Assessing the case against W.H.Bury

[johns]

Hi Lechmere

Well written piece, and welcome to Buryland.

On the question of the chalked messages at Bury's place in Dundee, have you any thoughts on whether Bury, Ellen or some random passer-by did it?

I myself have always leaned towards Bury himself scrawling them.

I have never lived in London myself, but I take your point about parish and district names... People will call a place whatever they like sometimes rather than it's official name.

Regards
John

[Lechmere]

I think Bury must have done it, but it hardly makes him Jack the Ripper.
When he arrived in Scotland he and his wife were 'ragged' by Dundonians along the lines of 'oh you're from the East End, that must mean you know Jack the Ripper'. The wife laughed it off - probably a tiresome and commonplace jibe that people from the East End had to put up at the time. Bury shrank away. He already had her coffin ready by then though.
I think the only evidence that Bury drank in Whitechapel comes from Scottish papers (eg one from Aberdeen I think). In my opinion when they said this it really meant 'East End'. The nuances of which district was which would have been beyond them. To them, in the aftermath of the Ripper publicity and with a murderer in Scotland who had just arrived from the East End, it would be natural to say he drank in Whitechapel (meaning the East End) when really the only evidence was that he went out late drinking - more likely just in Bow (or Bromley-by-Bow).
Bury was clearly an unpleasant character but also an idiot and a loser. He hatched the most stupid premeditated murder I have ever read about. He probably self importantly fantasised that he was a ripper, hence the minor stabs at his wife's abdomen. And hence the scrawling, and possibly hence his cryptic remarks to the hangman (if true).

[The Grave Maurice]

The point about Londoners identifying place names accurately is well made. My grandfather was definitely born in Mile End Old Town but, when asked about his origins, would, depending on his mood I suppose, say that he was from Mile End, or Limehouse, or Stepney, or Bromley (he never included the by-Bow part) and seemed to use them all interchangeably.

I encountered the same sort of geographical vagueness when speaking with a librarian at the Bancroft Road Library about the divisions of the various districts. He had no clear idea either, and apparently wasn't bothered by it. He wasn't even completely sure where he lived, and that was only a few blocks from my grandfather's old house.

Londoners don't seem to care where they live exactly, as long as it's in London.

[Abby Normal]

Bury is an interesting suspect and has more going for him than the celebrities. Namely he was a murderer and he did live in the East End during the Ripper murders. These two facts are hardly enough to pin the Ripper murders on him however. The main reasons why Bury is an unlikely suspect are:
He did not live in the East End for long. A year maybe. Not long enough I think to feel sufficiently comfortable and secure to commit random crimes in what would have been unfamiliar streets. He lived in Bow and Bromley-by-Bow. That is a good 40 minutes walk to Whitechapel. An easy walk but it is a different area. He is likely to have been reasonably familiar with Bow. There is very little evidence to link him to Whitechapel. Having lived for a number of years between Stepney Green and Whitechapel and then in Bow, they are distinct areas with quite different centres of gravity. The population in 1888 was about three times denser in distribution making the separate parts of the East End more distinct than they are now.
He would not have been able to ‘park’ his horse and cart at random places while he slept off his drink. The various yards were privately owned. The horse and cart would have been an encumbrance not and asset in carrying out his crimes. There is not a single witness who remembers seeing a horse and cart.
Mentally think through the double event and take him in his horse and cart from Berner Street, to Mitre Square and home via Goulston Street. While half cut. It doesn’t work.
I agree that it is unlikely that two similar murderers were operating in the East End, i.e. two ‘motiveless’ random serial killers of middle aged drunken prostitutes late at night in the Whitechapel-Spitalfields area.
However there were other cases of husbands killing wives in the East End. Bury had a financial motive. It was clearly very premeditated (he prepared her ‘coffin’ in Bow before going to Dundee) and not ‘random’. Bury strangled his wife with a rope, while the Ripper used his hands.
There were other fatal knife attacks in the East End after Bury was hanged that are much more similar to the canonical murders than that of Bury’s wife. If we accept that the attack on Bury’s wife bears the hallmarks of the Ripper, then Bury must have been innocent. Jack the Ripper must have followed him to Scotland, killed his wife and returned to London to kill McKenzie!
His Jack Ripper scrawling are clearly understandable as people in Scotland mentioned the case to him and his wife when he got there as it was such a notorious incident.
The supporting evidence such as the hangman saying Bury made various ambiguous semi confessions, or the supposed remarks by the two mystery London policemen who went to Dundee have to be treated with extreme caution as he only ‘remembered’ these remarks after he wrote his autobiography. It is far more likely that he conveniently remembered these details to give himself more notoriety.
Furthermore sleeping with a pen knife under his pillow does not equate to Bury having a knife fixation still less a fetish about knives.
I will also add that when people say where they live or associate themselves with a town or district, they will seldom do it with regard to the formal parish name, the electoral division or the municipality. Thus I used to live in Stepney Green which is just a vague area. I am fairly sure people wouldn’t have said they lived in Mile End Old Town or Mile End New Town. Depending on where about it was they would say Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney Green or just Mile End. Similarly I suspect no one would have said they lived in St George’s. They would have said Wapping or Whitechapel, or Stepney. In the southern parts of the Parish of St Leonard Bromley, people would have said they lived in Poplar, in some parts they would have said Bromley or Bromley-by-Bow and in others just Bow.

Hi Lechmere
Bury as a candidate for being JtR is as good as any other and better than most IMHO.

He was a known murderer of a woman via knife
he was a suspect/person of interest at the time
he fit witness descriptions
he had a violent temper-beat his wife
wifes murder similar (choked-abdominal wounds) to other victims
known to carry knives-sleep with one
Had a tragic childhood
had prior criminal record
known to drink heavily, problem with alcohol
known to stay out days at a time
was out the night of the murders
was local/knew the area
Married a prostitute-probably knew and frequented them
His occupation gave him a reason(to police,etc.) to be out at all hours
possible previous employment as a butcher
Possible graffiti at his home implicating him
Murders ended after he moved away


I think all these things TAKEN TOGETHER make William Bury a very viable candidate as a suspect for JtR.

[Lechmere]

I fully agree Bury has more going for him as a suspect than most (but that isn’t saying much), but...
Besides being a ‘stop out’ is there any real and credible evidence that he was out on the nights of any of the murders?
Is there any real and credible evidence that he ever went to Whitechapel or knew that specific area?
Bury murdered with by strangulation with a rope and the knife wounds were very much secondary. The Ripper usually murdered by manual strangulation and the knife wounds were immediate and very connected – and to the throat. Bury had plenty of time to inflict knife wounds to the abdomen with his wife but they were more superficial than in any of the Ripper Murders (including McKenzie and Tabram but excluding Stride obviously).
I would suggest that carrying a knife was common place. Even in this day and age dare I suggest sleeping with one under the pillow is not uncommon and even when taken together with other evidence, it adds very little to the case against him (or if you prefer for him).
The most interesting aspect is Bury writing the two Ripper scrawling. And you can add the fact that very broadly the murders coincided with his sojourn in the East End.
One of the main problems is that there is a fundamental difference between a premeditated wife murderer where there is a financial motive and someone who murders unknown prostitutes at random.
On East End place names again...
The thing about the East End is that many place names overlap. Also the population centres started as small hamlets and villages that grew and joined together. Most people lived in the bits that used to be fields between the centres of the original villages. And so naturally many people ended up living in indeterminate districts, or districts that could be given ambiguous names. This is of course a common feature in areas that suddenly grew into large population centres – such as say Birmingham (not Alabama).

[The Good Michael]

Lechmere,

I think if the message on his door hadn't been done, we wouldn't be discussing him at all. That is the glue holding this very piecemeal story together. Indeed, for most suspects there is usually one thing; a policeman's statement or a bit of hearsay, that could link them to the murders and then everything becomes conflated.

Cheers,

Mike

[johns]

Besides being a ‘stop out’ is there any real and credible evidence that he was out on the nights of any of the murders?
Is there any real and credible evidence that he ever went to Whitechapel or knew that specific area?

I don't think that there is any hard evidence that Bury was out on any of the murder nights.

I also don't think that there's any evidence he was ever in Whitechapel itself.

Mind you, I don't think there's much evidence that anyone did anything.

Regards
John

[Lechmere]

Ha! True - but claims have been made that Bury went to Whitechapel and that he was out late on at least one murder night. I doubt these claims can be substantiated in any meaningful way - which does leave the scrawlings as about it. And there are many valid explanations as to why he may have written them. If he really wanted to confess... why didn't he?

[Hatchett]

It's possible that the scrawlings were done by children. He had come from the East End of London. The Ripper murders were a National Sensation. The local kids could have associated Bury with the Ripper because of where he had come from.

[The Grave Maurice]

It's possible that the scrawlings were done by children.

That's quite insightful, Hatchett. I don't recall anyone making that point before.

[Lechmere]

But weren't the inscriptions on the inside of their property?

[The Grave Maurice]

You've got me. The A-Z says they were chalked on the door and on the stairway leading to the basement. I assumed they were outside the flat. I'll go and have a look at Macpherson's book and see what he says about it.

[The Grave Maurice]

Sorry for the delay. Once I get in amongst my books, I'm gone. I invariably stumble across things that I forgot I owned and get distracted.

Anyway, it took me a while to find, but Macpherson (at pp. 30-31) quotes the Dundee Advertiser. Its account says, in part:

The back premises are led to by a dirty stair, at the foot of which on an old door is the following written in chalk - Jack Ripper [sic] is at the back of this door. At the back of this door, and just at the turn of the stair, there is the inscription - Jack Ripper is in this seller [sic]. The handwriting is apparently that of a boy and the authorities will probably attach little importance to it.

Sounds as though Hatchett is dead on the money.

Note to Macpherson's publishers (Mainstream Publishing): For heaven's sake, next time you produce a book, spend a bit more and hire an indexer.

[Lechmere]

That pretty much counts Bury out all together

[The Grave Maurice]

Maybe. Although I never gave much weight to the scribblings. I still rank him fairly high on the list of known suspects for some of the reasons stated higher on this thread.