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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.
The quickest way to dispose of a whole host of Ripperologists suspects is to pose a question. If a newspaper had promoted the theory during the hunt for the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ in the late 1970’s that the killer could have been a member of the royal family, what would its readers have thought?
Let’s take it even further than that. What if the same newspaper also alleged that the following were involved with the murder of prostitutes in the north of England: Sir Harold Wilson, the Right Honourable Edward Heath, Mary Whitehouse, Sir Peter Scott, Lord Snowdon and Peter Ustinov?
Make no mistake, the list of suspects from the books concerning Jack the Ripper feature equally prominent public figures from the Victorian age… and it is the very prominence of these figures that poses a very serious question. Why should, or even more importantly how could, such prominent figures suddenly throw aside their very public respectability and start murdering and mutilating prostitutes in a red-light district where they would stand out like submarines in the Sahara?
The whole idea is so naďve and preposterous that it shouldn’t even be entertained, but it has to be - albeit briefly - because the Ripperologists have filled book after book with their extravagant theories and it has stuck not only in the mind of their readers but in the public imagination as well. There is nothing more frustrating for a genuine researcher involved in this field to be told by a well-meaning member of the public that it was all to do with a Freemason or establishment conspiracy to save the reputation of a future king, or some such other nonsense.
Of course these theories involving the highest in the land and murder are enormously popular in much the same way as the marital problems of the royal family are today, but that doesn’t mean to say that they are based on any sort of factual evidence. They are theories, speculation of the worst type and are largely backed up by slippery facts that tend to disappear when looked for. We have already seen how these stories can be built up over the years until they assume some kind of vague reality. Take the case of Mary Jane Kelly again where a whole plethora of stories and theories were built up by the experts based on her pregnancy. At least two books and numerous press articles have taken this single ‘fact’ and woven a fairly credible story around it of a ‘Jill the Ripper’, a murderous midwife who murders and mutilates the women she is supposedly about to abort. But as we have seen Mary Jane Kelley was not pregnant, and this illustrates only too well how these theories spread like an uncontrollable virus throughout the Ripper world.
It is in much the same way that the Russian secret agents, black magicians, and Irish terrorists - to name but a few - all make their appearance in the story of Jack the Ripper. But as we have just seen in the last chapter these people do not really have a place in the gallery of murderers we looked at. For once it is possible to agree with one of Colin Wilson’s statements that most modern-day serial killers have working class or lower middle class origins. It must be obvious to one and all that a man intent on committing murder has the cards stacked against him if he is in some way famous, in exactly the same way that a high ranking government official who wishes to pick up prostitutes from a well-known red-light district will quickly find himself headline news in the newspapers. On the other hand, a labourer can rest assured that no one is going to make a fuss about his sexual habits, unless he commits murder.
And that is the rub. A high public profile generally rules out a person from indulging his vices, particularly when that vice involves something so very public as murdering and chopping up prostitutes, and this was as true in 1888 as it is today. No, Jack the Ripper was a very ordinary little man distinguished only by an extraordinary bent for murder.
However, the Ripperologists do also have some very plausible suspects and it is to these that we must now turn our attention.
Sir Melville Macnaghten the Chief Constable CID of the Metropolitan Police in 1889, the year after the Ripper murders, is the primary source from which the Ripperologists draw their evidence for the three very strong candidates for Jack the Ripper. This because the chief constable wrote down his thoughts in 1894 on the killings in what has become known as the ‘Macnaghten Papers’ and to not go too deeply into these papers for the moment, it suffices to say that he maintained that the police suspected three different individuals of being the Ripper. To quote from his original document:
‘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 of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush (Macnaghten wrote the document to exonerate one Thomas Cutbush of being the Ripper) to have committed this series of murders:
(1) A Mr MJ 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 Dec - or about 7 weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private info 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 circs 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 murder could never be ascertained.’
Sir Robert Anderson, in 1888 the Assistant Commissioner Metropolitan Police CID, also hinted broadly that the Ripper was a Polish Jew and had been confined to a lunatic asylum, and Chief Inspector Swanson, who was directly in charge of the Ripper investigations, also put forward the name of Aaron Kosminski as the chief suspect for the Ripper crimes. So there is a very persuasive case for Aaron Kosminski being the Ripper, after all the testimony of three of the highest police officers in the land all of who were actually involved in the murder investigation cannot be lightly dismissed. Kosminski is an ideal suspect, as he fits in almost perfectly as the missing piece to the Ripper puzzle, a tailor-made suspect who can just about satisfy every criterion we have established in our long quest for the truth. He was insane and Dr Houchin who witnessed Kominski’s certification to be confined to the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in February 1891 said of him: ‘He declares that he is guided and his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind, he says that he knows the movements of all mankind, he refuses food from others because he is told to do so, and he eats out of the gutter for the same reason’.
One wants to leap up and down and shout out ‘Jack the Ripper!’ Because that is the classic description of a paranoid schizophrenic as we saw in the last chapter. A man like Herb Mullin who was commanded by voices to kill over a dozen people in California in the early 1970’s. Voices are telling him what to do and he goes out and does it, here is a man driven by demons and no mistake. But one also has to hesitate, and question. If the three police chiefs were really convinced that Kominski was their man why did Macnaghten include two other suspects on his list with him? Why did Chief Inspector Swanson in his own documents claim that Kominski died shortly after being committed to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1891 while in fact the man lived on until 1919? And finally, why, if Aaron Kominski was the Ripper was he allowed to wander at large until February 1891? Remember the police view was that Mary Jane Kelly was the last of the Ripper’s victims and her murder took place in November 1888. Macnaghten himself wrote in his document: ‘A much more rational theory is that the murderer’s brain gave way after his awful glut in Miller’s Court - where Mary Jane Kelly was murdered - 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’.
But we know that to not have been the case with Kosminski, he wasn’t committed until over two years later. Macnaghten wrote his memoranda in February 1894, three years after Kosminski had been interred, so if the police were convinced that he was the Ripper why did Macnaghten speculate about Kosminski’s fate so long after the event? He must have surely known that Kosminski wasn’t committed to a lunatic asylum until two years later - not immediately - and he certainly hadn’t committed suicide. This is an obvious reference to MJ Druitt whose only connection to the entire Ripper fiasco was that he committed suicide by drowning himself in the Thames a few weeks after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. Apart from that connection - a connection that is so thin that it isn’t really a connection at all - there is not a single shred of evidence anywhere to link Druitt with the Ripper murders. Although again a host of writers have taken that single point and created a plethora of books around it.
There is enormous conflict in the separate statements of the three police chiefs. Macnaghten also wrote: ‘the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November 1888...’
Swanson wrote: ‘After the suspect had been identified… he was watched by police by day and night. In a very short time the suspect with his hands tied behind his back he was sent to Stepney Workhouse and then to Colney Hatch and died shortly afterwards - Kosminski was the suspect…’
Sir Robert Anderson wrote: ‘I will only add that when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him…’
One senior policeman believes the murderer to have committed suicide, another claims that the murderer was identified and then confined in the lunatic asylum and the other believes that the murderer was actually identified in the lunatic asylum. Such a conflict amongst three of the senior police chiefs of the time is alarming and points to a very confused situation indeed. And what are we to make of Major Henry Smith’s statements - after he had retired as commissioner of the City of London Police - that Sir Robert Anderson’s claim to have identified the Ripper was ‘irresponsible’ and his investigation ‘fruitless’.
Major Henry Smith was not the only senior police officer to cast doubts on the statements of his immediate superiors. Inspector Frederick George Abberline, who was one of the most important and knowledgeable police officers connected with all the Ripper murders, gave some interviews to the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ in 1903 and his statements are persuasive evidence that the top rank of Scotland Yard were being deliberately evasive:
‘You can state most emphatically, that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago, It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end out of such a mystery, if only for their own credit.’
At this point the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ assured its readers that: ‘To convince those who have any doubts on the point, Mr Abberline produced recent documentary evidence which put the ignorance of Scotland Yard as to the perpetrator beyond the shadow of doubt’.
Then Abberline continued: ‘I know… that it has been stated in certain quarters that ‘Jack the Ripper’ was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory’.
It is vital to note that Inspector Abberline said this in 1903, that is nine years after Macnaghten and the others made their statements, and as he was probably the most qualified and experienced police officer to investigate the Ripper crimes his opinions must mean the credibility of the other senior police chiefs has to be questioned. Furthermore another Metropolitan Police Commissioner, James Monro, still thought the Ripper to be at large as late as September 1889, that being six months after Macnaghten’s one suspect was removed to an asylum and nine months after his other suspect, Druitt, committed suicide. This just doesn’t make any sort of sense. Can it really be possible that five or even six of the most senior police officers in a single murder inquiry can hold such conflicting opinions when that murder case is supposedly solved? Even worse when one of these senior police officers, Inspector Abberline, categorically states that the others are totally wrong in their assumptions? That seems plainly impossible, unless the other officers were deliberately creating this hopelessly confused situation. But why should they do that? Why, indeed.
But for the moment back to the three chief suspects who have up till now been the only really serious candidates for the role of Jack the Ripper.
Michael Ostrog is hard to place, he was well known as a confidence trickster and swindler, passing himself off variously as a count, Belgian doctor or Russian surgeon, and he was certainly a dangerous man to cross in the criminal world. But there is no link between him and the Ripper murders and the only reason he was put forward by Macnaghten seems to be that Ostrog was ‘available’ as a suspect. There is no evidence that Ostrog was even in the London area at the times of the Ripper murders. The other two, Druitt and Kosminski, present yet another serious flaw which the Ripperologists have tended to ignore in their search for the Ripper. For if these two men were the chief suspects and the case was considered closed when either Druitt had committed suicide or Kosminski incarcerated in a lunatic asylum then why did the police search for Jack the Ripper intensify after both these occasions?
The Home Office files on the Ripper murders show quite clearly that extra police patrols were drafted into Whitechapel long after Druitt had committed suicide. For instance in January 1889, and again after Kosminski had been locked up in February 1891 the police continued their hunt for the Ripper. A glance at Scotland Yard’s own files - specifically on the Ripper murders - shows that they were also not finally closed until 1892.
There can be only one reason why the police continued to investigate these crimes, and why the home Office sanctioned these investigations, and that must be that the police still believed the Ripper to be at large. What appears to have happened here is that five senior police chiefs sat down some years after the event and by a process extraordinarily similar to that employed by modern Ripperologists put all the names of the suspects into a big hat and drew out three of the best. Or is there a more sinister design to this totally confusing situation? The answer to this question may lie in Macnaghten’s document, not what he said but why he said it. The fact of the matter is that the chief constable of Scotland Yard put pen to paper to defend the reputation of yet another suspect who had been featured in a series of articles in the ‘Sun’ newspaper in 1894 alleging that he, Thomas Cutbush, was Jack the Ripper. This really quite extraordinary behaviour is without precedent in this case of mass murder - or any other case of murder in the entire history of policing and crime - as many other suspects had been featured in the press - for example John Pizer aka ‘Leather Apron’ - without Scotland Yard or anybody else leaping to their defence. That Macnaghten rose to the defence of this man, Thomas Cutbush, and in consequence dragged the other senior Metropolitan police chiefs along with him - except for Major Smith who attacks the claims of these other senior policemen and most significantly was from the City of London police force - and felt obliged to offer ‘better’ alternatives to the identity of Jack the Ripper smacks of a conspiracy.
Why should a senior police chief feel himself obliged to defend a total stranger who just may well have been Jack the Ripper? It is obvious that Macnaghten himself could not have been convinced that any of the three alternatives he put forward as the Ripper were really the murderer. Equally obvious at this stage is the massive conflict of opinion between the Metropolitan and City of London police forces. Even the press were aware of this and lauded the City Police as being frank and helpful with their information about the Ripper murders but claimed the Metropolitan force - Scotland Yard - were obstructive and secretive.
This conflict came to a head at Mary Jane Kelly’s inquest when there was an open dispute concerning police jurisdiction, and the coroner, Dr Roderick Macdonald, suddenly ended the inquest after cause of death had been established by asking the jury to conclude the proceedings and advised them that: ‘There is other evidence which I do not propose to call, for if we at once make public every fact brought forward in connection with this terrible murder, the end of justice might be retarded’. The newspapers and general public were outraged by Macdonald’s behaviour and well they should have been as important witness testimony was not even heard - like that of George Hutchinson who claimed to have had a first-hand view of the murderer of Mary Jane Kelly - and there is absolutely no doubt that Macdonald’s strange behaviour did indeed ‘retard the end of justice’. The most significant observation that can be made about this particular farce is that the coroner, Macdonald, was employed at the time by the Metropolitan police force as a surgeon. On the other hand the corner, Wynne Baxter, who conducted most of the other inquests into the Ripper murders was in open conflict with the Metropolitan police force and highly critical of their methods.
One doesn’t want to rush headlong on and start screaming about high level Freemason conspiracies involving the highest in the land and various other nonsense as some authors have done in the past because that is plainly ridiculous. But there is a powerful undercurrent here that demands to be measured, and the best way to do that is to look at the case of Thomas Cutbush and to see if it is possible to find out why Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Chief Constable CID of the Metropolitan Police, was so keen to protect this unknown man.