find that I want to know. The best story is the TRUE story, whatever that may be. It's important to respect any point of view or theory that makes sense. Truth is, as we know, stranger than fiction!

[lynn cates]

comparison

Hello Andrew. Thanks. A fitting comparison.

Cheers.
LC

[AndrewL]

Thanks Lynn.

I wonder if the Lusk letter writer was a Victorian version of John Humble, the man who sent fake Yorkshire Ripper letters and a tape to the police. Before he was caught, I listened to the voice and found it chilling. Now we know he was just a pathetic alcoholic, it sounds very different. Yet another example of how we subconsciously want to believe things about a murder case because they make the story more colourful or exciting.

[Stewart P Evans]

But...

But all Smith's musings on the Ripper are taken from his 1910 book, so all he says is subject to the caveat that 'he makes mistakes 22 years after the event'.

These include the claim that 'though within five minutes of the perpetrator one night, and with a very fair description of him besides, he completely beat me...'; 'The woman Stride was seriously injured about the head...no doubt she was rendered insensible by the fall.'; 'This woman [Eddowes] was in my custody at Bishopsgate Police Station twenty minutes before she was murdered.'; 'In Dorset Street, with extraordinary audacity, he [the assassin] washed them [his hands] at a sink up a close, not more than six yards from the street. I arrived in time to see the blood-stained water.', and so on.

Thus we evaluate the worth of such accounts of the case.

[Rainbow]

the Police were actively looking at Medical Students as a possible source for the skills sets seen in the first 2 Canonical murders at that time, and as Stewart pointed out, a possible occupation that would put someone in contact with such an organ sample were Medical Students, ...so I think it would be unwise to eliminate this a possible genuine article without further evidence to assess

That's exactly my opinion , and I think he had eaten Kelly's heart too .. cannibalism !

[lynn cates]

amen

Hello Andrew.

"Unfortunately, it has become such an integral part of Ripper folklore that many people are emotionally attached to the idea that it was genuine and cannot let it go.

In my opinion, this applies to several other aspects of the case as well."

A hearty amen.

Cheers.
LC

[GUT]

I might add that the same applies to theories, there are no certainties in the case of Jack the Ripper, save that a number of unfortunate females were killed in the East End in 1888. We don't even know with certainty who they were.

[GUT]

G'Day Stewart

22 years after the event he mistakes where the letter was sent, so we must ignore everything else he says? I don't think that I have read a single document in this case, contemporaneous or otherwise, that is not in some way or another contradicted by other document/s.

[Stewart P Evans]

How Reliable?

How reliable was Smith regarding the Lusk letter and kidney episode? We have to look no further than the following from his 1910 book, From Constable to Commissioner, page 154 -

'When the body was examined by the police surgeon, Mr. Gordon Brown, one kidney was found to be missing, and some days after the murder what purported to be that kidney was posted to the office of the Central News, together with a short note of rather a jocular character unfit for publication. Both kidney and note the manager at once forwarded to me.'

[Stewart P Evans]

Henry Smith

The caveats regarding the writings of Henry Smith have long been in place, as witness the following from The Jack the Ripper A-Z -

'In his memoirs From Constable to Commissioner (1910) he wrote, "There is no man living who knows as much of those murders as I do", a claim that was accepted at face value until the discovery in 1988 of G.H. Edwards' caveat concerning the major's veracity, written on the title-page of the Scotland Yard library copy, and the realization that some of the major's anecdotes were demonstrably untrue.'

[Tom_Wescott]

G'Day Tom

And if he wasn't where does that leave the issue?

Just where it's always been. An uncertainty.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott