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The Illustrated Police News  13 Oct 1888, Sat  •  Page 1

Ciipping from Newspapers.com

Throughout October this blog will present numerous photographs, illustrations and information related to the White Chapel murders as well as other #notorious murders during the Victorian age. After all it is Halloween!

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The Whitechapel Murder Victims 

During the era in which the Ripper was active, there were 11 murders committed in London’s East End. These murders took place between April 3, 1888 and February 13th, 1891. These murders were collectively known as the “Whitechapel Murders”, being labeled as such by a London Metropolitan Police Service investigation.

The map above shows the Whitechapel Murder crime scene locations, beginning with the site of the attack on Emma Elizabeth Smith (April 3, 1888) and ending with the murder of Frances Coles (February 13, 1891).

Of the eleven Whitechapel Murders, it is widely believed that Jack the Ripper is directly responsible for five of them. It is possible that the Ripper may have claimed more than five victims, but most experts agree that at least five of the East End murders were the work of Jack the Ripper.

VIA Whitechapel Jack

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Victim number one; Mary Nichols discovered 31 August 1888.

The body of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was discovered in the wee morning hours of August 31, 1888, at about 3:40am by 2 carmen on their way to work. Her body was found in front of a gated horse stable entrance on Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. The two men who happened upon her, Charles Cross and Robert Paul, saw Polly lying on the ground with her skirts pulled up to her waist. At first they weren’t sure if she was either passed out drunk or dead, but after some hesitation they approached her and felt her hands and face, which were both cold to the touch. Feeling very uneasy about what they had just stumbled upon, both men hurried off to alert the first constable they could find.

Lower image:  Mary Nichols murder site; Buck’s Row, Whitechapel

https://www.jack-the-ripper.org/jack-the-ripper-victim-mary-nichols.htm

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Dear Boss 

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.

The Dear Boss Letter, which was dated September 25th, was received by the Central News Agency on September 27, 1888, the same day as its postmark. This letter was then sent on to Scotland Yard two days later.

Though initially viewed as a prank, the Dear Boss Letter quickly gained attention after Catherine Eddowes’ murder on September 30th. In the letter, the author made mention of clipping off his next victim’s ears. Eddowes was found with one earlobe severed.

In the same manner as the other famed Ripper Letters, the Dear Boss Letter is rife with misspellings, as well as grammatical and punctuation errors.  VIA Whitechapel Jack

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Dear Boss 

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.

The Dear Boss Letter, which was dated September 25th, was received by the Central News Agency on September 27, 1888, the same day as its postmark. This letter was then sent on to Scotland Yard two days later.

Though initially viewed as a prank, the Dear Boss Letter quickly gained attention after Catherine Eddowes’ murder on September 30th. In the letter, the author made mention of clipping off his next victim’s ears. Eddowes was found with one earlobe severed.

In the same manner as the other famed Ripper Letters, the Dear Boss Letter is rife with misspellings, as well as grammatical and punctuation errors.  VIA Whitechapel Jack

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Annie Chapman (1841 - 1888) led a somewhat nomadic existence around Spitalfields. She was 47 years old at the time of her death, a short plump, ashen-faced consumptive who, for four or so months prior to her death, had been living at Crossingham’s lodging house at number 35 Dorset Street where she paid eight pence a night for a double bed.

She appears to have enjoyed a cordial relationship with the other tenants and the deputy keeper, Timothy Donovan, remembered her as being an inoffensive soul whose main weakness was a fondness for drink.

Like many of the women in the area Annie supplemented the meager income she obtained from crochet work and making and selling artificial flowers with prostitution.

She had two regular clients, one known as Harry the Hawker, and the other a man named Ted Stanley, a supposed retired soldier who was known to her fellow lodgers as “the Pensioner.”

JOHN DAVIS FINDS THE BODY

A little before 6am John Davis, an elderly resident of 29 Hanbury Street came downstairs, walked along the narrow passageway and opened the back door.

The sight that met his eyes sent him reeling back in horror.

Moments later two workmen walking along Hanbury Street were suddenly startled when, from the open door of number 29, a wild eyed old man came stumbling into the street.

“Men” he cried “come here.”

Nervously they followed him along the passageway and looking into the yard back yard of 29 Hanbury Street they saw the mutilated body of Annie Chapman lying on the ground between the steps and the wooden fence.

Her head was turned towards the house and her clothes had been tugged up above her waist exposing her red and white striped stockings.

A handkerchief was tied around her throat (she had been wearing this when the killer cut her throat and it had not, as has often been asserted, been tied by her murderer to “stop the head from rolling away”).

Her face and hands were covered in blood, and her hands were raised and bent with the palms towards the upper portion of her body giving James Kent the impression that she had “been struggling…[and] had fought for her throat.”

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Jack the Ripper was H.H. Holmes?

I love discussing serial killers, and there’s nothing I like better than a good, old-fashioned crime conspiracy. It’s one of the reasons I decided to become a criminologist. And no theory has intrigued me more than the possibility that the infamous serial killers H.H. Holmes and Jack the Ripper are one and the same person. There have been literally thousands of people that have been proposed as suspects in the Ripper Murders, with the list of serious suspects somewhat shorter, but the legend has reached such epic proportions that there are those who dedicate their lives to finding out who Jack the Ripper was (they are known as “Ripperologists”). People see Jack as the OG of serial killers. He literally tore apart his 5 hapless victims. H.H. Holmes, on the other hand, was infamous for building his “Murder Castle” during Chicago’s 1893 World Fair, and killing those who dared to lodge there. His kill count before he was turned in to the police stood at 9 (although he confessed to upwards of 27 murders). What could be more scintillating than if these two killers were not two at all, but the same person?

The theory originated in 2011, when Holmes’s great-great-grandson, lawyer and former Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, Jeff Mudgett (Mudgett was Holmes’ actual last name), who teamed up with ex-CIA operative Amaryllis Fox to write a book entitled “Bloodstains,” which lays claim to the idea that Jack and Holmes are the same person. In it, Jeff makes some explosive claims, including that he inherited two diaries from his grandfather, and, after employing the services of an expert handwriting analyst, determined that H.H. Holmes had authored them, and that Holmes was raped as a child by a priest. Furthermore, Mudgett expanded upon the story of Holmes’s escape from prison and his staged execution (what?!). Ultimately, he states that H.H. Holmes tricked someone into going to the gallows in his place, and went on to live a long life in the shadows. Considering the last two claims, Mudgett’s assertion of knowing Holmes to be Jack the Ripper is the least far-fetched of the entire book. Below is the most compelling evidence for the claim that H.H. Holmes is also Jack the Ripper.

Mudgett states that the diaries of H.H. Holmes posit that he was present in London with one of his assistants (a literal partner in crime) during the Ripper Murders in Whitechapel. He states that the diaries outline “training sessions” between Holmes and his assistant, with the assistant being instructed to murder prostitutes and excessively mutilate their corpses, in order to cause a public outcry, with the intent being to distract from Holmes’s own murders and sexual-organ harvest of upper-class women, Rich women’s ovaries would supposedly have healthier hormones in them to aid in Holmes’ pursuit of a youth serum which would purportedly allow him to live an unnaturally long life.

At first glance, the facts would point to radical differences between Holmes and Jack, not just because of the vast geographical divide between their respective killing zones, but also because of their largely contrasting MOs. Jack the Ripper claimed most of his victims on the streets, attacking women where he could have easily been caught in the act. On the other hand, H.H. Holmes preferred to kill in private, even going to such elaborate lengths as to build a “Murder Castle,” where he rigged rooms to isolate and secure his victims. Creeping about in public with a knife in his hand just wasn’t his style. However, if we look more deeply, the parallels between the two murderers become more apparent. The Ripper, despite popular myths of him being a savage, messy slasher, was actually a calm and careful killer. Rather than simply lunging at his victims, knife at the ready, he would first choke them and lay them quietly down before commencing the evisceration. This is partially why he didn’t alert anyone within earshot to what was going on. Holmes, too, had a methodical killing style, and was also a trained medic - meaning he was adept at the removal of organs. Of course, one of the most widely-held beliefs about Jack the Ripper is that he had some degree of medical training.

It’s also important to consider that the last of the official, canonical victims of Jack the Ripper was killed in her own bed rather than on the streets, utterly obliterated by the Ripper’s blade, to the point of being almost unrecognisable. This was a huge escalation from the previous Ripper killings, both in terms of context and ferocity. Jack’s style had evolved. If Amaryllis Fox’s theory is right, this could have been Holmes trying out different methods, and moving towards the more grandiose style he displayed in the Chicago Murder Castle. Speaking of the United States, Fox and Mudgett’s investigation has revealed that Holmes left a trail of business documents which allows us to chart his movements, with the exception of between 1888 and 1889, when the paper trail goes cold, coinciding with the Ripper Killings in London. Could this therefore have been when Holmes was Jack? We do know from ship logs that an individual by the name of “H Holmes” was a passenger who sailed from the UK to the US shortly after the Ripper killings ended. 

Moreover, linguistics experts consulted by Mudgett and Fox meticulously analysed the “Dear Boss” letter, widely regarded as having been sent by Jack to the London media of the time. The expert confirmed that various quirks of language suggest the writer of the letter was American. Mudgett and Fox also commissioned a forensic sketch artist to create a portrait of Jack based on witness testimonies of 13 people who’d seen the Ripper victims with men just before they died, the end result being a portrait so similar to photos of H.H. Holmes that Mudgett – an attorney by trade – firmly believes it would merit an arrest warrant if the case was active today. There is a certain logic to Mudgett’s theory about Holmes’ role in the Ripper killings. Objections to Holmes’ candidacy as a Ripper suspect include the difference in modus operandi between the methodical Holmes and the hysterical sadism of the Ripper. Mudgett’s theory, however, makes it so that the mutilations were a deliberate forensic counter-measure to throw people off Holmes’ trail and accomplished by a different hand (though under Holmes’ direction).

All of this certainly sounds exciting and even persuasive. But the fact is, there’s no solid evidence there at all. It’s all entirely circumstantial, based on coincidences, contradictory testimonies by long-dead Victorians and plain wishful thinking. So where to begin?

First, the “Dear Boss” letter. Perhaps it was indeed written by someone from the States, as the experts suggest. But that hardly matters if the letter (as with all other Ripper correspondence) was a hoax, penned by some hype-hungry journalist or local crackpot, as most Ripper experts and seasoned “Ripperologists” firmly believe. Then there’s the crucial question of geography, which obviously cannot be easily dismissed. Holmes and the Ripper lived on different continents, and there’s absolutely no evidence Holmes ever ventured onto British shores. Names in ship passenger logs don’t mean a thing – “Holmes” was hardly a rare name, after all. And, while Holmes later claimed to have “roamed” the planet for people to kill….well, this was likely another example of his rampant narcissism, and desire to mythologise himself as an awesome monster.

We also need to consider motivation. Despite the grisly, horror movie-like details of his Murder Castle, H.H. Holmes was driven solely by a basic greed for money. He regarded himself as a cunning entrepreneur, killing in order to collect on life insurance and further his material success. There’s no evidence he was driven by a lust for murder for its own sake, like Jack the Ripper appeared to be. The Ripper slaughtered the poor, helpless, penniless women of the East End. There was no greed there, except a greed for death. While we’ll possibly never know what made the Ripper kill, it seems reasonable to assume it was a deep-seated, irrational, emotional craving that he needed to satisfy. H.H. Holmes was a con-man who was willing to kill, but he was not irrational.

Jeff Mudgett is certainly convinced of his theory that Holmes was the Ripper, and perhaps the hard evidence is out there somewhere, waiting to be found. In the meantime, the controversy will carry on.

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