Introduction
Victims
Suspects
Witnesses
Ripper Letters
Police Officials
Official Documents
Press Reports
Victorian London
Message Boards
Ripper Media
Authors
Dissertations
Timelines
Games & Diversions
Photo Archive
Ripper Wiki
Casebook Examiner
Ripper Podcast
About the Casebook


Most Recent Posts:
General Discussion: Robert Mann - by John Wheat 4 minutes ago.
Lechmere/Cross, Charles: Why Cross Was Almost Certainly Innocent - by John Wheat 11 minutes ago.
Pub Talk: For the 503rd time...some person thinks THEY'VE solved the case! - by John Wheat 15 minutes ago.
Elizabeth Stride: Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery - by Herlock Sholmes 52 minutes ago.
Rippercast: Who Is He? What Is He? Where Is He? A Suspectology Roundtable - by Lombro2 1 hour ago.
Elizabeth Stride: Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery - by c.d. 1 hour ago.
Elizabeth Stride: Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery - by Herlock Sholmes 1 hour ago.
Lechmere/Cross, Charles: Why Cross Was Almost Certainly Innocent - by Herlock Sholmes 2 hours ago.

Most Popular Threads:
Elizabeth Stride: Berner Street: No Plot, No Mystery - (34 posts)
General Police Discussion: Ask Monty…… - (16 posts)
Pub Talk: For the 503rd time...some person thinks THEY'VE solved the case! - (14 posts)
Swanson, Chief Inspector Donald: Veracity - (13 posts)
Witnesses: Schwartz v. Lawende - (12 posts)
Motive, Method and Madness: Older Then Younger Victims - (7 posts)


My Life: Sixty Years' Recollections of Bohemian London
By George R. Sims

Published in 1917, My Life is George R. Sims' account of some of his more notable exploits. Two pages recount how Sims, as a result of his likeness to a sketch of the alleged murderer, was mistaken for Jack the Ripper by a coffee-stall attendant. Sims himself admitted to the similarity and showed his good-nature in laughing off the incident.


MY LIFE

As a journalist I followed the Jack the Ripper crimes at close quarters. I had a personal interest in the matter, for my portrait, which appeared outside the cover of a sixpenny edition of my "Social Kaleidoscope," was taken to Scotland Yard by a coffee-stall keeper as the likeness of the assassin.

On the night of the double murder, or rather in the small hours of the morning, a man had drunk a cup of coffee at the stall. The stall-keeper noticed that he had blood on his shirt-cuffs. The coffee merchant said, looking at him keenly, "Jack the Ripper's about perhaps to-night."

"Yes," replied the man, " he is pretty lively just now, isn't he? You may hear of two murders in the morning." Then he walked away.

At dawn the bodies of two women murdered by the Ripper were found.

Passing a newsvendor's shop that afternoon the coffee-stall keeper saw my likeness outside the book.

"That's the man!" he said, and bought the book. He took it first to Dr. Forbes Window, who was writing letters to the papers on the Ripper crimes at the time. Forbes Winslow, who knew me, told him it was absurd, but the man went off with the book to the Yard, and Forbes Winslow wrote to me and told me of the interview and the coffee-stall keeper's "mistake."

But it was quite a pardonable mistake. The redoubtable Ripper was not unlike me as I was at that time.

He was undoubtedly a doctor who had been in a lunatic asylum and had developed homicidal mania of a special kind.

Each of his murders was more maniacal than its predecessors, and the last was the worst of all.

After committing that he drowned himself. His body was found in the Thames after it had been in the river for nearly a month.

Had be been found alive there would have been no mystery about Jack the Ripper. The man would have been arrested and tried. But you can't try a corpse for a crime, however strong the suspicion may be.

And the authorities could not say, "This dead man was Jack the Ripper." The dead cannot defend themselves.

But there were circumstances which left very little doubt in the official mind as to the Ripper's identity.


Related pages:
  George Sims
       Press Reports: Dagonet and Jack the Ripper 
       Press Reports: Lloyds Weekly News - 22 September 1907 
       Ripper Media: Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide - George Robert Sims 
       Ripper Media: Mysteries of Modern London 
       Ripper Media: Sporting Times: The Pink Un World