The Life of William Henry Bury

[johns]

Hi Wyatt

I've only just seen this. Nice website I must say.

John

[curious]

If you're still interested in reading the article, a slightly improved version ("The Bury ID") is available at http://www.williambury.org (it's essentially the same article, I just added a few remarks and tried to improve the writing here and there).

Thanks, Wyatt. I really enjoyed it.

curious

[Wyatt Earp]

Thanks, guys. By the way, if anyone has an interest in contributing Bury-related material to the website, pm me and let me know. It would have to be material where copyright wouldn't be a problem. I'm not familiar with the U.K. copyright laws nor how things could be complicated by the website and I being in the U.S., which is why for the time being I've steered clear of using the old newspaper images on the site (the image of Bury on the front page is supposed to be a public domain image). I could put guest posts, interviews, photos, etc. on the site if people are interested in contributing material.

[Wyatt Earp]

I found this in West Yorkshire, England, Prison Records, 1801-1914. I’m not good with Victorian handwriting, so bear with me. I don’t know if this is news to anybody or not, but I didn’t see it mentioned in the books by Beadle or Macpherson.

Register no: 2795
Name: William Henry Bury
Date of committal: May 23, 1884
Place of committal: Dewsbury WR
Offense: Vagrancy?
(Looks like an “so” or “do.” I’m not familiar with prison record abbreviations. Further up the page, another guy’s offense is “vagrancy,” and then there are a bunch of guys beneath him, including Bury, with this abbreviation in the offense column, so I’m guessing that Bury’s offense was vagrancy as well.)
Sentence: 14 days tth
Education: looks like “Mp”
Age: 25
(Beadle gives DOB as 5/25/59, Macpherson as 11/20/59, so according to their dates Bury should still have been 24 at the time of committal, but this is very close.)
Height: 5’2” (Bury was 5’3”—very close.)
Hair: brown (Matches.)
Occupation: Warehouseman (Matches—according to Macpherson, Bury was working at Osbourne’s warehouse about that time.)
Physical characteristics: cut on forehead and on right side of neck
Religion: Church
Place of birth: Stourbridge (Matches.)
Previous convictions: None
Date of discharge: June 5, 1884

If this is our Bury, then this would constitute his first conviction and evidence that he spent a couple of weeks in the can in 1884.

[Pcdunn]

Wyatt, I think "do." was an abbreviation in old records for "ditto"-- meaning the same as above, so they probably all were in on the same offense.

[phantom]

I found this in West Yorkshire, England, Prison Records, 1801-1914. I’m not good with Victorian handwriting, so bear with me. I don’t know if this is news to anybody or not, but I didn’t see it mentioned in the books by Beadle or Macpherson.

Register no: 2795
Name: William Henry Bury
Date of committal: May 23, 1884
Place of committal: Dewsbury WR
Offense: Vagrancy?
(Looks like an “so” or “do.” I’m not familiar with prison record abbreviations. Further up the page, another guy’s offense is “vagrancy,” and then there are a bunch of guys beneath him, including Bury, with this abbreviation in the offense column, so I’m guessing that Bury’s offense was vagrancy as well.)
Sentence: 14 days tth
Education: looks like “Mp”
Age: 25
(Beadle gives DOB as 5/25/59, Macpherson as 11/20/59, so according to their dates Bury should still have been 24 at the time of committal, but this is very close.)
Height: 5’2” (Bury was 5’3”—very close.)
Hair: brown (Matches.)
Occupation: Warehouseman (Matches—according to Macpherson, Bury was working at Osbourne’s warehouse about that time.)
Physical characteristics: cut on forehead and on right side of neck
Religion: Church
Place of birth: Stourbridge (Matches.)
Previous convictions: None
Date of discharge: June 5, 1884

If this is our Bury, then this would constitute his first conviction and evidence that he spent a couple of weeks in the can in 1884.

Yeah I agree with PC Dunn below. Nice find!

[johns]

Excellent discovery

[Wyatt Earp]

Thank you Pcdunn, phantom and johns. Regarding the age discrepancy, I’m not sure if they would have recorded his age coming in or going out. If it was coming in, Bury would have been within two days of his 25th birthday (per the birth certificate information posted by johns in an earlier thread), and so he could have fudged and simply said 25. If it was going out, then Bury would have turned 25 by then, and there would be no discrepancy. In any event, it looks like Bury spent his 25th birthday in jail.

[Wyatt Earp]

Register no: 2795
Name: William Henry Bury
Date of committal: May 23, 1884
Place of committal: Dewsbury WR
Offense: Vagrancy?
(Looks like an “so” or “do.” I’m not familiar with prison record abbreviations. Further up the page, another guy’s offense is “vagrancy,” and then there are a bunch of guys beneath him, including Bury, with this abbreviation in the offense column, so I’m guessing that Bury’s offense was vagrancy as well.)
Sentence: 14 days tth
Education: looks like “Mp”
Age: 25
(Beadle gives DOB as 5/25/59, Macpherson as 11/20/59, so according to their dates Bury should still have been 24 at the time of committal, but this is very close.)
Height: 5’2” (Bury was 5’3”—very close.)
Hair: brown (Matches.)
Occupation: Warehouseman (Matches—according to Macpherson, Bury was working at Osbourne’s warehouse about that time.)
Physical characteristics: cut on forehead and on right side of neck
Religion: Church
Place of birth: Stourbridge (Matches.)
Previous convictions: None
Date of discharge: June 5, 1884

A few notes about the prison record—

The place of committal is given as “Dewsbury WR.” In the first post of this thread http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=129, johns provided a newspaper article which states that Bury “is said for some time to have been at Dewsbury.”

In their books about Bury, Beadle (p.50) and Macpherson (p.19) both give Bury’s height as 5’3½”, but they don’t provide their sources for that (that said, the Dundee Courier does give Bury’s height as 5’3½”). The prison record, however, is providing an official measurement of 5’2”. It doesn’t seem very likely that Bury would have grown an inch and a half after his twenty-fifth birthday, so there’s a conflict here. I’ve been looking through some old newspapers, and I’ve come across something which appears to reconcile the two measurements. According to the March 19 Dundee Advertiser, Bury was 5’3½” “in his boots.” In the August 1888 portrait of the Burys, he is shown wearing boots with some pretty good heels, so that sounds about right. Interestingly, the February 12 Aberdeen Journal does give Bury’s height as 5’2”. James Berry gives Bury’s height as 5’3”, but he may have been giving an “in his shoes” height. In any event, I’ve updated the Bury website in a few spots to make it clear that the 5’3½” I’m giving is a “boots” height (one of the nice things about having your work on your own website is that you can make immediate edits).

The March 30 Dundee People’s Journal gives Bury’s religion as Episcopalian. The prison record gives Bury’s religion as “Church.” Would “Church” be an abbreviation for “Church of England”?

[Abby Normal]

A few notes about the prison record—

The place of committal is given as “Dewsbury WR.” In the first post of this thread http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=129, johns provided a newspaper article which states that Bury “is said for some time to have been at Dewsbury.”

In their books about Bury, Beadle (p.50) and Macpherson (p.19) both give Bury’s height as 5’3½”, but they don’t provide their sources for that (that said, the Dundee Courier does give Bury’s height as 5’3½”). The prison record, however, is providing an official measurement of 5’2”. It doesn’t seem very likely that Bury would have grown an inch and a half after his twenty-fifth birthday, so there’s a conflict here. I’ve been looking through some old newspapers, and I’ve come across something which appears to reconcile the two measurements. According to the March 19 Dundee Advertiser, Bury was 5’3½” “in his boots.” In the August 1888 portrait of the Burys, he is shown wearing boots with some pretty good heels, so that sounds about right. Interestingly, the February 12 Aberdeen Journal does give Bury’s height as 5’2”. James Berry gives Bury’s height as 5’3”, but he may have been giving an “in his shoes” height. In any event, I’ve updated the Bury website in a few spots to make it clear that the 5’3½” I’m giving is a “boots” height (one of the nice things about having your work on your own website is that you can make immediate edits).

The March 30 Dundee People’s Journal gives Bury’s religion as Episcopalian. The prison record gives Bury’s religion as “Church.” Would “Church” be an abbreviation for “Church of England”?

awesome wyatt.

any way you could display the portrait of the burys here? where is it from? ive never heard of it before.

[Wyatt Earp]

It's in my article in Ripperologist 139. If you're a subscriber to Ripperologist, you can access the back issues through those links that come with each issue. You can also find it on page 101 of Beadle's Jack the Ripper Unmasked. If neither of those work for you, pm me your email address and I'll send you a scan sometime tomorrow.

[Abby Normal]

It's in my article in Ripperologist 139. If you're a subscriber to Ripperologist, you can access the back issues through those links that come with each issue. You can also find it on page 101 of Beadle's Jack the Ripper Unmasked. If neither of those work for you, pm me your email address and I'll send you a scan sometime tomorrow.

cool! Ill check it out.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ive just had a look on the Bury website. Hes an interesting suspect. In my opinion one of the few worth considering. Although its been a while since i read the three books reviewed but i recall, at the time, thinking that Bill Beadle’s book ‘Unmasked’ was one of the best that id read.

I need to read more and update myself on Bury (i did briefly meet Bill Beadle once at a Cloak And Dagger Club meeting years ago...nice guy.) My only ‘concern’ and its one that i have in general with ripperology, is over confidence. Steve appears to speak as if the case is over and its settled that Bury was guilty.

I live less than 30 minutes in a car from Stourbridge by the way.

[Busy Beaver]

Good one Herlock. I too think Bury needs some more investigating as do quite a few names, who I wouldn't mind see obliterated from this site

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi BB,

It’s always going to be a source of heated debate if we try and come up with a ranking list for suspects. Barring conspiracy theory I’d think that we can safely eliminated Prince Eddy due to court circulars proving him to be elsewhere. We can eliminate Neil Cream, Van Gogh (I hate even mentioning him) because they weren’t in the country. Likewise HH Holmes because it can’t be shown that he was in the country at the time. So that trims the herd a little.

Then there’s ‘suspects’ like Mann and Bachert who, as far as I can recall, were suspects purely because they were in the area at the time! So in the absence of anything like evidence I tend to ‘dump’ these too.

Fanciful one’s like Lewis Carroll shouldn’t really detain anyone. The case for Sickert appears to only convince Patricia Cornwell. And The Royal Conspiracy has been thoroughly disproven.

Maybrick is totally reliant on the diary and as we stand the weight of evidence is heavily in favour of forgery.

We have witnesses like Hutchinson and Lechmere that some believe could have been guilty. Debate will go on and we cannot completely exonerate either. We can only comment and debate the likelihood.

I don’t think that Tumblety was the ripper but he has to be in the ‘genuine suspect’ class. Less so Chapman in my opinion.

And so for me, and I certainly wouldn’t bet any cash in it, the best remaining are Kosminski/Cohen, Druitt (I know, people tend to dismiss him) and Bury.

I still think it’s likeliest that the Ripper has yet to be named and probably never will.