At the time of the seven Whitechapel murders the police worked on the assumption that they were not all perpetrated by one person (though five of them were investigated with this as a likely option). Why is it that the opposite assumption now holds sway? And why is it, in the light of all the atrocities which have occurred in the meantime, that we are still seemingly obsessed by this particular series of crimes?

As a teenager and for a few years after that, I used to read everything I saw about Jack the Ripper, but haven't bothered in recent years, so that I am not even aware that these murders are now thought to be the work (perhaps that's not the right word) of more than one person.

I think it is the mystery of these type of crimes that continue people's fascination. There's still room for historians and crime experts, not to mention ordinary people, to speculate and write about it. Not so easy to keep up that interest when a killer is definitely known. The crime stories that have stayed in the public eye have generally been those with some uncertainty about them - this may have changed in Britain in recent years (Soham murders etc). Here the high-profile murders that have retained media interest have been ones where the public is uncertain that the right person has been convicted, or where (usually with young women hitchhikers) there has never been a conviction. Though I think it will be a very long time before anyone living here at the time will forget the university tutor who stabbed his girlfriend over 200 times, locked in a room in the house where her mother was desperately trying to get access to, and claiming the young woman had provoked him!

I feel, possibly wrongly, that this was more or less the first one of this type of crime in England. Other serial murders seemed to be more the result of packs of young men with too little to do. I have read of earlier ones in Germany, but can't think of any in England, though you would think there must have been some over the centuries. Cities have to be big enough, though, to hide such a killer.

The nickname given to him has no doubt helped too. I might have to read up a bit more now - got put off by Patricia Cornwall's insistence that it was Walter Sickett on apparently very little real evidence. (Not that I read this.)

Caro.

There is also a certain morbid fascination in serial and ritual killings. Whilst feeling revolted by a violent murder or murderer one still can't help being drawn to the subject at the same time. Plus the crimes were never solved and the fact that the killings stopped quite suddenly, there will always be room for investigation and speculation.

I think any unsolved crime leaves us spellbound by it's mystique, but given the Ripper's timing- a period of history which also gave us Frankenstein, Dracula and Sherlock, it exacerbated the interest.

I personally think that an American 'quack' doctor, Francis Tumblety did the killings. He was an intense mysogynist who once showed Army friends jars full of uteri, had unwittingly married a prostitute, lived near enough to the killings and was pursued to New York and watched by both British and American Police, before he yet again fled (to the W.Indies) where similar killings continued...

To what extent has the popular press, then and now, created this phenomena? This was the heyday of the penny dreadfuls, wasn't it, and the propagation and maintenance of the semi mythical serial killers has certain resemblances to the creation of the stereotype of the American cowboy. Fundamentally, there was money to be made catering to the morbid fascination that ID referred to.
A more recent example was and still is the 'Bible John' killings in Glasgow in the 60s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_John There seems to need to be an unknown killer who might strike again but a 'something else' as well, a peculiarity in the person of the assassin and his modus operandi that can capture public imagination for the interest to persist.

In a similar vein,there was the Jack the Stripper murders in the 1960's.

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Stripper

Hello. Just writen a long piece on what a mess we have made solving crimes in an historical context, using Dr Crippen as my model and have lost it all............. I shall try to work up the energy to return! My sodding lap top! Sorry...

Hi Minette - that is frustrating when one loses a long and thought out post. I know you've received the advice before - but when I for a long time used a dodgy "Heath-Robinson PC-linked to mobile phone-linked to bad signal" arrangement I simply forced myself into the habit of writing anything over two sentences in WordPad or NotePad first and then pasting it over to the text box prior to sending on messageboards.

When it comes to Crippen that is another case where the profile would seem to exceed that which the extent of the crime merits when set in comparison to other atrocities both before and after it. However the reason in this particular case is rather straightforward in that it was the police themselves who chose to use it as publicity for what Chief Superintendent Froest, who took a personal interest in the investigation, hoped the public would perceive as Scotland Yard's "cutting edge technology" application. Both the forensics and the use of telegraphy in the investigation and arrest were much hyped in the social media of the day. It even featured in one of the earliest newsreels ever, shown at the Bioscope in London, which itself made news. The whole media event was carefully managed to impress on the public that bad people could never hope to get away with anything ever again, now that the cops had wireless technology.

It is ironic that it is modern forensics and in particular DNA analysis which has lately cast so much doubt over the police findings all those years ago.

Is " Jack" the connection? JTR, Springheel Jack, Strip Jack (Ian Rankin), there do seem to be many obsessed with the name - though I think Ian Rankin was keen on JRT very early on.

Following on from Temp's post over on "Evolutionary Queries", this is a very comprehensive JTR site;

http://www.casebook.org/intro.html

Francis Thompson is rated 12th out of 22 suspects

So, what are we to make of this? More wild claims for DNA testing?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/has-jack-the-rippers-identity-really-been-revealed-using-dna-evidence-9717036.html


PS The above article is from the Independent, but the Daily Mail also ran the story. One poster there (alas I can't find the message now) - obviously a very "worried of Tunbridge Wells" sort of person - did not seem very interested in Jack the Ripper: his or her concerns were all about ancient viruses being let loose with all this unearthing and testing of old bodies and artefacts (like the blood-stained shawl).  "Are these things thoroughly disinfected?" was his or her anxious query. This made me wonder if Richard III (or whoever) had been "thoroughly disinfected". I was amused, but on later reflection wondered whether the poster had a point. Surely not? We are not at risk from the plague or the sweating sickness viruses/bacteria being unleashed -  are we ("worried of near Exeter")?  

The Independent article raises all the questions that crossed my mind too when I heard an interview with the author on radio yesterday, especially when I heard his tone of absolute certainty along with his accompanying and repeated assertions of definitive proof despite his whole theory being based on such inconclusive and conjectural data. As an eye-opener however into how marketing in this day and age works in relation to "historical" publications it is salient and couldn't come at a better time given the piecemeal media treats that apparently constitute "The Discovery of Richard III is Fact, We Tell You!" show to which we are also being subjected at the moment.

Just one other thing which is reported misleadingly by both the author Edwards and the journalist who wrote the linked article; Aaron Kosminski was never to anybody's knowledge a "chief suspect". That he was a suspect at all is attributed to a memorandum dated 1894, three years after the last murder, by the then Assistant Chief Constable of the Met, Sir Melville McNaughten. In the note McNaughten infers that the name "Kosminsky" be added to the general suspect list, which we know from official records was already a lengthy one indeed at the time. He does not say why he wants this Kosminsky added (the Aaron bit came from another "Ripper author" as recently as 1989), but this did not deter even more "Ripper authors" in later years inferring much from this "new evidence" when the memorandum came to light many decades later. At some point the tenuous link between a surname and the full name of a lunatic asylum inmate became irrefutably "proof" that they were one and the same, the examination of probability being seemingly deemed irrelevant before such a leap was made.

Re your PS, Temp; similar squeals of terror accompanied the excavation of a plague pit last year in London uncovered during the recent light rail works. It was gaining good momentum before a senior biologist being interviewed on the Today show on Radio 4, when asked about the dangers posed by such exhumations, replied with a derisory snort and demanded that the interview get back to reality again. Since his snort I thought the whole issue had been suitably addressed to Joe and Jane Public's satisfaction. Apparently not.

nordmann wrote:

Re your PS, Temp; similar squeals of terror accompanied the excavation of a plague pit last year in London uncovered during the recent light rail works. It was gaining good momentum before a senior biologist being interviewed on the Today show on Radio 4, when asked about the dangers posed by such exhumations, replied with a derisory snort and demanded that the interview get back to reality again. Since his snort I thought the whole issue had been suitably addressed to Joe and Jane Public's satisfaction. Apparently not.

Well, I wasn't exactly "squealing", nordmann, just emitting a tiny, interrogative squeak  . I'm glad the "senior biologist" you mention snorted, although it's understandable why ordinary people do fret a bit about such things.

Shows how important it is that we can trust the science experts...

Not sure if some infections couldn't survive a very long time - you can crystallise viruses, after all, but surely even those bacteria which form spores, such as anthrax, can't make it through the centuries?

The notion that virulently infectious organisms can be contained by simply burying organic matter (without burning and in porous containers) is naive anyway. In fact traditional "plague pits", in burying the potential infection source in high concentrations within small areas of drained soil, actually magnified the probability that anything nasty getting into the water would indeed arrive there.

I don't think we need worry about ancient viruses, a) because we've probably got a fair immunity to many of the ancient forms by now b) viruses like the plague haven't gone away so are not being re-introduced, rather are still with us and are perfectly treatable and c) whatever viruses were around back then have since mutated into different forms as we've developed said immunities.  

If any of that makes sense.

In answer to the DNA articles

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/solving-jack-the-ripper-case-dna

Islanddawn wrote:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/solving-jack-the-ripper-case-dna

The Julia Laite article (ID's link above) is excellent. Yes, what we can learn about the women who were killed - and society's attitude to them -  is far more interesting than reading dubious claims about the murderer's DNA.

But, in many ways, whether Kate Kelly sold sex or not is beside the point. Because Jack the Ripper didn’t kill sex workers: he killed women, some of whom sold sex sometimes. Jack killed flower sellers. Jack killed charwomen. He killed mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. The case files that Ripper historians scrutinise for clues about his identity contain extraordinary details about these women’s ordinary and fascinating lives.

From these files, I learned about their friends, their lovers and their children; their love of drink, their quick tempers, and their favourite songs. I have seen pictures of their dead faces, and read coroners’ reports about the weight of their lungs, livers and hearts. These women are infinitely more interesting to me than the identity of their killer. Finding out about their poverty, their work and their experiences of injustice and inequality is far more important than their killer’s DNA. They are the real story of the Whitechapel murders. It is time for popular history to think more about them, and less about Jack.

Did anyone else watch the Channel 5 programme last night which presented a case against Charles Allen Lechmere?

http://unsolvedwhitechapel.wordpress.com/tag/charles-allen-lechmere/


The link just gives an account of Lechmere's movements at the time of the Nicholls murder, but 4 of the 6 murders ( Martha Tabram is included) lay directly on, or adjacent too, Lechmere's two quickest routes to work.
Work, incidentally, was as a carman with Pickfords. His job being to transport butcher meat fro the Broad Street station to East End butcher shops, giving him perfect cover for being in the area and wearing blood stained work clothes.

The sites where the other 2 murders ( the Double Event) took place, the first practically next door to Lechmere's mothers' house and the second at Mitre Square on his old route to work ( Lechmere moved to 22 Doveton Street, two months before the killings started)

I thought the programme presented a strong prima facie case against Lechmere. Why he was never questioned more closely, since he was first to discover Nicholls body, is a mystery.(Police incompetence?)

Lechmere lived until he was 70, it is possible that other murders, not thought to be Ripper killings, may be linked to him.

Prince Albert Victor, the grandson of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, was thought to have been Jack. Prince Albert was in Scotland at the time of one of the murders.

Triceratops wrote:

a case against Charles Allen Lechmere

Of the long list of suspects suggested over time this seems to me to be the most convincing. The Swedish journalist Christer Holmgren and the English historian Edward Stow certainly make a compelling case against Lechmere. Among other things, he was the person who discovered the body of the first known victim, he gave the police a different name to that which he usually went by and also gave a false address. The following recent article, however, pours cold water even on their hypothesis:

Charles Cross

P.S. The Lechmeres certainly have an interesting (if somewhat unfortunate) family tree in terms of East End local history. Not only was Charles a character in the dramatis personae of the Jack the Ripper murders (and over the last 10 years has emerged as a prime suspect) but his son Thomas was one of the victims of the 1943 Bethnal Green underground station disaster.

Vizzer,

I read your whole link, but nothing to do with Jack the Ripper, but as unsolved a crime, were the crimes of the Gang of Nivelles, still for most of us an attempt to destabilize the country by a far right group to induce a call for a more right wing governing by a switch in the elections.
I discussed it here in the Gladio thread by Dirk Marinus and publiced a youtube of the BBC documentary about Gladio, mentioned in this rather good and complete wiki article. Will seek if I Dirk's thread find back on our forum.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world

Kind regards from Paul.

Correction my BBC start page has of course to be the page about the Gang of Nivelles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers

And Dirk Marinus' thread about Gladio and my reply.
And the mentioned BBC documentary youtube still works: some 2 hours and
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t965-gladio-force-and-galacian-division
 
Kind regards from Paul.

I recommend also the recent book by Hallie Rubenhold - "The Five" - which examines the Ripper case not as a murder mystery but with total emphasis on the five women whose murder led to all the suppositions and conjecture afterwards. I found it a real eye-opener - like everyone else I had also naively assumed a handy generalisation of their being sex workers as being important, without too much thought beyond whatever such a description is traditionally assumed to infer, or even to what extent it was true or an apt description at all in every case.

The assumption by the police from the beginning that they were looking for one perpetrator, and what's more one who was acting very much as a lone wolf, was very much encouraged by an equally glib assumption by the policemen ("men" being a big factor here) that all of the victims were "of a type", not to mention that these victims also should be regarded in isolation from the many other women murdered in London's East End during the same period. Some of these had been equally gruesomely dispatched, and some even showed enough similarity to the "Ripper" modus operandi to justify being regarded as potentially part of the same case, but with other factors that "disqualified" them in the minds of the investigators and press (mainly that they could not be so easily dismissed as "mere" prostitutes).

Rubenhold doesn't speculate too much about the murderer's (or murderers') identity, but certainly leans to what she regards as an inevitable conclusion that it was suspiciously handy for all concerned, and not just the police, to regard the case the way they did, and in fact for subsequent authors, scriptwriters, journalists etc to then perpetuate the same simplistic assessment of the "facts". The reality of the situation included quite a lot of data that was just too uncomfortable or inconvenient to contemplate for those charged with the initial investigation, and even for almost all of those who have subsequently treated it as a gruesome "murder mystery" ready made for novel, stage and screen, simply missing a final "reveal".

Please note that in September 2014 I posted this upthread:

I wrote:

The Julia Laite article (ID's link above) is excellent. Yes, what we can learn about the women who were killed - and society's attitude to them -  is far more interesting than reading dubious claims about the murderer's DNA.

But, in many ways, whether Kate Kelly sold sex or not is beside the point. Because Jack the Ripper didn’t kill sex workers: he killed women, some of whom sold sex sometimes. Jack killed flower sellers. Jack killed charwomen. He killed mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. The case files that Ripper historians scrutinise for clues about his identity contain extraordinary details about these women’s ordinary and fascinating lives.

From these files, I learned about their friends, their lovers and their children; their love of drink, their quick tempers, and their favourite songs. I have seen pictures of their dead faces, and read coroners’ reports about the weight of their lungs, livers and hearts. These women are infinitely more interesting to me than the identity of their killer. Finding out about their poverty, their work and their experiences of injustice and inequality is far more important than their killer’s DNA. They are the real story of the Whitechapel murders. It is time for popular history to think more about them, and less about Jack.