We have him...

[Phil Carter]

Hello Debs,

This one is down to Chris. I will, however, try to contact the County Records Office in Dorchester on Monday, and see if they have anything there on Portland prisoners.

best wishes

Phil

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi All. Awesome stuff from Mike C, Mark, Chris, Debs, et al. Perry, you seem to be threatened by this information, but for what reason, I can't fathom. No one here is stating that because a newspaper article states the opinion of a couple detectives that Le Grand was definitely the Ripper, that we can call it a day and say the case is solved. The importance of the articles (to me at least) is that Le Grand has moved from being a mere 'suspicious character' into the realm of 'contemporary suspect'. This is something I've long suspected, but wasn't sure would ever be confirmed. Lord knows there's more information out there, we just have to find it. Sure, there's no smoking gun, but to say that Le Grand deserves to be on the heap with Cream, Bury, and the other less-than-likelies, is utterly wrong. It was wrong before the discovery of these articles and is down right ridiculous in light of them.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[perrymason]

Hi Tom,

Not threatened at all, although an interesting choice of words.

Im just far more skeptical about anything printed at anytime about these crimes and I believe we have enough suspected men with no tangible links with any of the crimes already. We've recently added Barnett more seriously.....Im not sure what evidence there is to warrant that inclusion..Fleming is talked about more as far as I can see with again, no evidence that ties him in with Marys or anyone's murder other than he had a suitable base of operations....

I think whats been revealed about him coupled with his peculiar involvement with the Stride investigation, with the potential that one of the men in Schwartz's story may have been Mr LeG,.....that makes him at least a person of interest for involvement with that crime I would think.

Since that crime is the least likely of all 5 Canonicals to have been the work of a postmortem mutilator, The Whitechapel Murderer suggestion may be more applicable to the fiend sought for the crimes that preceded the Ripper murders, and perhaps began again after them....or during them.

I am in no way interested in downplaying the interest he now commands now that a fuller picture is emerging...youve done good to probe into this coward for sure.

But his involvement with the Stride murder... to me, suggests that he was not likely the man that killed either Polly or Annie. I think I believe that the man that killed them was Jack.

"Whitechapel Murderer" and "Jack the Ripper" have not always been synonymous, one preceded the other....and the Whitechapel Murders as they were called were "interrupted" by the spree of a new killer that Fall. The Ripper crimes are within the Whitechapel Murders, but no one person is the Whitechapel Murderer guilty of all the unsolved attacks and murders.... including the Ripper ones.

My best regards Tom

[Tom_Wescott]

I think whats been revealed about him coupled with his peculiar involvement with the Stride investigation, with the potential that one of the men in Schwartz's story may have been Mr LeG,.....that makes him at least a person of interest for involvement with that crime I would think.

And isn't that more than you can say about most/all the suspects suggested in recent years?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[perrymason]

And isn't that more than you can say about most/all the suspects suggested in recent years?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Absolutely.

Best regards mate

[curious]

I've missed something

Hi Tom,

We've recently added Barnett more seriously....

Why is Barnett being considered more seriously?

thanks,

curious

[perrymason]

Why is Barnett being considered more seriously?

thanks,

curious

A former member here recently published a book citing Barnett as the probable Ripper, and its been bantied about informally for quite some time I think.

In truth, it takes very little to qualify oneself for a Suspect in the Ripper cases....you either have to have a senior contemporary investigator suggesting it, or you need a man that roughly fits the general description combining the best witness sightings that lived in the area at the time and had at the very least, odd habits or a temper.

I forgot dementia...sorry.

Cheer curious

[Tom_Wescott]

Curious,

Hi there. I apologize I missed your question until Perry quoted it. Le Grand is what you might call a 'new' suspect in the way that no book has yet been published. Mine will be the first, unless someone beats me to it, in which case they'll suffer a lifetime of flat tires. But I digress...To date only two pieces on Le Grand have been published, the first in Ripperologist magazine many years ago by Gerry Dixon. The second almost 3 years ago in Ripper Notes by myself. If you subscribe to Rip (and I assume you do!) then I'll something more indepth on him in there soon.

As far as Barnett goes, I don't think too many people take him seriously as the Ripper these days, although a few may still think he killed Kelly as a one-off. I personally believe he's innocent of all such crimes and that Kelly was a Ripper victim.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

I forgot to mention that the only known photograph of Le Grand (from circa 1877) was published by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow in their most recent book. I'm grateful we have at least this photograph, although I hope there's more out there.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Mike Covell]

I forgot to mention that the only known photograph of Le Grand (from circa 1877) was published by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow in their most recent book. I'm grateful we have at least this photograph, although I hope there's more out there.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

He looks very much like Russell Crowe in Scotland Yard Investigates...

[Tom_Wescott]

He looks very much like Russell Crowe in Scotland Yard Investigates...

It might not be a coincidence. One was Gladiator, the other was glad he ate her.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. Yes, I know that was horrible.

[Phil Carter]

Re Le Grande... Many may not have seen this, apologies if any already have...

LONDON, Nov. 25. - Charles Grande, alias a dozen other names, who has been on trial here on charges of blackmailing, was today found guilty and sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude. Grande had been pursuing his nefarious practices for a long time and numbers among his victims several titled ladies. It was his habit to write letters to these ladies, threatening them with his vengeance unless they complied with his demands for money. To one of them he wrote that if she didn't pay him a certain sum of money he would blow her to atoms. In this letter he referred to the ease with which he placed a quantity of dynamite under a door mat so arranged that when she stepped upon it it would explode and kill her. He also referred to the alleged fact that he could without discovery remove a brick in the walls of her home, fill the aperture with dynamite and blow the house and every one in it to destruction. Many of the ladies were so frightened by the rascal's threats that they paid him money. When Grande was arrested the police found in his possession a forged bill of exchange. This afforded an opportunity for another charge to be made against him, in addition to the charge of blackmail. The prisoner was convicted on this also, and on this conviction he was sentenced to an additional term of seven years' penal servitude.

Source: Elmira Gazette, Wednesday Evening, November 25, 1891

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

....and here is a little more to add to the above...

Charles Le Grand
Another man who has been inaccurately accused of being "Jack The Ripper" is Charles Le Grand, otherwise known as "Le Grand of the Strand." It has been reported that the criminal Charles Le Grand received a sentence of 20 years for fraud, blackmail and writing threatening letters to titled wealthy Ladies.

THE KING OF BLACKMAILERS.
(DAILY NEWS.)

Christian Briscony, alias Charles Le Grand, alias Grant, alias "French Colonel," alias Captain Anderson, was on 20th November, convicted of sending letters to Mrs. Baldock, demanding money, and threatening to murder her. Sentence was postponed, for he is still to be tried on other charges. He stands indicted for sending similar letters to the Baroness Bolsover and to Lady Jessel: for conspiring to defraud the London and Westminster Bank; and for forging cheques. The evidence at the late trial was confined to the first charge, and that seems almost enough. To take all the others might only be to suggest that the prisoner had well-nigh boxed the compass of crime. His most appropriate alias was that of Le Grand, for as the "the Great," assuredly, he will go down to posterity, the very king of blackmailers. We shall never see such another in our time. There was a boldness in his method which bespeaks the intuitions of genius. He had no original, and he can have no successor. Beside him, the Turkish brigand who seizes the solitary traveller in the mountains, and asks for 10,000 piastres as a condition of sparing his nose and his cars, is but a man of one idea. Le Grand was a man of a hundred, and his hunting-ground was the heart of the most populous city upon earth. That city, however, cannot claim him as one of her sons. He is not a Londoner, nor even an Englishman. The rest is obscure, but, according to one report, Denmark is his place of origin. It should rather have been Norway; there is something of the Viking in his ferocity, the Viking, let us say, in the course of evolution into the area sneak. He is a Viking who can write, and there is perhaps a touch of Atavism in his preference for red ink. No ink could have been quite red enough for his letters to Mrs. Baldock. He did not know Mrs. Baldock, and it is not quite certain that he had ever seen her. But he wanted 500, and he asked her to stand and deliver on penalty of a sudden, a violent, and a mysterious death. His missive was in the nature of a bill drawn at seven days. If the poor old lady did not pay up within that time, he said, he would "dash her brains out by a dynamical explosion." In a more generous moment, he was free to admit that he had no grievance against her. At the same time, he was able to assure her that he had been brought to despair by the villainy of a woman, and that, in one point of view, the money was a sort of fine levied on a faithless sex.
Mrs. Baldock put the matter in the hands of the police, and they laid a trap to catch him, which was not, however, immediately successful. They advertised "will comply," as suggested, but they made the preposterous request that he should call at Mrs. Baldock's house. This made him very angry, and not unnaturally, for it showed bad faith. "Treachery," he said, with feeling in a second letter to her "is a base, vile, and utterly unfit quality for a lady" - the distinction is interesting for its bearing on the question of sex in crime - "and must, in this instance, be punished with exemplary rigour." The exemplary rigour was to be dynamite under the door-mat, or perhaps arsenic or cyanids in the bread, and in the milk - in fact, a free breakfast table in corrosive poisons. He might have spared himself the trouble of proving that it was wicked to employ the police against him, for he was prepared to show that it was useless, which was much more to the point. Their "want of foresight," he said of the force, in terms of perhaps excessive severity, "can only be equalled, if not surpassed, by their incapacity to perform police duty." This seems to have given just displeasure at Whitehall. A policeman is but mortal; he may despise the chatter of irresponsible frivolity, but when he is mocked for incapacity by an expert who has himself been in the private inquiry line, he cannot but feel a wound. In a short time after he had written that second and fatal letter, Le Grand was in custody. Policemen have long memories, and one of them, in looking at the letters which had been sent to Mrs. Baldock, was struck by a certain resemblance in the handwriting to a letter written by Le Grand to the department, over four years ago, complaining of the conduct of a constable. In this letter the writer was but a citizen asserting his right to efficient public service; he therefore had no reason to conceal his name. The police now knew whom to look for, and, moreover, whom to send to look for him. They put the affair in the hands of a detective to whom Le Grand and all his little ways had been for years an open secret. Soon this officer was keeping a friendly watch on a messenger boy, who, he thought, might be fetching and carrying, in the way of business, for his old acquaintance. He missed the trail that time, for he did not know that, while he was following the messenger boy, Le Grand was following him. He became aware of it when he received a fierce epistle from this inveterate letter-writer taunting him with his want of skill. In due time, however, came the stroke of fate. On the 26th of September, the detective, from information received, was able to go to Malden Station, and at Malden he saw his man. "Grandy, consider yourself in custody," was all he said, but, as he said it, the officer who accompanied him seized the prisoner's right hand. It was well he did so, for, otherwise, the hand might soon have found its way to revolver and a knuckle-duster which the traveller was carrying in a bag, as he afterwards stated, expressly for the benefit of the police.
They found quite a little arsenal at his lodgings - a quantity of gunpowder, and an ugly-looking contrivance of springs in a cigar-box, which was evidently intended as an infernal machine. They also found the rough draft of one of the threatening letters. A former clerk of the prisoner, who had served him when Le Grand was conducting a private enquiry agency, identified the handwriting of the threatening letters as that of his old employer. Finally, Mr. Nethercliff, the expert, who had been summoned in hot haste from Scotland, gave equally damaging evidence for the prosecution. The police produced a terrible record against the prisoner. They, at least, were satisfied that he was convicted of felony in 1877, and sentenced to penal servitude for eight years, and that, in 1889, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for the very offence of sending threatening letters with which he was now charged. The jury, however, did not share their opinion as to his identity with the man convicted in the first case. So ends the trial at this stage. The prisoner is still to be tried on the charge of forgery on the London and Westminster Bank, but it is not likely that we shall hear anything more as to the other charges of sending threatening letters. The wretched man seems to be of a highly nervous and excitable temperament. He has freely fainted away all through the proceedings. He "went off" when the police were reading the charge to him after his arrest, and afterwards had a fit in the dock. This, with the extreme violence of his threats, not only to the helpless ladies, but to the officers who took him into custody, is rather a disquieting sign. All further opinion on the case, however, must be suspended, until his doom has been pronounced.

Source: Bush Advocate, Volume VII, Issue 606, 2 April 1892, Page 6

Note: Since Jack the Ripper's murders were not motivated by theft, and he certainly did not "blow up" his victims, then, how, in any way, does this even describe Jack? Also, the papers at the time of Le Grand's arrest had this to say about it:

*It is rumored* that the police attribute the "Ripper murders" to a convict now in Portland gaol. Since when is a "rumor" considered solid evidence to convict a man of murdering at least seven prostitutes?

best wishes,

Phil

[Debra A]

Thanks for posting these, Phil
I haven't seen these particular articles before, but there were similar ones appearing in the US press at the time.
Just a question, are the sections that mention JTR at the beginning and end part of the article or your own notes or part of the article?
Thanks.

[Phil Carter]

Hi Debs, not my words...LOL

best wishes

Phil