William Bury: Jack the Ripper

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Cheers, George

It’s a boring choice I’m afraid and one that annoys some but for me it’s Druitt and Kosminski at 1 and 2. There are objections to all suspect though of course. After those two I’d probably put Bury at 3. There would possibly then be a very few ‘possibles’ then around 150 ‘no chances.’ One problem is of course that there are very few that can be categorically eliminated due to evidence. PAV, Cream, Van Gogh (I hate even mentioning him)etc. I dismiss Doyle on principal and call for a lengthy prison sentence for the proposers.

[Ms Diddles]

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 ‘duFWIWmp’ 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.

All good points.

IIRC Ellen was a prostitute at least prior to marriage.

I too am perfectly capable of misremembering things though!!!

[Ms Diddles]

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.

Agreed!

It's nice to see a different candidate discussed.

I'm hoping to be in Dundee later this year (to check out the Discovery, and the Dundee Centre for Contemporary Arts does spectacularly good cocktails!!!!), so I may re-read MacPherson and Beadle too and do a themed walk around (before the cocktails naturally).

I'll post any interesting pictures, although I don't know Dundee well at all so I'm not sure what will be still standing and what will have been long since redeveloped.

[Ms Diddles]

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.

For sure!

It's a million miles away from being a done deal for any of the candidates, but Bury is in my five a side team too.

[Abby Normal]

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.

hi herlock
good points. but Ellen was a prostitute before getting married. and re her mutilations- nonetheless she was ripped up the abdoman, which is a ripper sig-the main one IMHO.

and re the rather un ripper like way he was busted-many serial killers do lose it and become unraveled at the end, which leads to their demise-bundy and kemper come to mind. and kemper did actually turn himself in at the end somewhat similar to bury.

[Herlock Sholmes]

All good points.

IIRC Ellen was a prostitute at least prior to marriage.

I too am perfectly capable of misremembering things though!!!

Thanks Ms D. I should have checked that

[Herlock Sholmes]

hi herlock
good points. but Ellen was a prostitute before getting married. and re her mutilations- nonetheless she was ripped up the abdoman, which is a ripper sig-the main one IMHO.

and re the rather un ripper like way he was busted-many serial killers do lose it and become unraveled at the end, which leads to their demise-bundy and kemper come to mind.

Cheers Abby I don’t know why I didn’t remember that she’d been a prostitute.

[Dickere]

For sure!

It's a million miles away from being a done deal for any of the candidates, but Bury is in my five a side team too.

They're playing a women's team, and then there's a sudden floodlight failure...

[Ms Diddles]

They're playing a women's team, and then there's a sudden floodlight failure...

Carnage!

Utter carnage!!!!

[Aethelwulf]

I think some people have been looking at this for so long that their thinking is stuck within a fairly rigid framework of what the logical sequence of events should have been and expected behaviours of a normal person. This lack of insight and imagination has led to Bury getting way with for 130 odd years and counting.

Bury was clearly running away from Whitechapel. He is trying distance himself from his crimes. Why would he commit and overtly ripper-like murder (e.g., Kelly) with his wife? There could only be two possible outcomes: he hands himself in and is arrested as JtR, or he goes on the run and the biggest manhunt in British policing history is launched.

In the end, his actions are rather hard to fathom. The sensible thing for him to have done would have been to leave and go somewhere he could be a stranger and blend in – probably back in the west midlands.

What it boils down for me is that McKenzie is so general that anyone could have done it as an imitation. The wounds are scratches. The throat would is not JtR’s signature, it is the wounds lower down. No one can reasonably claim disturbance as there are so many scratches that at least one of those could have been a proper wound. There is nothing specific about McKenzie that ties it to JtR – it is what you would expect from a copycat. He has been away for eight months and does an imitation and is never heard of again.

Also, if you want expert advice you ask and expert – they said no to McKenzie, undoubtedly for the above reasons.

The most profoundly disturbing wound on Ellen is incredibly specific and virtually identical in description to one on only one other victim – Eddowes. In the whole case, this is the single most profund piece of evidence for me. What I think you see with Ellen is JtR drawing on his range of previous experience and selecting what to do. But he is worried how it looks, has he gone too far?
Bury needs less special pleading than any other suspect. All you need to consider is that he could treat his wife differently, especially as he is trying to hide his true identity, and that the actions of JtR at the end could be unpredictable and erratic. That is all. Look at one of the other suspects we have covered: Druitt – he is sacked from a good job – he commits suicide – he was JtR. Where is the logic? Think of the steps you need to make up to get to the final conclusion. Surely, given what we now know about mental health, isn’t it more likely the suicide was connected to his sacking and its consequences?

There isn’t anything that makes me think Bury was exonerated by the police. They waited around to hear his final words. They can’t have had anything on him. The one person who could say definitively where he was and what he was doing was gone, the people that had dealings with Bury had said all they had to say. I’m not sure where they could have got any extra info from. The reality is more likely there was no appetite to investigate a man that had been tried and hanged. The report from the two officers was probably filed by les gros fromages as ‘wife murder – nothing to see here’. And Bury is forgotten. To counter all the circumstantial evidence- I covered in the main post with a piece of exonerating evidence that doesn’t exist (to anyone’s knowledge) is unrealistic.

I stand by what I said before – it is blindingly obvious it was Bury.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think some people have been looking at this for so long that their thinking is stuck within a fairly rigid framework of what the logical sequence of events should have been and expected behaviours of a normal person. This lack of insight and imagination has led to Bury getting way with for 130 odd years and counting.

Wulf, I would have hoped that you wouldn’t have assumed the same attitude that we see elsewhere from some. Just because someone’s opinion and assessment might differ from your own it doesn’t follow that it’s because they have a rigid outlook. No one on here has dismissed Bury out of hand and all have accepted that he’s a suspect worthy of consideration and further research. But to try and suggest that Bury was obviously the ripper just isn’t the case. You may believe that he was the Ripper, and you wouldn’t be alone in that, but it’s an opinion nonetheless and to support it much contradictory evidence has to be explained or ignored.

Bury was clearly running away from Whitechapel. He is trying distance himself from his crimes. Why would he commit and overtly ripper-like murder (e.g., Kelly) with his wife? There could only be two possible outcomes: he hands himself in and is arrested as JtR, or he goes on the run and the biggest manhunt in British policing history is launched.

‘Clearly’ why is it ‘clearly?’ As I said I haven’t re-read the books on the subject so I can’t recall if Bury gave a reason for leaving London and going to Dundee. Are you suggesting that Bury had just decided to give up killing? Is this normal for serial killers? (I know that there can be extended gaps but do they just decide to stop like giving up smoking?)

I find it difficult to understand how you can compare the murder of Kelly with that of Ellen? Hopefully you aren’t simply relying on the chemise which is irrelevant. Anything done to Ellen can’t be compared to the destruction that Kelly was subjected to. I see no resemblance at all.

In the end, his actions are rather hard to fathom. The sensible thing for him to have done would have been to leave and go somewhere he could be a stranger and blend in – probably back in the west midlands.

But we can’t assume to know what he was thinking.

What it boils down for me is that McKenzie is so general that anyone could have done it as an imitation. The wounds are scratches. The throat would is not JtR’s signature, it is the wounds lower down.

Who decides what the signature was? I have to say that it seems rather convenient that you dismiss the throat cutting which occurred without fail in the Canonical 5 (plus Mackenzie and Coles for that matter) but not with the murder of Ellen. He had ample time for the abdominal injuries after all.

No one can reasonably claim disturbance as there are so many scratches that at least one of those could have been a proper wound. There is nothing specific about McKenzie that ties it to JtR – it is what you would expect from a copycat. He has been away for eight months and does an imitation and is never heard of again.

Mackenzie may well have been a copycat but how can you know that an angry, drunken Bury didn’t simply strangle his wife then decided to subject her to the indignity of a ripper-type injury then, in panic, he hid the body in a trunk planning to put it onto a cart and dump it somewhere? It fits the facts and explains the trunk.

Also, if you want expert advice you ask and expert – they said no to McKenzie, undoubtedly for the above reasons.

Again, experts can give an opinion and we listen but we can’t say, especially at this distance of time, that they can’t be wrong. We regularly see experts disagreeing with each other even. And we have to recall that some at the time believed her to have been a ripper victim. The best that we can say is that the jury is out on Mackenzie but when we compare her to Ellen and the accepted ripper murders we can’t ignore - street prostitute, killed in the street, throat cut, left on display, same location. I’m not convinced she was a victim but she looks more like a ripper victim than Ellen.

The most profoundly disturbing wound on Ellen is incredibly specific and virtually identical in description to one on only one other victim – Eddowes. In the whole case, this is the single most profund piece of evidence for me. What I think you see with Ellen is JtR drawing on his range of previous experience and selecting what to do. But he is worried how it looks, has he gone too far?

If you are singling out one wound that was similar in Ellen’s murder and only the Eddowes murder then I have to ask why you don’t conclude that Nichols, Chapman and Kelly weren’t Ripper victims?

Bury needs less special pleading than any other suspect. All you need to consider is that he could treat his wife differently, especially as he is trying to hide his true identity, and that the actions of JtR at the end could be unpredictable and erratic. That is all.

I don’t see that special pleading is required although some can go over the top in ‘defence’ of a suspect. We can see that all suspects have their points for and against. We just weigh them up as individuals.

Look at one of the other suspects we have covered: Druitt – he is sacked from a good job – he commits suicide – he was JtR. Where is the logic? Think of the steps you need to make up to get to the final conclusion. Surely, given what we now know about mental health, isn’t it more likely the suicide was connected to his sacking and its consequences?

Druitt seems to get mentioned everywhere (I have to point out that it’s not me that brought him up) Druitt was named as a suspect by Sir Melville MacNaghten and others as a suspect. You have to make nothing up just because there are unknowns. Earlier you said that “Bury was clearly running away from Whitechapel,” but that’s your opinion so you yourself are ‘filling in the gaps.’ It’s not at all clear that his suicide was connected to his sacking at all. His sacking might well have been due to erratic behaviour, incidents of violence toward a pupil or a staff member, inappropriate sexual behaviour toward a female staff member or pupil. Is it reasonable to dismiss because of an unknown?

There isn’t anything that makes me think Bury was exonerated by the police. They waited around to hear his final words. They can’t have had anything on him. The one person who could say definitively where he was and what he was doing was gone, the people that had dealings with Bury had said all they had to say. I’m not sure where they could have got any extra info from. The reality is more likely there was no appetite to investigate a man that had been tried and hanged. The report from the two officers was probably filed by les gros fromages as ‘wife murder – nothing to see here’. And Bury is forgotten. To counter all the circumstantial evidence- I covered in the main post with a piece of exonerating evidence that doesn’t exist (to anyone’s knowledge) is unrealistic.

Im not countering with something that doesn’t exist Wulf. The evidence that he was exonerated exists because he was exonerated. That can be called a certainty. There’s also no record of anyone deciding to ‘take a second look.’ Yes we don’t know on what grounds he was exonerated but we have no records of any interview or investigation that happened. Just as I can’t prove that he was exonerated for valid reasons you can’t prove that he was exonerated on invalid reasons. But just assuming that the reasons were invalid…..is invalid.

I stand by what I said before – it is blindingly obvious it was Bury.

Which is your right to do Wulf.

Whereas I say that, whilst he’s worthy of consideration, investigation and further research he’s not even close to being blindingly obvious. To reach that conclusion we have to perform a wholesale dismissal of the differences and points against. We also have to assume that the police, who were being pilloried, denigrated and mocked by the politicians, the Press and the public, sent two officers all the way to Dundee only to dismiss Bury because he didn’t look the part. It’s entirely possible, not provable but possible, that they did indeed come up with evidence. Bury himself might have said “I was with x at the time of the Chapman murder,’ which they confirmed on their return to London. We don’t know but it’s plausible.

Vaid suspect, yes, blindingly obviously the ripper, no.

[John Wheat]

I think some people have been looking at this for so long that their thinking is stuck within a fairly rigid framework of what the logical sequence of events should have been and expected behaviours of a normal person. This lack of insight and imagination has led to Bury getting way with for 130 odd years and counting.

Bury was clearly running away from Whitechapel. He is trying distance himself from his crimes. Why would he commit and overtly ripper-like murder (e.g., Kelly) with his wife? There could only be two possible outcomes: he hands himself in and is arrested as JtR, or he goes on the run and the biggest manhunt in British policing history is launched.

In the end, his actions are rather hard to fathom. The sensible thing for him to have done would have been to leave and go somewhere he could be a stranger and blend in – probably back in the west midlands.

What it boils down for me is that McKenzie is so general that anyone could have done it as an imitation. The wounds are scratches. The throat would is not JtR’s signature, it is the wounds lower down. No one can reasonably claim disturbance as there are so many scratches that at least one of those could have been a proper wound. There is nothing specific about McKenzie that ties it to JtR – it is what you would expect from a copycat. He has been away for eight months and does an imitation and is never heard of again.

Also, if you want expert advice you ask and expert – they said no to McKenzie, undoubtedly for the above reasons.

The most profoundly disturbing wound on Ellen is incredibly specific and virtually identical in description to one on only one other victim – Eddowes. In the whole case, this is the single most profund piece of evidence for me. What I think you see with Ellen is JtR drawing on his range of previous experience and selecting what to do. But he is worried how it looks, has he gone too far?
Bury needs less special pleading than any other suspect. All you need to consider is that he could treat his wife differently, especially as he is trying to hide his true identity, and that the actions of JtR at the end could be unpredictable and erratic. That is all. Look at one of the other suspects we have covered: Druitt – he is sacked from a good job – he commits suicide – he was JtR. Where is the logic? Think of the steps you need to make up to get to the final conclusion. Surely, given what we now know about mental health, isn’t it more likely the suicide was connected to his sacking and its consequences?

There isn’t anything that makes me think Bury was exonerated by the police. They waited around to hear his final words. They can’t have had anything on him. The one person who could say definitively where he was and what he was doing was gone, the people that had dealings with Bury had said all they had to say. I’m not sure where they could have got any extra info from. The reality is more likely there was no appetite to investigate a man that had been tried and hanged. The report from the two officers was probably filed by les gros fromages as ‘wife murder – nothing to see here’. And Bury is forgotten. To counter all the circumstantial evidence- I covered in the main post with a piece of exonerating evidence that doesn’t exist (to anyone’s knowledge) is unrealistic.

I stand by what I said before – it is blindingly obvious it was Bury.

Hi Aethelwulf
I been telling people Bury was the Ripper for sometime on this site. However we know Bury isn't a glam suspect like Tumblety or Druitt. And I think that's a major reason why Bury is dismissed as a suspect by others. You might have to get used to some giving you short shrift. But don't let that stop you from starting Bury threads.

Cheers John

[Abby Normal]

Whereas I say that, whilst he’s worthy of consideration, investigation and further research he’s not even close to being blindingly obvious. To reach that conclusion we have to perform a wholesale dismissal of the differences and points against. We also have to assume that the police, who were being pilloried, denigrated and mocked by the politicians, the Press and the public, sent two officers all the way to Dundee only to dismiss Bury because he didn’t look the part. It’s entirely possible, not provable but possible, that they did indeed come up with evidence. Bury himself might have said “I was with x at the time of the Chapman murder,’ which they confirmed on their return to London. We don’t know but it’s plausible.

Vaid suspect, yes, blindingly obviously the ripper, no.

hi herlock
as usual some good points in there-but how was Bury exonerated? as far as I know,he was a person of interest who was never cleared.

[rjpalmer]

Some people seem to disregard the FBI profile. The experts that constructed the profile would have worked on lots of individual cases, from which they put together an ‘average profile,’ tailored to the specifics of the Whitechapel case.

Hi Aethelwulf.

Wasn’t the profile the work of a single agent--John E. Douglas, who created it for Cosgrove-Muerer---a film company in Burbank, California?

The use of the word “experts" suggests it was a consensus, but this was not the case. And this is relevant, because it has been shown that given the same exact data, different ‘experts’ will create entirely different profiles.

Further, Douglas has raised eyebrows in recent years by coming up with some rather strange notions about other historical cases, including the idea that Charles Manson was not the ‘mastermind’ behind the Tate/LaBianca murders—a claim that doesn’t fit the facts and has been denied by the participants.

The biggest ‘credibility killer’ for Bury as a viable suspect from a police perspective must have been the fact that he was married. I just don’t think it would have been on the police’s radar that JtR could have been married.

Jacob Isenschmid was married, and the police suspected him. The suspicions were evidently strong--until another murder happened while he was in custody. The police also suspected James Sadler and he was married. They even grilled his wife, hoping she could clarify his movements in 1888. In later years, Abberline suspected Severin Klosowski--another married man.

When Bury walked into the police station he was no longer married—he was a widower, and for the most repulsive reason imaginable. I’m confident this would have instantly unticked the ‘he is safe because he’s married’ box, had their been one.

A common theme among modern theorists is that the Victorian police were too dense to suspect the average man in the street. We hear this same argument made by those accusing Lechmere, Barnett, Hutchinson, etc.

I think the evidence suggests otherwise. The police grilled Barnett. They investigated Richardson. They investigated any number of ‘normal’ blokes and, personally, I think Abberline would have been all too happy to charge Bury had he found evidence he had committed other murders.

Still, the case against Bury is more respectable than most.

[Herlock Sholmes]

hi herlock
as usual some good points in there-but how was Bury exonerated? as far as I know,he was a person of interest who was never cleared.

Hi Abby,

Perhaps ‘exonerated’ might not be the best word to have used but the police did interview Bury and didn’t charge him. There doesn’t appear to be any record of any continued interest in him as a suspect. As Wulf has suggested maybe he fooled them in some way, it’s possible of course, but I’d suggest that it also can’t be anything like impossible that they found good reason not to pursue a case against him. Maybe they asked him “where were you on the night of….” to which he replied that he was doing something with Mr X and Mr Y all night and, on returning to Whitechapel, Mr X and Mr Y confirmed his alibi? All that I’m saying is that we can’t preclude the possibility that the police found a genuine reason for eliminating him at the time.