Blotchy-Face

[Chava]

I was looking over earlier victims that might have been done by the Ripper, and I found this description that Ada Wilson gave of her attacker:

5ft 6ins in height, with a sunburnt face and a fair moustache. He was wearing a dark coat, light trousers and a wideawake hat.

Now there's this description of a man seen by a number of witnesses with Catherine Eddowes just before she died:

30 years old, 5 foot 7 inches tall, fair complexion and mustache with a medium build.

And Stride:

a short man with a dark mustache and sandy eyelashes

(In my experience, men with sandy eyelashes don't have dark moustaches. I wonder if the witness made a mistake here. Or perhaps the moustache was auburn and read dark in the angle of the light.)

Then there's Kelly:

The man was aged around 35 or 36 and was about 5' 5" tall. He was shabbily dressed in a long overcoat and a billycock hat. He had a blotchy face and small side whiskers and a carrotty mustache.

That's a lot of viewings of a very similar-sounding man.

The problem with Blotchy-Face being the Ripper is the time-frame. We know he went in with Kelly at 11.45 pm. We know she didn't shut up singing for at least another 90 minutes. But I wouldn't half like to have a chat with this guy. Singing or no, he sounds like a top suspect to me. Especially since Ada Wilson identifies him as having a 'sun-burnt face' which is just a couple of millimetres over from Cox's 'blotchy face'...

[Ben]

Hi Chava,

For what it's worth, the headgear of Sarah Lewis' loitering suspect was also the same as Wilson's and Cox's. A Wideawake and a Billycock refer to the same type of hat. He was also not tall, but stout, which tallies with the latter description.

Regards,
Ben

[Chava]

Yeah, I think we have a live one here. If only I could explain that dratted song!

However he could equally well be the man seen by Lewis in the entrance to the court 'as if waiting for someone'. Maybe waiting for her to shut up and go to sleep?