Assessing Cutbush

[Herlock Sholmes]

People may recall that I said I recently said that no matter what I say or suggest, Fishy will automatically go for the polar opposite? When I did this poll I said to myself “I can only see one person possibly voting for the lower option” because surely no one could call Cutbush a poor suspect and surprise, surprise. Fishy hasn’t posted on the subject of JTR for two weeks but he just couldn’t miss an opportunity.

Known to wander at night and return in the early hours.
Had an outhouse that only he had access to.
Believed that a prostitute gave him syphilis.
Got a job in Whitechapel a month before the Nichols murder.
According to his aunt he raped a prostitute
Attacked at least 4 women with a knife (stabbing two)
Pushed an old man down stairs for a slightly mocking comment
Obsessed with anatomy and medical issues.
Obsessively drew anatomical drawings including of a woman with her abdomen cut open.
A police inspector and others were convinced that he was the ripper.
Found in his room - a large knife, anatomical drawings and some clothing with blood on them hidden in a chimney breast.
Got sentenced for life in Broadmoor for two non-fatal stabbings

A poor suspect?

Compared to Cross and Thompson and Van Gogh and Gull and Sickert and the vast majority of others?

Time to get real on this subject.

[Abby Normal]

nice post herlock.
hes probably been dismissed because mm dismissed him , and not only that, offered up other suspects that have remained 'canon' Except for ostrog of course. i voted reasonable suspect but im leaning higher.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Apart from “who was Jack the Ripper” or “did he write the graffito” or “how many victims did he actually have,” one question currently occupies me more than any other. “Why is there such indifference to idea of Thomas Hayne Cutbush” as a candidate for being the ripper? We all interpret differently of course but in Cutbush we have a suspect who ticks pretty much every criteria that we normally apply to this unknown killer. So why does he garner such little interest?

One of the problems in this subject are the extraordinary leaps that some make to allow the ‘evidence’ to fit their own suspect but, that said, shouldn’t we also guard against applying too rigorous an idea of what kind of person the killer was? When I say “too rigorous,” I’m not suggesting that we accept any old tosh, like the abject nonsense that we hear talked about some of our current alleged suspects, what I’m suggesting is that if we for example say “well, we have no evidence that he ever murdered anyone,” or, taking it further, “we have no evidence that he killed and mutilated anyone” then we pretty much reduce our list of possibles down to three; or even one. This achieves nothing.

It’s also counterproductive and wrong to say “why would he simply stop killing and mutilating women and then later commence prodding women in the backsides with a knife?” I think that this question is the one, above all, that leads people to dismiss, or to mark down, Cutbush as a suspect, but is it a fair point? Or, more accurately, is it a point on which we should dismiss a suspect? I can’t see how it is because we do know that serial killers stop; we know that they can have lengthy periods of inaction and how can we claim to understand the thinking of a highly disturbed and unpredictable mind? Also, he wasn’t just a harmless “prodder.” This is to confuse Cutbush’s crimes to those originally attributed to Colicott. As we have seen from the record, Cutbush brutally stabbed two women in the lower back…this is no harmless loony.

Ok, with apologies, I’ll go through the case for Cutbush, looking at the criteria that we tend to look for in a suspect (I would also point out, whilst not claiming it as proof of anything, that Cutbush currently heads the ‘rating the suspects’ list.)

That Cutbush was twenty three and physically fit at the time of the murders is hardly an important point but it has to be stated nonetheless. He lived with his mother and aunt in the Lambeth area of London. We often talk about the killer being able to come and go as he pleased and that he would have had somewhere to store his grisly souvenirs. Both women said that he went out at night and returned dishevelled in the early hours by climbing a fence or wall at the back of the house and entering via the back door. According to Bullock his mother spoke of there being an outhouse that only he had access to and after entering it after her son’s arrest she had it pulled down. So, at the very least, he was ideally placed to do what the ripper did.

We often look for a connection to Whitechapel with many suggesting that the killer actually lived there, so can we connect Cutbush to Whitechapel? Absolutely, he had more than one job there and he started the first one just a month or so before Polly Nichols was murdered. So the Whitechapel connection provably ticked.

Then next question to consider is whether Cutbush had any connection to prostitutes and the answer is again an undoubted yes. He complained obsessively to his doctor that a prostitute had given him syphilis and his aunt said that he’d attacked, and possibly raped, a prostitute. Here we have another criteria ticked but, as we do this, we can also tick another further one. We often look for trigger points; a potential reason for our suspect to begin killing and for this we need not only a possible reason but a time that fits in with the start of the murders. Cutbush started complaining about this prostitute in July of 1888 and in the same month he began work at a Whitechapel Tea Merchants; placing him at the very heart of the murders at exactly the right time. More boxes ticked.

What about medical/anatomical knowledge; a topic that’s still much discussed? Cutbush spent much time studying anatomy and had medical/surgical books in his room. He also spent much time doing anatomical drawings; often when he was supposed to be engaged in other things so it’s clear that he had anatomical knowledge and a clear interest in the subject.

Evidence of violence is understandably something that we look for in a suspect and we have no need of vague possibilities with Cutbush. Whilst working at the Tea Merchants an elderly clerk made a harmless comment about better looking men spending far less time looking at themselves in the mirror than Cutbush did. For this Cutbush waited for him and pushed him down a flight of stairs. This wasn’t simply a man striking out in anger, this was a cold, calculated act. He would have been fully aware of the possibility that this old man might have died but Cutbush simply didn’t care; this wasn’t a man a man who gave thought to others. Apart from the act of attacking a prostitute we know from his family that he once attacked a family servant, holding a knife to her throat. Why? Because she had gone into his room without his permission. And when his own mother had come to the end of her tether, and she suggested to him that he needed treatment, he tried to cut her throat. When Cutbush was arrested but quickly escaped and brutally stabbed two women in the lower back as they walked along the street. This was very clearly not only an unpredictable man but an extremely dangerous one; someone for whom other people didn’t count. The kind of person that most of us assume the ripper to have been.

What might we expect to find had we access to Jack the ripper’s room? A knife? Anatomical drawings, bloodied clothing? All discovered by Inspector Race when he searched Cutbush’s room.

A final point, and it’s only a piece of speculation, is about Cutbush’s trial and sentencing. As most will know, I’m not someone easily persuaded of any kind of conspiracy or cover-up but… At the time of his trial Race, and it appears others, saw Cutbush as a likely suspect but it would have been understandable that they wouldn’t have wanted him to be tried on the evidence that they had. Imagine if Jack the Ripper was found innocent and released? The problem of course is that a man who simply wounded two women by stabbing in them in the back was hardly going to be guaranteed a lifetime behind bars and yet that’s exactly what happened. This man who committed two none fatal acts of violence was sentenced to life in Broadmoor amongst the countries most dangerous men. Why? Was a deal done to ensure that the ripper, or at least a man that they felt was a likely candidate, would never again see the light of day? I’d suggest that it’s possible.

How many suspects tick so many boxes? I’d suggest none. Thomas Hayne Cutbush was an extremely dangerous, unpredictable and disturbed man who roamed the streets until the early hours and committed many acts of violence; at least four with a large knife. He blamed a prostitute for ruining his life, he worked in Whitechapel from a period of around a month before the first murder and the man who arrested him was convinced that he was the ripper.