where do you stand?

[Phil H]

Thanks, Jon. Much appreciated.

I'm afraid I left the "toff" camp years back.

If you look at the historiography of Ripper studies, there are a series of "waves":

Matters (c 1929) to Farson and Cullen (60s) - The Toff/doctors

Knight (post watergate) 70s etc - Conspiracy

1987/88 (the centenary) - Kosminski and a local man.

2000ish -celebrity suspects

Today -no one is sure/post modern deconstructionism.

Over the years I have come to perceive the "trends" in Ripper suspects as reflecting social and cultural issues of the day.

But the idea of the "toff" though visually iconic, strikes me as rather like the idea that aliens created Egyptian or Sumerian civilisation because the locals weren't capable. When in Egypt I asked local guides about the reactions to von Daniken, Hancock etc. They were all very angry at the implied insult to their own people. Half-jokingly, I think East Enders could take similar offence to the idea that an "outsider" has to come in to be the first serial killer, that he could not emerge from local alientation, urbanisation etc.

The same is true about celebrity suspects - easy for the dilettante to research because so much material exists. Much more difficult to research a member of the great unwashed. But look at the results that come from the work being done by Scott Nelson, Rob House and others on Kosminski and recent articles that have opened up new avenues of thought and possibility.

I conclude that I was right to abandon the "toff" suspects when I was in my salad days. Not, of course, that one can just reject Druitt because he is a contemporary suspect, but nothing Jonathan and others have argued comes near to convincing me that he is our man.

Phil

[RavenDarkendale]

Three Top Suspects?

I can honestly say the probability lies that he was interviewed by the police, as many were, but not actually named by them.

That said, I always liked Druitt for the killer, but I have come to doubt it. None of the named suspects here on casebook are solid enough for me.

Victims?

Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, Eddows, Mackenzie, Coles, and possibly some who were never discovered until much later. As the killer struck in out of the way corners, behind fences and walls hiding the deed (and the prostitution) some may have lain in an odd corner only to be found after enough time that identity was impossible and even cause of death difficult. Only a possibility.

If Leather Apron wasn't Pizer, it was someone very like him

As for the letters, possibly the Dear Boss letter. The reams of other letters were done by people who just wanted to stir the muck and some were undoubtedly the work of newspaper men wishing to cash in on the murder mystery. I say the Dear Boss letter only because many serial killers contact police or papers with their stories, so perhaps one or so of the letters was actually written by JtR.

[miakaal4]

Hi All, good question this, my own response is, perhaps boring.
James Maybrick alone.
All five "known" + two others.
So many Leather Aprons around then I think several blokes.
The two "Yours truely" letters, don't know about the others.
Cheers.

[John Wheat]

1. William Henry Bury

2. Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Kelly.

3. John Pizer

4. None of them.

[RivkahChaya]

1) the three most plausible suspects (if any)?
i. Someone we have never heard of.
ii. A Jew with a name similar to "Kosminski," but not the Aaron Kosminski, about whom so much has been written.
iii. James Kelly, the one person among modern suspects who we know actually did commit a murder, and who doesn't have any glaring problems about him, like being in Scotland, Joliet prison, or dead, during the time of some of the murders.

2) which victims were"Jacks" work?
The most I am willing to say I am certain of, is that Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were killed by the same person. Since I do not believe any of the letters are authentic, and therefore no actual killer gave himself the name "Jack the Ripper," I am hesitant to say whose victims are "Jack's." I think it is fairly likely that the person who killed Nichols and Chapman also killed Eddowes and Kelly, so I guess we can call him Jack the Ripper. Alternately, I can believe that one person killed Nichols and Chapman, and another Eddowes and Kelly, in which case, I'm also open to the possibility that the killer of Nichols and Chapman killed Martha Tabram. They can be JTR1 and JTR2. I don't think the person who killed Stride killed anyone else who is on the radar, but if he did, then it is probably just Coles and Mackenzie. That's pretty doubtful, though. I don't actually think the killer of Coles and Mackenzie killed any of the C5, not Tabram, and I don't think there is any crossover between JTR and the torso murders.

3) most plausible identity of Leather Apron who harrassed women in the area?
I don't know enough about this to comment, although in regards to it not being John Pizer, see below.

4)) which if any letters came from the killer?
None. However, I think the two sent to the Central News Office were done by reporters, and while they are not by the exact same person, they are in the same style of handwriting, so I think they were written by at least two people, together, who either worked for the same paper or news service, or had known each other for a while, maybe in school. The handwriting is similar enough, that they are probably close in age, and went to school in the same area, or else work for the same person, who wants them to write a certain way.

Pizer certainly did admit being "Leather Apron" in court, but something about the story doesn't jive for me.

I think that was a language confusion thing. He didn't realize he was being asked if he answered to the nickname "Leather Apron," and thought he was just being asked if he used a leather apron in his work, which he did. Maybe he thought he was being asked if it were somehow appropriate to call him "Leather Apron," and he said "yes," because he did wear one, and wasn't fully aware that the nickname already belong to someone notorious, and that by saying that yes, it could be applied to him, he was essentially admitting to the crimes, which he did not commit, not the murders nor the extorting of money from prostitutes.

[Phil H]

That's pretty doubtful, though. I don't actually think the killer of Coles and Mackenzie killed any of the C5, not Tabram, and I don't think there is any crossover between JTR and the torso murders.I just wonder whether Mckenzie might not have been the work of the same hand as Polly and Annie, but FRAILER - weakened or less confident - psychologically, medically, physically? Complicated by being disturbed.

The wounds remind me of Nichols' somewhat.

Phil

[Abby Normal]

Pizer certainly did admit being "Leather Apron" in court, but something about the story doesn't jive for me.

If some of the police knew that Pizer was known as "LA" from the start, why didn't they say so?

Phil

They did. In a police report written on 8/31/88 and again on 9/7/88 on the polly Nichols murder they reference "Pizer alias Leather Apron".

[mklhawley]

I'll comment on two suspects, who should still be taken seriously:

Francis Tumbley –

I have more faith in Scotland Yard than many, especially at the peak of the murders in November 1888 when their investigation was more complete than at any other time prior to this. Since they were not allowed to discuss the case publically, their actions at this time speak loudly. Here’s what we do know. The only suspect Anderson ever stated by name during the peak of the murders was Tumblety, when he contacted US Chiefs of Police for anything on him. Inspector Andrews was sent to North America with Anderson’s approval specifically for Tumblety. Chief Inspector Littlechild was clearly privy to his old boss’ actions, since he stated Tumblety was ‘a likely suspect’, and we now know that Littlechild’s division was certainly involved in the Whitechapel murder investigation. We also know that Scotland Yard’s file on Tumblety began in the mid-1870s, and by 1888, the file was extensive. They knew the character of Francis Tumblety well enough to take him seriously.

More to come!


Montague John Druitt –

I believe Melville MacNaghten was in the perfect position and at an appropriate time to have reviewed the entire investigation (records we cannot see) AND to have learned through hindsight.


Sincerely,

Mike

[Nic1950]

Hi

The only suspects that I am concentrating on are the ones who died, were incarcerated or moved from the area (possible) not long after Kelly's murder. I find it impossible to believe that the murderer can just stop after Kelly, so based on that there are a few good ones to look at.
Thanks
Nic

[Phil H]

But when Macnaghten came into his post, Anderson and Swanson were still there, much more au fait with the material and the case than he - etc etc. Why give precedence to Mmover them?

As anyone who has ever worked in an office (I am speaking generally not of police work) knows, working on a case while it is in progress gives you much more colour, intimacy with the material and sense of development than can ever be achieved by anyone who comes along later.

Think of this: if the Swanson marginalia had been on the file in the 1890s in place of the MM; and if Cullen and farson had been given sight of a manuscript copy - we would have been discussing Kosminski for years.

Then, when the MM emerged in the 1980s we would have been as sceptical about that (MJD and ostrog) as some now are of DSS's marginalia.

I see no reason to rate MJD above AK (or someone of the same or a similar name)

Phil

[Chava]

Great thread!

I think he killed Nicholls, Chapman, Stride and Eddowes. I think there is an excellent possibility that he killed MJK and a better than good possibility that he killed Tabram. I believe he attacked Ada Wilson. I don't count McKenzie or Coles.

As to who he was, Mr Blotchy tops my list. He sounds suspiciously close to the man who attacked Ada Wilson and to a man seen with earlier victims. I always liked McCarthy the landlord for MJK. But as of today I have to add Bowyer to my list of top suspects. If I'm allowed one more it would be an anonymous kosher butcher or someone who lived close enough to a kosher abattoir to spend a lot of time watching what went on there.

Who 'Leather Apron' was I have no idea but I suspect he is irrelevant to the inquiry.

[Phil H]

If I'm allowed one more it would be an anonymous kosher butcher or someone who lived close enough to a kosher abattoir to spend a lot of time watching what went on there.

Are you aware of Robin Odell's non-specific candidate - the Jewish shochet, put forward in his excellent 1965 book?

Phil

[Jonathan H]

Top Hat Toff Triumph?

To Mike Hawley

I agree except that I argue -- and I'm alone here -- that Macanghten investigated Druitt thoroughly albeit posthumously; he met with the family or a family member in 1891 (which is fictionalised in Sims as the 'freinds' meeting with the 'police' in 1888).

Top Hat Toff

Actually the historical 'waves' went like this:

In the Edwardian Era ex-police began claiming that they knew the indeitity of the murderer but there was no consensus.

More important than them, the famous George Sims had consolidated the notion of the Ripper as a product of the better classes: middle-aged, independently wealthy, unemployed suregon who should never have been let back onto the streets because he had been diagnosed ('twice') as a homcicidal maniac (though in a 'peculiarly' narrow range: East End harlots). 'Jack' had killed himself within hours of the Miller's Ct. atrocity and a month later his body bobbed up in Thames. His friends had the gravest suspicions about him because of his periodic spells asylums and the police were so on the ball that they had a warrant for his arrest, but they were too late by mere hours.

This story cemented the image, among many which the 1888 crimes had inspired, of the top hat toff -- even though Sims never used such a description.

When Mac retired in 1913 his press coneference, and his subsequent memoirs the following year, were the moment to make it clear for posterity whether the 'drowned doctor' (and not the local lunatic Jew or some dodgy American character -- Sims, 1907) was the defibinitive solution -- and why?

Mac tried, but he had boxed himself into a corner telling so many different fibs to different people, especially Sims (Littlechild was, unwittingly, lifting the veil for Sims on some of this gentlemanly subterfuge).

Macnaghten tried to make it clear that the real Jack was an entirely posthumous suspect, a Gentile 'Simon Pure', and was not a middle-aged doctor who had been 'detained' in any asylum. That 'certain facts' received came to Mac alone, and he was able to lay Jack's ghost to rest. Critically he conceded that the murderer did not kill himself within mere hours of Kelly -- he functioned and then was found to be 'absented' by 'his own people' showing Mac's remarkable powers of recall as this [essentially] fits an 1889 primary source about the inquest into Montie's inexplicable self-murder.

Well, all of that was far too subtle and compromised (eg. a fine writer such as Robin Odell, in 1966, did not even relaise that behind all this opacity was Montague Druitt) to make any impression on the public at all.

Compared to Sims' colourful account, Mac's is tepid (he does not even include the Thames finale -- because he couldn't yet he knew it was true).

He did not even make it clear that he was writing about the same suspect as Sims.

It was an opportunity lost.

The genie of Jack-as-Jekyll was out of the bottle and he could not be put back in.

Mac dies in 1921 and Sims in 1922.

That left precisely nobody to defend the solution, as they would have done had they lived long enough to see William Le Queux, that best selling jingositic fantastist, reboot the entire story as a mystery which had forever flummoxed the constabulary.

This was somewhat fair enough from his point of view as he wrote in 1898 that the 'drowned doctor' fiction was just -- a self-serving cover story. He had been in Whitechapel in 1888 and he knew the cops were not about to arrest an English dooctor or knew the terror was over, not for years.

With his Rasputin fantasy, Le Queux created 'Ripperology'; the idea that subsequent researchers would succeed where the contemporaneous police had allegedly failed.

There was some resistance but it was to no avail:

Empire News (U.K.)
23 October 1923


NEW STORY OF 'JACK THE RIPPER'
RASPUTIN DOCUMENT CHALLENGED

SPECIAL TO 'EMPIRE NEWS'

In his book, 'Things I Know', published this week - see page eight - Mr. William Le Queux claims to have revealed the actual identity of Jack the Ripper. He cites a Rasputin manuscript to the effect that the amazing criminal who terrorized London was a mad Russian doctor sent here by the Secret Police to annoy and baffle Scotland Yard ...

... 'Against this theory, Sir Melville Macnaghten, Chief of the CID at the time, says in his memoirs:-

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

And in favour of the Russian doctor theory Sir Robert Anderson, who was Commissioner of the Police at the time, always maintained the view that the murders were the work of a medical man. '

Note that even Anderson is here subordinated to Mac's solution, but the latter cannot gain traction not without 'doctor' and 'drowned'.

Therefore while Pedachenko -- Ostrog on steroids -- never became the image of Jack, the top hat toff limped on (partly because of Matters denouncing the drowned doctor as a fake) but was fatally cut off from his watery demise. It was the latter element which was true whereas Druitt was not a medical man.

By the time Dan Farson examined the unofficial version of Lady Aberconway's father's 'Report' -- the document which had launched the solution as nEdwardians thought they knew it -- he did not know any of the above.

Worse being a celebrity TV reporter working to a tight deadline he did not have the time or resources to examine this source -- this sensational scoop -- against a myriad of others to work out why Sir Melville had mistaken Druitt for a dcotor?

For example, the official versiont o which he did not again access (but Odell did in 1966) might have made him realise that 'said to be a doctor ...' is contingent whereas 'he was sexually insane ...' is not.

That Macnaghten had probably disguised Druitt as this was a document for public consumption and thus potentially put the surviving family in jeopardy, was unknown to him. But christbael showed the way. She asked him not to use the name in case it cause anguish and pubclis distreess to any descendants.

Are to believe that her father would do any less, or be any less sensitive? That Sims' profile left only winners and no losers caused no ssupicion in the mind of the investigative reporter because he knew nothing about Sims, or all the other sources he need to place 'aberconway' in context.

and so was launched the drowned not-a-doctor whose let down brought about the Royal Conspiracy coming to preeminence not among historians but pop culture.

With the background of Watergate spilling out of the White House like an ugly oil slick, 1973's TV hit 'Jack the Ripper' was narrated by two fictional dectectives (from terrific and realsitic cops shows) Barlow and Watt.

Fictional detectives!

It would be like if 'Starsky and Hutch' re-examined the Lizzie Borden case, or went zooming around Dealey Plaza trying to locate Grassy Knoll witness the CIA had neglected to bump off.

Meanwhile, Mac sources including Sims, and his profile which is clearly fictitious and diversionary are sidelined (some excellent secondary sources, nevetheless, do not include both non-identical versions of his 'memo', or the 1913 cemments in which he is certain are out, or his memoirs which try to carefully rectify and recalibrate the real story behind his fictional confection languish in obscurity).

A major exception is Paul Begg's 'JTR--The Facts' (2006) not because he agrees with any of the above -- he does not -- but simply because he inslcudes everything and is judiciously disatisfied with Macnaghten as a reliable source, but also disatisfied with stale caricatures of Macnaghten as a know-nothing too.

The Top Hat Toff, so despised by today's Ripper cognoscenti, was Macnaghten's admirable triumph (partly over Anderson too) in that he made the 'better classes' face such an unwanted solution: the fiend was a Gentile and a doctor and from the West End.

Against this core truth, that the real figure who lay impenetrably behind this discreet 'shell game' was actually a young barrister from Dorset, hardly mattered.

A fiend-murderer could be a respectable, normal-seeming person who is 'above suspicion', which is as true today as it was then.

[mklhawley]

Thanks Jonathan. With conflicting evidence, this certainly connects the dots.

To Phil H: I understand your point. I still go back to Chief Inspector Littlechild stating that Anderson 'only thought he knew'. Why is Littlechild so confident of this? He seems to be telling George Sims that he was just as privy to the investigation as Anderson and his judgement is just as good.

Keep in mind, Anderson said absolutely nothing about his contacting the US chiefs of police, but he did. It's not that Anderson lied in his later days, he was merely selective in his discussions. God and Country took priority over everything, and Tumblety being a person of interest in Special Branch meant he was not to be known to the public.

I see Swanson as a man who loved his superior and easily sided with his judgement, especially when it was logical. It's easy to be convinced by your superior and social superior. I'm sure Anderson reciprocated to the enjoyment of Swanson.

Sincerely,

Mike

[RivkahChaya]

I just wonder whether Mckenzie might not have been the work of the same hand as Polly and Annie, but FRAILER - weakened or less confident - psychologically, medically, physically? Complicated by being disturbed.

I have wondered how he managed not to nick himself at some point, or whether he did manage not to. He could have given himself a serious case of septicemia, and died shortly after Miller's Court, or if he did recover, taken a hiatus while he was recovering, and afterwards, been more cautious.

If I were writing a fictional account, something like that would happen. The blazing fire in Miller's Court would be because he was experiencing fever chills, and the savageness would be because he thought he was dying, and this might be his last victim.

The only suspects that I am concentrating on are the ones who died, were incarcerated or moved from the area (possible) not long after Kelly's murder. I find it impossible to believe that the murderer can just stop after Kelly, so based on that there are a few good ones to look at.

I used to think that, until Gary Ridgway just up and stopped being the Green River Killer one day.

Montague John Druitt –

I believe Melville MacNaghten was in the perfect position and at an appropriate time to have reviewed the entire investigation (records we cannot see) AND to have learned through hindsight.

If we can make up elaborate scenarios for MJK skipping town, and leaving everyone to think she died in Miller's Court, then how about a story where the killer knew Druitt, knew he was contemplating suicide, and concerned about his mental state, so when Druitt disappeared (and perhaps the killer even knew what had happened to him), the killer started the rumor that Druitt was the Ripper, the one that turned into "his family thought he was the killer," and then skipped town, hoping the investigation would be closed once Druitt's body washed up.