BillyE’s Jack the Ripper: Fact and Fiction

Rather than posting the entry I had originally planned to I thought instead I would post one of the things that brought me into the case.  This is from the 1977 edition of “The Book of Lists,” and is what let me know Jack the Ripper really existed, and wasn’t just a Hollywood creation.  Being from 1977, the artical is full of errors of one manner or another, but it is still fun to read.  A side note to this artical: at the bottom of one of the pages was the “Dear Boss” letter with a caption that read: “Which of the 10 wrote this letter?”                                                                          10 POSSIBLE VICTIMS OF 10 POSSIBLE “JACK THE RIPPERS”   ”…I am down on whores and shant [sic] quit ripping them…” warned the writer of an anonymous letter to London’s Central News Agency on September 28, 1888.  The letter may have been a hoax, but it gave a lasting nickname to the murderer of several prostitutes in the slums of London’s East End in 1888-and possibly later.  Jack the Ripper has inspired at least a dozen movies and stage plays; two operas, Alban Berg’s Lulu and The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill; and several hundred books, both fact and fiction.  Estimates of the Ripper’s victims range from the “dozens” of popular belief down to the 10 selected by serious criminologists.  The 10 “most likely” victims are listed here in chronological order, with the 6 “favorites” starred.                                                                                                    

THE VICTIMS 1. Emma Elizabeth Smith (Apr. 3, 1888) Fourty-five -year-old prostitude; died in hosptial from stab wound in abdomen inflicted by a “sharp spike.”  No mutilations. 2. Martha Turner* (or Tabram) (Aug. 7, 1888) Thirty-five-year-old prostitue; throat slit and 39 wounds on body; autopsy suggested ambidextrous killer. 3. Mary Ann (”Polly”) Nicholls* (Aug. 31, 1888) Fourty-two-year-old prostitude; throat cut and body mutilated, almost disemboweled; examination suggested left-handed expert with “surgical” knife. 4. Annie Chapman* (Sept. 8,1888) Fourty-seven-year-old prostitute; nearly decapitated; kidney and ovaries removed “by an expert hand.” 5. Elizabeth (”Long Liz”) Stride* (Sept. 30, 1888) Fourty-five-year-old prostitute; throat cut but body unmutilated.  The killer may have been disturbed at his work (at 1:00 A.M.) 6. Catherine Eddowes* (Sept. 30,1888) Fourty-three-year-old prostitute; found only 45 minutes after discovery of Stride’s body, some 15 minutes’ walk away’ throat cut, face and body mutilated, left kidney and other organs missing. 7. Mary Jane (”Jeanette”) Kelly* (Nov. 9, 1888) Twenty-four-year-old prostitute; body found in her room, horribly mutilated but no organs missing. 8. Elizabeth Jackson (June 1889) Prostitute, age unknown; headless trunk and other parts of body taken from the Thames. 9. Alice (”Clay Pipe Alice”) Mackenzie (July 17, 1889) Fourty-seven-year-old prostitute; body found near site of Nicholls slaying, throat cut and abdomen mutilated. 10. Frances (”Carrotty Nell”) Coles (Feb. 13.1891) Twenty-five-year-old prostitute; found dying of stab wounds in East End.                           THE SUSPECTS1. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850-1892) and “Another” Born in Scotland, Cream was taken to Canada by his parents in 1854.  He was graduated as a doctor of medicine in Montreal in 1876, having already begun his criminal career with theft, arson, attempted blackmail-and the possible murder of his wife following an abortion.  In 1876-1878 he continued his medical studies in England and was admitted as a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Edinburgh.  Cream practiced medicine in Ontario, Canada, but an unsuccessful blackmail attempt, plus suspicion of his having murdered his mistress with chloroform, caused him to move to Chcago, where he was arrested for murder after a patient of his died following an abortion in 1880.  He beat the rap, as well as another for attempted poisoning and blackmail the same year.  Convicted of second-degree murder-strychnine poisoning of his mistress’s husband-in 1881, Cream served 10 years in Joliet penitentiary, going to England on his release.  In 1891-1892 for the sheer joy of killing, Cream murdered at least five London prostitutes by strychnine poisoning.  He was hanged on November 15, 1892.  Billington, the executioner, stated that Cream’s last words were: “I am Jack the…”!  Although Cream was in Joliet when the main Ripper murders were committed, reliable evidence suggests he had a “double,” also a criminal.  Cream once beat a bigamy rap by claiming that he was in Sydney, Australia, at the relevant time; he never was in Australia, but was identified as a former prisoner by the governor of Sydney prison.  The famous advocate Marshall Hall, who defended Cream-or his double-on the bigamy charge, believed Cream and his “twin” had an alibi pact and that one of them was the Ripper.  The Australian con man and murderer Frederick Bailey (”Mad Fred”) Deeming (1853-1892) also confessed on the scaffold to being the Ripper: he would have had little opportunity to commit the crimes and, although both men were spectacularly ugly, he was not Cream’s double.2. John Druitt Montague (1857-1889) Oxford-educated Montague was a brilliant but unstable young man.  Failing in his career as a lawyer (not a doctor, as sometimes stated), in 1888 he was teaching at a shabby private school near London.  A month after the killing of Mary Kelly, he attempted suicide by drowning; a second attempt a month later was successful.  In March, 1889, an anti-Ripper vigilante group was persuaded to disband when secretly informed by the police that “the Ripper dorwned himself two months ago.”  Montague was a strong police suspect, according to the assistant chief of London’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in 1889. 3.”The General’s Secretary” (unnamed man) ”General” William Booth (1829-1912), founder of the Salvation Army, believed that his former secretary was Jack the Ripper.  In February, 1891, a few days before the slaying of Frances Coles, the young secretary told booth: “Carrotty Nell will be the next to go”; immediately after that murder he vanished.  Both was no liar-but the secretary probably was.  Some writers say the secretary may have “ripped” Coles, but others state that she was almost certainly killed by Thomas Sadler, a drunken railroadman, who was arrested earlier but released for lack of evidence after the murder of Alice MacKenzie. 4. “Jill the Ripper”There has to be one theory that Jack was a Jill.  Author William Stewart believes the murders were committed by a psychopathic midwife, who may have walked the East End disguised as a man.  The thin evidence rests on the fact (not revealed at the time) that Mary Kelly was three months pregnant at the time of her killing, and that ashes in the fireplace of her room may have been the remains of the Ripper’s disguise.  Others point out that the “mad midwife” could hardly have escaped in Kelly’s spare clothes.  The unfortunate woman had pawned them. 5.  James Kenneth Stephen (1859-1892) J. K. Stephen, who’s humorous verse is still to be found in many anthologies, was the cousin of Sir Leslie Stephen, who was the tutor of Prince Albert Victor and the father of the novelist Virginia Woolf.  He was a friend of John Druitt Montague, another suspect.  Basing his evidence on a detailed comparison of Stephen’s poetry and the “Ripper letters,” author Michael Harrison regarded the poet as the slayer.  In spite of Stephen’s undoubted eccentricity and his connection with other suspects, this theory seems exploded by the fact that of the hundreds of letters to the police and newspapers supposedly sent by Jack the Ripper, only two are accepted by Jurgen Thorwald and other reliable criminologists as genuine. 6. “Leather Apron” Among the police suspects named by crime writer Maj. Aurthur Griffiths, “an insane Polish Jew” figures strongly.  This unfortunate man, variously called Pizer or Kosminski, was a mentally deranged shoemaker (who got his nickname of “Leather Apron” from his working dress), and appears to have been the victim of local gossip which linked him with the killings as early as the Turner slaying.  He was arrested, questioned, and freed-after the murder of Nicholls.  A slogan chalked on a wall near Eddowes’s body-”The Jewes [sic] Are The Men What Wont Be Blamed For Nothing”- was probably the work of an anti-Semitic troublemaker, although both Sir Robert Anderson, appointed head of the CID in 1889, and Maj. Sir Henry Smith, then head of the City of London police, seem to have believed “Leather Apron” was guilty.  Another authority also suggests the Ripper was a Jew-not a cobbler, but a shochet, emplyed to slaughter animals by the approved Jewish ritual method. 7. Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1864-1892) Although he would have been king of England had he lived, “Prince Eddy,” elder son of Edward, prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and brother of future king George V, was admittedly weak-minded and almost certainly a sexual degenerate.  Contemporary gossip connected “a member of the royal family” with the Ripper slayings, but the prince’s possible guilt was not aired until Dr. Thomas Stowell, a surgeon of international repute, published evidence in 1970 pointing to “Eddy” as the possible killer.  (Stowell later denied that the prince was his suspect.)  Other attempts have been made to link “Eddy” with the case. 8. Sir William Withey Gull (1816-1890) and “Others” Gull’s rise in the medical profession was assured when he cured the prince of Wales of typhoid in 1871; he was made a baronet and appointed physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria.  The famous spiritualis medium Robert James Lees (consulted by the mourning queen in 1868 after the death of her husband) claimed in the 1890’s that he had “dreamed” of the Ripper and had identified “a distinguished physician”-fairly obviously meaning Gull-to the police.  The main case against Gull was put by Dr. Benjamin Howard in a sensational interview with the Chicago Sundy Times-Herald on April 28, 1895, claiming that Gull, who had “died” in 1890, was really still alive, a raving madman in a London asylum to which he had been confined after a private “trial” by 12 eminent physicians (Howard himself being one).  A more circumstantial attempt to establish Gull as the Ripper was made by author Stephen Knight in 1976.  He argued that a bastard child sired by “Prince Eddy” had been nursed by Mary Kelly, last of the “probable” Ripper victims.  Having fallen from the status of nursemaid to that of harlot, Kelly attempted to blackmail the royal family, whereupon Prime Minister Salisbury, with the queen’s approval, ordered the “elimination” of Kelly and her closest associates.  The murders were carried out by Gull, police chief Sir Robert Anderson, and “Eddy’s” former private carriage driver John Netley-the trio stalking their prey in a horse-drawn cab into which the women were lured, “ripped,” and later dumped.  The painter Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), said to have been the guardian-and later the lover-of “Eddy’s” illegitimate daughter, is also alleged to have played an active part in the conspiracy. 9. George Chapman (1865-1903) In the opinion of three authorities, George Chapman is the likeliest of the named suspects.  Born in Poland-his real name was Severin Klosowski-Chapman served an apprenticeship to a barber-surgeon before departing hurriedly to England (he was suspected of the decapitation of a woman) in 1887.  At the time of the Ripper slayings, Chapman was working as a barber in the area. Early in 1890, he left suddenly for New York; attempts to link him with a supposed series of Ripper-type murders  in Jersey City in 1891-1893 have been discounted.  Back in London by 1895, Chapman turned tavernkeeper, and in the following years murdered a succession of barmaid-mistresses by antimony poisoning.  He was arrested in 1902.  Chief Inspector Abberline, formerly a top detective on the Ripper case, told the inspector who collared Chapman: “You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last!”  Chapman was hanged for the murder of three mistresses.  Much circumstantial evidence points to him as the Ripper; the main objection, that he was a poisoner by inclination and that mass murderers rarely vary their method, seems inconclusive. 10. “The Russian Doctor” A theory with more weight than some, supported by authors Sir Harold Scott and Richard Deacon, attributes the Ripper murders to “an insane Russian doctor” named Alexander Pedachenko, also known as Vassily Konovalov, Andrey Luiskovo, and Mikhail Ostrong (or Ostrog).  Pedachenko was employed at a clinic for London’s East End poor, where Martha Turner, Mary Nicholls, Annie Chapman, and Mary Kelly all received treatment early in 1888.  Deacon suggests that Pedachenko, who had already “ripped” a Parisian prostitute, was deliberately introduced into England by the Okhrana, the Russian czarist secret police, who hoped his activities might discredit the Rissian radicals living in exile in east London.  After the Ripper murders, Pedachenko returned to St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), where he died in an asylum after murdering yet another woman.  Sir Basil Thompson, assistant head of the CID, was convinced of Pedachenko’s guilt.                                                                                                                                                                   -R.O.

Due do family medical situations this blog will be on hiatus until further notice. I’ll announce on Facebook when the next entry is released.

       *Warning, there will be spoilers in this post*

     Let me start off by saying I’m a fan of the Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell book “From Hell” from which the movie is based.  From that you might think I’m predjudiced against the movie.  That may very well be true, but not necessarily.  There have been plenty of books I was a fan of, as well as a fan of the movie.  “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and “The Da Vinci Code” are prime examples.  That being said I am not a fan of this movie, despite the fact I am a fan of the actors in it.  I think Johnny Depp, Robbie Coltrain, Ian Holm, and Heather Graham are as good as is possible in this movie.  The execution of the filming is just bad. 

     In his book Alan Moore predicted there would be a movie based on it.  He was right.  There have been to date four Alan Moore stories turned into movies, “From Hell” being the first.  The others in order are: “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” “V For Vendetta,” and “The Watchmen.”  Moore has yet to approve any verson of his work on film.  Indeed, he doesn’t believe literary work should make it to film.  You simply lose too much in the change of format from book to film.  He has been so against this that, though he accepted the money for the making of “From Hell,” he did not accept money from future films of his work, instead giving the money that would have gone to him to the artist that he worked with on that particular work.  Keven O’Neill got the money that would have gone to Moore for the movie “League,” David Lloyd for “V,” and Dave Gibbons for “The Watchmen.”  Moore has expressed his increasing difficulty in doing so, due to the increasing amount of money being offered him.

     Onto the movie itself: The best thing I can say about this movie is the casting.  It has really good actors in it.  The problem is it doesn’t matter how good the cast is if the script is sub-par.  There is virtually no background story laid.  You really don’t know the basis of the story.  You’re just thrown into it, and as such you don’t know what’s going on.

     There is very little connecting the film with the book.  There are a few precious shots the Hughes brothers got from the book, but in different places from the book.  The shot of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the coach riding across London Bridge, and the light peering through the keyhole in Mary Kelly’s room are prime examples of this.  The two biggest changes for the movie was to make this not Dr. William Gull’s and Insp. Fred Abberline’s story, but Abberline’s story alone, investigating the murders, and combining the characters Robert James Lees and Fred Abberline into one.  They do this by making Abberline a clairvoyant by having him imbibe in hallucinogenic substances.  Thus, they’ve turned Insp. Abberline into a drug addict.  This is similar, but on a grander scale, of the David Wickes mini-series staring Michael Caine.  In this telling of the story the Hughes brothers take another page from David Wickes’ story, and have Abberline consult Dr. Gull on the medical aspect of the case.

     I’m okay with the idea of turning the movie into Abberline’s story.  You have to change some things when changing formats, such as book to movie.  I’m even sort of okay with the blending of Abberline with Lees, the medium.  I hold my greatest objection in turning Abberline into a drug addict.  Not only is it insulting to the actual man who did exist, but also historicly inaccurate, and  the directors made this change for a selfish reason.  The reason they had the main character as a drug addict was to legitimize their own drug use.  If you listen to the directors’ commentary the last thing said (by one of the Hughes brothers) is: “I’m rambling on now because I just hit the pipe!”  Somehow I don’t think he’s talking about cherry flavored shag tobacco.  All other complaints I have about the characterization of Insp. can be found in my post about the Michael Caine/Johnny Depp characterizations of that character in their respective movies.

     A couple of notes on the character of Dr. Sir William Withey Gull. In the scene when he’s killing who he thinks is Mary Kelly there is a flash on the screen, and Gull is suddenly in a medical theatre, surrounded by students applauding his lecture and work as he disects the woman in front of them.  The movie gives no explanation of this.  I believe the directors thought the people who saw the movie had already read the book, when the exact opposite would have been true.  The overwhelming majority of those who saw the movie were there because they were Johnny Depp fans, not fans of the book.  With no explanation the viewer would have no idea what was going on in this scene!  Why was Gull in a medical theatre?  If you had read the book (and the appendices, which are near required reading) it would make perfect sense.  But since the movie hadn’t given any background on the four ritual stages of serial killers (aura, trawling, wooing, and ritual) the viewer doesn’t realize this is the part of an hallucination created by Gull’s mind during this, the ritual stage.  It just causes confusion for the viewer, and a very big reason why I don’t care for the execution of the filmmakers.  Finally, in the case of the the famous line “One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century!”  This is a corruption of the original line from the book.  The original line reads: “For better or worse, the twentieth century.  I have delivered it.”  I don’t mind rewriting this line, but were I to rewrite it I would have had it say: “The twentieth century…for better or worse, I have delivered it.”  Metaphorically speaking, Gull did not give birth to the twentieth century, but may have delivered it.  A doctor does not give birth to the baby, the doctor delivers it (unless, of course, the mother is a doctor.)

     With little doubt semi-famous British artist Walter Sickert made Jack the Ripper part of his personal mythology.  At the dinner parties he attended he told the story of how he stayed in the same lodging house, indeed perhaps the same room as the Ripper.  I can just imagine the wome in at the table gasping, napkins covering their mouths as he would tell them how his landlords told him about their suspicions concerning their previous lodger.  It has been supposed by more than one person his story of “Jack the Lodger” has influenced not only Marie Belloc Lowndes story, but the Druitt entry in Sir Melville Macnaghten’s memorandum of Ripper suspects as well.

     Sickert is in a near unique position of turning from Ripperologist to Ripper suspect.  The only other person I can think of who shares this transition is  Robert (Roslyn) D’Onston Stephenson, more of which can be learned by reading Mike Covell’s excellent blog entries about him found here: http://blog.casebook.org/mcebe

     Contrary to what author Patricia Cornwell might want you to believe she was not the first to name Walter Sickert as a suspect in his own right.  That distinction would go to Donald McCormick.  In the 1970 update to his 1959 book “The Identity of Jack the Ripper” McCormick mentioned how Sickert painted “The Camdentown Murders” series of paintings, and how similar they are to the Mary Jane Kelly murder.

     Sickert’s candidacy as a suspect came to the forefront with Stephen Knight’s book “Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution,” which tells the story of the Royal/Masonic conspiracy.  Knight’s information for this came from Joseph Gorman “Sickert,” who claimed to be the son of Walter Sickert, despite having William Gorman’s name on his birth certificate, listing him as Joseph’s father.  More on Joseph Gorman “Sickert” in another post.  JG”S”’s verson of the R/M conspiracy lists the Ripper group as being Gull, Netley, and Sir Robert Anderson, the last of which was in Switzerland during the bulk of the Ripper murders, so couldn’t have been personally involved with the murders themselves.  Knowing this, Knight named Walter Sickert as the third member of the Ripper gang.  This put a rift in the relationship between JG”S” and Knight. 

     Knight took a page from McCormick’s book and wrote about Sickert’s art.  He mentioned more than “The Camdentown Murders,” however, bringing a great number of paintings to the attention of the reader, such as: “Ennui,” “Blackmail, or Mrs. Barrett,” and “Lazarus Breaks His Fast.”  Knight writes about various aspects of each painting, and how it relates to the Ripper murders.  A very interesting read, if only as a flight of fancy.

     Shortly after the publication of Knight’s book very large holes were being punched in the theory by researchers, chief among them Simon Wood.  By the time the Michael Caine “Jack the Ripper” mini-series came out Walter Sickert didn’t even get a mention. 

     Sickert stayed pretty well out of the limelight until Patricia Cornwell’s book came out in 2002.  She declared in the title “Case Closed.”  It wasn’t.  She came up with this ridiculous story of how a fistula in his manhood made it too painful for him to have sex, and he took this affliction out on women, particularly women who make their living through sex.  After her book came out it became known he most likely had an anal fistula rather than a penile fistula, therefore no trouble with sex.  She claims his affliction kept him from having children, which would be disproved if, indeed, Joe Gorman “Sickert” really was Walter sickert’s son. 

     In the end, for you to believe Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper you have to believe he left his home in Dieppe in France, rode a ferry to England, caught a train to London, walked to Whitechapel, found a victim, murdered her, mutilated her, then all while bloodstained calmly walked away, boarded a train back to the English coast, caught a ferry back to France, and walked to his house again, all without attracting any attention to himself.  I can’t say this is impossible, but I find the likelyhood of this to be nearly non-existant.  What do you think?

     The role of Abberline has been played in one way or another by a handful of actors, among them: Wayne Rogers, Gordon Christie, Robert Wisden, Hisayoshi Suganuma for the Japanese animated tv series “Kuroshitsuji (episode “Sono Shitsuji , Sousou”), and most recently Hugo Weaving playing “Inspector Francis Abberline” in the 2010 movie “The Wolfman” featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro in the title roll.  The two most famous portrails of this famous detective in charge of the investigation “on the ground” was Michael Caine in the 1988 mini-series “Jack the Ripper,” and Johnny Depp in the 2001 movie “From Hell.”

     There are some vastly different thoughts in the casting of these two actors for essencially the same roll.  One is British, the other American.  The first was 55 years old, and the second 38.  There were also similarities.  Neither actor even attempted to look like the real life inspector (a step taken by Weaving for the “Wolfman” film.)  Both actors, at the directors’ behest, portrayed  the inspector with a substance abuse problem, the first was alcohol, the other various hallucinogens, including: opium, and absenth.  Finally, both portrayed Abberline as a relentless puersuer of truth.

     I’ll start with the Michael Caine interpretation of Abberline for the 1988 mini-series “Jack the Ripper.”  Caine was 10 years older than the actual Abberline, however the age difference is about as minor an alteration of the character as it gets.  A director makes such sacrifices to get the best actor for the role.  The character was portrayed as a raging alcoholic.  This was not Caine’s fault, but was mandated by the writer/director David Wickes. This portrayal was so upsetting to the Abberline family they contacted a leading Ripper researcher to find if there was any truth to the supposition.  Of course, there’s no evidence to support Abberline being a drunk, but the Victorians probably had different standards for what constitutes an alcoholic than we have today.  The fact Caine played Abberline as an alcoholic doesn’t bother me, because it’s a tool filmmakers often use.  The main character has to overcome a problem/weakness/personal demon in order to bring about a successful conclusion to, in this case, the mystery.  My only complaint in Caine’s performance is that he shouted quite often throughout the mini-series.  I’m sure it was to make the scene more intense, and Caine likely fell back on his theater training and projected his voice for the mood of the scene, but in film it just comes across as accessive emotion. Caine’s Abberline was a man  who had never been married, but had an on again/off again relationship with Emma Prentiss, played by Jane Seymour.  This is totally unlike the real man of the Ripper investigation.  He had a wife who died of tuberculosis.  He was married a second time to a woman named “Emma” but was not the Emma Prentiss of the mini-series.

     Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Abberline in the movie “From Hell” is almost radically different than Caine’s.  He’s much younger, again an aspect I don’t mind.   Depp was only 7 years younger than Abberline would have been at the time, which is closer than Caine’s 10 years older.  The British accent the American Depp uses for the role is far different than the more likely Cockney accent the British Caine used in his film.  The most noticable thing about this portrayal of Abberline is the mixing of two characters: Abberline, and Robert James Lees, the Queen’s psychic medium.  In this film Abberline is a police inspector who can see the future.  The way he accomplishes this is where my objection lies.  While under the influence of an hallucinogen Abberline has visions which show him the murders, and the cirucmstances they were committed in.  I’ll go further into my objections to this character, and the movie itself, in another post.   As for Abberline’s personal life in this film he had been married once, to a woman who died in childbirth, not tuberculosis.  And had never married afterward.  This opened the door for a romantic relationship with Mary Kelly, which never took place in real life.

     Both performances were well done by the actors in question.  In both cases the character was made better by the actors who protrayed him.  I do feel the Caine performance is more likely to real life than the Depp version, for obvious reasons.  But in the end both actors made their respective roles more watchable than they would have been if any other actor had played the same role the same way.

     In my last entry I talked about the movie(s) “The Lodger.”  I have read from at least two independent sources the book “The Lodger” by Marie Belloc Lowndes, was inspired by a story told at dinner parties by British painter Walter Sickert.  The story he told is how he lodged at a house, and the landlords told him the story of how they suspect the previous tenant of being Jack the Ripper.  To make the story interesting he undoubtedly embelished the details.  It isn’t known if Ms. Lowndes heard him tell the story first hand, or from other sources, but it inspired her book, which later became the movies bearing that title. 

     When talking about “The Lodger” as a suspect theory one almost always means “The Batty Street Lodger” which is usually identified as the suspect Dr. Francis Tumblety.  It is believed while this American quack of a doctor was in London he was staying in a house on Batty Street, near the Burner Street crime scene, which is where Elizabeth Stride as murdered.  Most of the transactions with lodging houses, be they private or public, were done in cash,  and therefore no written record was kept at the time.  It is doubtful we will ever know if either Tumblety or Sickert was ever a patron of a lodging house, but the fact there’s no evidence to support this doesn’t mean either of them were not a lodger at any house.  The big question would be if they both were lodgers of the same house at different times. 
    
     Francis Tumblety came to the world’s attention in roughly 1996 when Ripper researcher and collector Stewart Evans bought a typed letter from Detective Chief Inspector John Littlechild from the Special Irish Branch (now known as the less specific “Special Branch”) to journalist George Sims.  In the letter he talks about Tumblety, whom Littlechild considered a strong suspect for Jack the Ripper.  He was arrested on November 7, 1888, two days before the Mary Jane Kelly murder, but posted bail and fled to France, where he booked passage to America under a false name.  His name was printed in American newspapers in relation to the Ripper investigation, but was curiously absent from British newspapers.  While although he’s an interesting character, and deserves further investigation, the biggest hurdle to scale in keeping him as a major suspect is the fact he apparently was homosexual, and most homosexual serial killers murder members of the same sex, rather the opposite.  It was a “gross indecency” charge, which was a euphemism in Victorian England for homosexuality, that Tumblety was arrested for, and led to his flight back to America.

     Tumblety was known to have had a “violent hatred for women” and was alleged to keep a collection of human uteri in bottles filled with spirits.  This, however, has never been proven to be true, but proponants of this theory point to this “evidence” to show he was capable of being Jack the Ripper.  A Scotland Yard investigator traveled to America in search of Tumblety, but his trail ran cold as soon as he landed in New York.  Little was heard of Tumblety until 1903, when he died of heart disease in St. Louis, Missouri.

     The original story of “The Lodger” came as a serial in newspapers of 1911 London, England.  It was written by Marie Belloc Lowndes.  It was finally collected into book form in 1913, and was lauded by such luminaries as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemmingway.  But it was nearly a quarter century before it was rendered to film, and by none other than Alfred Hitchcock himself!  There had been previous films mentioning the Ripper, such as the 1915 oddly titled “Farmer Spud and his Wife Take a Trip to Town” as well as a 1917 version of “Lulu”, but the Hitchcock film was the first to make the search for the Ripper the major plot point of the film.   Hitchcock was known as the Master of the Macabre, but he had to start somewhere, and he started with Jack the Ripper.

     “The Lodger” was not the first movie Hitchcock directed to be released, but he considered it to be his first movie, and it is the earliest film by Hitchcock that survives today in its entirety.  “Hitch” had problems from the beginging, mostly budgetary. He had little money for anything.  He even had to use himself in a shot because he ran out of extras.  This was the start of Hitch using himself as an extra in almost every one of his movies.  His biggest problem was the studio coddling their matinee star Ivor Novello.  The studio didn’t want to endanger the status of their star, Novello, by portraying him as a villain, so Hitch had to make him into the man wrongfully accused of being the Ripper, known in this  movie (and the book) as “The Avenger.”  It turned into something good for Hitch, as he would come back to this “Man wrongfully accused” plotline again and again.

     In 1932 Novello would reprise this roll, in a remake of “The Lodger” called “The Phantom Fiend.”  Hitch was invited to direct this film as well, but turned the offer down.  It was directed, instead, by Maurice Elvey.  Novello put up part of the money for this film, and so was able to dictate that he would not be the killer in this film either. 

     These two films gave rise to more movies along the same vein, such as: “The Lodger” from 1944, 1950’s “Room to Let”, the 1953 tv movie “Man in the Attic”, and the 2009 movie “The Lodger.”  This last film mentioned does use a few shots featuring the website Casebook.org started and maintained by our own Stephen Ryder.  They couldn’t have gone to a better site.

     Even though it’s a peripheral part of the case, and not part of the actual investigation one cannot ignore the importance of the “Dear Boss” letter.  It is, after all, the letter which gave us the name “Jack the Ripper.”  There has been great speculation as to the authorship of this famous letter.  Several names have been offered as the writer of the letter, but the most common name mentioned is Tom Bulling.  A facsimile of the “Dear Boss” letter can be found in nearly every book about Jack the Ripper, but the book “Jack the Ripper: Letters From Hell” by Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner (Sutton Publishing, 2001) is near required reading for anyone interested in the “Jack the Ripper” letters. 
     The name Tom Bulling is usually connected with the writer of the “DB” letter because of a letter he claimed to have copied, and sent the copy to the police.  He told the police he kept the original for the press.  The “copy” he forwarded to the police, in which he attempted to copy the handwriting of the letter writer, can be found in the book by Evans and Skinner.  The “copied” portion appears to be identical to the “DB” letter, leading people to speculate Bulling was the author of the original “Jack the Ripper” letter. 

    
     Another name that has popped up regularly in conjunction with the letters is a man with the last name “Best.”  No first name has been given to this man, but he claimed to be a Fleet Street reporter, and going back through the records of the newsmen on that street during the relevant time the only one with that last name was Frederick Best.  Best said he and a “provincial colleague” wrote the Ripper letters to keep the story going.  If this story is true who could the “provincial colleague” be?  Perhaps Tom Bulling? 
     I’ve been looking at the “DB” letter for years now.  Indeed, it was one of the things which got me interested in the case.  Upon close examination it appeared to me the postscript is in a slightly different hand than the body of the letter.  I’ve discussed this in the Casebook message board.  It was shown to me letter by letter how they were all essentially the same.  The schools at the time were teaching people to write in basicly the same form.  It would have been difficult back then to have differentiated the writings of two people who never met each other.  If indeed this is the case the letters would have looked virtually the same no matter who was writing them, but in my eyes I see enough of a difference to think it possible the body and postscript of the letter to have been written by two different men.  At the same time, one must consider the different matterial used to write with.  The body of the letter was written in red ink (debate still rages over the tip of the pen), while the postscript was written in red crayon.  The slight change in handwriting might be explained by the switch of writing instruments, but I think it is just as well explained that two people wrote the different parts of the letter.
     There are, of course, many other Ripper letters in Scotland Yard’s files, and I’ll probably talk about them in this blog.  I’ll likely return to the “Dear Boss” letter before my last entry.  You can’t overemphasize the importance of this, and all the Ripper letters to the staying power of the mystery that is Jack the Ripper.
    

     This time around I thought about posting something about the Jack the Ripper fiction the case inspired.  I’m calling this “Part I” because I’ll be returning to this mini-series at least two more times, and possibly more.  This will be my attempt to extract the 1988 Michael Caine mini-series “Jack the Ripper” from the Royal/Masonic conspiracy theory it always seems to be lumped in with.  There are plenty of R/M conspiracy movies out there, including “Murder By Decree” and “From Hell”, both of which I’ll talk about in later posts. 

     Even though the Michael Caine mini-series has many of the principle characters as the R/M conspiracy theory it is missing key elements, as well as at least three characters.  The mini-series does feature Sir William Gull, and John Netley, and has a cameo with Prince Albert Victor (Eddy), it’s missing important characters like Walter Sickert, Annie Elizabeth Crook, and her daughter (with Eddy) Alice Margaret.

    
     As a result there’s no government conspiracy saying they must cover-up the misdeeds of the prince, because the prince committed no mentioned misdeeds.   The theory presented in this movie is such: ***spoilers*** Sir William Gull, physician-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria, wanted to understand insanity so it could be cured, so he drove himself insane by killing women he didn’t think would be missed: prostitutes.  I struggle in my mind to think of which theory is more rediculous.  I’m leaning towards the movie solution.  The conspiracy is at least compelling, and when presented convincing. 

     I’ll cover a review of the mini-series in a separate post, but the last 30 (roughly) minutes are the offending parts of the show.  This is where the David Wickes theory (sane Gull understanding insane Gull) is presented.  It flys in the face of sanity itself.  I think he came to the case thinking Gull was guilty already, but rejecting the R/M conspiracy theory he had to come up with his own, and this is the result.  I do find it interesting Wickes was one of the directors for the Barlow and Watt “Jack the Ripper” mini-series.  That was where the Joseph Gorman “Sickert” theory which launched the Stephen Knight R/M conspiracy theory to begin with.  Funny how things come full circle, huh? 

     Bottom line is, dispite any similarities this movie/mini-series has with the Royal/Masonic conspiracy theory, this isn’t about that.  It does present it’s own theory, which is equally nonsensical.  Tell me what you think.

     Welcome back, reader(s?) 

     For my first post about Jack the Ripper I thought I should talk about an aspect of the case itself.  So I’ve decided to touch upon the suspect identification at the seaside home.  There is a bit of confusion as to who the witness called to the seaside home was.  The most common candidates are Israel Schwartz and Joseph Lawende.  Lawende is usually discounted because he was used to identify the suspect in the Francis Coles murder.  Why would he be called to identify the murderer of Coles as Jack the Ripper when he’d already been called to the seaside home to identify the same killer?  As a result of this argument most Ripperologists turn their attention to Israel Schwartz.

     If it was Schwartz who was called to the seaside home to identify Jack the Ripper Sir Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Division and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as well as his assistant, Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson must have believed the killer of Elizabeth Stride was Jack the Ripper.  It was the assault on Stride that Schwartz was witness to, before the assailent’s cry of “Lipski” (a popular slur of Jews of the day) caused Schwartz to rush off.  I’ll leave the debate of whether Elizabeth Stride was a true victim of Jack the Ripper till another post of this blog.

     If, indeed, Schwartz was Anderson’s witness there are two possibilities, from which many scenarios may have played out.  Either Schwartz was there to identify the attacker of Liz Stride (broad-shouldered man), or he was there to identify the accomplice.  If he were there to identify the killer, then Anderson and Swanson believed a man named (Aaron?) Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.  That being the case Schwartz identified Kosminski as the attacker of Liz Stride, and possibly Jack the Ripper himself.

     If Schwartz had been brought in to identify Kosminski as the accomplice, Kosminski would be a vital link to capturing Jack the Ripper, but it is clear through the Swanson marginalia of Anderson’s memoir that they believed Kosminski to have been the attacker, and therefore Jack the Ripper.  However due to a language barrier Schwartz might not have understood this.  I’m thinking Schwartz’s knowlege of English was limited, and Anderson’s/Swanson’s knowlege of both Hebrew and Yiddish were non-existant.  If Anderson/Swanson brought him in to identify the attacker and Schwartz thought he was brought in to identify the accomplice it could lead to the confusion we have today.

     I believe it is most likely Schwartz could not identify the attacker.  Since Schwartz was across the street from the attack, and the attacker had his back to the street, the only time Schwartz could have seen the attacker’s face was when he turned to shout “Lipski,” and this would likely only be half the face, not to mention the poor lighting that would have been in the area.  I doubt Schwartz could have seen any part of his face.  The man who walked after Schwartz, whom many think may have been an accomplice, was also across the street, but not very far from Schwartz, and would have eventually walked under a lamp post, and given Schwartz a greater chance to have seen his face.  The fact he walked after Schwartz does not prove he was an accomplice.  He may have been fleeing from the “Lipski” slur the same as Schwartz.  Even Schwartz himself couldn’t exclude this idea.  He said he wasn’t sure if the man was working with the attacker or running away from him the same as Schwartz himself was.  I find it more likely Schwartz would have been able to identify this man, than “broad-shouldered man” who attacked Stride. 

     If Schwartz was identifying a possible accomplice, and Anderson/Swanson thought he was identifying the attacker they would feel he was positively identifying Jack the Ripper, which explains Swanson’s line in Anderson’s memoir “Kosminski was the suspect.”  When Anderson told Schwartz this information would send Kosminski to the gallows Schwartz refused to give testimony against Kosminski, not wanting the death of a fellow Jew on his conscience, especially at gentile justice.  And if, indeed, Kosminski was just trying to escape from the “Lipski” slur he would have been just as innocent as Schwartz of being Jack the Ripper!  It is really only because of the Swanson marginalia and his inclusion in McNaughton’s memorandum we even consider Kosminski as a suspect, and it’s likely McNaughton got Kosminski’s name from Anderson. 

     You’ll likely notice there are a lot of “ifs” in this entry.  Were the situation that played out at the seaside home had been better recorded there would have been far fewer “ifs” in the post you’re reading.  But such is the playing field in the game of “Find Jack the Ripper.”  Well, that’s my thoughts.  What are yours?