Lost police records & documents...............

[David Orsam]

Your Co-Op dividend number?

No, I thought we were exchanging metropolitan police file reference numbers.

Was so excited when you started it.

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

Your Co-Op dividend number?

Regards,

Simon

[David Orsam]

Hi Simon,

45492.

Regards,

David

[Simon Wood]

Hi David,

52983.

Regards,

Simon

[David Orsam]

Except of course from the secret police files.

Which were not Ripper files, thus confirming the point I made in my previous post.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Didn't the authors Ralph Strauss and Douglas Browne have access to the Scotland yard files on the case sometime before 1956, and that Douglas Browne cryptically said that Macnaghten appeared to identify Jack with the leader of a plot to assassinate Balfour at the Irish office. If what he said is true this file as never been traced nor was it likely to have been destroyed in the war. Unfortunately all the city police files where.

[Pierre]

The issue here, surely, is what has survived from the Metropolitan Police records. In this respect, there is nothing special about the Ripper files other than how much more has survived compared to other murders of the period.

Except of course from the secret police files.

[David Orsam]

Duh.. sorry I forgot to add that I meant files alot older then that. And not necessarily exclusive to murder. For instance important historical documents that are centuries old. Alot older then the ripper case.

Of course there are but then you are not comparing like with like. All institutions store documents in different ways.

The issue here, surely, is what has survived from the Metropolitan Police records. In this respect, there is nothing special about the Ripper files other than how much more has survived compared to other murders of the period.

[Natasha]

Really?

Here's an exercise for you to do Natasha.

Go the online National Archives catalogue and search for all files within the Metropolitan Police series (MEPO) for the entire decade of 1880 to 1890 which contain the word "murder".

Do you know how many results you will get?

I'll tell you: 106

Of those 106 results, guess how many relate to the Whitechapel murders?

I'll tell you: 103

In fact, the true answer is probably 104 because one of the remaining 3 files relates to the death of a woman in Poplar in December 1888 that some consider to be a Ripper murder (and she has a chapter in the JTR sourcebook).

Of the remaining two files, one relates to an attempted murder of some constables. The other involved a murder case in 1887 where the police were criticised.

On those numbers, I'm not convinced your argument stacks up.

Duh.. sorry I forgot to add that I meant files alot older then that. And not necessarily exclusive to murder. For instance important historical documents that are centuries old. Alot older then the ripper case.

[David Orsam]

but I find it kinda amazing that files of all kinds, unrelated to the ripper case, are still available

Really?

Here's an exercise for you to do Natasha.

Go the online National Archives catalogue and search for all files within the Metropolitan Police series (MEPO) for the entire decade of 1880 to 1890 which contain the word "murder".

Do you know how many results you will get?

I'll tell you: 106

Of those 106 results, guess how many relate to the Whitechapel murders?

I'll tell you: 103

In fact, the true answer is probably 104 because one of the remaining 3 files relates to the death of a woman in Poplar in December 1888 that some consider to be a Ripper murder (and she has a chapter in the JTR sourcebook).

Of the remaining two files, one relates to an attempted murder of some constables. The other involved a murder case in 1887 where the police were criticised.

On those numbers, I'm not convinced your argument stacks up.

[Natasha]

It was Donald Rumbelow (correct me if I'm wrong) who commented that Kelly was pregnant. Where did he get that info from? If he saw files that said that, where did they disappear to?

Bit fishy that alot of stuff has gone missing. I know alot of stuff got destroyed in the war, but I find it kinda amazing that files of all kinds, unrelated to the ripper case, are still available, yet we have alot of missing stuff related to the ripper case.

I think I remember someone on here, can't remember who, said that they know a family who has some photos etc of the victims or paper work something to that effect anyway, and that they've seen them.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Dark Passenger,

The 1891 Census [5th April] provides a glimpse of the staff and types of patients then at the Seaside Home.

It was certainly not an environment into which you might risk sending Jack the Ripper, whether he was Kosher or Goy.

Regards,

Simon

[DarkPassenger]

I supposed a visitor's log for the Seaside Home circa 1891 is too much to ask for

How about the constant references I keep seeing for the Yard's "announcement" of Jack being a Jew in an asylum? Did the Yard make a big deal of this prior to Anderson making his autobiography claims?

[Mayerling]

Have other historical murder files been subject to the same types of loss?

Pierre

Hi Pierre,

Haven't been around the threads recently, though I read some.

I suspect that thefts from some of the other files occurred, though I specifically don't know of any. The Ripper file, being the one of Britain's most famous unsolved murder case, would have been a natural magnet for people seeking souvenirs, although logic should have dictated leaving the contents together. I am aware that Donald Rumbelow did comment on the Ripper file and the file on the Houndsditch Murders (the Siege of Sidney Street, in 1910) in his books on those cases. But of missing materials elsewhere, I can't be certain.

In the U.S. police departments habitually got rid of material that no longer was "needed". About a dozen or so years back I read a book about the source of James Cain's novel, "Double Indemnity" (also a movie with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray), the 1927 Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray Murder in New York's borough of Queens (where I live, by the way). There was plenty of material, but the trial transcripts no longer exist, and newspaper accounts had to be used. This is true, of many old and celebrated New York Cases. The development of microfilm and microfiche has changed this (as well as comperization) but it has come too late to save many items we would have liked to have kept.

Jeff

[GUT]

Have other historical murder files been subject to the same types of loss?

Pierre

Yes..