Unless Jack the Ripper was incredibly stupid, he would have removed the side of folded stationery that was embossed with the address. This is not to say that criminals haven’t been known to make numbskull over-sights, such as leaving a driver’s license at a crime scene or writing a “stick-up” note on a deposit slip that includes the bank robber’s address and Social Security number. But the Ripper did not make fatal errors during his lifetime.
He also did not believe he would ever be caught. Sickert must not have been worried about the artwork or watermarks on the Ripper letters he wrote. Perhaps this was another “catch me if you can” taunt. More likely, he was too arrogant to think paper or crude cartoons would matter—and he was right. The A Pirie & Sons watermarks we found on Sickert stationery include a watermarked date of manufacturing. The three partial dates on the Ripper letters with the A Pirie & Sons watermark are 18 and 18 and 87. The 87, obviously, is 1887.
Repeated trips to archives turned up other matching watermarks. Letters Sickert wrote to Jacques-Emile Blanche in 1887 are on stationery with the address embossed in black, and a Joynson Superfine watermark. A search through the Blanche-Sickert correspondence in the Institut Bibliothèque de L’Institut de France in Paris shows that during the late summer and fall of 1888 and in the spring of 1889, Sickert was still using Joynson Superfine paper with the return address of 54 Broadhurst Gardens either embossed with no color or in bright red with a red border.
Letters Ellen wrote to Blanche as late as 1893 with a 10 Glebe Place, Chelsea, return address are on stationery that also has the Joynson Superfine watermark. In the Whistler collection at Glasgow, there are seven Sickert letters with the Joynson Superfine watermark, and it would appear that Sickert was using this stationery about the same time he was using A Pirie & Sons.
In the Sir William Rothenstein collection at Harvard University’s Department of Manuscripts, I found two other Sickert letters with the Joynson Superfine watermark. Rothenstein was an artist and a writer, and a trusted enough friend of Sickert’s that the latter felt comfortable asking him to lie under oath. During the late 1890s, Sickert had become friendly with a French woman named Madame Villain, a fishwife in Dieppe he referred to as “Titine.” For £5 a quarter, he rented a small space in her house for his bedroom and studio. Whatever the nature of his relationship with Titine, his living with her would have been used against him in court had he contested Ellen’s divorce suit, which he did not. “If subpoenaed,” he wrote to Rothenstein in 1899, during the divorce, “you might truly remain as you are in ignorance of Titine’s very name. You might say I always call her ‘Madame.’” Rothenstein was not ignorant of Titine. He knew very well who she was.
Both Joynson Superfine watermarked letters that Sickert wrote to Rothenstein are undated. One of them—oddly, written in German and Italian—is on stationery that must have belonged to Sickert’s mother because the return address is hers. A second Joynson Superfine watermarked letter to Rothenstein, which includes mathematical scribbles and a cartoonish face and the word ugh, has a return address of 10 Glebe Place, Chelsea, which is the same return address on Ellen Sickert’s 1893 letter to Blanche. In another letter to Rothenstein, Sickert draws childish, round cartoon faces that resemble a cartoon face on a postcard the Ripper wrote to James Fraser of the City of London Police Office (undated, but probably the fall of 1888, because the postcard taunts police about “Poor Annie,” or the murder of Annie Chapman).
There is a Ripper letter at the PRO with a partial Joynson Superfine watermark. It would appear that Sickert used Joynson Superfine watermarked paper from the late 1880s through the late 1890s. I have found no letters with this watermark that date from after his divorce in 1899, when he moved to continental Europe.
As these watermarks continued to turn up, Tate Britain suggested I consult with Peter Bower, one of the most respected paper experts and paper historians in the world, to see what he had to say about paper comparisons between Sickert and Ripper letters. Bower is a frequent expert witness in court, and is perhaps best known for his work on the papers used by artists as various as Michelangelo, J. M. W. Turner, Constable, and others—as well as for determining that the Ripper diary is a fraud. Bower points out that matching watermarks do not always mean the paper was from the same batch.
When trying to ascertain a match, he uses a 30X lens to study the measurements, fiber content, and distances between chain lines, among other features. When paper is manufactured by machine, as A Pirie & Sons and Joynson Superfine were, and the paper comes from one batch, this means that each sheet of paper came from the same roll. Another batch produced from a different roll of paper can have the same watermark and a very similar fiber content, but the individual sheets of paper may have slight differences in measurements due to the speed of drying or the way the machine cut it.
These characteristics—measurements and spacing of the wire the paper was formed on—are the paper’s Y profile, and matching Y profiles mean the paper came from the same batch. Bower says it is not unusual for an individual to have stationery that comes from many batches, and that even when the paper is ordered from the stationer, there could be different batches mixed in, although the watermarks and embossing or engraving are the same. The discrepancies in the Sickert and Ripper letters pertain to their measurements.
For example, the “Dear Openshaw” letter with the A Pirie watermark is from the same batch as a November 22nd A Pirie Ripper letter mailed from London, but not from the same batch as another November 22nd A Pirie letter the Ripper leads us to believe (through the date and place he wrote on the letter) he mailed from Manchester. Clearly, the Ripper had a mixture of A Pirie batches when he wrote these November 22nd letters, unless one wishes to make the case that there were two different individuals who just happened to write Ripper letters on A Pirie & Sons paper of the same type and color, allegedly on November 22nd.
Differences in measurements can, in some instances, be attributed to conservation. When paper is heated by applying a protective membrane, for example, the paper shrinks slightly. More probable is that the differences in measurements can be explained by reorders from the stationer. During the late 1880s, personalized stationery was usually ordered in a quire, or twenty-four sheets, including unprinted second sheets. A reorder of the same personalized stationery on the same type of paper with the same watermark could quite easily come from a different batch. Or perhaps the stationer used a different standard size, such as Post Quarto, which was approximately 7 by 9 inches, or Commercial Note, which was 8 by 5 inches, or Octavo Note, which was nominally 7 by 4½ inches.
An example of a discrepancy in paper size is a Ripper letter with a Joynson Superfine watermark that was sent to the City of London Police. The torn half of the folded stationery measures 6 inches by 9 inches. Another Ripper letter on the same type of paper with the same watermark was sent to the Metropolitan Police and that stationery is Commercial Note, or 8 by 5 inches. A Sickert letter written on Monckton’s Superfine that we examined in Glasgow measures 7⅛ inches by 9 inches, while a Ripper letter sent to the City of London Police on the same type of paper with a matching Monckton’s Superfine watermark measures 7⅛ inches by 8 inches. Most likely, this suggests that in these cases the Monckton’s Superfine stationery is from different batches, but this by no means indicates that it was from different Ripper letter-writers.
I point out these different paper batches only because a defense attorney would. In fact, paper of the same type and watermark but from different batches doesn’t necessarily mean a setback in a case and, as Bower pointed out, having studied other artists’ paper, he “would expect to find variations like this.”
But Bower also discovered paper in Ripper letters that do not have variations, and because they also have no watermarks, these letters were not really noticed by anyone else. Two Ripper letters written to the Metropolitan Police and one Ripper letter written to the City of London Police are on matching very cheap pale blue paper—and for three letters to
come from the same batch of paper strongly indicates that the same person wrote them, just as matching watermarks, especially three different types of matching watermarks, are hard to dismiss.
Almost impossible to dismiss are discoveries Bower made after the initial publication of this book. Dr. Anna Gruetzner Robins discovered a small number of Sickert letters at the Getty Research Institute in Santa Monica, California, and I went to see them. I made measurements of the stationery, described watermarks and the paper, and sent the information to Bower. He was excited enough about what he saw to travel from London to the Getty Institute and examine the original letters.
His amazing discovery is this: Three Sickert letters written on his mother’s stationery and two Ripper letters come from a batch of twenty-four sheets of stationery with the watermark Gurney Ivory Laid.
Bower explained that the manufacturer of Gurney Ivory Laid “made relatively small runs of papers such as stationery, the sheets roughly guillotined to size and then folded and divided into quires of twenty-four sheets. Each individual quire of paper was then given a final trim in a hand-fed guillotine. Every guillotining would produce very slightly different trims. The match between the short edge cuts of the four identified sheets shows they came from the same quire of paper . . . [or] group of 24 sheets.”
Some months later, Bower discovered a third Sickert letter in the British Library, written (circa 1890) to a woman named Miss E. Case who had invited Sickert and his wife, Ellen, to a social gathering. Sickert replies in a note on Gurney Ivory Laid paper that Ellen is “still in the country,” and adds, “I am never able to get out during daylight.” Again, the sheet of stationery is from the same batch as the two other Sickert letters on Gurney Ivory Laid paper and the two Ripper letters on Gurney Ivory Laid paper.
As Bower’s paper investigation continued, he came up with more evidence that constitutes more proof that Sickert wrote numerous Ripper letters.
Four letters catalogued in the “Whitechapel Murders” file at the Corporation of London Records Office were written on Joynson Superfine paper and signed “Nemo.” The dates are October 8, 1888; October 16, 1888; January 29, 1889; and February 16, 1889. The first time I saw these letters I was suspicious of them because Sickert’s stage name was Mr. Nemo, and after months of research I had come to believe that Jack the Ripper didn’t always sign his letters with his various versions of the Ripper name (the Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Saucy Jack, and so on). In some letters, the signature seems to depend on the contents and intended recipient. A number of letters not signed “Jack the Ripper”—most written to the City of London Police—are supposed to seem helpful to the investigation, but reek of mockery and attempts to manipulate police into following through with suggestions while, no doubt, the Ripper watches from backstage and laughs.
The following list provides a brief summary of the new evidence about definite and probable matches in paper that Sickert and Ripper letters are written on, according to Peter Bower:• Two Nemo letters that probably match a letter Sickert wrote on Joynson Superfine stationery to art dealer D. C. Thompson (circa 1890; Getty Research Institute)
• One Nemo letter that definitely matches two other letters Sickert wrote on Joynson Superfine to D. C. Thompson (Getty Research Institute)
• One Nemo letter that definitely matches a letter on Joynson Superfine that Sickert wrote to his friend William Rothenstein (Harvard)
• One music-hall drawing on paper with a partial Brookleigh Fine watermark (1888; Walker Art Gallery) that probably matches two Ripper letters (Public Record Office)
• One Sickert letter with the Monckton’s N.B. watermark (Sickert Archives) that probably matches a Ripper letter (Corporation of London Records Office)
• The letter with the watermark Gurney Ivory Laid that Sickert wrote to a Miss E. Case (circa 1890; British Library) that definitely matches a Ripper letter (the Corporation of London Records Office)
To say that a match is “probable” is expert-witness talk. As is true with other expert witnesses who testify in court, Bower is basically claiming for the record that one finding is consistent with another, which really means the findings are close enough for the jury to take these consistencies very seriously. Bower’s paper matches, probable or definite, should be taken very seriously.
Trade directories of the time list some nearly 1,200 different watermarks in use in the late 1880s, with some papermakers producing over a hundred different varieties. When you consider this vast number of differently watermarked papers that were available in London, for the same small group of papers—Gurney Ivory Laid, Joynson Superfine, Monckton’s Superfine, A Pirie & Sons, and Brookleigh Fine, at least two of which came from the same small supplier, Lepard & Smiths—to occur over and over again in both Sickert and Ripper letters is more than coincidence. Just one manufacturer, Bower explains, might have had as many as one hundred different watermark designs available to stationers. “People choose what they know and like,” he adds, and when one considers a watermark match or probable match between two identical watermarks from the same batch, and then finds two or three other identical watermarks from the same batch, and then finds yet other identical watermarks from the same batch, the statistical probability of the letters coming from a single source becomes extremely compelling.
On October 4, 1888 (four days before the first “Nemo” letter was written to the City of London Police and in the midst of much publicity about Elizabeth Stride’s ongoing inquest), The Times published a letter to the editor that was dated October 2nd and signed “Nemo.” In it the writer described “mutilations, cutting off the nose and ears, ripping up the body, and cutting out certain organs—the heart, & c.—. . .” It is curious that Nemo mentioned the removal of a heart in this letter to the editor. As far as we know, the Ripper had yet to take the heart from any of his victims. But when Mary Kelly’s mutilated body was discovered on November 9th, her heart was missing.
In the Nemo letter to The Times, the writer continued:Unless caught red-handed, such a man in ordinary life would be harmless enough, polite, not to say obsequious, in his manners, and about the last a British policeman would suspect.
But when the villain is primed with his opium, or bang, or gin, and inspired with his lust for slaughter and blood, he would destroy his defenceless victim with the ferocity and cunning of the tiger; and past impunity and success would only have rendered him the more daring and restless.
Your obedient servant
October 2
NEMO
Other unusual signatories in the some fifty letters at the Corporation of London Records Office are suspiciously reminiscent of those of some PRO Ripper letters: “Justitia,” “Revelation,” “Ripper,” “Nemesis,” “A Thinker,” “May-bee,” “A friend,” “an accessary,” and “one that has had his eyes opened.” Quite a number of these fifty letters were written in October 1888 and also include both art and comments similar to those found in the Jack the Ripper letters at the PRO. For example, in a PRO letter to the editor of the Daily News Office, October 1, 1888, the Ripper says, “I’ve got someone to write this for me.” In an undated letter at the Corporation of London Records Office, the anonymous sender says, “I’ve got someone to write this for me.”
Other “Whitechapel Murder” letters in the Corporation of London Records Office include a postcard dated October 3rd, with the anonymous sender using many of the same threats, words, and phrases found in Ripper letters at the PRO: “send you my victims ears”; “It amuses me that you think I am mad”; “Just a card to let you know”; “I will write to you again soon”; and “My bloody ink is running out.” On October 6, 1888, “Anonymous” offers a suggestion that the killer might be keeping “the victims silent by pressure on certain nerves in the neck,” and adds that an additional benefit to subduing the victim is that the killer can “preserve his own person and clothing comparatively unstained.” In October 1888, an anonymous letter written in red ink uses the terms “spanky ass” and “Saucy Jac
ky” and promises to “send next ears I clip to Charly Warren.”
An undated letter includes a bit of newspaper attached by a rusty paper clip. When my co-worker, Irene Shulgin, removed the clipping and turned it over, she found the phrase “author of works of art.” In a letter dated October 7, 1888, the writer signs his name “Homo Sum,” Latin for “I am a man.” On October 9, 1888, an anonymous writer takes offense, once again, at being thought of as a lunatic: “Don’t you rest content on the lunacy fad.” Other anonymous letters offer tips to the police, encouraging officers to disguise themselves as women and wear “chain armour” or “light steel collars” under their clothes. An anonymous letter of October 20, 1888, claims that the “motive for the crimes is hatred and spite against the authorities of Scotland Yard one of whom is marked as a victim.”
In a July 1889 letter, a writer signs his letter “Qui Vir,” Latin for “Which Man.” In a letter Sickert wrote to Whistler in 1897, he rather sarcastically refers to his former “impish master” as “Ecce homo,” or “behold the man.” In the “Qui Vir” letter, which is at the Corporation of London Records Office, the writer suggests that the killer is “able to choose a time to do the murder & get back to his hiding place.” On September 11, 1889, an anonymous writer teases police by saying he always travels in “third class Cerage” and “I ware black wiskers all over my face.” Approximately 20% of these Corporation of London Records Office letters have watermarks, including, as I mentioned, the Joynson Superfine and the Monckton’s Superfine watermark (signed “one of the public”). A letter Sickert wrote to Whistler in the mid- to late-1880s also has a Monckton’s Superfine watermark.
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed Page 20
