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Robert Hale 1993 (hardcover)
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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?