ripper suspect – Rebecca Frost

Ripper suspect: Richard Mansfield

We must once again remember that it doesn’t take much to be accused of having been Jack the Ripper. If a man can be shown to have been near the East End in the fall of 1888, then his name has likely shown up on the list.

Richard Mansfield, an English actor, was accused of being Jack the Ripper in an anonymous letter dated 1888. It’s hard to determine exactly how seriously the suggestion was taken, especially considering how phrenology and atavism were still in vogue. People were (and still are, to an extent) convinced that the darkness in someone’s soul would have to show on their faces and in their bodies. The more “rough” a person looked, than the rougher his character, and brutal murders of strangers was about as rough as it came.

But what, people started wondering, if there happened to be a man who could change his appearance so that he only looked like his essential self – a brutal, ugly murderer – part of the time? Sort of like how people think Ted Bundy is attractive despite the whole murder thing. In part that explains how he was able to isolate and then murder so many young women, but it also makes things scarier when we can’t look at someone and immediately identify them as dangerous.

Promotional material emphasizing Mansfield’s shift from Jekyll to Hyde.

Enter Richard Mansfield, who happened to be playing the dual roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a West End theater during the Autumn of Terror. Audiences at the Lyceum watched as Mansfield transformed in front of their eyes, contorting his body and his face into the violent and base Hyde. The rumor was even spread that he managed all of this without any help from makeup or prosthetics, although the lighting choices certainly helped his transformation. It turned out that Mansfield did have some assistance, but at least one theater-goer bought into the belief that he could, in fact, change his physical self at will.

The novella was published in 1886, two years before the Ripper murders, and explored the idea of the alter ego or the gothic double. It seems that the restraint of the Victorian era was too much for Dr. Jekyll, outwardly the perfect gentleman, and he only needs the slightest push to revert to his baser instincts. This “push” comes in the form of a serum Jekyll drinks, so at least it’s not going to spread like some sort of social disease, but it’s also incredibly addictive. Even though Jekyll promises he won’t drink anymore and won’t become Hyde again, he can’t help it. First he drinks out of compulsion, and then he transforms into Hyde without even needing the serum.

On the one hand, it might make sense to accuse an actor of being the Ripper, since he would apparently have had the skills needed to blend in with others in the East End at least long enough to commit the murder and make his escape. On the other, Mansfield was only accused because of this dual role and his apparently perfect inhabitation of both of the characters. It was a role that made Mansfield’s reputation as an actor, so he must have done well.

The accusation did have an impact on Mansfield’s career, so it wasn’t completely ignored. In response to the publicity surrounding the suspicion, he put on a performance of the comedy Prince Karl as a benefit for reformed sex workers. Whether or not the police took the letter seriously, he certainly convinced his audiences that there was something to it.

Mansfield continued acting, including taking many roles on Broadway, and also went on to have a successful career as a theatrical manager. After his death at age 50, the New York Times declared that “As an interpreter of Shakespeare, he had no living equal.” Despite being accused of being a serial killer in his own lifetime, at the time of the murders, Mansfield managed to shake off suspicion and prosper.

Ripper suspect: a Jewish slaughterman

One way of getting around naming an actual known person as having been the Ripper is to propose an occupation. In this case, I’m looking at the idea that the Ripper may have been a shochet, or a Jewish slaughterman. It’s a theory Robin Odell covers in the 1965 book Jack the Ripper in Fact and Fiction, but also one that appealed to newspaper readers in 1888.

Why pick “a Jewish slaughterman” as a Ripper suspect? Let us count the ways.

Antisemitism was rife in London in the late 1800s. If you see a Ripper suspect described as a “foreigner,” chances are the person was using the then-common description for “Jew.” Not allowed to settle in other parts of London, Jewish immigrants gathered together to form their own communities and cared for each other with social programs not available to anyone else, because the government didn’t provide them. Rather than respond with frustration against the government, the people turned their anger against the Jews.

It was also a major concern in the case on the night of the so-called Double Event because of graffiti chalked on a wall along the path the Ripper is thought to have fled after murdering Kate Eddowes. Called “the Goulston Street graffito,” the actual text was washed off before there was enough light for it to be photographed, and variations are all we have left. It said something along the lines of The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing and has been interpreted, variably, as either blaming the Jewish people for the Ripper murders, or having something to do with Freemason legends.

At the time, Police Commissioner Charles Warren recommended that the message be erased before it could be seen by too many people because he suspected it would be interpreted the first way. The police were already struggling because they had arrested a Jewish man named John Pizer (nickname: Leather Apron) for the crimes but then had to let him go since he was in custody as they continued. This was also a time when mobs would descend on people, claiming they were the Ripper, causing these victims to turn to the police for protection. It was very easy, then, for East Enders to combine their fear of the Ripper with their antisemitism.
It was already suspected that the Ripper had some knowledge of biology. The common image of the Ripper in a top hat and cape also has him carrying a doctor’s bag for this very reason. The killer was reported to have removed specific organs from his victims and worked very quickly in conditions of poor lighting, to the point where physicians commented that they could not have done the same thing in the given amount of time.

Aside from causing actual physicians to frantically replace their usual bags with ones that didn’t carry the Ripper’s stigma, this also started a debate. Did the Ripper honestly have anatomical knowledge, or was he just lucky? Could he have gained such knowledge somewhere other than medical school?

There were numerous slaughterhouses in the East End, so the Ripper could have come from any of them and gained whatever anatomical knowledge he might have had from his work there. As a bonus, it was a common sight to see men walking around covered in blood because of their work. A slaughterman could easily have escaped after the murders without necessarily having to clean himself thoroughly because he would have been expected to be in such a state, anyway.
Unless someone was rather famous, it’s difficult to find records and therefore attach a name to a suspect. Rather than accusing someone famous, whose descendants might have something to say about that, it’s easier to look at a group of people who have the same presumed skill set and say “There were thousands of them. We’ll never know which one.”

… and that’s very likely true: we’ll never actually know who the Ripper was. We’ve narrowed it down to “someone who was alive in 1888 and at least near the East End,” but, other than that … we’re left grasping at straws. True, if we think that the Ripper did in fact exhibit some anatomical knowledge, a butcher seems to be a good candidate, but what about the men with proven medical training whose names have also been put forward?

What do you think? Does this theory belong on the books or in the bin?

Ripper suspect: George Chapman

George Chapman – no relation to Annie Chapman; birth name Seweryn Kłosowski – is one of the oldest Ripper suspects. Although he was arrested, tried, and hanged for three poisonings, police at the time thought he may have been the Ripper. Let’s see if we agree.

Chapman was born in Poland in 1865. At age 14, he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and in October 1885 he enrolled in a brief course in practical surgery at the Warsaw Praga Hospital. It’s unclear exactly when he left Poland for England, but he was working as a doctor’s assistant in Warsaw until December 1886, and a receipt from February 1887 still places him in Poland. He settled in the East End as a hairdresser’s assistant in either late 1887 or early 1888.

So far Chapman seems to be a plausible Ripper suspect. The Ripper was thought to have anatomical knowledge that could be attributed to being a butcher or a doctor, and Chapman had medical training. He had also moved to the East End shortly before the murders began and records can prove he was there during the Autumn of Terror. On top of this, he was a known serial killer. So what’s the hesitation?

Jack the Ripper killed women on the street by cutting their throats and then mutilating their bodies with a knife or knives. There is no known connection between these women, although various people have done their best to hook them together in a conspiracy.

George Chapman murdered his mistresses by poisoning them with tartar-emetic. He had a string of relationships with women who presented themselves as his wife, and while some of them left Chapman because he was violent, three of them died because of him. Chapman’s first known murder was of Mary Isabella Spink in 1897; his second, Bessie Taylor in 1901; and his third, Maud Marsh in 1902. Reports at his trial indicate that he was physically abusive to all three, as well as the other women – some mothers of his children – who left him, perhaps before he could murder them, as well.

Suspicions were high enough after Marsh’s death for the bodies of Spink and Taylor to be exhumed, as well, in order to prove poisoning. Chapman was charged with Marsh’s murder, brought to trial, convicted on March 19, 1903, and hanged on April 7 with his motives still unproven. Although he inherited a legacy from Spink, there was no monetary reason for him to have murdered Taylor and March.

No less than Fredrick Abberline himself considered George Chapman to have been Jack the Ripper. When he spoke to the policeman who arrested Chapman, he’s reported to have said “You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last!” During the initial investigation Abberline had interviewed Chapman’s “wife” at the time, who apparently reported that he was out and about at all hours. However, Chapman – who was then still going by Seweryn Kłosowski – was not named as a suspect in 1888. It was only his arrest for serial poisoning that put his name on the short list.

So: we know that Chapman in the East End at the proper time, and that he was violent toward the women in his life. He had medical training. And we also know he was a murderer, but the question remains: would the Ripper have switched from using a knife to using poison? From killing strangers who could not have been connected back to him to murdering his own “wives”?

What do you think? Did they really capture Jack the Ripper at last?

Ripper suspect: James Maybrick

Remember back when we were discussing Montague John Druitt and we learned it’s bad luck to have died shortly after the Ripper murders were “finished”? James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton merchant, had some of that same luck, except “died” doesn’t quite fit here. His wife was convicted of his murder and sentenced to death.

Florence Chandler was 18 when she met 42-year-old Maybrick on a sea voyage to Liverpool. It lasted six days, which was long enough for the couple to go from strangers to being engaged. They married in 1881 and had two children by 1886. He had multiple mistresses; she had at least one affair. He sickened suddenly in late April 1889 and died 15 days later. The inquest declared it was arsenic poisoning. Florence became the key suspect.

The trial was sensational, especially since this was an American woman, and the judge’s conduct in particular likely led to her death sentence being commuted to life in prison. In 1904 the case was reexamined and Florence was released. She was the more interesting Maybrick until 1992, when “the Ripper diary” hit headlines.

The provenance of the book is confusing, especially since the story has changed a few times. The contents aren’t really any more enlightening, since the author of the diary never gives his own name. He claims responsibility for the murders of the Canonical Five, as well as two others. And apparently this anonymous author is supposed to be James Maybrick.

The “diary” surfaced in 1992 and has been subjected to multiple tests to determine whether the ink could have been used in 1888. The book itself is less controversial, since the binding and the pages are apparently of the correct vintage, but someone could have found the book and then written the story themselves much later. Some of the details “the Ripper” provides about the murders are inaccurate, but align with oft-repeated parts of the story that someone who was not the Ripper might have heard in the decades since. In fact, the owner of the diary made a statement in 1995 that his wife actually wrote the diary while he dictated. (His solicitor submitted a repudiation of this affidavit, and then he withdrew the repudiation. Just to make things even more confusing.)

The idea seems to be that James Maybrick embarked on the murders as a reaction to his wife’s infidelities, even though it seems that she only began her affair after he had continually cheated on her with multiple women. I suppose we can counter these double standards by arguing that she murdered him when she found out he was murdering other people, even though a twenty-first inquiry into the case revealed that Maybrick was taking multiple medications at the time of his death, most of which were poisonous. It’s highly unlikely Florence Maybrick killed her husband, and it’s also highly unlikely that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.

But the diary isn’t the only piece of evidence that surfaced naming the previously unsuspected Maybrick. In 1993, a year after the diary was presented to the world, a man named Albert Johnson bought an antique pocket watch with a strange etching inside. Someone had scratched in the initials of the Canonical Five women (not including the two unidentified women from the diary), James Maybrick’s signature, and the words “I am Jack.” Separate examinations determined that the scratches were not recent – say, if someone had come across the diary story in 1992 and decided to fake them on an true antique watch – but the timing is still puzzling. If Maybrick was a Ripper “nobody” until the diary surfaced in 1992 because it reached the hands of a new owner, how coincidental is it that the pocket watch also changed hands and came to light a year later?

The diary made a splash in the 1990s with books arguing both for and against its authenticity, but it – and James Maybrick – has been largely dismissed by those studying the case. If the Ripper had left a diary for us to find, that would have been big news indeed – even bigger if he’d gotten all the details right and actually signed his name. But the diary goes the way of the shawl and the letters: an interesting splash for experts to argue over, but ultimately not the key to unlock the mystery.

Have you heard about the Ripper diary and the pocket watch? What did you think when you first learned about them? (Does Jack the Ripper strike you as the type to keep a diary in the first place?)

Ripper suspects – Joseph Barnett or George Hutchinson

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some of my research instead of my writing musings, so let’s jump back in to Jack the Ripper and consider a pair of suspects: Joseph Barnett or George Hutchinson. These are an “or” pair instead of an “and” pair, because nobody’s (yet) suggested that they worked together, but the story behind them is very similar.

Both Barnett and Hutchinson are connected to Mary Jane Kelly, the last of the so-called Canonical Five victims of Jack the Ripper. Choosing either Barnett or Hutchinson as the Ripper clearly makes Mary Jane Kelly the last. It actually positions her at the center of all of the murders.

Joseph Barnett was Mary Jane Kelly’s boyfriend. The two of them met in April 1887 and decided to move in together on their second encounter. The vast majority of what we know – or think we know – about Mary Jane Kelly comes from Barnett’s testimony at the inquest after her murder. He lived with her until the end of October 1888, when they quarreled and separated.

Barnett had been living with Mary Jane Kelly at 13 Miller’s Court when they separated. It was a very small room, with only a single bed, and one of the reasons for the separation seems to be that Mary Jane was letting other women sleep there. Since this was the Autumn of Terror where women were being murdered in the streets, and since Mary Jane had a steady room that wasn’t in a lodging house, it seems like it was a kind thing for her to do.

Another instigating factor for their separation also seems to have been the fact that Barnett had lost his job as a fish porter, resulting in Mary Jane Kelly’s return to sex work. Barnett apparently disproved of this as much as he did of her offering their small, shared space to other women, and so he left her. Their separation was the reason why Barnett was not also sleeping at 13 Miller’s Court the night of November 8-9, and why Mary Jane Kelly was alone and murdered there.

Barnett was not a suspect at the time. In fact, Inspector Fredrick Abberline personally cleared him after a four-hour interrogation, which included an inspection of Barnett’s clothes. No blood was found, and Abberline, at least, was satisfied.

The same cannot be said for Bruce Paley who, in 1996, named Barnett as the Ripper. According to Paley, Barnett decided to become the Ripper in order to scare Mary Kelly off the streets and force her to stop making money through sex work out of fear of being murdered. On the one hand, Barnett’s plan seems to have worked if Mary Jane Kelly was worried enough to allow other women to sleep indoors with her. On the other, he apparently couldn’t scare her enough to stop. Thus, Paley argues, Barnett was driven to kill the woman he loved because he couldn’t save her otherwise.

George Hutchinson also became a Ripper suspect not in the 1880s but in the 1990s, this time in a 1998 book by Robert Hinton. Hutchinson was known to the police at the time because, after Mary Jane Kelly’s murder, he made a statement to the police about a man he had seen with Mary Jane Kelly shortly before her murder. Hutchinson, unemployed, apparently had plenty of time that night to hang around Miller’s Court and get a good look at anyone who passed by.

Abberline also interviewed Hutchinson, although he was considered only as a witness and not a suspect. Hutchinson had known Mary Jane Kelly for three years and his incredibly detailed description of the man entering the room with her was explained because Hutchinson thought the man looked “foreign,” which piqued his interest and concern. After all, women were being murdered, so of course he would memorize every detail about any man who seemed to be going into his friend’s room as a client.

Although numerous skeptics have doubted Hutchinson’s description of the Ripper, he wasn’t accused of being the murderer himself until Hinton. And here the story sounds very similar: angry that Mary Jane Kelly was supporting herself through sex work – and not relying on him as her sole sexual partner and source of money – Hutchinson orchestrated the Ripper murders, hoping to scare Mary Jane Kelly into stopping.

Hinton suggests that Hutchinson, after seeing Mary Jane Kelly take that client into her room and that client later depart, snapped. Hutchinson therefore went into 13 Miller’s Court himself, shook Mary Jane Kelly awake – or tried to, considering the reports that she was very drunk that night – and was confronted with the reality of the woman she was instead of the apparent perfection he had preciously imagined. With this ideal shattered, Hutchinson lashed out and killed her.

So: two men who knew Mary Jane Kelly, and were known to have been close to her at the time of her death. One of them was cleared as a suspect by Fredrick Abberline, and the other never even considered to be one. More than a century after the Ripper murders, each in turn became accused of being the Ripper to turn Mary Jane Kelly away from sex work … and into his arms.

What do you think? Was there something in the air in the 1990s? Would a man ever actually turn to serial murder as a way of pursuing the “perfect” woman? Or should we let Barnett and Hutchinson rest in peace?

Ripper suspect: Robert Mann

This is another suspect that makes most people ask “Who?” He’s not a famous author, painter, or prince, so if you know who Robert Mann is, you’ve either read M. J. Trow’s 2009 book or seen the Discovery Channel documentary. Robert Mann was basically a nobody, making him a prime candidate for being the killer who was never identified.

Mann was the mortuary attendant at the Whitechapel Workhouse, so we know for certain he was in the area at the right time. He even has a direct connection to the murders, since both Polly Nichols’ and Annie Chapman’s bodies were taken to that mortuary. There was even a bit of confusion during the inquest into Polly Nichols’ death so Mann’s name made it into the newspaper reports.

Mann was asked what, exactly, he had done with Polly Nichols’ body, and who was there while he did it. The wounds to her abdomen were not discovered at the scene but only after she had been undressed at the mortuary, and the coroner seems to have gotten very frustrated with Mann’s changing testimony about witnesses. One newspaper reported the coroner concluding his questions with the statement that “It appears the mortuary-keeper is subject to fits, and neither his memory nor statements are reliable.” It appears Mann changed his story too many times to suit the coroner.

At Annie Chapman’s inquest, Mann’s occupation gets specified as being a “watchman,” meaning he wasn’t ever supposed to have touched the bodies at all. Considering how the “mortuary” he was watching was really a shed and not a proper mortuary in the first place, it seems plausible that he could have been asked to help. Right?

M. J. Trow argues that Mann, who died in 1896, was actually the Ripper, so he did a lot more than that.

But … why Mann? Well …

In 1988, to mark the hundred-year anniversary of the murders, FBI agent John Douglass composed a psychological profile of Jack the Ripper. (If you’re a fan of Mindhunter, Douglas is the real-life Holden Ford.) You can read Douglas’ full profile here. A lot of it should be familiar: white male, low social standing, broken family life, socially inept … nothing surprising, and nothing to say it wasn’t Mann.

Trow follows Mann’s life as closely as possible, and there’s nothing in it to conclusively prove that he couldn’t have been the Ripper. He fits the profile, at least, and everyone knows he was around at the time of the murders because his name made the papers. According to Trow, everyone else just overlooked Mann before this, both during his life and after his death. And isn’t that the perfect marker of a serial killer who was never identified?

Mann is an interesting case because he can be shown to at least have been around bodies and death, even if we can’t say for sure that he was obsessed with either, or the creation thereof. He could have just been a resident of the workhouse, stuck with the job they gave him, and confused and overwhelmed by the coroner’s inquest.

Or he could have been a cunning murderer hiding behind the mask.

What do you think? Is Mann one of the top likely Rippers, or was Trow just grasping at straws?

Ripper suspect: Lewis Carroll

Remember how the you can basically accuse anyone who was alive in 1888 of having been Jack the Ripper? In 1996, author Richard Wallace decided to make the case for Charles Dodgson – pen name, Lewis Carroll. The man who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1856 was meant to have murdered multiple women in 1888 … and to have confessed to all of it, if anyone happens to be clever enough to see.

The main point (slash problem) is that these confessions and clues are all in anagram form. Even then, at times Wallace needs to misspell something or otherwise get creative with his interpretations.

Most of these messages, Wallace argues, are from two of Carroll’s books: The Nursery “Alice” and Sylvie and Bruno. Both were first published in 1889, which at least works from a timing standpoint. If Carroll had been Jack the Ripper, he would have had time to commit his murders and then confess to him by the time the books went to press. So, clearly, the various lines of verse can be reworked into confessions and descriptions of the murder scenes.

Well. “Clearly.”

The problem with anagrams is that texts can be reworked to say just about anything, given a “codebreaker” with enough determination. Yes, fine, Carroll’s verse can be translated into murder confessions, but that’s only one possible interpretation … and assumes that Carroll started with his confession and worked everything backward into children’s literature. This is a level of dedication and focus at times seen in fiction, but not exactly documented in real life.

If the anagrams convince you, though, you should probably know a few other details. For example, Carroll was vacationing in East Sussex from August 31 through the end of September 1888. That covers the dates of the murders of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Kate Eddowes. On November 9, when Mary Kelly was murdered, Carroll was in Oxford.

You might point out that Wallace claims Carroll didn’t work alone – apparently this Ripper was in fact a duo and included his friend Thomas Vere Bayne – but Bayne was in Oxford with Carroll in November. Perhaps Carroll might have made multiple trips into London in order to complete these murders (a similar argument is made for suspects such as Walter Sickert and Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, whose schedules likewise seem to leave little room for murder) but that would be an incredible stretch.

Wallace doesn’t rely solely on his anagrams. He also argues that Carroll’s life and childhood set him up as the sort of man who would indeed kill women for his own pleasure. He even argues, as many authors of the 1990s seem to, that Carroll was a victim before he ever made the murdered women his victims. In spite of these claims, though, there’s nothing in Carroll’s life that points to such acts of violence.

This theory argues that the Ripper was the sort of person who would publicize his crimes for all the world to read while laughing behind his hand because people didn’t realize the actual content of the text. True, there were all those Ripper letters that made it seem like the killer wanted to write about his crimes, and yes, Carroll was an author who wrote about many strange things, but … that seems to be the limit.

If you’re a fan of anagrams, you can turn any piece of writing into a confession of murder. Lewis Carroll is an interesting historical figure who has been examined for many reasons in both his public and personal life, but he wasn’t Jack the Ripper … even if he could be anagrammed into saying so.

Ripper suspect: Lizzie Williams

Most serial killers are expected to be men. Female serial killers, the FBI lectures us, tend to use bloodless methods of murder, such as poison or strangulation. Jack the Ripper, therefore, is highly unlikely to have been a women. although the idea was indeed around at the time of the murders. More recently, John Morris has accused not just a woman, but the wife of a man who has himself been named as a Ripper suspect.

Born Mary Elizabeth Ann Hughes, Lizzie married Dr. (later Sir) John Williams in 1872. John became a private doctor to the royal family in 1886 and was named as a Ripper suspect in 2005 by one of his own descendants. Tony Williams and Humphrey Price claimed that John’s missing diaries from the time surrounding the murders meant that he, personally, had been the Ripper and did not want to leave a record of his activities.

In 2012, however, John Morris decided to take things a step further: the diaries are missing, he argues, because they contain John’s worries about his wife, Lizzie, who later confessed to him that she had in fact been the murderer.

The argument here is that, after a childhood of being spoiled and given everything she ever wanted, Lizzie found herself in a childless marriage. Sir John is meant to have decided that the problem lay with his wife, so he sought out another woman to provide him with an heir. He happened upon Mary Jane Kelly, a poor East End sex worker who had at least proven herself fertile because she already had a son, and John embarked on an affair.

Lizzie, having discovered this, flew into such a fit of rage and jealousy that she embarked on an entire murder spree. She’s supposed to have killed the first three of the Canonical Five victims in order to simply prove to herself that she could indeed murder a woman – although why she’d want to practice on women who had done nothing to her isn’t entirely clear. Really, to make this work, there needs to be some sort of explanation as to why she didn’t just go murder her husband’s mistress, since other women died prior to Mary Jane Kelly.

Morris argues that Lizzie, having made certain that she could wield a weapon – perhaps her husband’s own scalpels – somehow tracked down Catherine Eddowes, heard her give the name “Kate Kelly,” and mistook her for Mary Jane Kelly. This is Morris’ explanation for why Catherine Eddowes was so horribly mutilated following her murder: Lizzie used a knife in a fit of feminine pique and wanted to ensure that her husband would never find his mistress attractive ever again.

It also explains the long pause between the murder of Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly: Lizzie, upon discovering that she had murdered and mutilated yet another innocent woman, was taken aback and needed some time to regroup. Was she steeling herself for yet another murder? Upset that somehow she was now a multiple murderer and hadn’t yet even worked her way up to her true target? Whatever the reason, Lizzie was still able to take herself in hand in order to murder and mutilate the woman who might have, in time, given her husband the child he wished for.

After which Lizzie did in fact have a mental breakdown, confess the murders to her husband, and throw herself on his mercy (while perhaps blaming him for a bit that she was forced to become a murderer in the first place). John destroyed his diaries, saw that his wife got a rest cure, and the Williamses were safe from suspicion until the early 2000s.

We all know about hell’s fury and women scorned, and Rudyard Kipling would like to inform us that the female of the species is indeed more deadly than the male, but what do you think? Are the Ripper murders really the result of a woman seeking revenge against her husband’s mistress?

Ripper Suspect: Charles Allen Lechmere

Last week we talked about one of the oldest named Ripper suspects, Montague John Druitt, who died via an apparent suicide in late 1888. Named by one of the men involved in the Ripper case, and refuted by another, Druitt is frequently mentioned but not often actually accused of having been the famous murderer. Charles Allen Lechmere’s name is a more recent contribution to the hundreds of Ripper suspects, and although he might be a better choice than Druitt, his guilt is impossible to prove.

Lechmere enters Ripper lore under the name Charles Cross, a meat cart driver who discovered Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols after her murder. According to recorded testimony, Lechmere was passing Buck’s Row on his way yo work around 3:40 am on August 31, 1888, when he saw a woman lying on the ground. Another man, Robert Paul, also on his way to work, saw Lechmere, who immediately called Paul over. The two men didn’t see any blood or mutilations and left Polly Nichols where she lay, reporting an apparently drunk or unconscious woman to a constable they found on the way.

At the inquest, Lechmere gave his name as Charles Cross, using the surname of one of his stepfathers, and that seemed to be the end of it. The testimony of “Charles Cross” helped establish the likely time of death, and “Cross” and Paul both testified that they saw no one else in the street. The inquest verdict was willful murder by person or persons unknown, and that was the end of it.

Until 2014, that is, when the documentary Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence named Lechmere as a suspect.

Journalist Christer Holmgren and criminologist Gareth Norris build the case against Lechmere, starting with the fact that he did indeed give a false name. They were able to connect “Charles Cross” to Charles Allen Lechmere and find more information about this apparent witness. Tracing “Charles Cross” had proven futile, but information about Charles Allen Lechmere seemed to point toward likely guilt.

Holmgren and Norris make use of geographic profiling in their argument for Lechmere’s guilt. This is a newer method that relies on psychological information about serial killers, combined with the locations of their crimes, to help make predictions about future murder locations and the killer’s “home base.” It involves questions of how far a killer would willingly travel in order to commit a crime, while still feeling relatively safe because he knows the area, as well as marking an area closer to the killer’s home as being unlikely for future murders. To oversimplify, a killer’s “hunting range” looks vaguely like a donut shape, with his home in the middle surrounded by an area of inactivity.

This range, though, is affected when a killer becomes comfortable in new areas. A man who has moved around a lot as a child knows multiple neighborhoods. One who has to walk a distance to get to work learns still more. A killer’s comfort zone expands as his life develops and he moves through more of the world, leaning which areas would be “safe” for him to kill in.

Holmgren and Norris not only point out that neither Lechmere – seen here in a photograph from 1912 – nor Paul mentioned seeing any other person in Buck’s Row, even though the murderer must have still been nearby, but map out Lechmere’s life against the murders of the Canonical Five and a previous victim, Martha Tabram. Each of these sites corresponds with Lechmere’s walk from home to work in the autumn of 1888, or to previous homes his family occupied, or earlier jobs he had.

They theorize that Lechmere was not merely bending over an unresponsive woman’s body when Paul spotted him, but was actually interrupted in the middle of the Ripper’s trademark mutilations. Lechmere, according to Holmgren and Norris, attempted to cover his tracks by first pretending to discover Polly Nichols’ body, and then by giving a false name.

Beyond this, though, there is nothing to either link Lechmere to the Ripper or to prove that he conclusively could not have been. The documentary argues that Lechmere would have known the area, yes, and can place him at the scene shortly after one of the murders, but the Ripper’s identity is still unknown – and, 130 years after the murders, we’re still pulling out new names and trying to assign guilt.

Ripper suspect: Montague John Druitt

Jack the Ripper was never caught. He murdered five women in the fall of 1888 – or more, or fewer, depending on which story we want to tell – and then, to be melodramatic, he slunk back into the fog without ever showing his face. Anyone who was arrested under suspicion of being the murderer had to be released, and the police file was closed in 1892 without any public declaration of his identity. This, of course, has left the door open for any number of suspects.

One of the earliest Ripper suspects was a young lawyer named Montague John Druitt. We’ve seen him before as part of my favorite, and very convoluted, Ripper theory, but why was he considered a viable suspect in the first place?

Druitt was a young lawyer who committed suicide in late 1888 after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. He had been working at a boarding school in order to supplement his income, and was dismissed from that post in late November. There is no evidence supporting a reason for this dismissal, but Druitt killed himself not long after. His body was found floating in the Thames on December 31, 1888, and had been in the water for some time.

What evidence is there that Druitt was the Ripper? Honestly, none. Some authors – again, see my favorite theory – try to place him near Whitechapel and give him a motive for the murders by tying him to the Crown and other conspiracy theories. Druitt even caught the attention of Melville Macnaghten, who rose to the position of Assistant Commissioner and, years after the crimes, penned the “Macnaghten Memoranda”: a list of three people Macnaghten thought likely to have been Jack the Ripper.

(It should be noted that, if you really want to get into Ripperology, you need to be familiar with terms like “the Macnaghten Memoranda” and “the Swanson Marginalia.” This means knowing who Macnaghten and Swanson were, their connection to the case, and when and where they penned their various notes. It’s rather confusing and frustrating, especially since said notes were not made in 1888, but years later, and are jottings and therefore fragments.)

Macnaghten’s Memoranda even confuses the issue by naming a Mr. M. J. Druitt and calling him “a doctor of about 41 years of age.” This Druitt, though, was a barrister and school teacher, and 31 years old. Macnaghten was likely working from memory instead of notes, and simply recalled that someone had drowned himself in the Thames after Mary Jane Kelly’s murder. The timing meant that Macnaghten could argue Druitt’s mental health was deteriorating and that, not long after this final brutal murder, he could no longer live with himself and took his own life.

Montague John Druitt was not, however, experiencing mental health issues. He was still working at the school and as a barrister through the end of November. Although Macnaghten argues that Druitt’s family believed he was the Ripper, there’s no evidence of this outside of Macnaghten’s statement. Even the way Macnaghten words it makes it seem as though he heard it thirdhand at least, and not directly from the family members themselves.

But, because Druitt’s name appears in the Macnaghten Memoranda, written by one of them involved in the case in 1888 and who had risen further to a respected post, his name has been tied to the murders. It doesn’t matter that he had no known connection to Whitechapel or that Inspector Fredrick Abberline went on record saying that there was nothing to incriminate Druitt – from the timing of his suicide, likely a reaction to losing his teaching position, Druitt’s name must always be brought up when discussing Ripper suspects.