This is the full-text of A.P. Wolf's Jack the Myth, originally published by Robert Hale in 1993. It is reprinted here in its entirety, with new revisions, by the kind permission of A.P. Wolf. You may start reading it from the beginning, or you can jump to specific chapters by clicking the links below.
Chapter 11 - Relatively Simple
Although the evidence connecting Thomas Cutbush with the crimes of Jack the
Ripper appears to be largely circumstantial, it is as well not to forget
many of the murder cases that were examined earlier where the police failed
to act on the alarming and suspicious coincidences that occurred. In
particular the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ and ‘Ted’ murders should be borne in mind,
where there were so many circumstantial factors indicating that both Peter
Sutcliffe and Ted Bundy were indeed the killers but the police still failed
to make the obvious and vital connections.
We must not allow ourselves a similar error.
The alarming coincidences that occur in Cutbush’s case are further
compounded by what is an obvious attempt by the police of the day to defuse
a potentially explosive situation, and considering this it is no wonder that
both Scotland Yard and Home Office files are missing and still others have
obviously been tampered with in an effort to encourage the rampant spread of
disinformation.
Anybody who was witness to the activities of the ‘Warren Panel’ after the
assassination of John F Kennedy and this panel’s superb campaign of
deliberate disinformation will immediately find familiar ground with the
reports of the senior police officials concerned in the Jack the Ripper
case.
As we have seen, the active disinformation campaign waged by Scotland Yard
on behalf of Thomas Cutbush over a hundred years ago is still to this very
day extremely difficult to penetrate. It is as if every time we get a
momentary glimpse into the life of this strange young man a heavy curtain
falls down and blocks everything out. That one of the most factual and
accomplished writers on Jack the Ripper, Paul Begg, can categorically state
in 1988 that Thomas Cutbush was not the Ripper - and offer no explanation
whatsoever for his dismissive statement - when the actual facts seem to
indicate otherwise is proof enough of the legacy of falsehood that was
established by Macnaghten when he rose to champion the cause of Thomas
Cutbush in 1894.
Many it seems have been tempted by the seduction of Macnaghten’s
disinformation campaign on behalf of Thomas Cutbush.
The spectacular defence of Cutbush by a chief constable of Scotland Yard
must be a landmark in the history of British policing but at the same time
it is also very persuasive evidence that something was not quite right about
the Cutbush affair. After all if one has an itch one scratches it and when
the ‘Sun’ newspaper alleged in 1894 that Cutbush was in fact Jack the
Ripper, Scotland Yard began to scratch like they have never done before - or
since - as if they had been invaded by a veritable horde of bed bugs.
Now it has been pointed out to me recently that this memorandum from
Macnaghten was solely intended for the internal consumption of Scotland Yard
and the Home Office, and therefore carries less weight than if it were a
document intended for public circulation. However I disagree with this point
of view in the strongest possible terms, as it is patently obvious that any
document produced by the police then - and even now - for public consumption
would leave much unsaid, whereas a document purely intended on an ‘eyes
only’ basis for senior officials within an organisation gives us not only a
canny insight into the internal workings and machinery of that organisation
but more importantly offers us a unique opportunity to explore the motives
of all those concerned. As such this private memorandum does not close any
windows of opportunity, it does in fact fling them wide open and invites us
to climb inside.
The document is more valuable as a private memorandum because it shows us
what the police were thinking and not saying.
One wonders what the modern-day Bochum police force would have done with
their own violent criminal, the son of one of their senior officers, if the
Essen police had simply accepted their assurances that the man was really
innocent and dropped the case as a consequence?
It is tempting to believe that the violent rapist would have been rapidly
consigned to a mental institution and his father forced into early
retirement, thereby avoiding the painful publicity and embarrassment that
the arrest for the crimes would have caused. Perhaps a few years later the
father of the rapist, appalled at his own complicity in the horrifying
crimes and with his own professional career in tatters, might have sat down
in his kitchen, put a pistol to his head and shot himself?
And perhaps one hundred years later, legions of writers and researchers
would be exercising their imaginations in trying to determine who really was
the ‘Essen University Rapist’?
Of course, it is only speculation, but neither lazy nor idle, based as it is
on two very disparate but nonetheless strongly linked incidents we have
slowly watched unfold on these pages; hence the series of events connected
with Thomas Cutbush, his uncle Superintendent Charles Cutbush, Jack the
Ripper and Scotland Yard do provide exactly the same scenario as the Bochum
case.
Sadly, hard facts about the life of Thomas Cutbush are rare things to find.
Macnaghten’s memorandum leaves much unsaid but it does give us a momentary
glimpse into the life of this truly strange young man and some clues to his
behaviour and background. Macnaghten says that Cutbush was ‘employed as a
clerk and traveller in the Tea trade at the Minories, & subsequently
canvassed for a Directory in the East End…’
This was up till 1888 when Cutbush ‘contracted syphilis… led an idle and
useless life. His brain seems to have become affected…’
This puts Thomas Cutbush right at the heart of Jack the Ripper’s territory
in 1888, for the Minories is located directly off Aldgate High Street and
Whitechapel High Street within a stone’s throw of Mitre Square, the murder
site of Catherine Eddowes. As a clerk and traveller in the tea trade Cutbush
would have had a superior knowledge of Whitechapel, especially when he later
went on to canvass for a business directory of the East End. His knowledge
of commercial sites in the Whitechapel area would have been considerable,
especially when those commercial sites involved the tea trade.
Mary Nichols was murdered on the 31st August directly outside a tea
warehouse.
Catherine Eddowes was murdered on the 30th September 1888 directly outside a
tea warehouse.
Three other victims were murdered outside commercial premises which may or
may not have been linked to the tea trade: Annie Chapman, Alice McKenzie and
Frances Coles.
So now we have a man, Thomas Cutbush, known to be a lunatic with a peculiar
bent for stabbing and slashing at women with a knife, who was not only in
the Whitechapel area at the time of the Ripper murders but also must have
had a good working knowledge of at least two of the murder sites when not
them all.
What else can be learnt from Chief Constable Macnaghten’s memorandum?
‘He (Cutbush) is said to have studied medical books by day, and to have
rambled about at night, returning frequently with his clothes covered in
mud… It was found impossible to ascertain his movements on the nights of the
Whitechapel murders.’
If Cutbush ‘rambled’ about at night - Macnaghten’s choice of word here is
almost comedy, and one can almost picture the image of Thomas donning his
rucksack and marching off with his stick for a pleasant ramble through the
countryside of Whitechapel. This is pure damage limitation. - and frequently
came home with his clothes covered in mud (though two sources do print the
word ‘blood’ here in the memorandum rather than ‘mud’) then the simple
question must surely be ‘why had he not come to the attention of the police
before 1891?’
For instance in 1888 at the height of the Ripper murders - which is the
exact time period Thomas was acting in this bizarre fashion - when there
were hundreds of policemen swarming the streets of Whitechapel searching for
someone just like Thomas Cutbush?
Obviously the mud stains would have made superb camouflage for any blood
stains, and even when that were not the case it seems that any policeman on
patrol in Whitechapel at the height of the Ripper murders would have found
Thomas’ mud-covered condition just a tad suspicious and certainly hauled him
off for questioning. That is unless the policeman already knew Thomas
Cutbush and was acutely aware of the fact that his uncle was a very senior
officer at Scotland Yard.
Macnaghten said it was impossible to ascertain Cutbush’s movements on the
nights of the Whitechapel murders. In other words he is asking us to believe
that this young lunatic was free to ‘ramble’ the streets of Whitechapel all
night long, covered in mud and this too at the height of the Ripper murders
when police activity was at its absolute maximum in a desperate search for
the killer?
And that Cutbush was never apprehended at some time during that period?
Poppycock.
It is much more likely that Thomas was stopped by the police on numerous
occasions but they probably knew him well enough to have escorted him home
or to his uncle’s house, or to have simply ignored him and said to
themselves ‘there goes old Superintendent Cutbush’s daft nephew again’.
Of course it may have happened just like it did in the Bochum case. With
Superintendent Cutbush assuring his fellow officers that his nephew was a
bit simple but harmless enough, and then proceeding to tell his daft nephew
over a cup of tea the latest police tactics to catch the Ripper.
Macnaghten’s admission that they were unable to trace Thomas Cutbush’s
movements on the all-important nights of the Ripper murders is a bit
mysterious. Why not?
Perhaps because Thomas Cutbush was not at home on those nights. Perhaps he
was taking full advantage of his superb local knowledge of the Whitechapel
area by renting beds in common lodging houses located near to commercial
sites well known to him and then luring prostitutes into these dark and
dismal sites to murder and mutilate them?
Well, good old Uncle Charles could have helped him out there as well, for
Charles Henry Cutbush, Executive Superintendent of Scotland Yard, was
personally responsible for the administration and policy enforcement of
every single common lodging house in Whitechapel. That was his job.
His full job description at the time of the murders is as an Executive
Superintendent of the ‘Executive Branch and Common Lodging Houses Branch’.
Now is that not handy?
