London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (3 page)

THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE SEARCH FOR THE IDENTITY OF JACK THE RIPPER

For every book written about the Whitechapel murders there is a suspect in the frame. It would seem that most of those who choose to write about the case do so in the hope of persuading the reader that their own pet theory is the correct one. As I stated at the outset, this is not my intention. This desire to solve the mystery of the murderer's identity is understandable, as is the process of refuting each new suggested killer. After all if we actually found out who had killed five or more women in the late summer and autumn of 1888 then who would continue to be interested in the case? Without the mystery the Whitechapel murders become just another tale of sadistic serial killing: interesting but not nearly as compelling.

The Casebook website (perhaps the most useful of all ripperology portals on the internet) has been running a poll of visitors to gauge who is the most popular of all the suspects listed. At the moment the top 20 stands thus:

1. James Maybrick

2. Francis Tumblety

3. Walter Sickert

4. The Royal Conspiracy

5. Joseph Barnett

6. George Chapman

7. Aaron Kosminski

8. The Lodger

9. Montague John Druitt

10. Jill the Ripper

11. W. H. Bury

12. Francis Thompson

13. R. D'Onston Stephenson

14. Michael Ostrog

15. George Hutchinson

16. Prince Albert Victor

17. Dr Thomas Neill Cream

18. James Kelly

19. James Kenneth Stephen

20. Dr Pedachenko'

There are more recent additions that have not made the top ten, including a local East End mortuary assistant, Robert Mann, named recently by Dr Mei Trow.b Despite the extensive (but not exhaustive) list above new suspects will continue to emerge. This is the nature of ripper studies: the search for a culprit dominates the genre.

As Christopher Frayling observed those selected as possible killers have generally fallen into three types: an `English milord; mad doctor or foreigner (in particular an immigrant Jew). These suggested suspects are not modern inventions but were in common currency in 1888 and immediately afterwards, and each is a representation of the `other' in Victorian society.

The contemporary newspapers, the Pall Mall Gazette for example, chose the person of Rosslyn D'Onston Stephenson, a self-styled occultist who fitted the image of a decadent English gentleman who killed for pleasure. The image of the depraved aristocrat was a convenient one for the middle-class editor of the Gazette to present to a readership recently horrified by the revelations that members of the upper classes were routinely purchasing teenage working-class virgins for as little as £5 a time (as we shall see in Chapter 6). Likewise the Ripper was thought by some to be a middle-class do-gooder, one of the many philanthropists and religious men that had set up camp in the East End to save the area from itself.

The notion that `Jack' was a doctor arose from the suggestion (by some, but significantly not all, of those who examined the bodies of the victims) that the killer possessed some medical knowledge. This was despite the fact that, as the City of London's own medical expert declared, the killer `does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterman or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals'.' The most recent suspect, the Whitechapel mortuary attendant Robert Mann, is the latest to be linked to the crimes through some tenuous link with medicine. Mann worked alongside professional medical practictioners and thus would have been able to gain a working knowledge of human anatomy. However, this would have applied equally to medical students, countless local slaughtermen and butchers, and presumably anyone who took the time and trouble to consult an anatomy textbook or attend a series of public lectures.

That the Ripper was a foreigner was another theory that engaged contemporary opinion. Perhaps `Jack' was one of the many foreign sailors who arrived on the London docks from all over the Empire, Europe and beyond. The Portuguese and Spanish were renowned for their use of knives; the more exotic Lascars and Caribs had cultures far removed from civilized Englishmen; the Jews had provided a focus for anti-alienism for centuries and now there were more of them than ever before packed into the workshops and slums of East London. Jews from Eastern Europe also brought with them the contagion of revolutionary socialism and anarchism, so the idea that the Ripper was a mad-eyed Polish revolutionary was not beyond contemporary imagining.

Of course much of this contemporary mud-slinging was initiated by the editors of the London newspapers, keen to provide their readers with a social commentary on the murders and to ensure the story remained uppermost in the public imagination so that increased circulation rates were maintained. However, while we might excuse the late Victorians (who had little understanding of the way in which serial killers operated) their prejudices born of ignorance, can we extend the same allowances to more modern scholars? After all, as Frayling points out, nearly all those who have been put forward as Ripper suspects in the last 120 years still continue to be drawn from the broad typology that he has identified, even when `there is so much evidence, social and psychological, to contradict them' 8 Thus, we have a plethora of mad doctors: Dr Cream (who supposedly confessed as his hangman launched him `into eternity'), Dr Tumblety (who escaped the clutches of Scotland Yard by fleeing to the USA) and Dr Williams who helped found the National Library of Wales and apparently bequeathed the bloody knife he used to murder his victims to the archives there.

Neil Cream is an unlikely suspect despite making the top 20 on the Casebook website: his only connection to the murders is his alleged last-minute confession and there is evidence that from 1881 to 1891 he was locked up in an American gaol, although this has not prevented some from suggesting he had a doppelganger who committed the murders while he was incarcerated. Francis Tumblety was put forward as a suspect by Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey.9 Tumblety was arrested by the police and supposedly charged in connection with the Whitechapel murders. However, it seems unlikely that they truly believed they had their man, given that he was granted bail a few days after Mary Kelly became the Ripper's fifth victim, and he fled the continent under a false name. Stewart Evans' reason for identifying this most unpleasant individual was the emergence of a new piece of evidence in the ongoing Ripper inquiry. This was a letter penned by Chief Inspector Littlechild in 1913 in which Tumblety is named as a `very likely suspect' The letter seems authentic and there are several other reasons why Tumblety has remained close to the top of many people's lists of `Rippers' However, Tumblety was a known homosexual, indeed it was this that brought him to police attention long before the Whitechapel murders began. From what we now understand of serial killers it would seem unlikely that a homosexual `lust murderer' would gain any sexual pleasure from mutilating female victims." Littlechild's letter is suitably vague and this allows it to be interpreted in a number of ways. This is a feature of much of the Ripper evidence. Littlechild says, for example, that although Tumblety was `a "Sycopathia Sexualis"[sic] subject he was not known as a "Sadist" (which the murderer unquestionably was) but his feelings toward women were remarkable and bitter in the extreme, a fact on record." Littlechild was also writing some 25 years after the murders to a journalist interested in the case. As a result this evidence is not quite as clear or as strong as some might want us to believe: the jury is still out on Francis Tumblety.

Dr (Sir) John Williams is a more recent name to be associated with the murders. When Tony Williams was researching his family history in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, he came across a box which held the doctor's effects including a surgical knife and three slides supposedly containing `animal matter'." According to this account Dr John Williams worked at the London hospital for a time and murdered the five women in the Ripper case files in his search of a cure for his wife's infertility. This is a most unlikely scenario for a serious medical practitioner and stretches the credibility of Williams as a suspect. According to Tony Williams and Humphrey Price, Dr Williams also performed an abortion on Mary Ann Nichols in 1885 and managed to have an affair with Marie Kelly who he had known from Wales. Overall Tony Williams' case is severely flawed and based almost entirely on conjecture. Williams is not alone in this; many of the scores of Ripper books are poorly researched and would probably not have seen the light of day had they not been about the most elusive serial killer history has so far produced. As Robin Odell notes in an essay published on the Casebook website, `Making accusations that erode the good name and reputation of long-dead eminent Victorians has become something of a cult in the vast literature that has grown up around Ripperology' 13 He points out that Dr John Williams is just the latest in a long line that includes Queen Victoria's surgeon Dr William Gull, a man at the centre of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories that surround the case.

Towards the end of the 1970s the idea that the Ripper murders were actually the work of more than one individual emerged in Stephen Knight's book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. The seed for this had been a BBC Television drama documentary in which Joseph Sickert (the son of the Victorian artist Walter Sickert) alleged that his father had told him the dark truth about the murders. In brief, the conspiracy unfolds thus: Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward (or `Eddy' to his friends), the grandson of Queen Victoria and therefore possible heir to the throne, became involved with an ordinary working-class girl called Annie Crook who had been introduced to the prince by his friend Walter Sickert. As a result of their dalliance Eddy and Annie had a child (Alice Margaret) and subsequently married in secret. This was of particular concern to the Queen because Annie was not only poor and a commoner - she was a Catholic. This last fact threatened the very fabric of the nation and when the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, found out about the affair he ordered that Annie be removed and the pair separated. Salisbury enlisted Sir William Gull's (the royal physician) help in having Annie committed to an asylum where she was forced to undergo an operation that caused her to lose her memory if not her mind. Walter Sickert rescued baby Alice and arranged for her nanny, one Mary Kelly, to look after her and keep her away from the agents of the government and royal family. So Mary took the child to be raised by nuns. Alas Mary was overcome by the enormity of Annie's affair with the Duke of Clarence and broke down. Eventually she fell into prostitution on the streets of Whitechapel where she told anyone that would listen about Eddy's indiscretion and the existence of his love child.

At this point three of her companions, Polly Nichols, Elizabeth Stride and Annie Chapman, recognizing an opportunity to drag themselves out of the gutter, persuaded Mary to use the story to extort money from the government in exchange for not going to the newspapers. Lord Salisbury now persuaded Sir William Gull to silence the women once and for all and he and his cab driver, John Netley, trawled the streets of Whitechapel gradually picking off the women one by one. Unfortunately for her, Catherine (or Kate) Eddowes was a case of mistaken identity as she had used the name Kelly when arrested by the police. When Gull and Netley finally caught up with Mary Kelly - the source of all the trouble - they made sure she would never speak to anyone ever again. In a rather neat twist Knight alleges that as Gull, Salisbury and the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, were all Freemasons it was easy to cover up the crimes and put the blame on Montague Druitt (whose body was dragged from the Thames some weeks after the Kelly murder).14

The Freemasonry angle allows Knight to get around his lack of any tangible evidence. The network of Freemasons means that it would all have been destroyed. It is a classic conspiracy theory - the lack of evidence is in fact evidence of its veracity. The story also endures because it goes to the heart of Victorian society and touches the Royal Family itself. We want to believe it because it is so incredible, especially in a modern age when the Royals have lost some of their previous glister. It is no surprise that the Royal conspiracy has featured in several films about the murders, including the most recent outing with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham, From Hell, inspired by the graphic novel of the same name.15

Although the Royal conspiracy is entertaining it has little basis in truth. Indeed truth seems to be almost incidental in some of the books that have claimed to unveil the identity of Jack the Ripper. Having looked at `killer doctors' we can turn to consider some of the claims made against depraved English gentlemen or those that might fall into a similar category. Montague Druitt, who was one of three suspects named in the infamous McNaughten memorandum, apparently committed suicide soon after the Kelly murder in November 1888. Druitt was a quiet barrister or school teacher who feared he was losing his mind (like his mother before him) and it is alleged, but not proven, that he had lost his position at a private school because he had been caught `interfering' with one of the boys. If we believe Knight's account, he was fitted up and possibly murdered by the Freemasons. Among the possessions found at his home was a suicide note in which he wrote: `Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.' If Inspector McNaughten had not named him, along with Kosminski, `a poor Polish Jew, and Michael Ostrog, a petty criminal who is quite easily dismissed as a suspect, there would be little reason to suspect him. He is a gentleman and his suicide fits neatly with the end of the murders. But why are we looking for a gentleman at all?

Another Victorian gent has, in recent years, also been accused after his diary surfaced in Liverpool to shed new light on the case in 1991. In his own words James Maybrick recounts the murders in all their gory detail and even left behind a ladies gold watch engraved with the words `I am Jack - J. Maybrick' complete with the initials of his victims scratched on the back. Surely now researchers had the missing evidence to prove the killer's identity? Unfortunately some have had the temerity to doubt the provenance of the diary and watch. Had it been faked they asked? The person that brought the diary to the attention of the world, Michael Barrett, has admitted it was a forgery and then retracted his confession before again denying its authenticity. After a tremendous amount of investigation it remains unclear whether the diary is genuine or not but even if it is there is no conclusive proof that it was written by the murderer. The diary fits the dramatic narrative of Ripper suspects; after all, Maybrick was himself murdered - poisoned by his wife Florence in one of the most sensational murder stories of 1889. How fitting that he should posthumously confess to an even more sensational crime a century later.