by Paul Roland
Obliged to pursue the matter, if only to appease Lees and put the matter to rest, the detectives knocked on the door and asked if the master was at home. To their astonishment the interior was exactly as Lees had described it. In making discreet enquiries they learned from the lady of the house that she had always suspected her husband led a double life and that he enjoyed inflicting pain. The doctor was consequently declared insane and committed to an asylum, but to ensure that his name and reputation were not blackened it was agreed that he should officially be declared dead from heart failure and a mock funeral held so as not to arouse suspicion.
In gratitude for tracking down the Ripper, Lees was reputedly awarded a life pension and sworn to secrecy, a promise he kept until his death in 1931.
The strange psychic visions of Derek Acorah
Psychics fall into two distinct categories. The first are attention-seeking charlatans who go ‘fishing’ for clues and the second are genuinely gifted individuals who possess an acute sensitivity to residual personal energy. Because of this, they can pick up visual impressions from personal possessions and locations where an earthbound spirit may linger. Celebrated medium Derek Acorah has earned a formidable reputation in England and the USA as a psychic investigator and so was an obvious choice to try his talents at the Whitechapel murder sites.
In April 1999 Acorah was invited by the International Society For Paranormal Research to visit Mitre Square and Bucks Row (now Durward Street) in the company of ISPR parapsychologist Dr Larry Montz and Ripper historian Donald Rumbelow. At the first location the spring sunshine and sounds of the local school children faded, he said, as he tuned into the lingering impressions from more than a hundred years earlier. Through his ‘inner eye’ he saw the square as it had been on the night of 30 September 1888 and heard the sounds issuing from a nearby public house (since demolished).
A journey into the past
A woman’s hoarse laughter rang out and he caught the name ‘Catherine’. A moment later she appeared before him, dressed in dark shabby clothes with wisps of grey hair protruding from beneath a greasy bonnet. Acorah was overwhelmed as he shared her sense of dread and inhaled the stench of blood. Recovering his senses, he was drawn to a specific spot which he correctly identified as the place where Catherine Eddowes’ body had been found that night. Then he caught another name, ‘Elizabeth’, as he relived the frenzied attack on Elizabeth Stride, the first of the two victims claimed by the Ripper that evening just a few hundred yards away in Berner Street.
At the next site, Bucks Row, Acorah allowed himself to sink into another light trance in which he ‘saw’ the mutilated body of the first canonical victim, Polly Nichols, murdered on 31 August 1888. She was stocky and dark-haired, and her clothes were caked with blood. Her face had been slashed and one ear was partially severed. Nearby lay her black straw hat.
When the psychic returned to the present he said he had the impression that the murders were the work of two men. The man responsible for five killings was tall, slim and in his thirties. He had dark facial hair with fringes of grey, high cheekbones and strong crease marks down each side of his face. He was evidently a man of means with possible connections to royalty and carried a pocket watch to which he was constantly referring. The other was a ‘copy cat’ killer who carried out at least one killing. In both cases the killings were ritualistic rather than sexual or sadistic.
Of course, none of this verifies Acorah’s claims to be a genuine clairvoyant (in fact it is an uncharacteristically weak ‘performance’ by his standards), nor does it reveal details that were not public knowledge, but his assertion that there were two killers is intriguing – if you accept psychic insight as a valid method of investigation.
Chapter 6: The Scotland Yard Files
Sir Melville Macnaghten wrote his influential and ultimately highly misleading memorandum on 23 February 1894 to refute newspaper reports that a disturbed young man named Thomas Cutbush had been identified by Scotland Yard as Jack the Ripper. No doubt the press were aroused by the fact that Cutbush had been a medical student and evidently mentally unstable. But as Macnaghten points out, a savage serial killer would be unlikely to be satisfied with prodding young women in the rear with a knife.
‘Confidential
The case referred to in the sensational story told in “The Sun” in its issue of 13th inst, & following dates, is that of Thomas Cutbush who was arraigned at the London County Sessions in April 1891 on a charge of maliciously wounding Florence Grace Johnson, and attempting to wound Isabella Fraser Anderson in Kennington. He was found to be insane, and sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty’s Pleasure. This Cutbush, who lived with his mother and aunt at 14 Albert Street, Kennington, escaped from the Lambeth Infirmary (after he had been detained only a few hours, as a lunatic) at noon on 5th March 1891. He was rearrested on 9th idem. A few weeks before this, several cases of stabbing, or jabbing, from behind had occurred in the vicinity, and a man named Colicott was arrested, but subsequently discharged owing to faulty identification. The cuts in the girls’ dresses made by Colicott were quite different to the cut(s) made by Cutbush (when he wounded Miss Johnson) who was no doubt influenced by a wild desire of morbid imitation. Cutbush’s antecedents were enquired into by C. Insp (now Supt.) Chris, by Inspector Hale, and by P.S. McCarthy C.I.D. – (the last named officer had been specially employed in Whitechapel at the time of the murders there) – and it was ascertained that he was born, and had lived, in Kennington all his life. His father died when he was quite young and he was always a “spoilt” child. He had been employed as a clerk and traveller in the Tea trade at the Minories, and subsequently canvassed for a Directory in the East End, during which time he bore a good character. He apparently contracted syphilis about 1888, and, – since that time, – led an idle and useless life. His brain seems to have become affected, and he believed that people were trying to poison him. He wrote to Lord Grimthorpe, and others, – and also to the Treasury, – complaining of Dr Brooks, of Westminster Bridge Road, whom he threatened to shoot for having supplied him with bad medicines. He is said to have studied medical books by day, and to have rambled about at night, returning frequently with his clothes covered with mud; but little reliance could be placed on the statements made by his mother or his aunt, who both appear to have been of a very excitable disposition. It was found impossible to ascertain his movements on the nights of the Whitechapel murders. The knife found on him was bought in Houndsditch about a week before he was detained in the Infirmary. Cutbush was the nephew of the late Supt. Executive.
Now the Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims – & 5 victims only, – his murders were (1) 31st August, ’88. Mary Ann Nichols – at Buck’s Row – who was found with her throat cut – & with (slight) stomach mutilation.
(2) 8th Sept. ’88 Annie Chapman – Hanbury St.; – throat cut – stomach & private parts badly mutilated & some of the entrails placed round the neck.
(3) 30th Sept. ’88. Elizabeth Stride – Berner’s Street – throat cut, but nothing in shape of mutilation attempted, & on same date Catherine Eddowes – Mitre Square, throat cut & very bad mutilation, both of face and stomach. 9th November. Mary Jane Kelly – Miller’s Court, throat cut, and the whole of the body mutilated in the most ghastly manner –
The last murder is the only one that took place in a room, and the murderer must have been at least 2 hours engaged. A photo was taken of the woman, as she was found lying on the bed, without seeing which it is impossible to imagine the awful mutilation.
With regard to the double murder which took place on 30th September, there is no doubt but that the man was disturbed by some Jews who drove up to a Club, (close to which the body of Elizabeth Stride was found) and that he then, “mordum satiatus”, went in search of a further victim who he found at Mitre Square.
It will be noted that the fury of the mutilations increased in each case, and, seemingly, the appetite only became sharpened by indulgence. It seems, then, highly improbable that the murde
rer would have suddenly stopped in November ’88, and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards. A much more rational theory is that the murderer’s brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller’s Court, and that he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum.
No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer; many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:
(1) 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.
(2) Kosminski – a Polish Jew – & resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years’ indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies: he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circumstances connected with this man which made him a strong “suspect”.
(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man’s antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his whereabouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.
And now with regard to a few of the other inaccuracies and misleading statements made by “The Sun”. In its issue of 14th February, it is stated that the writer has in his possession a facsimile of the knife with which the murders were committed. This knife (which for some unexplained reason has, for the last 3 years, been kept by Inspector Hale, instead of being sent to Prisoner’s Property Store) was traced, and it was found to have been purchased in Houndsditch in February ’91 or 2 years and 3 months after the Whitechapel murders ceased!
The statement, too, that Cutbush “spent a portion of the day in making rough drawings of the bodies of women, and of their mutilations” is based solely on the fact that 2 scribble drawings of women in indecent postures were found torn up in Cutbush’s room. The head and body of one of these had been cut from some fashion plate, and legs were added to shew a woman’s naked thighs and pink stockings.
In the issue of 15th inst. it is said that a light overcoat was among the things found in Cutbush’s house, and that a man in a light overcoat was seen talking to a woman at Backchurch Lane whose body with arms attached was found in Pinchin Street. This is hopelessly incorrect! On 10th Sept. ’89 the naked body, with arms, of a woman was found wrapped in some sacking under a Railway arch in Pinchin Street: the head and legs were never found nor was the woman ever identified. She had been killed at least 24 hours before the remains which had seemingly been brought from a distance, were discovered. The stomach was split up by a cut, and the head and legs had been severed in a manner identical with that of the woman whose remains were discovered in the Thames, in Battersea Park, and on the Chelsea Embankment on the 4th June of the same year; and these murders had no connection whatever with the Whitechapel horrors. The Rainham mystery in 1887 and the Whitehall mystery (when portions of a woman’s body were found under what is now New Scotland Yard) in 1888 were of a similar type to the Thames and Pinchin Street crimes.
It is perfectly untrue to say that Cutbush stabbed 6 girls behind. This is confounding his case with that of Colicott. The theory that the Whitechapel murderer was left-handed, or, at any rate, “ambidexter”, had its origin in the remark made by a doctor who examined the corpse of one of the earliest victims; other doctors did not agree with him.
With regard to the 4 additional murders ascribed by the writer in the Sun to the Whitechapel fiend:
(1) The body of Martha Tabram, a prostitute, was found on a common staircase in George Yard buildings on 7th August 1888; the body had been repeatedly pierced, probably with a bayonet. This woman had, with a fellow prostitute, been in company of 2 soldiers in the early part of the evening: these men were arrested, but the second prostitute failed, or refused, to identify, and the soldiers were eventually discharged.
(2) Alice McKenzie was found with her throat cut (or rather stabbed) in Castle Alley on 17th July 1889; no evidence was forthcoming and no arrests were made in connection with this case. The stab in the throat was of the same nature as in the case of the murder of
(3) Frances Coles in Swallow Gardens, on 13th February 1891 – for which Thomas Sadler, a fireman, was arrested, and, after several remands, discharged. It was ascertained at the time that Sadler had sailed for the Baltic on 19th July ‘89 and was in Whitechapel on the night of 17th idem. He was a man of ungovernable temper and entirely addicted to drink, and the company of the lowest prostitutes.
(4) The case of the unidentified woman whose trunk was found in Pinchin Street: on 10th September 1889 – which has already been dealt with.
M.S. Macnaghten
23rd February 1894’
Frances Coles
The missing Ripper files
When the official police files were transferred from Scotland Yard to the Public Record Office in the 1980s several of the files itemized on the inventory were found to be missing. Fortunately, extensive notes had been made by various researchers shortly before they disappeared, preserving the names of a number of significant suspects who would otherwise have been overlooked.
A soldier suspected
One of the most promising is a report from the police at Rotherham dated 5 October, concerning a soldier with a violent hatred of women. Their informant, James Oliver, a former member of the 5th Lancers, was ‘firmly persuaded in his own mind’ that one of his former comrades was responsible for the Whitechapel murders.
The accused, Richard Austen, had been a sailor and was about 40 years old when the report was written. From the description of his appearance and behaviour, he seems a likely candidate for questioning, but the authorities were never able to trace him.
Oliver’s statement described him as:
‘. . . 5ft 8in, an extremely powerful and active man, but by no means heavy or stout. Hair and eyes light, had in service a very long fair moustache, may have grown heavy whiskers and beard. His face was fresh, hard and healthy looking. He had a small piece bitten off the end of his nose. Although not mad, he was not right in his mind, “he was too sharp to be right” . . . He used to sometimes brag of what he had done previously to enlisting in the way of violence . . . While in the regiment he was never known to go with women and when his comrades used to talk about them in the barrack room he used to grind his teeth – he was in fact a perfect woman hater.
He used to say if he had his will he would kill every whore and cut her inside out, that when he left the regiment there would be nothing before him but the gallows . . . Probably he would always be respectably dressed but more often the description of a sailor than a soldier.’
Oliver presumed he would be working at London Docks or on board ship and that he may have committed the murders shortly before embarking on a new voyage – which would account for the long gaps between murders. Oliver was convinced that if Austen could be traced his return to port would tally with the dates of the murders. ‘He always had revenge brooding on his mind,’ he said.
Oliver offered to identify Austen from a regimental photograph if one could be supplied and to look at the ‘Dear Boss’ letters to see if the handwriting matched that of his former comrade. However, no photograph could be found, but when facsimiles of the letters were sent down from London Oliver stated that the writing was very similar to Austen’s. Austen was never traced and the police had no choice but to abandon that line of enquiry.
Street Ballads
In famous Lond
on city in eighteen eighty-eight
Four beastly cruel murders have been done
Some say it was Old Nick himself or else a Russian Jew
Some say it was a cannibal from the Isle of Kickaiboo
Some say it must be Bashi-Bazouks
Or else it’s the Chinese
Come over to Whitechapel to commit
Such crimes as these.
’As anyone seen him? Can you tell us where he is?
If you meet him, you must take away his knife
Then give him to the women, they’ll spoil his pretty fiz,
And I wouldn’t give him tuppence for his life.
Now at night when you’re undressed and about to go to rest
Just see that he ain’t underneath the bed
If he is you mustn’t shout but politely drag him out
And with your poker tap him on the head
Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,
Gladstone may save one, then there’ll be seven.
Seven little whores beggin’ for a shilling,
One stays in Henage Court, then there’s a killing.
Six little whores, glad to be alive,
One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.
Four and whore rhyme aright,
So do three and me,
I’ll set the town alight
Ere there are two.
Two little whores, shivering with fright,
Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.
Jack’s knife flashes, then there’s but one,
And the last one’s the ripest for
Jack’s idea of fun.
Dr Winslow’s accusation
The following press cutting from the New York Herald dated September 1889 was evidently considered worthy of serious investigation as it had originally been preserved in the now missing police files by Chief Inspector Swanson, who subsequently interviewed Dr Forbes Winslow in an attempt to verify the story. Fortunately someone had the presence of mind to photocopy it before both the press cutting and the file containing Swanson’s notes went missing in the 1970s.
