The profession of Jack the Ripper.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

If the police officer was wearing his uniform while killing Polly Nichols, we can assume he was a Met police.

How does he know the city police's beat so he can kill Eddowes?

[Mayerling]

Those "V" shape cuts could also suggest (aside from normal cuts) that the Ripper was putting the first letter of Queen Victoria's name onto the victim's face. He might also have meant it for the word "victim".

The policeman theory has been suggested in the past, and is not new with you Pierre. The idea of the Ripper rapidly melting into the background after each crime suggested that the Ripper was (at the least) wearing a police constable or officer uniform. But it was as valid an exercise of the imagination as the suggestion that a midwife was the killer, or a local butcher or ritual slaughterer (shockhet) wearing a leather apron. All were suggested ideas, and all have their points and weaknesses. One weakness is that a police official at the scenes or near the scenes of the crimes would soon be noticed by some of the regular police officers. You can sneer about this and say he was too clever and knew how police beats ran or whatever, but there was nothing to suggest that the suspect you had in mind would have had such a remarkable memory that he could avoid being recognized too often in the East End by some talkative police constables.

I have to also agree that in Britain the police are respected but not idolized to the point that you made it sound like this proven theory of yours happened to be of such a nature as to shake up British support for the institution of their national police. In the 1870s and 1880s there was considerable negative comments (AT THAT TIME) about the police department. Too many crimes going back (at least) to 1860 had been bungled by the police in investigation. In particular:

1860 - The "Road" Murder or Constance Kent Case, where Chief Inspector Whicher felt certain Constance murdered her little half-brother, but was hooted down by the local constabulary at Road (not very effective on their own in the case) and the national newspapers. Constance (in 1865) publicly admitted her guilt (there is still some questions about this) but by then Whicher had retired in disgrace from the Yard.

1866 - The Cannon Street Murder of Sarah Milsom. An arrest of a relative who was supposedly seen near the warehouse that Milsom worked and lived in at Cannon Street was arrested and put on trial - and twenty witnesses showed up proving his alibi (he was gambling miles away from the murder site at the time of the case).

1872 - Murder of Mrs. Squires and her daughter in Hoxton. A young man was seen by many people fleeing the shop the killings occurred in, but nobody was ever arrested and tried for the killing. Ironically one of the pieces of evidence had a fingerprint on it - but it was not for three more decades (in the Stratton Case of 1905) that fingerprints were used to convict, and there was no fingerprint base for comparisons in 1872.

1877 - The De Goncourt Scandal leading to "The Trial of the Detectives": Harry Benson, a very clever and accomplished conman, set up a turf fraud that rooked a French Countess of a considerable sum of money. It turned out he bribed at least three leading Scotland Yard detectives (Drusckovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer) and probably more to mislead the investigation and to be tipped off on further police activities. The three detectives ended up getting convicted and going to prison.

Nat Drusckovitch, was the Yard's expert on crimes involving foreign suspects (he spoke five languages), and had been a good police officer, but was something of a dandy and in debt due to lifestyle and being co-signer on a loan. It turned out that in 1874 he had been investigating a violent shooting death of the mother-in-law of a French so-called noblemen, "Comte" Henri de Tourville (actually Henri Pineux, an ex-waiter). The mother-in-law, to whom the Comte owed a sum of money, was shot to death while examining her son-in-law's pistol. In 1877 when de Tourville was fighting (and losing) extradition to the Austro-Hungarian empire for a separate wife murder (which ended in a prison sentence to the salt mines where he died), the skull of the mother-in-law was exhumed and the wound was in the dead center of the back of the skull. It could not have been an accident, but in 1874 Drusckovitch wrote a letter report saying it was. It turned out he had been bribed by de Tourville.

1879 - The Euston Square Mystery involving the death of an elderly woman probably by the family she roomed with - only conviction in this confusedly investigated case was one of perjury for one of the males involved.

1881 - Chatham Barracks Mystery - Lt. Percy Roper was shot to death in his rooms at the army barracks at Chatham in February of that year. Although several lines of inquiry were made nothing was solved - and one of the possible suspects may have committed suicide. The case may have nearly been resolved by the confession of Percy Lefroy Mapleton, in late November 1881, when he was facing execution for a homicide on a train. But this confession was repudiated by Lefroy within a day of his making it. Roper's murder was never solve.

1881 - The St. Luke's Mystery - Urban Napoleon Stanger, a German immigrant baker, vanished and suspicion fell on his wife and her lover. The lover did get a prison term connected with a suspicious act of forgery, but the killing was never solved.

1882 - The Georgiana Moore Case - the Detective Inspector assigned to this case (with the less than confidence building name of "Moon") arrested Ms Moore for child murder and she was tried. The case fell apart.


1886 - The Pimlico Poisoning Case - a damning case of poisoning of one Edwin Bartlett, by his wife Adelaide, with chloroform was demolished in court by Adelaide Bartlett's counsel Sir Edward Clark. Police investigation never fully figured out how the victim ingested liquid chloroform quietly if he did not plan to commit suicide (as was pushed by the defense). We still don't know how.

1887 - Cass Case: Miss Cass was arrested by an overly eager constable for soliciting. She wasn't a prostitute and was not doing soliciting. This case took months to try to straighten out.

1887 - The Trafalgar Square Riots - The police on horseback violently broke up a public meeting at Trafalgar Square that was conducted apparently peacefully. A great deal of political bitterness directed at the new Assistant Police Commissioner (Sir Charles Warren) resulted in this. It helps explain the suspicions towards the police felt in Whitechapel the following year.

You can see that with this series of disasters the police came into 1888 with hardly universal approval. The revelation that some high ranking official was the Ripper while shocking would not have toppled public opinion against the Yard, but would have been seen as just one more in a series of missteps (though the mutilation murders would have been making this more horrifying).

Jeff

[lynn cates]

interruption

Hello Jon. Thanks for interrupting the madness with your intelligent post.

Mere collateral damage. (Symbols indeed!)

Cheers.
LC

[Pierre]

Hello, Pierre-- well! This is interesting.
A police officer was Jack the Ripper! OR-- a serial killer wore a police uniform.

Hmmm...? They are not quite the same thing, are they?

Hi Pcdunn,

Naturally.

But the person I think was Jack the Ripper was actually a police officer.

And I have other data sources that identifies him. The testimony of Lechmere has had nothing to do with that during the time of my research. I found Lechmereīs testimony late in the research process and the theory was finished.

So the statement of Lechmere is something else. It has nothing to do with the data I have, which gives the ID of this police official. I merely see Charles Lechmereīs statement as a possible confirming testimony.

By the way, the chevrons shown in your detail of an uniformed person are pointing downward, while the small inset of a chevron, and the sketch of Kate's facial markings point upward, exactly the opposite direction.
Do you have an explanation for this? (Remember, some military ranks are also denoted by chevrons on their sleeves-- does this mean Jack was a soldier?)

Well, Pcdunn, I have naturally considered what you are saying and thanks for the good questions. If you are a police official wearing the uniform you stretch out your arm and see the chevron pointing "upward", or in the direction of the cuts. So the chevrons are performed from that perspective. I do not know if that is significant and if that was his thinking.

The question about the military now. No, the person I think was Jack the Ripper was not a soldier. He was actually a police official. So I think this is the right interpretation of the chevrons.

Kind Regards, Pierre

[Pierre]

No they do not.

Those cuts were not drawn with the tip of a knife, they are described as flaps of skin, slices done with the side of a blade.



The killer may have been trying to peel the skin off her face, or slice her face off, either way they are not drawn on the face - that is an old, overused, worn out canard.

Well, Wickerman. They might be such cuts as you refer to. You would have to research the probability of this though, since there are a lot of people here who wouldnīt know if that is the truth.

But the truth is that the cuts looks like chevrons. Everyone can see that. So this is a much more simple hypothesis.

And I have in no part built the theory on the cuts. They are merely a possible confirming clue. What I can say though, is that he wanted to give the police a clue about who he was. So they could be such a clue.

And by the way, some people have been thinking that there is such a cut on Kellyīs hand. Have you been looking into that, or do you know if there are any sources from 1888 mentioning that? Because I donīt know if I should take any notice of that.

Regards Pierre

[Pierre]

Hi all

joke time!
and tired so only brief reply now

1. I am sure that Pierre denied it was a police officer before.

Yes, I did. But I have changed my mind. The reason is that I donīt want to carry this alone anymore.

2. The chevrons he shows are on a sergeants uniform, are there any on other officers uniforms?

The military has them. But the person I think was Jack the Ripper was not a military. He was a policeman.

3. With regards to Cross/Lechmere, why no comment on Robert Paul?
And he didn't lie about his name, he gave a different version which he also used, but thats for other to argue.

Robert Paul came when Lechmere was standing in the street. He came after Lechmere to the murder site. Why was Lechmere just standing there?

4."There is a confession strongly connected to him but not giving his name. There are also a few historical data sources that connect his name to the victims."

so the confession is not really a confession if it has no name is it?

would not many police be linked to the murders?

Thanks, Steve, for a good question. The confession give things that only this police official could have known.

5. To be able to elude all the beats, this officer obviously had links with both the met and the city police

Letīs just say that he was a smart son of a bitch who knew what he wanted to do and how to do it.

6. "These two examples are not included in the sources that give the identity of the killer but they can be understood and explained from the perspective of his profession."

Now is it just me or do you see a pattern here, what ever he posts is not important to his theory.

Steve, at this moment I can only refer to sources which do not give his ID. So whatever I post is not important for the theory of his ID. But it can have importance for understanding certain features of the crimes.

and finally

"I am truly sorry about the fact that the person I think was Jack the Ripper was a police official. The police shall protect people and not murder them. But he thought he had more than one strong motive for doing it."

so thats why he said would upset people, am sorry to say it won't we have had far to many bad police here in uk. not to mention names but there were a few involved in Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4 cases .

Not sure why he is upset.

OK. I am grateful to hear that. But if you put it in the perspective of the Scotland Yard and how they handled the case to try and stop the killings - what do you think they would have done if they knew that the killer was a police official? Would they have told the truth to the public? Would they have arrested him? Would they have killed him? Or would they have let him go and try to forget about him?

Regards Pierre

[Pierre]

Pierre,

at least you have now given us something, you can see from my first post I on this thread, that I am not convinced as yet.

I will not try to convince you. I only want the truth. If the truth is that this person is not the killer, I would be glad. If he was, I think it is a real tragedy. And what I think about then is the victims. He had so many advantages and they had nothing.

However lets see if we can actual make some sense out of this and see if we can advance further

I think the best advancement is a serious discussion.

I was mistaken in my belief that you said it was not a police officer, and I am happy to apologise.

No Steve, you were right. So no need to apologise. But since you are so generous, I would like to apologise to you if I have offended you in any way. I did not mean to do that.

what you actually said was:

A Halloween Mystery: The Monro Standpoint Thread
post36
"Well, the person I have found wasnīt a Scotland Yard official"

And now begins the questioning of "where he worked" and of "what rank" he was. I was of course expecting that. And naturally I canīt answer you or anyone else on these points. That is something you will know when I have finished my research.

I think it is easy how that can be misunderstood, the two police forces involved in the case were the Met and the City police, Scotland yard and the Met are often seen as one and the same.
one assumes that you are really saying it was not a senior Met Police officer.

This does however lead one to the obvious conclusion, that your suspect must be a local police officer.

As I pointed out in my first post the police uniform you used was of a sergeant. Is there any significance in that in your opinion?

The chevrons cut into Eddoweīs face has got nothing with grade. He would never have been able to make any more complex cuts than those given the short time he had.

You see i am not convinced Chevrons have any meaning other than for certain ranks, and to be honest I do not at present without evidence to support believe those are deliberate cuts to the checks, rather I see them as as the result of other actions.

I respect you for that. And the chevrons are not any part of my theory of his ID. I merely think they confirm his profession and the way he communicated with the police.

you have said before that this revelation could upset people in the uk.

I feel you have a view of British society, and the attitude of the general population to the police that is more Murder mystery story / Hollywood view of Britain than is the case.

I donīt have any view on all that. I only care for historical research. And I hardly ever watch TV.

The truth is that the British police are not held in a position of universal high respect. They are viewed on the whole as good people but not saints. I do not feel the disclosure you are proposing would have any effect of the public standing of the police.

OK. That is good to hear. But in my previous answer to you I was posing some questions about the Scotland Yard. What is your line of thinking regarding those questions?


Elamarna

Regards Pierre

[Rosella]

I think any police officer known to have been Jack the Ripper would have been incarcerated in an insane asylum. However, as I don't believe in policeman Jack, the question is moot.

[Pierre]

If the police officer was wearing his uniform while killing Polly Nichols, we can assume he was a Met police.

How does he know the city police's beat so he can kill Eddowes?

Hi,

I think it is best if people donīt assume anything about his rank and where he worked. It may not be fruitful for the discussion, since it will lead to the wrong conclusions.

But if one could find some general facts about any police officials to discuss it could be meaningful and lead forward.

Regards Pierre

[GUT]

Hi,

I think it is best if people donīt assume anything about his rank and where he worked. It may not be fruitful for the discussion, since it will lead to the wrong conclusions.

But if one could find some general facts about any police officials to discuss it could be meaningful and lead forward.

Regards Pierre

Why's there any need to lead forward, you've already solved it.

[John G]

Hi,

I think it is best if people donīt assume anything about his rank and where he worked. It may not be fruitful for the discussion, since it will lead to the wrong conclusions.

But if one could find some general facts about any police officials to discuss it could be meaningful and lead forward.

Regards Pierre

Well this is another Delphic post! And what differentiates a "police official" from a "police officer"?l

[Fisherman]

I do not want to get too bogged down in this issue, but I think that the reoccurring discussions on the so called inverted v:s is superfluos.
These cuts are not - and never were - inverted v:s. If anything, they are inverted u: s. They do not have the sharp angle where the legs of the letter meet that a v has. It is only in the drawings that this seems to be the case. The blade commenced the cuts at the highest level on Eddowes' face, and so they could not begin with a sharp angle.

If the killer wanted to produce a v shape, he would need to make TWO cuts in each flap, meeting each other in a sharp angle. Then there could exist no doubt about an intention, regardless of the interpretation part.

He did not do this. Ergo, he cut no v shapes.

[Pierre]

Those "V" shape cuts could also suggest (aside from normal cuts) that the Ripper was putting the first letter of Queen Victoria's name onto the victim's face. He might also have meant it for the word "victim".

Thanks for answering my post, I am interested in what you think. Well, you could always suggest a lot of different reasons, but when you get many clues pointing to one person you finally have to accept the correlation between the sources. And Queen Victoria...why would the killer take interest in her personally? Are there other historical sources indicating he did? And the word "victim", well, the police could see that it was a victim, so why write about it? And so on and so forth.

The policeman theory has been suggested in the past, and is not new with you Pierre. The idea of the Ripper rapidly melting into the background after each crime suggested that the Ripper was (at the least) wearing a police constable or officer uniform.

Well, it has been very difficult for ripperologists to understand and explain why he could lure the victims so easily and why he could escape. So it is understandable that people have seen a policeman as a possible explanation. But I have never been thinking is those terms. I just stumbled over him when I was looking into some sources about this case. All I can say about people thinking in these lines is that is corresponds to what I know about him.


But it was as valid an exercise of the imagination as the suggestion that a midwife was the killer, or a local butcher or ritual slaughterer (shockhet) wearing a leather apron. All were suggested ideas, and all have their points and weaknesses.

One weakness is that a police official at the scenes or near the scenes of the crimes would soon be noticed by some of the regular police officers.

Yes. But he did not always wear a uniform. This is something I know.

You can sneer about this and say he was too clever and knew how police beats ran or whatever, but there was nothing to suggest that the suspect you had in mind would have had such a remarkable memory that he could avoid being recognized too often in the East End by some talkative police constables.

I donīt sneer about what you are writing here. I take it seriously and try to answer it. Well, he had a remarkable memory. There are sources for this too.

I have to also agree that in Britain the police are respected but not idolized to the point that you made it sound like this proven theory of yours happened to be of such a nature as to shake up British support for the institution of their national police. In the 1870s and 1880s there was considerable negative comments (AT THAT TIME) about the police department. Too many crimes going back (at least) to 1860 had been bungled by the police in investigation. In particular:

1860 - The "Road" Murder or Constance Kent Case, where Chief Inspector Whicher felt certain Constance murdered her little half-brother, but was hooted down by the local constabulary at Road (not very effective on their own in the case) and the national newspapers. Constance (in 1865) publicly admitted her guilt (there is still some questions about this) but by then Whicher had retired in disgrace from the Yard.

1866 - The Cannon Street Murder of Sarah Milsom. An arrest of a relative who was supposedly seen near the warehouse that Milsom worked and lived in at Cannon Street was arrested and put on trial - and twenty witnesses showed up proving his alibi (he was gambling miles away from the murder site at the time of the case).

1872 - Murder of Mrs. Squires and her daughter in Hoxton. A young man was seen by many people fleeing the shop the killings occurred in, but nobody was ever arrested and tried for the killing. Ironically one of the pieces of evidence had a fingerprint on it - but it was not for three more decades (in the Stratton Case of 1905) that fingerprints were used to convict, and there was no fingerprint base for comparisons in 1872.

1877 - The De Goncourt Scandal leading to "The Trial of the Detectives": Harry Benson, a very clever and accomplished conman, set up a turf fraud that rooked a French Countess of a considerable sum of money. It turned out he bribed at least three leading Scotland Yard detectives (Drusckovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer) and probably more to mislead the investigation and to be tipped off on further police activities. The three detectives ended up getting convicted and going to prison.

Nat Drusckovitch, was the Yard's expert on crimes involving foreign suspects (he spoke five languages), and had been a good police officer, but was something of a dandy and in debt due to lifestyle and being co-signer on a loan. It turned out that in 1874 he had been investigating a violent shooting death of the mother-in-law of a French so-called noblemen, "Comte" Henri de Tourville (actually Henri Pineux, an ex-waiter). The mother-in-law, to whom the Comte owed a sum of money, was shot to death while examining her son-in-law's pistol. In 1877 when de Tourville was fighting (and losing) extradition to the Austro-Hungarian empire for a separate wife murder (which ended in a prison sentence to the salt mines where he died), the skull of the mother-in-law was exhumed and the wound was in the dead center of the back of the skull. It could not have been an accident, but in 1874 Drusckovitch wrote a letter report saying it was. It turned out he had been bribed by de Tourville.

1879 - The Euston Square Mystery involving the death of an elderly woman probably by the family she roomed with - only conviction in this confusedly investigated case was one of perjury for one of the males involved.

1881 - Chatham Barracks Mystery - Lt. Percy Roper was shot to death in his rooms at the army barracks at Chatham in February of that year. Although several lines of inquiry were made nothing was solved - and one of the possible suspects may have committed suicide. The case may have nearly been resolved by the confession of Percy Lefroy Mapleton, in late November 1881, when he was facing execution for a homicide on a train. But this confession was repudiated by Lefroy within a day of his making it. Roper's murder was never solve.

1881 - The St. Luke's Mystery - Urban Napoleon Stanger, a German immigrant baker, vanished and suspicion fell on his wife and her lover. The lover did get a prison term connected with a suspicious act of forgery, but the killing was never solved.

1882 - The Georgiana Moore Case - the Detective Inspector assigned to this case (with the less than confidence building name of "Moon") arrested Ms Moore for child murder and she was tried. The case fell apart.


1886 - The Pimlico Poisoning Case - a damning case of poisoning of one Edwin Bartlett, by his wife Adelaide, with chloroform was demolished in court by Adelaide Bartlett's counsel Sir Edward Clark. Police investigation never fully figured out how the victim ingested liquid chloroform quietly if he did not plan to commit suicide (as was pushed by the defense). We still don't know how.

1887 - Cass Case: Miss Cass was arrested by an overly eager constable for soliciting. She wasn't a prostitute and was not doing soliciting. This case took months to try to straighten out.

1887 - The Trafalgar Square Riots - The police on horseback violently broke up a public meeting at Trafalgar Square that was conducted apparently peacefully. A great deal of political bitterness directed at the new Assistant Police Commissioner (Sir Charles Warren) resulted in this. It helps explain the suspicions towards the police felt in Whitechapel the following year.

Thanks for all the interesting descriptions of other cases.

You can see that with this series of disasters the police came into 1888 with hardly universal approval. The revelation that some high ranking official was the Ripper while shocking would not have toppled public opinion against the Yard, but would have been seen as just one more in a series of missteps (though the mutilation murders would have been making this more horrifying).

Interesting to know and it makes me wonder how Scotland Yard looked upon all these problems.

Jeff

Regards Pierre

[Pierre]

I do not want to get too bogged down in this issue, but I think that the reoccurring discussions on the so called inverted v:s is superfluos.
These cuts are not - and never were - inverted v:s. If anything, they are inverted u: s. They do not have the sharp angle where the legs of the letter meet that a v has. It is only in the drawings that this seems to be the case. The blade commenced the cuts at the highest level on Eddowes' face, and so they could not begin with a sharp angle.

If the killer wanted to produce a v shape, he would need to make TWO cuts in each flap, meeting each other in a sharp angle. Then there could exist no doubt about an intention, regardless of the interpretation part.

He did not do this. Ergo, he cut no v shapes.

Hi Fisherman,

You have nothing indicating that Lechmere was the killer, apart from what you call the Mizen scam and some ideas about Lechmere living and working in Spitalfields, a catsmeat woman beeing the mother of Lechmere and her been domineering.

There is nothing that connects him to any of the other killings. No indications even. There is a problem with Lechmere: He was lying -if you donīt think in terms of misremembering during the inquest. Why was a hard working family man lying? Was he thinking about his wife? Was he thinking of his children?

Lechmere lived and worked in Spitalfields. But a lot of people did. And you donīt know anything about a domineering mother. Nothing. Zip.

Please show me that he was at any of the other murder sites. Please show me that he had some REAL problem in his life and back it up with research on serial killers and their problems in life. Show me evidence for a REAL motive.

I would love to get my "suspect" of the hook. But since he has many indications and many data sources connecting him and his motives to several of the murders and you have nothing - because if you did, I could as well say that Diemschutz was the killer - please let the poor man Charles Lechmere of the hook.

If he was a witness to the killer and was afraid of coming forward - why should you accuse him?

You have to establish facts with good data sources when you write history. There has to be a congruent theory and it must be explanatory. Lechmere does not explain any of the murders, not even Nichols, since someone has to be the first person at any murder site after the killer. That is a well established fact.


Regards Pierre

[GUT]

Hi Fisherman,

You have nothing indicating that Lechmere was the killer, apart from what you call the Mizen scam and some ideas about Lechmere living and working in Spitalfields, a catsmeat woman beeing the mother of Lechmere and her been domineering.

There is nothing that connects him to any of the other killings. No indications even. There is a problem with Lechmere: He was lying -if you donīt think in terms of misremembering during the inquest. Why was a hard working family man lying? Was he thinking about his wife? Was he thinking of his children?

Lechmere lived and worked in Spitalfields. But a lot of people did. And you donīt know anything about a domineering mother. Nothing. Zip.

Please show me that he was at any of the other murder sites. Please show me that he had some REAL problem in his life and back it up with research on serial killers and their problems in life. Show me evidence for a REAL motive.

I would love to get my "suspect" of the hook. But since he has many indications and many data sources connecting him and his motives to several of the murders and you have nothing - because if you did, I could as well say that Diemschutz was the killer - please let the poor man Charles Lechmere of the hook. If he was a witness to the killer and was afraid of coming forward - why should you accuse him?

You have to establish facts with good data sources when you write history. There has to be a congruent theory and it must be explanatory. Lechmere does not explain any of the murders, not even Nichols, since someone has to be the first person at any murder site. That is a well established fact.


Regards Pierre

Well Pierre at least Fish gave us a name.

More than you can say you've done.