Sent to an asylum?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Here's a suspect I have come up with - George Capel Scudamore Lechmere - a semi-employed barber/hairdresser who tried to slit his wife's throat while she was nursing their baby. GCS Lechmere was in and out of workhouses, but doesn't seem to have an alibi for any of the C5. GCS Lechmere's attack on his wife was in June of 1890. He was sentenced to 18 months hard labor. I haven't found when he died, but he appears to have been alive as late as 1893.

So not a great fit on timing - arrested a year and a half after the last of the C5 were killed, released after serving his sentence.

Charles Allen Lechmere finds the Whitechapel Murderer's first victim while on his way to work and she had just five minutes earlier been murdered by Lechmere's cousin?

Why didn't the murderer hang around and greet his cousin, who would surely have protected him?

[John Wheat]

Charles Allen Lechmere finds the Whitechapel Murderer's first victim while on his way to work and she had just five minutes earlier been murdered by Lechmere's cousin?

Why didn't the murderer hang around and greet his cousin, who would surely have protected him?

A better suspect that Charles Allen Lechmere but a terrible suspect nonetheless.

[Fiver]

A better suspect that Charles Allen Lechmere but a terrible suspect nonetheless.

I never said GCS Lechmere was a good suspect. But he is better than most - no alibi, violence against a woman, cutting her throat with a knife.

[Fiver]

Charles Allen Lechmere finds the Whitechapel Murderer's first victim while on his way to work and she had just five minutes earlier been murdered by Lechmere's cousin?

Why didn't the murderer hang around and greet his cousin, who would surely have protected him?

In what sort of bizzaro world do people protect mass-murdering third cousins that they've probably never met?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

In what sort of bizzaro world do people protect mass-murdering third cousins that they've probably never met?

In what sort of bizarre world do people on their way to work come across bodies of people murdered by their cousins?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I never said GCS Lechmere was a good suspect. But he is better than most - no alibi, violence against a woman, cutting her throat with a knife.

How do you know he had no alibi?

[John Wheat]

I never said GCS Lechmere was a good suspect. But he is better than most - no alibi, violence against a woman, cutting her throat with a knife.

Fair enough. I agree violent murderers should be ahead of suspects that were for example non violent family men eg Charles Allen Lechmere. My preferred suspect Bury was a proven violent murderer.

[spyglass]

I would find it unlikely that the Authorities would incarcerate JTR without letting it be known that they had caught the killer after all the criticism they had recieved.
unless of course he was someone high in the establishment or Royalty....just saying!

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I would find it unlikely that the Authorities would incarcerate JTR without letting it be known that they had caught the killer after all the criticism they had recieved.
unless of course he was someone high in the establishment or Royalty....just saying!

I agree.

You would also think that if Anderson and Swanson had identified the murderer, they would have let Abberline and Smith know about it, and that Macnaghten would have read about it in the police files.

If Anderson's claim that the police came to the conclusion early in the investigation that the murderer had to be a Polish Jew were true, then why did he allow Abberline to continue to look for Gentile suspects and not tell him about the breakthrough?

The answer is that it did not happen.

[spyglass]

I suppose it possible that the killer was identified/caught early during the early stages,and for what ever reasons escaped or released.
Im sure the police wouldnt want this to come out later.
I always thought that Pigott would make a good suspect ( all circumstantial )if the murders had ceased after Chapman.
apparently he was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum quite quickly, but it seems any records cant be found.

Regards

[Abby Normal]

In what sort of bizzaro world do people protect mass-murdering third cousins that they've probably never met?

a conspiracy of leches!

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I would find it unlikely that the Authorities would incarcerate JTR without letting it be known that they had caught the killer after all the criticism they had recieved.
unless of course he was someone high in the establishment or Royalty....just saying!

Sir Robert Anderson, who had a theory that the murders stopped because the murderer had been incarcerated, was quite definite that he was never identified:


After a stranger has gone over it he takes a much more lenient view of our failure to find Jack the Ripper, as they call him, than he did before.

(Sir Robert Anderson, Pall Mall Gazette, 4 November 1889)


I told Sir William Harcourt that I could not accept the responsibility for the non-detection of the author of the Ripper crimes.

(Sir Robert Anderson, Daily Chronicle, September 1908)

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

After a stranger has gone over it he takes a much more lenient view of our failure to find Jack the Ripper, as they call him, than he did before.

(Sir Robert Anderson, Pall Mall Gazette, 4 November 1889)

I quote a comment from another topic:


Could it perhaps have been the City of London (CID) officers who were conducting the surveillance who caught him (Kosminski) doing that (walking a dog without a muzzle in public) in the City of London?

(Bridewell, # 612, The Seaside Home: Could Schwartz or Lawende Have Put the Ripper's Neck in a Noose?)


Why would City of London CID officers have had Kosminski under surveillance at the same time as Anderson was talking of his failure to catch the murderer?

And why was the worst thing that they could catch him doing walking a dog without a muzzle?

Why was he not caught committing an act of violence?

And why, if he was the murderer, with every opportunity to continue to commit murder, had he not committed a murder for more than a year?

And why, if he was suspected of being the murderer, was no attempt to identify him made?

If the witness was Lawende, the police knew his contact details.

Why had they not contacted him?

Why did they not ask Lawende to identify him surreptitiously or, alternatively, arrest Kosminski and arrange an identification?

If the witness was someone whose contact details they did not have, how could they have set up an identification as claimed?

And if surveillance of Kosminski proved that he consorted with prostitutes, why did CID never find anything incriminating against him - something more substantial than Macnaghten's wholly circumstantial evidence or Anderson's and Swanson's identification evidence?

If CID saw Kosminski consorting with prostitutes, what was Kosminski doing with them?

If he was having sexual relations with them, how could he have been the Whitechapel Murderer?