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Jack The Ripper (Compendium Thread)

What do you think is the most likely ?

  • The Ripper was a Freemason?

    Votes: 7 9.7%

  • The Ripper had medical knowledge?

    Votes: 10 13.9%

  • It was Maybrick?

    Votes: 4 5.6%

  • The Ripper was 'of the same class' as his victims?

    Votes: 9 12.5%

  • The Ripper was foreign?

    Votes: 2 2.8%

  • It was Druitt?

    Votes: 2 2.8%

  • None of the suspects yet put forward?

    Votes: 17 23.6%

  • It was a woman?

    Votes: 2 2.8%

  • Another?

    Votes: 19 26.4%
  • Total voters
    72
After the awful Michael Caine mini-series that pointed the finger at Gull, I believe his grave was vandalised, so possibly the idea that people still have strong feelings about this is a valid one.
 
Heckler20 said:
After the awful Michael Caine mini-series that pointed the finger at Gull, I believe his grave was vandalised, so possibly the idea that people still have strong feelings about this is a valid one.
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What strange times we live in. I mean, we have had world wars and concentration camps and atom bombs and such since, and people are moved to do this sort of thing based on an ill-informed TV program about a century old crime?
 
I have seen a fair bit about geographical profiling recently and I know this has been applied more than once to the canonical five and it seems to centre on Flower and Dean Street or Thrawl Street, both the site of many doss houses and cheap lodgings.

But what would be really interesting would be to see the effects on the geo-profiling of adding or removing victims.

What happens when Tabram is included, or Coles, or McKenzie? What happens if Stride is eliminated? Or Kelly?

I think if the search is expanded to more victims that suit the over all psych profile, any victims that then throw the geo-profile way out could be considered less likely.

Worth a shot!

A
 
Ho hum...

Was Jack the Ripper a cart driver from Bethnal Green?
Two Jack The Ripper experts believe they have found the identity of the Whitechapel serial killer.
9:00PM BST 31 Aug 2012

It has been the subject of macabre speculation for more than 100 years but now two Jack The Ripper experts believe they have found the identity of the Whitechapel serial killer.

Authors Christer Holmgren and Edward Stow believe the most likely suspect for Jack The Ripper is Charles Cross, a cartman who claimed to have found the first victim prostitute Polly Nichols on August 31 1888.
Cross was discovered crouching over the body by a witness Robert Paul.
He told police he had been walking through Bucks Row on his way to Pickfords’ depot in Broad Street at around 3am when he found the body of Nichols.

But Holmgren and Stow believe he could have been the killer, disturbed as he was mutilating the body of Nichols.

And all the subsequent murders took place between his home in Doveton Street in Bethnal Green and his work at Broad Street at times when he would have been walking to work.
Mr Stow said: "We think it Charles Cross, the first person who found that first body. He was seen crouching over Polly Nichols and he wast trying to cover up some of the wounds.
"He hasn't been the subject of a lot of investigation and has only crept up very vaguely in census records.
"We have found out that he gave a false name to the police. His real name was Charles Latchmere.

"The police at the time were looking for some sort of special individual. But most crimes turn out to be someone quite ordinary.
"He walked past every single murder scene on his way to work. He is the best suspect so far."

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols was attacked as she walked home from a night walking the Whitechapel Road.
Her throat was slit twice from left to right and her body mutilated.

The body of second Ripper victim, Annie Chapman, was found on September 8 in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Her abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was later discovered that the uterus had been removed.

Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed in the early morning of Sunday 30 September 1888.

Eddowes' body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. The throat was severed, and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed.

The final victim, Mary Jane Kelly was discovered lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court off Dorset Street, Spitalfields on November 9 1888. The throat had been severed down to the spine, and the abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. Even her heart was missing.

The removal of the organs led the police to suspect he was an educated upper-class man, possibly a doctor or an aristocrat. Suggestions for the culprit included Prince Albert Victor, the grandson of Queen Victoria, and Sir William Gull, the Queen's doctor.

Holmgren and Stow made the claims on the anniversary of the first murder at a re-enactment in Bethnal Green.
Cross died in 1920 and was survived by his wife who eventually passed away on 12 September 1940 in Stratford.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... Green.html

Right, now that's sorted we can close the thread and get on to something more interesting.... 8)
 
Well at least he wasn't someone famous!

I don't think I've encountered his name before. Perhaps he is one of the unknown pair mentioned on this page, which gives a good idea of the sort of work which went on in those days:

Night-working horse-slaughterers :shock:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Well at least he wasn't someone famous!

I don't think I've encountered his name before. Perhaps he is one of the unknown pair mentioned on this page, which gives a good idea of the sort of work which went on in those days:

Night-working horse-slaughterers :shock:
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Makes a change to have an ordinary person blamed.
 
But if it was him, and he didn't die till 1920 - why did he stop doing it? And what about all the other nameless, faceless people walking by all those murder sites during the same period? Given what a small town Whitechapel was, geographically, for the large number of people crammed into it, all of them must have been on the regular routes of a lot of folks.
 
PeniG said:
But if it was him, and he didn't die till 1920 - why did he stop doing it? And what about all the other nameless, faceless people walking by all those murder sites during the same period? Given what a small town Whitechapel was, geographically, for the large number of people crammed into it, all of them must have been on the regular routes of a lot of folks.
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According to the programme he contracted TB and was weakened as a result.
 
How does that fit in with the two men who found the body and ran off to find a policeman, and the policeman who found the body while they were off looking for a policeman? (proving the theory that coppers are like buses, of course)
 
Ok, let's now move from the purely speculative to the completely bonkers:

Vincent Van Gogh was Jack the Ripper

The proof is in his painting "The Irises" - and these three short youtube videos will no doubt convince you of the veracity of this claim:

http://youtu.be/f8fNwbdKQy8

http://youtu.be/clOPwt4UD8E

http://youtu.be/At_Gq19K-V0

And did I mention he's selling a book about this "discovery"? :roll:

This is getting worse. I am starting to think JTR was Mother Theresa - she WAS pretty old and looked a bit like a man...
 
That guy is... is.... totally utterly hatstand.

Vincent and the Doctor was more believable.
 
No Jack D. Ripper on the list, though!

It is a somewhat strange list, to be sure!

I clicked on Big Nose George to find a story of the Wild West I had not heard. Quite grotesque post-mortem details for the morbidly-inclined - which I suppose covers most readers of this thread! :)
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I clicked on Big Nose George to find a story of the Wild West I had not heard. Quite grotesque post-mortem details for the morbidly-inclined - which I suppose covers most readers of this thread! :)
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I kind of want to see the shoes now.
 
Zoffre said:
Yesterday I went to see the Jack the Ripper exhibition at the London Docklands museum mentioned above (and also here). I'm not overly familiar with the cases, but I'd say the exhibition is good for getting a general overview. There's particular focus on the social deprivation and general milieu in which the murders were carried out, which aids general understanding. There are also plenty of contemporary accounts, evidence etc, as well as current theories on subjects such as prostitution in general, whether the murderer/murderers were surgeons etc. (including a Feminist perspective from Bonnie Greer, which I'm afraid I found very unconvincing, but nevertheless interesting). The only area where I found it lacking was in the suspects - I would have liked more about how they came to be considered as suspects, arguments for and against etc. because I felt that area was glossed over towards the end.

Otherwise, an interesting exhibition. And the rest of the museum is worth a look too. :D
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If anyone is interested, the Rippercast covers the exhibition in depth:

The consensus among the ripperologist-panel is that the exhibition missed the point by omitting the biographies of the victims - and everyone, in fact.
The core criticism is that the exhibition was really an 'East End lives' exhibition hung on a Ripper-hook.

http://www.casebook.org/podcast/listen.html?id=67
 
Jack the Ripper’s letter should go on show, Assembly urges Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is under pressure to put crime artefacts including a letter from Jack the Ripper on public display.

The infamous “letter from hell” taunting police said to have been sent by the killer with half a human kidney from a victim at the height of the 1888 Whitechapel Murders is among a collection of evidence which has remained hidden from the public.

But putting them on show for three months could earn the Met Police a cool £4 million, say London Assembly members.

“It could attract 300,000 people from all over the world,” said a Tory Group spokesman.

“Scotland Yard is holding a lot of historical items which should be on public show, yet have always claimed the items are too gruesome.”

But Scotland Yard wouldn’t be drawn on the idea. A spokesman said today: “Assembly members have suggested we put on a roadshow. We haven’t responded to that idea.”

Such an exhibition would include items currently accessible only by invitation such as the Ripper letter sent with the kidney parcel to George Luske. Other items would include evidence against the Great Train Robbers.

Historical researcher Edward Stow, who has been investigating a new suspect in the Whitechapel Murders, backs the idea of a public exhibition.

He said: “London seems to be embarrassed with talking about the Ripper—but it brings tourists from all over the world and we should capitalise on it.

“Jack the Ripper is part of the fabric of London and the East End. We can look at it dispassionately because 125 years on is a fair distance of time.

“If they had been in Paris or particularly New York, they wouldn’t be ashamed of it.”

The items could be put on display when the Met moves from New Scotland Yard in 2015, it is suggested.

Assembly members are urging The Met to open its infamous ‘Black Museum’ collection to the public and use the profits for policing London.
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East London Advertiser
 
Oh great. I bet that would be really tasteful - not.

My wife had seen the 'Black Museum', she being blessed with an insatiable curiosity and the sort of persistence and charm that got her places you don't normally get to go.

She reckoned a) it was a lot less interesting that you'd think and b) it's all in a quite small room, not particularly laid out for display.

Very little of it has anything to do with JtR, either. If there was such a person.
 
The stuff may not be on display to the public but I don't think anything in the so-called Museum has not been thoroughly explored by Ripperologists in the literature.

These market-forces twonks do not appear to be doing much research.

As a brand, JTR still has a certain recognition value: if he was a meat extract, he would be Bovril. They would probably need to diversify into general atrocity and find themselves up against the home-delivery service offered by the Internet. :?
 
Indeed and you can buy 'Public records office' colour scanned and printed release of the Ripper letters, the police reports and coroners reports that I bought about ten years ago so seeing the originals in the flesh won't really add much to that.
 
Some new publicity for Trevor Marriott and his theory ...

Jack The Ripper Mystery Solved? Cold Case Investigation Implicates German Sailor Carl Feigenbaum

For just over 125 years, the mystery of the Jack the Ripper serial murders has been fodder for books, movies and periodic re-openings of the unsolved cases. But after years of investigation, a retired detective is confident he has finally found the culprit behind some, if not all, of the killings attributed to the infamous "Jack."

Past attempts to identify the man who supposedly terrorized London in the late 19th century have implicated artist Vincent Van Gogh, Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll and even relatives of Queen Victoria. But retired homicide detective Trevor Marriott says that after 11 years of investigation, he believes German merchant sailor Carl Feigenbaum committed an unknown number of the murders.

Marriott, who hails from Bedfordshire, England, told British site Express that he came to his conclusion via old-school document analysis and high-tech forensic science. He also said he found that Hollywood and myth have "distorted" many facts of the case over the years.

What does appear to be true is that between Aug. 31, 1888, and Nov. 9, 1888, five women -- Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly -- were stabbed to death within one-fourth of a mile from each other in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London, reports CBS News. Some accounts claim the victims were disemboweled post-mortem; most assume a number of the victims were prostitutes and were all killed by the same man.

The former policeman's quest to uncover the truth has not always been an easy one. He took Scotland Yard to court in 2011 in a costly effort to force the agency to hand over thousands of pages of notes and tips from informants, reports The Telegraph.

By that time, Marriott had begun to zero in on Feigenbaum, a sailor whose ships often docked near the neighborhood where many of the unsolved murders occurred, according to Express.

New documents seem to disprove the theory that the victims had their organs cut out by their killer, a key aspect of the murders that had steered previous investigations toward suspects with medical knowledge, reported the BBC. Gaps of time between the murders suggested to Marriot that the killer might have been a traveler, and sailors were known to seek out prostitutes in the Whitechapel district.

Perhaps most compelling was the fact that Feigenbaum's own lawyer, William Lawton, had once told reporters he believed his client had confessed to the crimes by claiming a disease made him kill and mutilate women. Indeed, Feigenbaum was eventually convicted and executed for an unrelated murder in New York City in 1894, the BBC notes.

"Jack is supposed to be responsible for five victims, but there were other similar murders before and after the ones attributed to him, both in this country and abroad in America and Germany," Marriot told Express, adding that the widely appropriated image of Jack as a well-dressed gentleman is probably nothing but an "urban myth."

But critics point out that Marriot's theory isn't exactly bulletproof. In a review of Marriot's 2007 book on the topic, The Guardian reports that Marriot shares a problem common to all "Ripperologists": a lack of hard evidence.

"[Marriot] turns initial speculation into assumed fact and presents a wodge of information that leads nowhere," the reviewer complained.

Marriott has launched a one-man show detailing his investigation. The production is currently touring the UK and Ireland.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/2 ... d%3D380909
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None of the theories are 'bulletproof'.

None are ever going to be. The killer simply did not leave enough evidence at the time that could be analysed with the methods available then, and he was not caught when alive. We don't even know who he did and didn''t kill.

Personally, I think not one of the dozens if not hundreds of suggested suspects has enough evidence to even charge them, let alone bring a conviction.

But the fact that people still buy books on the subject does suggest the 'Jack the Ripper' brand - a name invented by a newspaper - is still going strong. Interesting work for a sociologist there, I'd have thought.
 
This second book adds another line of purported evidence pointing to Sir John Williams. Still circumstantial rather than compelling, but interesting for not relying on the suppositions of a single theorist alone ...

I'm confused by this 2013 article's allusion to Tony Williams' book having been published 'last year'. It was published (and discussed in this FTMB thread) back around 2005.


Has this locket finally unmasked Jack the Ripper? Descendant of fifth victim claims tiny photo proves serial killer was Queen Victoria's surgeon

A second book has named Queen Victoria's surgeon Sir John Williams as the infamous Jack the Ripper - and it is written by a descendant of one of the serial killer's victims.

Author Antonia Alexander claims she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of the Ripper's fifth and final victim Mary Kelly.

She points the finger at Sir John, who founded the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and acted as surgeon for the royal family.

It follows a book released last year by Tony Williams, the great-great nephew of Sir John, who also accuses the prominent surgeon of being behind the notorious killings on the cobbled streets of London's Whitechapel in 1888.
Ms Alexander's investigation started after she discovered a photograph of a man in a 125-year-old locket contained in Mary's belongings was not of the victim's husband - as she had initially believed - but of Sir John.

'It's part of our family history that Mary had an affair for a number of years with a doctor who had taken her to places like Paris,' said the mother-of-two, who released her book The Fifth Victim earlier this month.

'But the doctor married someone else and Mary also got married so everyone believed the photo in the locket was of her husband.

'But my research has shown she was in fact carrying around the photo of her lover, Sir John Williams.'

...

More (including photos of Sir John and the locket) at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ndant.html
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Is this Jack the Ripper? Artist with links to the royal family is most likely suspect, claims crime writer Patricia Cornwell

-Writer spent 11 years and millions of pounds researching Jack the Ripper
-Says artist Walter Sickert, who has links to royalty, is the culprit
-Killer's letters shared watermark with artist's paper, she claims
-Queen Victoria's surgeon - accused of disposing bodies of victims - was -Sickert's family doctor, she says evidence suggests


Crime writer Patricia Cornwell is promising to publish new research on the identity of Jack the Ripper which she claims will help to solve the mystery.

The best-selling author believes she has 'cracked' the case by unearthing evidence that confirms Walter Sickert, an influential artist, as the prime suspect.

Fans of the painter were critical of her first book for pointing the finger at the painter, but she has spent the last 11 years working to prove her theory.

She says she has a lot more detail and predicts people will be surprised by evidence she has unearthed linking Sickert with the royal family.

'I feel that I have cracked it,' she said.

'I believe it’s Sickert, and I believe it now more than ever.'
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Etc,

Daily Mail
 
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