Jack the Ripper or the Whitechapel Murders

                                                        by R. David Ludwig

    Don't read this article.

    If you must, if your curiosity is piqued by the title, the subject matter, then I hope it's just a passing fancy. Go ahead and read this and have a few momentary second thoughts about an occasion when the sickness of a human personality welled up and gushed out as a venomous bile, about a time when the world became a less safe place to live in--but for heaven's sake, don't dwell on it.  The Whitechapel Murders are not a healthy subject for prolonged study.

    I'm not facetious; more than one serial murderer has professed a fascination--an identification--with Jack the Ripper.  That which remains undiscovered, unfathomable, is powerfully seductive and alluring.  Coupled with the strange pull "Gaslight" London has always exerted on mystery aficionados, the myth of the Ripper, that eternal question mark looming on an endless horizon, is an unquenchable enigma.  Every time I retrace the Ripper's footsteps, covering ground which has become increasingly familiar to me over the years, I am assailed with the thought that among all the fact and all the speculation-- somewhere--is the answer; if only I could direct my search along the right path, I could rout the villain.  It's as if he was there somewhere, beyond the pale, laughing at us still.

    But once you delve a little deeper, once you begin to pierce the shadow veiling the face of the"Whitechapel Fiend," you move beyond humanity--you catch a glimpse over the edge of a vertiginous abyss that is the sick, twisted psyche of a monster to whom life was no more than a fluid he could spill, and flesh merely a medium for sculpture.  Jack the Ripper was no celluloid manifestation of teenage penitence, swash in red corn syrup and with a guilty sexual angst to grind; he was no pulp by-product of a Stephen King or Clive Barker, fever-dreamed with a copy of Grey's Anatomy at the author's elbow; he was, for a mercifully short 72 day period in late 1888, the embodiment of all that is most evil and repulsive in the human soul.

    One of the most frustrating things about the murders is that there is almost no fact about them which is not contradicted somewhere else:  All but one of the murders was committed outdoors; experts disagreed whether the killer had any anatomical knowledge or not; witnesses gave conflicting descriptions of a dark foreigner and a "toff"; of the Ripper correspondence, the one letter most likely to have been genuine was one not signed "Jack the Ripper."  In fact, the killer was originally nicknamed "Leather Apron" until the suspect with that nickname was exonerated, when he was rechristened and "Jack the Ripper" caught the popular imagination.

    Even the date of the first murder is open to speculation.  Some experts include attacks on prostitutes that took place on August Bank Holiday 1888 (1) and one five months prior, on 2 April.  No connection has ever been drawn to conclusively link these with the later spate of Whitechapel Murders, but between the disagreement over which victims to include and their various names and aliases, it's often difficult to keep even the known information straight.  One "Ripperologist" may mention the Ripper's fourth victim (when he was actually still known as "Leather Apron" or "The Whitechapel Fiend"), Annie Chapman, and another to the second, "Dark" Annie Siffey, and they'll be referring to the same person.  For this reason, when first mentioning each victim, I've listed their full name plus known aliases.

    The earlier of the two mentioned above was Emma Elizabeth Smith, some time between 12:15 a.m., when she was seen in Fairance Street, Limehouse, talking to a man dressed in dark clothes and a white scarf, and some four hours later when she staggered into her lodgings claiming to have been assaulted and robbed by four men in Osborn Street.  (I say claimed only because although she must have been in great pain--she died the next day of peritonitis from wounds to her vagina--she walked a quarter of a mile home without hailing a constable, and only very reluctantly allowed herself to be taken to the London Hospital.)

    The later one was Martha Tabram, whose body was found at 3 a.m. on the first-floor landing of the George Yard building, with 39 puncture wounds from, the coroner concluded, some bayonet-like weapon.  He likewise concluded the killer was left-handed.

    A common misconception usually portrays Jack's victims as professional streetwalkers.  Blame Hollywood for casting starlets in roles more akin to bag ladies than prostitutes.  Jack's victims were street-people; there were primarily aggrieved woman living desperate lives under the worst of conditions, finding what solace they could in alcohol, and willing to sleep with someone for the price of a bottle or a bed at a cheap doss house. One woman, when a journalist asked her if she wasn't afraid of meeting up with "Leather Apron" replied, "I hope I do meet him.  I'm sick of this life.  I'd rather be dead."

    The first of the undeniable "Whitechapel Fiend" murders was a 42-year-old woman named Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols; she had been turned away from a doss house in Thrawl Street.  As Colin Wilson put it, "her life was sacrificed for fourpence, the cost of a bed. " (2)

    On Friday, 31 August 1888, at about 3:10 in the morning, George Cross, a carter, or market porter, was walking to work along Buck's Row, when he saw what he took to be some kind of bundle on the street, covered by a tarpaulin.  This was the remains of Polly Nichols.  As her legs were still warm, she couldn't have been dead more than a half hour at the time.

    What at first appeared to be a straightforward, if somewhat,  savage killing--the throat had been cut first with a four-inch incision beneath the left ear and then with a second incision, eight-inches long, an inch below and beneath the first, ending at a point three inches below the right jaw, cutting the throat back to the spinal cord, severing the windpipe--turned out to be a much more terrible case of mutilation.  At the morgue, even before the postmortem could be conducted, a young policeman, endeavoring to ascertain the extent of her injuries, lifted her dress and what he saw made him vomit.  A deep jagged incision on the lower left side of the abdomen ran from the center of the bottom of the ribs under the pelvis to the left of the stomach.  The woman had been gutted!

    Dr. Ralph Llewellyn, the doctor who performed the ensuing examination, also found various bruises on the jaw and face, and several more incisions, including two stab wounds to the vagina.  He concluded that the wounds had been inflicted by a left-handed person with a stout-backed knife about six to eight inches long. (According to handwritten notes left by Sir Melville Macnaughten, Assistant Chief Constable in 1889 and Head of the CID in 1903, but who did not have first-hand experience with the murders, subsequent doctors refuted this presumption as to handedness--but then Macnaughten's note noticeably contradicts other known facts, principally about the profession of one of the suspects, Montague J. Druitt.)

    Her husband, a printer's machinist for whom she had bore five children and from whom she had been separated for seven years because of her fondness for gin, identified the body:  "I forgive you for everything now that I see you like this," he was heard to say.

    It has been presumed she must have been killed where she was found, judging by the amount of blood soaked into her clothing; yet the street was unusually quiet that morning.  No one heard any screams, including three constables patrolling nearby or Mrs. Emma Green, who lay in her bed, unable to fall asleep, less than ten yards away.

    Eight days passed when history repeated itself. On Saturday, 8 September, between 5:30 a.m. (when she was last seen) and 6 a.m. (when her body was subsequently found), "Dark" Annie Chapman (Siffey) met her death at the hands of the killer.  Again, the killer must have walked the streets in blood-soaked clothing, a suggestion corroborated by a dustman who claimed to have seen such a man at such a time.  The number of slaughterhouses in the area didn't make this a particularly noteworthy sight under normal circumstances.

    The body was found by John Davis, a lodger at the house at 29 Hanbury Street (less than half a mile from Buck's Row) in the rear yard of which she was f and then removed to the mortuary--in the same shell that had transported Polly Nichols the week before.  Again, there were those two distinct cuts to the throat made from the left side, almost through the spinal cord and nearly severing the head from the trunk; the abdomen was cut open, only this time the intestines had been severed from their mesenteric attachments and placed upon the shoulder of the corpse; the uterus, the upper part of the vagina and the posterior two-thirds of the bladder had been removed (leading some to presume a knowledge of anatomy on the part of the killer.)  Signs of bruising on the face and chest were evident, some of which were several days old; these were attributed to a brawl she had partaken in with another woman, named Liza Cooper.  The swollen face and protruding tongue indicated strangulation.  Abrasions were also found on the ring finger, evidently from the two rings found lying at her feet, along with some pennies and two new farthings.  It has been suggested that as she had earlier been turned away from a doss house (as had Mary Anne Nichols), this time in Dorset Street, by a man named Donovan, that this money she subsequently earned for services rendered--either earlier that night or by the killer himself.

    The postmortem was conducted by Dr. George Bagster Phillips, who independently came to the conclusion that the wounds had been done with a knife with a blade six to eight inches in length, possibly longer (and not a sword-bayonet).  He also thought the wounds would have taken between a quarter and a full hour to inflict.

    The woman who last saw "Dark" Annie alive saw her in the company of a dark gentleman, possibly a foreigner, about 40 years of age, of a shabby genteel appearance and wearing a dark deerstalker cap.  In the same yard as the body, about two yards from the tap, was found a leather apron.  Although this bit of evidence was initially dismissed, as it was free of bloodstains (as were the "bloodstains" on a nearby wall, when they were found to actually be urine), the search was on for John "Jack" Pizer, a Polish Jew bootmaker who was known to have mistreated prostitutes and was known by the nickname of "Leather Apron."  He was found (wearing a deerstalker!) and arrested two days later.  When it was discovered that the leather apron belonged to John Richardson whose widowed mother rented the first floor of the Hanbury Street house, and who had washed and folded and placed the apron exactly where the police found it, and that Jack Pizer had alibis for both murders, he was released.  He then began the first of several court cases against the newspapers that had so publicly maligned him.

    Another man, one William Piggot, who closely resembled Pizer, was also picked up about this time and detained by the police.  Between bloodstains found on his clothing, several cuts on his hands, and his exceedingly and increasingly erratic behavior, he seemed a likely suspect.  Had the murders abated once Piggot was declared insane and sent to an asylum in Bow, you would not now be reading this account.

    Once John Pizer was exonerated, someone--and whether or not it was actually the killer is another highly debatable point--gave the newspapers a new nickname for the "Whitechapel Fiend."  During a time when the police were receiving an estimated thousand pieces of mail per week, "Jack the Ripper" was signed on two pieces of correspondence.  The first is certainly worth quoting here in full:

25 Sept. 1888

Dear Boss:

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won't fix me just yet.  I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.  The joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits.  I am down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled.  Grand work the last job was.  I gave the lady no time to squeal.  How can they catch me now.  I love my work and want to start again.  You will soon hear of me with my funny little games.  I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can't use it.  Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha.  The next job I do I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police offers just for jolly wouldn't you.  Keep this letter till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight.  My knife is nice and sharp and I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.

Good luck.

Yours truly

JACK THE RIPPER

    The most chilling aspect to this letter is his promise:  "The next job I do I shall clip the lady's ears off and send to the police offers just for jolly wouldn't you."  That the murderer tried to do just this makes this letter seem genuine; why he didn't follow through and actually do it tends to vitiate the same idea.

    One month after the death of Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, five days after the above was allegedly written, the steward of the International Working Men's Educational Club, Louis Diemschutz, was crossing one side of the narrow court off Berner Street where the club was located at 1 a.m., found the still warm body of Elizabeth ("Long Liz") Stride (Annie Fitzgerald). Date and probable time of death:  Sunday, 30 September, after 11:45 p.m. but before 1 a.m.

    The initial examination and subsequent postmortem were performed by Dr. Phillips and Dr. Blackwell.
This time, there was only one wound, an incision in the neck running about 2 ½" below the angle of the jaw on the left side, cutting the windpipe in two and ending on the other side about 1 ½" below the angle of the right jaw.  There were no other marks on the body except for some healing sores, and some bruises on both shoulders and under the collar bone.

    "Long Liz" was the least mutilated of the "official" Ripper victims.  This is widely, and most probably attributed to the fact that it was only the first of two murders that night:

    Police Constable 881 Watkins was patrolling Mitre Square (in the City of London), and had checked the location at 1:30 a.m., when he found nothing, and again at 1:44 a.m., when he came upon the body of Catherine Eddowes (Kate Kelly) on the second.  (If for no other reason, this murder is unique insofar as it was the only one of the corpses found in the City of London, and therefore in the jurisdiction of the City police.)

    The constable's schedule meant that the killer had fifteen minutes at most to inflict the following wounds: severed throat, dividing the sterno cleido mastoid muscle as well as the cricoid cartilage below the vocal cords; kidney removed; lower eyelids nicked.  The abdomen was opened, from the breast downwards.  The intestines were detached and placed over the right shoulder.  Many, many other mutilations, too numerous to transcribe here.  The initial examination was by Dr. Frederick Brown and Dr. Sequira; the postmortem by Dr. Saunders, though Drs. Brown and Sequira were both present.  Dr. Saunders, while concurring with Brown and Sequira, ascribed no greater anatomical knowledge to the killer than that of the common butcher.  He went on to say that it would have taken at least five minutes to complete the mutilation--that the killer took the time to nick the eyelids suggests that he was in no hurry.

    More than the previous murders, Catherine Eddowes' was the most likely to have been committed somewhere else.  Despite Dr. Saunders' testimony, the extent of the mutilations suggests an unhurried approach not conducive to the short time the killer had to carry them out.  In this, Dr. Saunders seems to be hedging his bets a little too closely on both sides; either the murderer had some anatomic knowledge and therefore could have carried out his work quickly (going so far as removing the kidney and nicking the eyelids), or else he had no such knowledge and would have needed more time.

    This, the fact it was found in the City of London, and that "Long Liz" had been found still warm only three-quarters of an hour before, more than any of the crimes, suggests (but--damn it!--doesn't prove conclusively) that the murderer had access to some kind of transportation (such as a lorry or a carriage). (3) The murderer would have had between 2 hours and 30 minutes to leave Eddowes' body, find another victim, mutilate her, and escape again--between quarter-hour rounds by a police constable!

    This was also the murder linked to the "mysterious message on the wall," that some say implicate the Jews, and others the Masons.  This message was found along the wall of the staircase to some flats in Goulston Street (about a third of a mile away from Mitre Square, or 10 minutes by foot).  Also found in the passage was a stained bit of cloth later identified as having been part of the bloodstained apron found around Eddowes-Kelly's neck.  The message allegedly found on the wall was:

THE JUWES ARE NOT

THE MEN THAT

WILL BE

BLAMED FOR NOTHING

"JUWES" was possibly mistranscribed from "JUIVES," which is French for Jews.

    This "double event" also is the strongest evidence against the popular theory of the time (and still is) that the killer was searching for a specific prostitute.  On the contrary, these two crimes are strong indication that he was unable to complete the first killing to his satisfaction and had to kill again in order to satiate his blood lust. (4)

    Lastly, this is the murder connected to the most credibly genuine letter to the police, the one which contained a kidney.  While originally scoffed at as a hoax, it proved to be a "ginny" kidney (or that of an alcoholic), from a woman about 45, and had been removed in the last three weeks.  To apparently clinch matters, of the renal artery (which is about three inches long), one inch was still attached to the kidney and the other two inches were still inside the body of Catherine Eddowes.  This indicates that despite the questionable authenticity of the many other letters, the "Whitechapel Fiend" did write at least one genuine letter--and he did not sign it "Jack the Ripper."

    We now come to the longest lag between murders.  More than a month passed, during which it was theorized that the killer had died or moved on.  With the murder of Friday, 9 November, another possibility suggests itself:  That the murderer was actually becoming fearful of being caught.  This may have been general caution on his part, or he may have actually been questioned by the police among their other suspects, and he was waiting until interest abated.  Some blame this suppression of his homicidal tendencies for the unparalleled brutality of the new crime.  Those that subscribe to the theory that his next victim was the one he was actually after throughout his reign of terror, and that 611 the publicity caused him to be far more careful and get the right woman this time.  Her name was Mary Jane (Mary Ann) Kelly.  She was not quite three months pregnant at the time of her death.

    Thomas Bowyer was the shop assistant to the lodging-housekeeper of Number 6 Dorset Street (Miller's Court), who sent him around to collect the overdue rent from Mary Kelly.  No answer came to his knocking, so he looked through the broken pane of the window.  It would take the coroner's examination to catalog the horror that he glimpsed, all the terrible things that had been done to that poor woman's body:

    The head and left arm were nearly severed from the body.  The abdomen was partially ripped open; while the entrails were missing, the liver had been placed between the feet.  Both breast and the nose had been removed.  The forehead and thighs (down to the feet) had been skinned.  Breasts, nose, and remnants of skin had been deposited on the small table next to the bed.  Her left hand had been thrust into her open stomach. (Initial examination by Dr. Phillips; postmortem by Dr. Thomas Bond; this latter doctor concluded from this examination and from the notes of the previous murders that the killer had no anatomical knowledge whatsoever, not even "the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughter.")  Date and probable time of death:  between 3:30 and 4 a.m.

There are three main peculiarities about the death of Mary Kelly, in comparison to her compatriots:

1)  Hers was the only body to have been found indoors.

2)  The ashes in the fireplace were still warm when the police entered the house at 1:30 p.m.--or seven hours after the murder took place.  The fire had been intense enough to melt the handle and spout of a tin tea kettle (even coal would have needed a bellows to throw off this kind of heat).  Bits of a skirt and the brim of a woman's hat were found in his ashes.

3)  Most peculiarly, the door had to be forced:  According to testimony by her common-law husband, Joseph Barnett, he and Mary Kelly would reach through the window (broken during a quarrel on 30 October) and pull back the bolt to gain entrance to the room.  The key must therefore have been lost within the preceding 10 days; indeed, Inspector Abberline, denying suggestions by the newspapers that the murderer had made off with the key, points to this very fact.

There is likewise a trio of explanations for this:  

1)  The police, after removing the window to take a photograph, didn't bother to check and see if the door could simply be unbolted.  Possible, but highly improbable.  

2)  Mary Kelly had found the key since last speaking with Barnett, and the murderer had coolly locked her remains inside and taken the key with him as he left.  Very possible, but in that case, why would Inspector Abberline go to the trouble of publicly refuting the idea?  (In fact, as far as I can tell, this is the only instance where Abberline steps out of the shadows during the entire investigation.)

3)  That the murderer himself had stolen the key some time prior.  We may never know how probable this idea is; but if it has any chance of being true, it would put an entirely different spin on the Whitechapel Murders--for the first time there would be evidence of premeditation, something that has thus far been suggested only in fanciful "pastiches" of the murders.  (5)

    Additionally, there seems to be some confusion over who broke down the door and why.  The sequence of events went something like this:  First Bowyer told M'Carthy, the landlord, of what held found; when M'Carthy saw the carnage for himself, he sent Bowyer to the police, who returned with an Inspector Beck, who in turn cabled Divisional Superintendent Arnold.  Next Abberline arrived and sealed off the court.  At Dr. Phillips' suggestion, Abberline refused permission to enter to anyone until he could get word from Warren about sending bloodhounds down to the scene.  Unfortunately, unbeknownst to any of them, Warren, under pressure by Home Secretary Matthews for discussing internal affairs in print, had resigned the day before.  This is where the confusion begins.   At 1:30 a.m. Arnold decided they could wait no longer and ordered one of the windows taken out.  A photographer (from the City Police, who was on the scene despite the "dressing down' Warren had given them for being in Whitechapel) arrived about this time to record the carnage.  In one version, M'Carthy then took down the door with a pickaxe.  In another, the Metropolitan Police, fearful to enter without first hearing from Warren, elicited the help of the City Police, and taking a photograph was their justification for doing so.  I mention all of this because the inconsistencies in the murders and inability to piece together one cohesive picture of the killer and his victims is not the lone mystery; certainly the actions of the police (such as with the "JUWES" message) are also open to various interpretations.

    Though it could only be seen in retrospect, with the passing of Mary Kelly, the murders came to an end.

    While Jack the Ripper holds a unique place in the annuals of crime, as a mass murderer without conscience and one who committed his crimes with an incredible impunity considering where the majority of them took place and the amount of time he had to commit them, there are several other compelling facets to his crimes.

    Many people--even among the self-proclaimed "Ripperologists"--refer to the murders as the first sex crimes.  This is not strictly true; crimes arising out of an aberrant sexual nature must date back to the beginnings of human personality. They may mean that they were the first sex crimes that were recognized as such.  This may be true--although Jack the Ripper was a contemporary of Freud, the sexual nature of his crimes went pretty much ignored by the policemen of the time.  However, it was noted in some of the reports made by the various doctors who conducted the postmortem examinations.

    What did not escape the notice of the police was his choice of victims.  Neither did it escape the attention of the "media" of the day, whose portrayal of the killer as a cloaked wraith stalking Whitechapel echoes G.B. Shawls' sentiments that he was in actuality a social reformer intent on drawing attention to the shameful social conditions of the East End.

    The very fact that "prostitutes" (and we use that word very loosely in this context) were being killed, shocked Victorian society to its core nearly as much as the viciousness of the crimes and the fact that the killer went uncensored.  The Victorian sensibility believed very strongly in the Sherlock Holmes-type of clockwork crime--crime that had some tangible objective; crime was a socioeconomic inequality.  The Whitechapel Murders reflected none of this.  They were ghastly, foreboding.  They smelled of the charnel house.  The people of 19th century London didn't have the preponderance of violence in their everyday lives that today inures us.  The Ripper crimes were much more a shock to their system. That much anyway, is to their credit.

    The psychological profile of the "Whitechapel Fiend" differs, albeit it slightly, upon what expert one turns to.  Usually his supposed personality is designed to fit a particular suspect.  Jack has been alternately portrayed as someone whose insanity arose from a stroke, a venereal disease, age and revenge (for a son who contracted a venereal disease) . . . to name a few.  Jack, the bloodletting psychopath, has been portrayed as a frustrated eunuch, as someone commissioned to perform the killings, a foreigner involved in religious ritual killings, a Russian "terrorist" sent to England to make the police look foolish and ineffectual, and "Jill the Ripper," a female abortionist.

    Colin Wilson blames it largely on an insatiable sexual appetite . . . reminding me of the person who defined "oversexed" as anyone whose sex drive was stronger than their own.  Satyriasis is a gross over- simplification; denial of sexual excess by itself does not produce a Ripper.  His crimes scream of a calamitous deviant mental attitude, a severe dementia that warped his sexual identity.  Let us not confuse a symptom of the disease with the disease itself.

    Certainly he was an outcast, living at a time of gradual alienation from an increasingly industrialized society, aggravated by the prevailing living conditions in the East End of the time.  Shawls' suggestion that the Ripper was tied to the shameful social conditions of the East End may not have been too far from the mark, but he too may have confused the cause with the effort. Donald Rumbelow, in his books, The Complete Jack the Ripper, or its updated edition, Jack the Ripper, The Complete Casebook, refers to the East End as being seen by Victorians as strange and remote and removed from the rest of humanity; journalists equated the people living there  with "African pygmies and the Polynesian natives."  (Curiously enough,  in a strangely circular fashion, this section of his books--"Outcast  London"--is suggested reading for business travelers in Nigeria to prepare them for conditions that they may see there).  The Ripper was very probably a product of his environment, atrocious as that was.

    Whom does this suggest?  We've already mentioned John Pizer, and his look-alike, William Piggot. According to Sir Melville Macnaughten, there were three main suspects:

    Montague John Druitt--A doctor, whose family suspected of being the Ripper, and whose body was found in the Thames some seven weeks after the last murder, at which time it was estimated to have been in the water at least a month or more--according to Macnaughten's description, that is.  Actually, there is no proof at this late date that Druitt, other than for a year before switching to law, had trained as a doctor.  One curious fact in Druitt's favor--for being the Ripper, that is--may be gleaned from the apparent gap in the sequence of murders: 31/8, 8/9, 30/9, [8/10], [31/10], and 9/11.  That there were no murders committed on the bracketed dates may be explained by Abberline having questioned an unnamed "medical student" early in October.  If this were Druitt, he may have felt under police scrutiny, Druitt generally remains the odds-on favorite of known suspects. (6)

Kosminski--A Polish Jew who allegedly had a great hatred of women and manifested homicidal tendencies. He was removed to an asylum about March 1889.

Michael Ostrog--A Russian doctor who was subsequently interred in an asylum as a homicidal maniac.

Other favorites have included:

George Chapman (Severin Antoniovich Klosowski), who according to W.L. Adams, was who Abberline thought was the Ripper.  However, the cool calculation of murdering three women with arsenic is hardly reconcible with the frenzied slashing by the Ripper. (7)

Dr. Neill Cream, who killed four London prostitutes with strychnine.  The problem with casting him as the Ripper was his being in prison in the United States during part of the reign of terror.

Or even Richard Mansfield.  Actually a least likely suspect, but interesting nonetheless.  He was a stage actor playing in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" on the London stage at the time.  His performance so disturbed one gentleman that he suffered nightmares and convinced himself the stage actor was in reality the "Whitechapel Fiend." (8)

    Then there is the possibly most complex theory of them all, the "Royal Family/Masonic" Conspiracy Theory.  To make a long story short, women were being silenced who knew about a dangerous liaison between Prince Eddy and a Roman Catholic woman (Annie Crook); it was felt that the existence of an heir from such an alliance may precipitate another "Bloody Sunday."  Freemasonry was a way of "obligating" certain public officials (such as Sir Charles Warren, who personally ordered the "JUWES" message to be blotted from the wall) to help dissemble and cover up the truth.  Sir William Gull (Physician Extraordinary to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria) and John Netley (Nickley) were the actual killers, with the assistance of Walter Sickert, an artist who was allegedly a friend of His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor ("Eddy"), Duke of Clarence (who, interesting enough, bore a striking resemblance to none other than Montague Druitt).

    This leads us to our final two suppositions, both of which transpose characters from this theory.  The first of these was generated by Dr. Thomas Stowell in 1970, who was careful to refer to the killer as "S," possible because his "proofs" so clearly pointed to none other than the Duke of Clarence himself.  Stowell asserts that Clarence did not die in the great flu epidemic of 1892, but from syphilis.  The crimes were therefore being covered up at the very highest levels because of the August personage was  who committing them.

    There are a number of problems with this explanation.  One is the  fact that this information is allegedly culled from the private papers of the aforementioned Sir William Gull--quite a trick, considering Gull died some two years before Clarence.  Another is how the Heir Presumptive could have been in Scotland shooting game while simultaneously committing the double murders.  And if this wasn't enough, soon after Mary Kelly died, Clarence was sent to Denmark on a diplomatic mission; even if you're willing to consider the idea that the crimes were committed by a Prince of the Realm, it defies belief that such a psychopath would be subsequently chosen as a diplomatic emissary.

    For our final theory, we must juggle the characters again, this time to suit the imagination of Michael Harrison.  I say the imagination, because Harrison, rather than using evidence to find the murderer as a good investigator should, works backward, trying to pretzel-twist his suspect to fit another man's unproven theory:  He identifies Dr. Thomas Stowell's pseudonymous "S" as one of Clarence's tutors at Cambridge, James Kenneth Stephen, with whom Clarence had an alleged homosexual relationship.  This was in 1883. The relationship ended two years later when Clarence left Cambridge.  Two years later Stephen suffered brain damage, and it was discovered that he was slowly going mad.  In 1887, he became Sir William Gull's patient.  He died 5 years later, after having been committed to a mental institution.  There is little evidence to tie him in with the Whitechapel murders, including a motive for committing them--even a pathological reason.  When Harrison compares Stephen's handwriting to that of the Ripper letters, his comparisons are not only inconclusive and psychologically suspect, but problematical in the first place, seeing as how there has never been any proof that these were actually written by the murderer.

    The question remains:  Why was Jack the Ripper never caught?

    Because he died.  Or was gaoled--in Wormwood Scrubs or Newgate Prison.  Or was committed to an asylum. And not long after the death of Mary Kelly. (9)

    The increasing frenzy of his crimes has led some theories to postulate that he took his own life (one reason Druitt forever remains such a popular choice).  This pattern of spiraling madness makes it virtually certain that after committing this atrocious series of crimes, he could not have resumed any semblance of a normal life.  (But of course there are dissenting opinions even over this.  Colin Wilson suggests that the Ripper's sexual bloodlust may have actually been satiated by Mary Kelly's death and after that, he didn't need to kill again.)

    Or perhaps, most ironically, one of the many other criminals prowling the East End came across the mysterious figure of a gentleman garbed in dark evening clothes, and upon accosting him for money, struggled in the fog, and was just a bit quicker with his own knife, thus unwittingly ending the career of Jack the Ripper.

AN ABRIDGED FIELD GUIDE TO OTHER "RIPPER" MATERIALS:

    Of the many books and stories written about the Ripper, the foremost probably has to be Robert Bloch's, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" (1943).  Certainly the most famous short story about the Ripper (and towering above his later novel, Night of the Ripper), it also enjoys the dubious distinction of sparking a "trilogy" of short stories! (10) concerning the exploits of the Ripper.  Harlan Ellison commissioned Bloch to write the second of these, an interesting if rather slight tale entitled, "A Toy for Juliette."  As this did not seem to satisfy Ellison's vision, that of the Ripper living on into an antiseptic city of the future, he wrote his own sequel-to-a-sequel, "The Prowler in the City on the Edge of the World," which unfortunately exists mostly as an exercise in creative typography.

    There are numerous other books, each purporting to solve the crime anew.  I recommend the Rumbelow book mentioned on page 15 as the last word on the subject.  He's already updated it once as new information has come to light, and while he discusses each of the possible solutions, he evinces a policeman's impartiality and doesn't "stack the deck" to support any pet theory of his own.  If anything, he's too cautious in not lending any credence to any one theory over the rest.

    Jack has also appeared in a number of movies and plays over the years, including musical revues (1), and theatrical and television movies that transport him (or copycat murderers) to present day San Francisco and Arizona (the latter being where the London Bridge was reconstructed).  Mercifully, we'll only hit the high points:

"Jack the Ripper" (1988) -- An excellent television mini-series shown last year on the 100th Anniversary of the murders--in itself a rather macabre homage.  On the surface, it appears to be a rather conventional retelling of the crime (though with great liberty in rounding out Inspector Abberline by providing him with both a drinking problem and an old flame), but in reality takes a most unconventional tack in regard to the suspects.  Rather than culling them from the lists of those most credible, the authors (Derek Marlowe and David Wickes) cast suspicion on the people who involved themselves in the crime:  George Lusk (self-appointed head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and to whom the infamous "Kidne" was addressed), Robert Lees, and even Dr. Ralph Llewellyn!  For good measure (and special makeup effects they didn't have in Victorian England), they also threw in Richard Mansfield.  A number of conventional suspects are mentioned, but only those that were quickly eliminated (such as John Pizer or Prince Albert Victor again).

While the solution offered by Marlowe and Wickes is highly debatable, the performances and period detail (the aforementioned gaff notwithstanding) make this well worth a watch.  Michael Caine's Abberline is typically superb, and but for the sensationalistic nature of the material, certainly Emmy fodder.  They do take additional liberties by putting Warren on the scene of Mary Kelly's murder (as well as not going into the additional reasons for his resignation), and they bypass the questions of who broke into her room and that of the key completely, but then this is a relatively obscure point.

My main question is whether their treatment of Robert Lees, the psychic, is historically accurate.  It conflicts with how he is portrayed by Dr. Thomas Stowell, whose version of the facts is used in the following:

"Murder by Decree" (1979) -- Equally excellent, which, incidentally uses the same killers as aforementioned, albeit pseudonymously, and with a different motive.

Possibly the penultimate dramatization of the "Royal Family/Masonic" Conspiracy theory, it is somewhat distanced by the inclusion of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, though as played by Christopher Plummer and James Mason, they are not only a funny, touching and affective pair (making one wish they had an opportunity to repeat their roles), but the whole production hints at a Holmes who is a great deal more human than is often credited, one far more accessible than usual.  Though the ending and attendant explanation are convoluted and long-winded, Plummer/Holmes' summation is one of the most moving of any mystery.  One particularly ingenious facet of this solution is that the murderers tortured Mary Kelly with a hot poker in order to find out the whereabouts of Annie Crook's child--thus accounting for the intense fire that had been kindled in the grate of her room (and possibly why she was so heavily mutilated--in order to disguise signs of the torture).

Several people were fictionalized for this incarnation (such as Abberline being, apparently, Foxborough, the "disaffected radical" who secretly draws Holmes into the case and who dies toward the end of the case), or went unnamed (The Prime Minister, instead of Lord Salisbury, [11] and The Home Secretary, rather than Henry Matthews).

"A Study in Terror" (1965) -- "Murder by Decree" was not the first time Holmes crossed the Ripper's path on film. (12)  Based on an Ellery Queen novel (in Britain published as Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper), this earlier movie does so as well, though its solution was purely fictional and did not purport to actually solve the murders.  And, just to add a nice spin on things, it employed the talents of Anthony Quayle (as a doctor), who also appeared in "Murder by Decree" (as Inspector Warren).

"Time After Time" (1979) -- A rather ingenious movie that combines H. G. Wells with his "Time Machine," identifies a certain fictitious Dr. John Leslie Stevenson (13) as the Ripper, and then allows him to escape to the twentieth century (thus accounting for his never being caught in 1888).  Nicholas Meyer's directorial debut could have been better--there are a number of historical inaccuracies--but it is thoroughly enjoyable. And even if it was horrible you can always close your eyes at a movie with a Miklos Rozsa score and listen to the music.

Of technical gaffs, the only one of the Ripper's Gaslight victims that are shown (he continues his work in the "future," remember) is "ripped" standing up (technical gaff#l) and outside on the street (technical #2).  (The experts' best guess was that the victims were strangled before their throats were cut; in any case, the mutilations were certainly not the first wounds inflicted.  And the Ripper's last victim was Mary Kelly, who was killed in her own digs.)  But it's a fantasy, so let's go with it.

What the movie does bring out nicely is the Victorian belief that man is inevitably moving toward Utopia. This bright outlook for the future was a very real part of the Victorian sensibility.  It's another of the reasons the Whitechapel murders were so shocking; such brutality, such senselessness, defied their understanding.  Wells (in the movie) estimates the Utopian idea should come to pass no more than three generations into the future; imagine his surprise at what he finds in 1979 San Francisco.

As to their portrait of the Ripper, David Warner (an underrated and an under used actor who slips easily from playing "Ultimate Evil" (14) in "Time Bandits" to Bob Cratchit in the George C. Scott starring version of "A Christmas Carol") invests it with his own personal brand of psychopathic menace.  He finds himself quite at home in the violent world of "the future"; flipping through the channels on a television, he shows Wells a football game, Yosemite Sam getting blown up (3 times!) in a Warner Brothers cartoon, Asian war footage, and Jim Hendrix trashing a guitar, among others.

"Ninety years ago I was a freak, today . . . he claims, "I am an amateur."

(Trivia question:  What does the preceding four movies have in common?  Answer:  In all four, the killer is a physician.)

"Earth Spirit" (1895) + "Pandora's Box" (1904) & "Lulu" -- The first two are plays by Frank Wedekind that were combined by G. W. Pabst to make the third (an early cinematic classic show casting Louis Brooks' talent and unearthly beauty), and then by Alban Berg as a play again.

The main character in all the various incarnations, Lulu is a woman who destroys every man whose ardor she cannot help but ignite.  In the end, she and a Lesbian admirer lose their life to Jack the Ripper, a sort of cameo "demon ex machina."

The "Whitechapel Fiend" has made further appearances on shows ranging from the Boris Karloff-hosted "Thriller" (an adaptation of "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper") to "Star Trek" (in an episode written by Robert Bloch) to "Kolchak:  The Night Stalker."  All of which have portrayed him as some kind of deathless creature who's "lifeforce" (sorry, Colin Wilson) is somehow fed by either ritualistic murder or simply fear itself.

Then, there was also "The Search for Jack the Ripper" (1988), the sort of show that defies labeling, it is perhaps closest in spirit to Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone's Vaults.  This one was hosted by Peter Ustinov and boasted a panel of "experts" in the legal and criminal justice professions who weighed the evidence. The preponderance of lawyer-types tipped the scales heavily in favor of not coming to any sort of conclusion at all, as the trail by this time was far too cold to come up with any evidence capable of conviction.  When forced to choose one suspect, Kosminski seemed to be the popular favorite, but this may have been because so little was known about him that he didn't "not" fit the prerequisites.

QUESTIONS AND CURIOSITIES:

Finally, in my readings, there have been three additional loose ends, having to do with three people involved in the Whitechapel investigation:

The first is Inspector Frederick Abberline.  Chief investigator of the Ripper murders, he retired in 1892, never publishing (unlike other policemen less directly involved, such as Sir Melville Macnaughten) his part in the investigation.  Seven detectives who worked with Abberline on the Whitechapel murders presented him with a walking stick, the handle of which is of a face covered by a cowl.  Does this have any special significance?  And did he really believe George Chapman was the killer?

Then there is Robert Lees.  Which version of his interest is the murders is true?  The hysterical crank of the supposedly non-fictional "Jack the Ripper," or the genuine psychic of "Murder by Decree," who claimed not only to have seen the killer(s) in a vision, but on the street, as well as leading the police to the fashionable West End home of a noted physician?  Or is there any credence to either of these?

And lastly, perhaps most ignominiously, there is Sir Charles Warren.  Just why did Warren insist the "JUWES" message be sponged off the wall? Was it really because he feared another "Bloody Sunday?"  Or is the ritual killing of the "JUWES" a real Masonic ceremony, and being a member of the Freemasons, he felt some compunction to destroy the evidence?

The final mystery is, of course, the same one with which we began:  That of the identity of the murderer.  I can't help feeling that if we knew more about the actions of the above three men, exactly what went on with Mary Kelly's door and what significance--if any--there is in the similarity of names of the victims, we would somehow be closer to learning the true identity of Jack the Ripper.

FOOTNOTES:

1)  The 7th.

2)  Wilson, Colin, "My Search for Jack the Ripper," from Unsolved! by Richard Glyne Jones, Peter Bedrick Books.

3)  An idea first suggested by the minimal amount of bloodstains found at the four outdoor murders, other than that beneath the bodies.  When the throat of someone standing is cut, it causes about a three-feet jet of blood to spurt out.  No such evidence was ever found.  One popular explanation for this is that the Ripper first stunned his victims with a blow to the face (giving Annie Chapman, for example, time to call out), then strangled them, dropping their bodies to the ground, where their throats were subsequently cut.  Under these circumstances (as has been born out in similar situations) most of the blood is absorbed into the clothing of the victim; it would also explain why some of the throats seem to have been cut by a left-handed person and others a right-handed one, as the killer could have been crouching above the victims' heads when the fatal slash was made.  While a distinct possibility, the alternate and equally credent theory that some of the victims were killed in a carriage and then dumped out upon the street is not only possible, but would also explain the lack of sightings and the awkward times the murders were committed.

4)  Likewise giving credence to another theory of the time, one which Robert Bloch exploited in his infamous story, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," that these were ritual killings, and conformed to some astrological or lunar cycle.  If the killer believed this, and was interrupted or frightened away before completing his mutilations upon Elizabeth Stride, then he may have felt compelled to go out and find another victim.

5)  The one thing I've always found odd about the Ripper's victims was the similarity in their names (when you take certain select "aliases" into account):  The first victim was Mary Ann, the second "Dark" Annie, the third Annie Fitzgerald, the fourth Kate Kelly, and the final one, Mary Ann Kelly.  Could he really have been looking for Mary Ann Kelly throughout, and the first four victims merely unfortunate substitutes?  In that case, why the double murder of the previous occasion?

6)  Interestingly enough, Druitt's mother was also named Anne, and had been confined to a mental institution since July 1888, or one month before the first murder.

7)  Chapman may also have been Dr. Pedachenko, who was the killer according to theories put forward by Donald McCormick.  However, since no independent proof is forthcoming to ascertain the existence of Dr. Pedachenko, we'll leave him out of the running for the time being.

8)  And a spooky bit of personal coincidence for yours truly. Years ago (right after The Seven Per Cent Solution made this sort of thing the vogue) I jotted down an idea for a novel I called Jekyll and Jack: ". . the story Dr. Jekyll tells Robert Louis Stevenson about how a colleague of his, Prof. Jonathan Hyde, experiments with personality-altering drugs, and fears that this man is Jack the Ripper.  The two of them set out to bring him to justice."  Imagine my astonishment to learn this had a very real historical precedent.

9)  According to Donald Rumbelow, school children in the East End still chant Jack's name to skipping games:

                              Jack the Ripper's dead,
                                And lying on his bed.
                                   He cut-his throat
                                 With Sunlight Soap.
                              Jack the Ripper's dead.

10)  Similar, but not quite as effective as H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch's earlier cycle of stories, "The Shambler from the Stars," "The Haunter of the Dark," and "The Shadow from the Steeple," the first and last of which were Bloch's.

11)  Who additionally is identified as a Freemason in the movie, when he was not.

12)  In books and stories they seem to have an absolute affinity for literary collision.  No less than Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Lestrade and even Prof. Moriarty himself have each on occasion brought the "Whitechapel Fiend" to justice.  In one bizarre pastiche, the killer turned out to be Holmes himself, who, when confronted by Watson with the truth on the precipice above Reichenbach Falls, hurls himself into the abyss.

13)  Although his name does harken back to James Kenneth Stephen.

14)  Which is not far from the Ripper. In "The Ruling Class," a mad" Peter O'Toole, thinks he is Christ when he is the embodiment of all that is good.  When he is subsequently "cured" and becomes all that is evil (becoming a much more popular citizen), he thinks he's Jack!