Jack the Ripper: A Rabbit Hole

The ‘Canonical Five” and the Whitechapel Murders 

******WARNING BEFORE YOU READ PLEASE DON'T SKIP THIS***** - There are some really really horrible images contained in this post that show the results of Jack the Ripper's brutal murder of five women. I've chosen to include them anyway because I think it's important - both because it's important to realistically and authentically depict a historical period accurately and because I think it emphasizes just how shocking these murders were, even in the context of our modern sensibilities.  

The general number of murders during this time in the East End makes it difficult to understand just how many people Jack the Ripper is responsible for killing – violence against women was alarmingly high during this period generally. So many started to occur that they were described by police as the “Whitechapel murders.” However, there are five murders that can be confidently linked to the Jack the Ripper: those of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. Each of these murders is linked due to the method and lack of motive behind it:
Each victim had their throat slashed, had some organ that was removed in someway (or were otherwise mutilated in a way that could be seen as methodical) and there was no clear suspect or reason for their death. These victims would come to be called 'The Canonical Five."

Nichols' body was discovered at 3:40 a.m. on Friday 31 August 1888 in Buck's Row, Whitechapel. The throat was severed by two cuts, and the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep and jagged cut.


Chapman's body was discovered at 6 a.m. on Saturday 8 September 1888 near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. The throat had two cuts. The abdomen, again, was slashed open with the uterus removed.


Stride was killed in the early morning of Sunday 30 September 1888. Stride's body was discovered at 1 a.m. in Dutfield's Yard in Whitechapel. There was a single cut to her neck. There were no mutilations, however it’s assumed that the killer was interrupted by an eye witness before he could finish.


Eddowes' body was found in London only 45 minutes after Stride’s. The throat was also cut and the abdomen was ripped open by the same distinctive deep, open cut. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed.


Kelly's body was discovered mutilated and disembowelled in her bedroom on 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields, at 10:45 a.m. on Friday 9 November 1888. The throat had been cut  down to her spine. Her body had been emptied of its organs.
 

The Suspects 

Prince Albert Victor
-Grandson of Queen Victoria
-Mother was well loved by the public but hated him
-Had a reputation as a womanizer and party guy – a lot of scandals as a results of his partying was covered up; the most shocking of which linked him to an underage male brothel in London. The brother would use 'post boys' who would 'visit' the homes to clients. I'll let you fill in the blanks.
-Someone close to him (James Pope-Hennessy) once described him as "Even his nearest and dearest, who were naturally bent on making the best of poor Prince Eddy, could not bring themselves to use more positive terms. Prince Eddy was certainly dear and good, kind and considerate. He was also backward and utterly listless. He was self-indulgent and not punctual. He had been given no proper education, and as a result he was interested in nothing. He was as heedless and as aimless as a gleaming gold-fish in a crystal bowl." – he was an idiot
-This is support by his teach who said that he clearly suffered from some type of learning disability or just simply had a limited amount of intelligence
-Was in line to the be king but died of an influenza outbreak right before marrying Queen Mary
-Wasn’t listed as a suspect during this era but in 1970 an article was published in The Criminologist that uncovered correspondence between Albert and his personal doctor Sir William Gull.
-Gull claims that Albert didn’t die of a cold but of syphilis that he contracted while in India. His syphilis would eventually drive him to insanity, which would then drive him to kill.
-He is accused by Gull of murdering 3 women.
-There are a few problems
a. The timeline of syphilitic insanity would mean that Albert would’ve had to contract the disease when he was six and not living in India
b. He wasn’t in London during the first 4 Whitechapel Murders
c. He had no formal education, making it unlikely that he had any working knowledge of the human body.
-There are other theories that propose that Albert wasn’t directly involved but had some involvement. Most stories argue that Albert and various friends of Albert fell in love with prostitutes and then murdered them during a fit of passion.
-He is also the poster child for a wider conspiracy that argued that the Royal Family covered up all the murders for some reason; supported by two facts
a. To this day, the police have yet to release an unrestricted and uncensored version of the murders. Some of the thousands of pages haven't even been released for 'security reasons'
b. Multiple eye witnesses across all the murders report seeing upwards of 3-4 people.
c. No one person could possible be responsible for ALL the deaths.


 
Joseph Barnett

-Was a fish porter that lived in Whitechapel.
-Is a suspect largely because of his relationship to Mary Jane Kelly, a woman whose body would be found brutally mutilated in 1888. They had some sort of relationship that some say was requited, others that it wasn’t.
-Suspicion only arose in the 1970s when author Bruce Paley proposed the theory. The book he published was accused of having flawed research methods.
-Had some type of speech impediment and stutter.
-The murders stopped after Kelly and is was known that Barnett had a key to her home.
-Matches the FBI psychological profile that was released
 F.B.I. Psychological Profile
 White male, aged 28 to 36, living or working in the Whitechapel area.
Barnett was 30 years old, white, and lived within a mile of Whitechapel for his entire life.
In childhood, there was an absent or passive father figure.
Joseph's father died when he was six.
The killer probably had a profession in which he could legally experience his destructive tendencies.
Barnett was a fish porter, undoubtedly experienced in boning and gutting fish.
Jack the Ripper probably ceased his killing because he was either arrested for some other crime, or felt himself close to being discovered as the killer.
Barnett was interviewed for four hours after the Kelly murder. The police seemed satisfied with his testimony and they don't appear to have suspected him further.
The killer probably had some sort of physical defect which was the source of a great deal of frustration or anger.
According to one contemporary news report, Barnett repeated the last words spoken to him at the inquest. This could be an indication of echolalia, a speech impediment.
 
Lewis Carrol
-Wrote Alice in Wonderland
-Is the suspect for entirely unfounded reasons but is more the product of other rumors about him
-Was very eccentric and private. He never married but it was known that he did have some ‘close’ relationships with married and unmarried women.
-Was also very eccentric but sociable. He had a stutter that would plague him all his life which didn’t help.
-Evidence that in the 1860s he had a very sexually traumatic experience though details about what happened are not clear.
-Most evidence isn’t really evidence, mostly involving anagrams that rearrange parts of his writing that somehow prove he’s the killer.
Example:
For example he takes this passage from Dodgson's 'Nursery Alice':
'So she wondered away, through the wood, carrying the ugly little thing with her. And a great job it was to keep hold of it, it wriggled about so. But at last she found out that the proper way was to keep tight hold of itself foot and its right ear'.
Can be turned into:
'She wriggled about so! But at last Dodgson and Bayne found a way to keep hold of the fat little whore. I got a tight hold of her and slit her throat, left ear to right. It was tough, wet, disgusting, too. So weary of it, they threw up - jack the Ripper.'
This theory is dumb, however, because you can do this with literally any sentence in the English language.
For example:
'Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now'
can be turned into
'Stab red red women! CR is downing whores - AA'
 
David Cohen aka Nathan Kaminsky aka Leather Apron
-Is actually multiple people, all Polish Jews
-Was part of a working theory that argued that the suspect was a Polish Jew that lived in whitechapel.
-Adopted the name “Leather Apron” to describe this theory; largely the result of eye witness accounts that said the culprit wore a bloody leather apron (probably not true)
David Cohen is the Polish Jew that is pointed to the most and is based on two pieces of evidence
1. the 1894 Macnaghten memoranda list him as a suspect because
a. he was "a Polish Jew & resident in Whitechapel.
b. That he was mentally insane due to ‘solitary vices.’
c. Had ‘a great hatred of women’ and ‘homicidal tendencies’
d. He had spent time in an insane asylum in March 1889.
e. General hearsay pointed to him as the killer

2. Sir Robert Anderson (Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard).
a. Described the suspect as a ‘low class Polish Jew.’
b. "One did not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to discover that the criminal was a sexual maniac of a virulent type; that he was living in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders; […] And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews […] I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. But no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer. I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him; but he refused to give evidence against him.";
c. a copy of Anderson's memoirs: "because the suspect was also a Polish Jew and also because his evidence would convict the suspect, and witness would be the means of murderer being hanged which he did not wish to be left on his mind. […] And after this identification which suspect knew, no other murder of this kind took place in London. […]

The problem: all of this evidence is circumstantial and clearly based on the racist tendencies of Scotland yard
 
Dr. Thomas Neil Cream
-A Scottish born doctor that came from a wealthy family that owned a hotel.
-Had education as a doctor – matching the profile of Jack the Ripper
-Was actually a murderer – he is known to have poisoned 3-4 women; his three wives and a chambermaid.
-Is also accused of killing three other women, all of whom were prostitutes but unrelated to the canonical 5.
-He was eventually sentenced and put in prison, despite the protection his money provided (but not for any killings related to Jack the Ripper).
-Evidence against states that his method of murder doesn’t match that of Jack.
-He was also in prison on a different and unrelated murder of other prostitutes during the time of the Whitechapel murders. (who were all poisoned, not stabbed and mutilated).
-Is thought of as the killer for matching the profile.
-Still no evidence linking him to the crime.

 
Montague John Druitt

-Implied homosexual
-Killed himself

There is a theory that tragedies in his life lead to increased mental instability-  The death of his father in 1885, followed by the death of his mother six months later didn’t look too great when juxtaposed to a family history of mental illness -  Ann Druitt, his mother, died in the Manor House Asylum in Chiswick in 1890. She suffered from paranoid delusions. She once attempted suicide. His grandmother also had committed suicide, and his sister also attempted to kill herself. His oldest sister killed herself in old age by jumping from an attic window.
On January 2, 1889, Montague killed himself after an inquiry into whether or not he was Jack the Ripper.
The meat of the accusation comes from Inspector Macnaghten who is quoted as saying:
“I have always held strong opinions regarding him, and the more I think the matter over, the stronger do these opinions become. The truth, however, will never be known, and did indeed, at one time lie at the bottom of the Thames, if my conjections be correct!”

The Scotland Yard’s profile says the following:
“Mr. M.J. Druitt a doctor of about 41 years of age & of fairly good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, and whose body was found floating in the Thames on 31st Dec: i.e. 7 weeks after the said murder. The body was said to have been in the water for a month, or more -- on it was found a season ticket between Blackheath & London. From private information I have little doubt that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane.”

Another Scotland Yard file reads:
“A Mr M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, & whose body (which was said to have been upwards of a month in the water) was found in the Thames on 31st December - or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.”

That being said, all evidence linking Druitt to any of the murders is non-existant. The only link can be made in likeness to witness accounts. Three major witnesses report the Ripper as having a moustache (which Druitt had), although the color varies. Druitt also generally looked 'respectable' and had a reputation for being well dressed, a description that matched SOME descriptions given by eye witnesses.