William Bury: Jack the Ripper

[Columbo]

Bury, as with other suspects, is only suspected because of his activities in the U.S.. Which of course you would want to look a someone like him considering what he did. But he doesn't fit the descriptions that we have. He killed for money or to hide himself from the law. He just doesn't fit the bill for me for JTR.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thanks Herlock. I was aware of his theory, but didn't it involve the suicide being on the 9th Nov as an instant result of the horror of the MJK murder? Are you aware that by the time Macnaughton released his memoirs in 1914 the drowned doctor theory had been dropped in favour of " the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November 1888".

Abilene was vocal in his oppostion to the drowned doctor theory and in 1891 Sir Edward Bradford, Chief Commissioner of the Police, was convinced that Coles was a ripper victim and was parading Sadler before a Mitre Square witness for identification.

Cheers, George

MacNaghten favoured Druitt until his death, as did others. But again, there are other threads for Druitt stuff.

[Ms Diddles]

I would argue that Bury is not a very "attractive" suspect for a lot of people. A drunkard who half-assed his final murder and handed himself into the police smashes the mythos of the Ripper.

The likes of Maybrick, Kosminski, Druitt, Lechmere, Sickert, Gull etc. are a bit more alluring than Bury, truth be damned.

Agreed, Harry!

He doesn't seem to have the glamour of a Druitt or the charisma of a Tumblety somehow does he?

His trip to the police station after murdering his wife certainly doesn't fit in with the image which we have of JTR even though in all probability that image is merely an illusion.

I also agree with Abby and George that McKenzie's status as a ripper victim is a big factor, and TBH (as with so many aspects of the case) I swither on that one!!

[Harry D]

Bury, as with other suspects, is only suspected because of his activities in the U.S.

That's a new one on me?

Another point in Bury's favour, he arrived in London in Oct 1887, not long before the first spate of attacks began.

[Ms Diddles]

Bury, as with other suspects, is only suspected because of his activities in the U.S.. Which of course you would want to look a someone like him considering what he did. But he doesn't fit the descriptions that we have. He killed for money or to hide himself from the law. He just doesn't fit the bill for me for JTR.

Activities in the US??

The moustache??

Columbo, are you maybe confusing Bury with Tumblety here?

[Columbo]

Activities in the US??

The moustache??

Columbo, are you maybe confusing Bury with Tumblety here?

Nope actually confused him with another post. sorry.

[Ms Diddles]

Nope actually confused him with another post. sorry.

Ha! No worries!

I always get the witnesses all muddled up myself!

[Aethelwulf]

Can we be anything like certain of this though Wulf? We know how desperately the Police wanted the killer caught and the kind of pressures they were under from the politicians and the public. Could it really be as simplistic as this for the police to go to the expense of sending two officers up to Scotland to see if Bury was their ‘Mr Hyde’ type image of the killer? Of course I’m not saying that it’s impossible that a guilty Bury couldn’t have fooled them but I don’t think we can assume that it would have been such an easy task. I think we can tend toward sidestepping the inconvenient if we use this simplistic argument to ignore the fact that the police certainly didn’t think that he was Jack the Ripper. How can we be sure for example that they didn’t discover some insurmountable fact that exonerated him? And although later on suspects were either named or hinted at by various officers and observers/confidantes (Koz, Druitt, Tumblety, Chapman etc) no one ever mentions Bury. Not even in hindsight does anyone consider him.



Two of these of course were actually highlighted as suspects (and likely one’s in their opinion) of two very highly placed Police Officers so it’s difficult to see where ‘absurd’ comes from? Whether these suspects seem the ‘type’ or not is largely it relevant. We can take no suspect as a ‘case closed’ of course but we cannot dismiss them because they don’t ‘seem’ right. People who were around at the time and in a position to know felt the opposite. This has to give them weight.

…..

Id of course add that any perceived similarities between the murder of his wife and the victims is outweighed by the differences in a murder of strangers in the street put on display as opposed to a wife murdered and hidden in a trunk. There are some similarities of course but none are exactly unique in the annals of murder.

Id certainly have Bury as a person of interest but from reading comments by one proposer there has been a tendency toward serious exaggeration IMO. The case isn’t closed. I’d say that Bury is a slightly better suspect than Kelly. Worth further research certainly.

Hang on though, didn't the two police officers actually wait right until the end to hear Bury's final words, if he would confess, and commented that they could be construed a number of ways. Would they really do that if they had turned up something to rule him out? Of course not. Bury could have fooled them. Have you read his two forged letters - they are elaborate, especially the 'letter from Ellen' - 'poor Will, dicky tummy, ship rocking and rolling etc'. He was also always pleasant to Ellen's sister yet beat Ellen regularly. I get the feeling Bury could easily have deceived the police. You say they weren't interested but wasn't Parr convinced JtR was Bury and was following him up.

Problem is, people are far too bogged down in the minutiae of timings, who said what to who, in what order, was she wearing an apron, was it whole, who cares, did Joe blogs put together a conspiracy with jeff blogs to give cousin bloggs an alibi - to see what is so blindingly obvious.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hang on though, didn't the two police officers actually wait right until the end to hear Bury's final words, if he would confess, and commented that they could be construed a number of ways. Would they really do that if they had turned up something to rule him out? Of course not. Bury could have fooled them. Have you read his two forged letters - they are elaborate, especially the 'letter from Ellen' - 'poor Will, dicky tummy, ship rocking and rolling etc'. He was also always pleasant to Ellen's sister yet beat Ellen regularly. I get the feeling Bury could easily have deceived the police. You say they weren't interested but wasn't Parr convinced JtR was Bury and was following him up.

Problem is, people are far too bogged down in the minutiae of timings, who said what to who, in what order, was she wearing an apron, was it whole, who cares, did Joe blogs put together a conspiracy with jeff blogs to give cousin bloggs an alibi - to see what is so blindingly obvious.

There’s just nothing blindingly obvious about this. I’ve no doubt that Bury could be persuasive and that he was a liar and that he was a very unpleasant man (and obviously a murderer) and he might have been the ripper but I don’t see why you call this at all obvious when it’s far from it. Of course he ‘might’ have fooled them but you can’t negate the possibility that they might have felt that they had good reason for exonerating him. And indeed they might have had.

People might get ‘bogged’ down on other issues Wulf but I’d suggest that most posters have read up on Bury and drawn there own conclusions. Many consider Bury a suspect worth of pursuing but see nothing to make it ‘blindingly obvious’ that he was the ripper. I’m certainly rusty on details because it’s been a considerable time since I read the Bury and MacPherson books but we can’t ignore the fact that the ripper killed prostitutes in the street (apart from one of course) and left there bodies on display. We don’t know why he did this though? Did he hate prostitutes specifically or women in general? Did anything in his history trigger this? Was he the kind of killer that felt that he was doing God’s work? Bury however killed his wife and hid her body in a trunk (which might have meant that he’d originally intended to dump her body and flee) Wyatt Earp even suggested on here that she’d been deliberately ‘posed’ in the trunk which is just a step way too far.

I certainly would dismiss Bury by any means but I don’t see how it can be considered ‘blindingly obviously’ the ripper.

[drstrange169]

Great to see a Bury thread, it's been ages since there has been a real discussion on him. I'll have to re-read about him.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don’t want it thought that I’m dismissing Bury out of hand. I’m not. But it’s been suggested that it’s pretty much obvious that he was guilty which I certainly disagree with. So I’ve just made a few points which are based largely from memory (without re-reading any of the books) and are just my opinion.

• If Bury made a confession to Ellen’s murder to Reverend Gough, which he put into writing with the request that it wasn’t revealed until after his death, why didn’t he confess to being Jack the Ripper? The fact that he confessed to a priest points to the suggestion that he saw value in the confession for reasons of religion/faith (before God) So why was he basically accepting his guilt for Ellen before God but not the ripper murders? If he believed in God then he must have accepted that God knows all. This appears contradictory to me especially as it appears to be suggested that the chalked writing was a ‘confession.’
• Bury strangled Ellen with a rope. There is no evidence of the ripper using an implement. I can’t see any practical reason for this.
• All of the rippers victims had their throats cut. Ellen didn’t.
• The rippers victims were street prostitutes. I’m working from memory but I don’t believe that Ellen was a prostitute (obviously I’ll hold my hands up if I’ve mis-remembered)
• From Nichols to Chapman to Eddowes to Kelly we see an escalation in the severity of the mutilations. Ellen was killed indoors which would have given the ripper more than ample time and yet the cuts to her abdomen were derisory when compared to Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly.
• We can’t know if Mackenzie was a ripper victim or not but her manner of death was far more ripper-like than the murder of Ellen and Bury was in Dundee at the time. So why Ellen/yes but Mackenzie/no?
• The police exonerated Bury as a suspect. Wulf points out that the police had a preconceived image of the type of person that the ripper would have been. It’s a fair point but the police were utterly desperate to catch the ripper and they obviously felt that Bury was a likely enough suspect to send 2 officers to Dundee. Now we don’t know what was said or what actions might have been taken of course but how do we know that they didn’t find some ‘game over’ exonerating factor? It’s also possible that they might have followed up in London any information gained in Dundee. This follow-up might again have resulted in them finding that clincher which exonerated Bury? We have no way of knowing of course but I don’t think that we can simply dismiss the police’s exoneration of Bury as baseless.
• Bury put his wife’s body in a trunk. This is concealment and not display. Surely this implies that Bury might have intended to ‘dump’ the body.
• As the police apparently had no clue who the ripper was, and the killer had a killing ground that he was familiar with and comfortable with, why would he move to a completely unfamiliar area? If he’d begun ripper-style murders there then the police would have been looking for a man who had moved from the East End to Dundee.

[drstrange169]

Yes, Bury is a reasonable candidate, but I'd agree with your caveats, that's feelings too. No candidate quite gets there for me.

[GBinOz]

Hi Herlock,

Those are very good points you make. I find myself at a loss to come up with any objection to any of them.

Cheers, George

[Herlock Sholmes]

I do want to stress that I don’t dismiss Bury by any means. In fact I’d say that he’s possibly number 3 in any list that I’d compile. I’ve certainly no issue with anyone having his as number one but I don’t think that we can say it’s anything like the done deal as has been claimed by some.

[GBinOz]

I do want to stress that I don’t dismiss Bury by any means. In fact I’d say that he’s possibly number 3 in any list that I’d compile. I’ve certainly no issue with anyone having his as number one but I don’t think that we can say it’s anything like the done deal as has been claimed by some.

Interesting. Who would be number 2 on your list? Is there a place on your list for Frederick Deeming?

Cheers, George