How Cutbush outwitted his pursuers in 1891

[Natalie Severn]

By far the most compelling piece of evidence that Thomas Cutbush was the Ripper, was for me,his documented escape from the institution he had been placed in in March 1891.
I have taken it directly from The Sun newspaper of February 14th 1894.
The incident occurred in a busy district of London,teeming with people.Thomas Cutbush had had all his clothes taken from him and had been given just a shirt.He was in bed with four armed men in guard over him.Nevertheless by a nifty swinging action,Thomas was able to knock down all four men on guard and " with the ease and nimbleness of a monkey,he was able to scale a wall, 8 foot in height".
Thomas dropped himself to the other side where he found himself in the middle of a crowded district. Immediately the alarm was raised and a crowd of people joined in his pursuit.
The police began to sound their whistles with other constables arriving on the scene,and within moments of his escape descriptions of him were wired from the district police station to every other police station in London.The police and staff of the institution were convinced that his scanty clothing---comprising just a shirt, would ensure his swift recapture.
However,Thomas Cutbush was a fugitive well able to think on his feet.Astutely,he entered one of the houses,passed right through to the back garden and then jumped several garden walls until he arrived at a house where the occupants had gone into the street to observe the hue and cry taking place in their district.Without hesitation he grabbed a pair of striped trousers,check jacket,brown overcoat,black felt hat and a pair of old boots all of which he put on.
He then re-entered the street,where the crowd, in full pursuit are still trying to gain admission to the first house he has been seen to enter. But, Thomas Cutbush,still thinking on his feet, re-appears and IN FULL CONTROL ,fully disguised by his stolen clothes, walks calmly past the excited crowd , who are all still looking for him in his shirt tails and "police still blowing their whistles" etc.are all completely outwitted
Such a clever escape from armed guards ,the police and a crowd chasing after him like the clappers, reveal rapid reflexes ,quick thinking and a calm, cool exterior,that sound a lot like Jack to me.

[Sara]

A very good post; and the fact he is prepared brazenly to go through a house and out into the back garden sounds like him too - Hanbury St, anyone?

[Cap'n Jack]

Indeed, Natalie, it is a most provoking and remarkable escapade.
And as I pointed out a long time ago, Thomas Cutbush actually owned properties in Fieldgate which gave him hidden access to Roadside and vice versa, so he would have been well used to this 'Indian rope trick'.
What amuses me is the wide spread belief on these boards that a lunatic is incapable of cunning and meticulous planning in the execution and escape from such horrible murders... and here we have a certified lunatic showing us the real truth behind the matter.

[Monty]

Interesting article but how does this class as evidence for Cutbushs candicy? This event has no link to the murders and his escape was not unique to him.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Monty,
My view is that Thomas Cutbush was not taken seriously by the top brass,who mostly seem to have dismissed his candidacy on the grounds of his "lunacy".Inspector Race ,who arrested him in 1891 for the street stabbings,seems the only policeman to have been convinced of his guilt. He was obviously considered too mad and therefore lacking in single minded acumen to have been the ripper.This case demonstrates their judgment ,at least in that respect, was very unsound.Far from not having the "credentials" to have been the ripper ,because,for example,"he got caught " in Kennington ,he demonstrates here his imaginative thinking and cool nerve when needing to extricate himself from danger and crisis,even having just been sectioned as a dangerous lunatic.
I agree,Monty, the only "evidence" we have is circumstantial so far,and that is mostly through the Sun"s account from Inspector Race,who ,having interrogated him over his street stabbings in 1891,believed Thomas Cutbush was The Ripper .The Sun also states that in the brief of the counsel who prosecuted and in the instructions of the solicitor who defended there was the statement that he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper.
Very importantly, we can locate Thomas Cutbush in employment in Whitechapel in 1888,"at the Minories"----ie a stone"s throw from Mitre Square ,where he unexpectedly made a murderous attack on an elderly officer at his place of work.Thomas Cutbush was becoming ill,his work record had begun to suffer.He was obsessing about cutting up women and disemboweling them in his drawings and the medical texts he was studying.But we can actually pin down "some" witnessed and recorded information on him of events which happened and were verified by Inspector Race rather than just taking the word of Anderson with his low class Polish Jew suspect and no record of violence or Macnaghten"s Druitt,on whom we have no record of anything except his suicide.
Cheers
Norma.

[Trevor Marriott]

The escape of Cutbush is not unique to him and for that matter anyone else. I would suggest the thought of escape goes through the minds of most persons incarcerated either in prison or intsitutions. Some in fact even manage to effect an escape.

For comparison Carl Feigenabum another Ripper suspect after killing a woman in Ripper like fashion in New York in 1894. Escaped out of the back window of the house where he had committed the murder down a fire escape, hid the knife wiped his bloody hands then ran off only to be caught running away by a policeman. he still was cute enough to tell the officer he was in fact chasing the real murderer.

Feigenabumn was 54 at the time just imagine how nimble and agile he would have been in 1888.

Can anyone show me any tangible evidence and i mean evidence not what someone concludes or someones wild speculative theory to even show Cutbush as a Ripper suspect because i have read all on this man an i can see nothing to even suggest this.

[Natalie Severn]

The Sun National Newspaper for five consecutive days carried full page spreads naming Thomas Cutbush as The Ripper.No other Ripper suspect was given such National coverage in any newspaper at the time.The Sun"s investigative journalist had access to the reports from Inspector Race,the arresting officer of Thomas Cutbush in 1891, sight of his work records in Whitechapel Tea companies,views of his drawings of mutilated women,and the considered statements from both defending and prosecuting counsel at his abortive trial in 1891 that he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper.
I was not saying he was "unique" but in his escape , his rapid thinking regarding the crafty entrance and egress from houses,his agility in vaulting walls and the ingenious disguise he adopted,these taken together with his Whitechapel /Minories employment in 1888, his medical obsessions , knife attacks etc I believe we have a man capable of the daring , cool ,agility and total indifference to the consequences murderous attack -as seen in the attack on the old man , the relative whose throat he tried to cut and the young women stabbed in the streets -that mark him out as having had the motives , callousness and cunning attributes of a killer of the type Jack the Ripper must have been.

[Cap'n Jack]

Never mind Trev, Nats, he's up a fig tree without a ladder down.

[Monty]

Colin Stagg

[Natalie Severn]

Quite true Monty.However,Thomas Cutbush was an alumni of the Broadmoor Institution, where a killer there is now separately charged with the Wimbledon Common murder,after a DNA match was found.The arrested man is currently serving life in Broadmoor for a Mary Kelly type murder and mutilation,where he had stalked his victim prior to knocking on her door ,[they believe] under the pretext of being a postman or window cleaner.Before that, he had been charged with "random stabbing offences" on Green Common in London.I understand he is believed to be insane.
As I understand it, CS did not actually "commit" stabbings or violent assaults did he?
Norma

[Sara]

The pointers towards Cutbush - we can't calls them evidence - are indeed as compelling as those for quite a few other suspects, and much more compelling imo than for most. Very few suspects are recorded as being obsessed with looking at and making drawings of women's interior organs, let alone drawing mutilations of them! Very few are employed in Whitechapel, own property in the area, or have been known to spend a good deal of the day sleeping and the night, perambulating.


The Rachel Nickell murder always sends a terrible shiver down my spine.

Almost every Saturday and Sunday afternoon at that period I would drive my dog up to Wimbledon Common and park my car in that part of the cafe carpark, usually walking off down into the wood along the very path on which RN was attacked - which is only a minute or so out of sight of the cars. I was there passing that spot less than 24 hours before the murder; and I was slim and pretty then although in my 40s...

The Stagg scenario was bizarre, since he did apparently confess to a policewoman, whether or not she 'entrapped' him

[Monty]

As I understand it, CS did not actually "commit" stabbings or violent assaults did he?

No, but he was the target (righly or wrongly) of a viscious national news campaign that, coupled with the police statement at the trail collapse (We are not looking at anyone else for the murder) led the majority of the British public to whisper "it musta been him".

Monty

[Ben]

Just to be pedantically clear, there's no evidence that Cutbush ever worked in Whitechapel as far as I'm aware. The Minories was within the City boundary, and not in the East End.

Best regards,
Ben

[Robert]

Hi Ben

Macnaghten (if you can trust anything he says) asserts that he was employed as a clerk and traveller (my italics) in the tea trade at the Minories, also that he canvassed for a directory in the east end, so he would almost certainly have walked the Whitechapel streets.

[Cap'n Jack]

And as I said earlier young Thomas did own properties right in the heart of Whitechapel, on Fieldgate and Roadside... and given his family connections to the Whitechapel Foundry and other familiar landmarks of the East End I think we can safely assume that he was very much an East End boy.
He was hardly likely to have been hired to cold call East Enders for an East End trade directory if he didn't know his Aldgate Pump from Aberdeen Rump.