Did The Ripper Die Shortly After His Last Kill?

[Stephen Thomas]

Hi Chava

A sentence from Macnaghton's autobiography of 1914, little quoted....

I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people; that he absented himself from home at certain times and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888.....

Did he know or did he only 'thought he knew' or is he lying?

'His own people'? Shades of Anderson's comments much discussed here.

Suicide around Nov 10th 1888? A bit specific that don't you think?

[Chava]

Ouch! I knew this wouldn't be easy! Thanks Chris for that invaluable website. And thanks Chris Scott for the other info. It'll be a long, hard slog. But I think there is an excellent chance that the Ripper died shortly after his last victim.

[aspallek]

Although it would be nowhere near a comprehensive list, a starting point would be a check of newspaper archives of the period which could give information of noteworthy deaths such as suicides.

I one listed all the male suicides I could find reported in the Times of London between Nov. 10, 1888 and Jan. 31, 1889. There were at least two or three that looked somewhat plausible as possibilities for suspects, i.e. right age and location. Of course, no mention of Druitt's death is found is that publication or any other online newspaper archive I could find.

Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the 19th Century British newspaper database.

[Chris Scott]

Hi Chava
The main problem you would face would be isolating which men died during a specific 2 or 3 week period. The searchable indices of deaths are sorted not by individual date or even month but by quarter. This is as near as you can get without starting on the time and expense of ordering individual certificates.
For example the quarter you would be interested in would be Quarter 4 of 1888 which covers the months October to December. If you looked up and found a John Smith listed as dying in e.g. Whitechapel in that Quarter, until you get to see the certificate there is no way of knowing when within those three months he died. That it is to say, he may well have died in early October, before the Kelly murder.
As a very rough guides the number of deaths registered in this quarter are:
Whitechapel - 527 (this is male and female)
St George in the East - 275
On the very approximate assumption that the ratio of sexes dying may be roughly 50:50 (but I have no evidence of this), you could be looking at a number of male deaths for that quarter in those two districts approaching 400
Of course as Chris says this would be reduced by the age ranges you mention
For persons aged 25 to 25 (1e born 1853 +- 10 years) the numbers are for that quarter:
Whitechapel: 109 (male and female)
St George East - 32
London City (for parts of Aldgate) - 73
Stepney - 33
Of course if you start including the outlying but feasible districts such as Mile End and Bethnal Green, the numbers increase considerably

Chris

[Chris]

I think it might be possible that he himself died within the week or two after that killing. Maybe even within the week. So I'm wondering if any of the archivists in the audience would feel like running a search for deaths with the following parameters:

I think you can run as good a search as can easily be done in the UK, by going to www.freebmd.org.uk, and specifying deaths in the final quarter of 1888, in a registration district of your choice. You can either run a search without specifying an age and then pick out the men with acceptable ages, or else run a series of searches specifying different ages.

The numbers wouldn't be unmanageable - it looks as though there might be something like 60 male deaths, with ages 25-45, registered in Whitechapel in the quarter, which would imply about 10 within a fortnight after the murder of Kelly. But unfortunately there's no obvious way of separating these out.

The only realistic way I can think of going further would be to ask for searches in cemetery records (probably not unreasonable, given the limited time-frame). And then I suppose you could try to research the few dozen who died in or near Whitechapel.

[Chava]

Although I am on the fence about this, for the sake of this discussion I am going to assume Mary Jane Kelly is a Ripper victim.

After the Ripper kills Nichols, he kills again very quickly. Within the week. His mutilations escalate. Then he doesn't kill again for 3 weeks, at which point he kills Stride, but appears to be interrupted. He then kills Eddowes. The level of violence perpetrated on her is an escalation from the violence done to Chapman. He then disappears for 6 weeks, after which he kills Kelly. Again the violence escalates. It's hard to look at 5 murders and claim a clear pattern, however he does look as if he kills twice within a short space of time. Disappears. Kills twice within a very short space of time. Disappears. Then kills once. I think that, if he were in a position to do so, he would kill again, very quickly, with (if it's possible!) even more violence. But he doesn't. He walks out of Millers Court and disappears.

I think it might be possible that he himself died within the week or two after that killing. Maybe even within the week. So I'm wondering if any of the archivists in the audience would feel like running a search for deaths with the following parameters:

- Lives in the East End. Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Aldgate, maybe Hoxton. I wouldn't go further afield than that.

- No younger than 25. I think he's been a while in the making, and I'd be surprised if he got his act together younger.

- No older than 45. Actually I think he's probably younger than that, but I'm going to the outside parameters of what I think is possible.

- If he's Jewish, either someone born in the East End or someone who was brought there very young. After the Leather Apron thing I doubt an East End whore would go anywhere with a Jewish immigrant who spoke with a pronounced accent or looked 'foreign'.

- Dead within 2 weeks of the murders. Or dead within three weeks after having been incapacitated within 2 weeks.

People died of all sorts of stuff then: virus, infection. There were no safety standards, so lots of work-related accidents and deaths. A nasty family history could fell Our Boy via a heart attack in his early 30s. However I doubt there would have been hundreds of men dying in that area with those credentials in that time frame. Anyone want to take this on? I'd do it myself but there is a limit how far I can get on a computer over in Canada!