The Suspects Part One
Who was Jack the Ripper? This question haunted the police at the time of the valleys, but has become the subject of endless speculation ever since. It seems like every year a new book is published or there is a new TV documentary claiming to have solved the case.
So let’s look at the main suspects, including people the police suspected at the time as well as the candidates people proposed since.
WHAT DID POLICE KNOW?
They know very little. Some witnesses saw victims in the company of a man who wore clothing that was shabby, perhaps a man who had had money but come down in the world. Apart from that, he seemed forgettable.
And while some people said at the time the killer must have had some medical knowledge to know how to find and remove certain organs, either as a doctor or a butcher, others thought the wounds were too crude.
In short, the police knew nothing. They interviewed over 2,000 men, investigated several hundred and arrested about 80, but they never came close to having a true suspect. That’s why the list of suspects suggested here is so diverse.
None have any proven links to any of the cases. Some that have been proposed even have cast-iron alibis. Most behaved in ways that made them suspicious, or committed other, known crimes that are similar to the Ripper’s ones, but some are flights of fancy. It’s impossible to list all the names suggested over the past 130 years, but these are the main ones.
Montague John Druitt
In 1894, over 5 years after the last killing, press speculation about a man as the Ripper led to senior Scotland yard officer writing a memo listing the three suspects he said Scotland Yard had. The first person he named was Druitt.
Montague Druitt was a barrister but also part-time teacher who lived in Blackheath, a generally well-to-do area on a hill south of the Thames, overlooking the East End but a world away socially, as it was largely open space and on the very edge of the built-up area of greater London.
Druitt became a suspect largely because he committed suicide in December 1888, a month after the last killing and the murders stopped after he died. However, Inspector Fred Abberline dismissed him as a suspect. Both his mother and grandmother had suffered from mental illness (and this could have been depression). Druitt had lost his school job not long before, and his legal career had never been successful, so his suicide was most likely because of this.
There was also no evidence that Druitt ever visited the East End regularly (whereas the killer clearly had local knowledge), and he also had an alibi for the first murder, as he was in his home county of Dorset playing cricket the morning after the first murder, when it would have been impossible for him to get to Dorset in the time.
And MacNaughten also may have been thinking of another suspect, as he described Druitt as a 41-year-old doctor, whereas Druitt was 31 and a barrister.
VERDICT? NOT GUILTY
John Pizer
In the 1880s, the East End was rife with resentment and hostility about immigrants, and particularly the large number of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had come to the East End after fleeing persecution in Russia. So several people suggested as suspects at the time, including Pizer, were Jewish immigrants, but anti-semitism probably played more of a part in them being named as any facts (anti-semitism frequently accuses Jews of ritual murder with knives).
One of the first rumours about the Ripper was that he was an Eastern European dubbed “Leather Apron”. After the first murder, prostitutes in Whitechapel told police that a man known only as “Leather Apron” had been extorting sex workers and threatening to “rip them up” if they didn’t pay.
Pizer was a boot-maker and so wore a leather apron and used a lot of sharp knives in his work. He had also been convicted of a stabbing, and a local police sergeant accused him of being “Leather Apron”.
Pizer was arrested but the local police inspector said there was no evidence against Pizer, and he had alibis for two of the murders (when one happened, he was actually with a police officer, watching a warehouse fire in the docks).
VERDICT? NOT GUILTY
Dr Thomas Cream
Mentioned frequently, but he cannot be Jack the Ripper as he was in the USA at the time of the murders (in prison!) He later came to London and was hung for murder. The legend says that his last words were, “I am Jack the….”
VERDICT? IMPOSSIBLE TO BE THE RIPPER. NOT GUILTY
Seweryn Klosowski
Klosowski came to London from Poland shortly before the murders. At the time they happened, he was using the name Ludwig Schloski and working as a barber. It has been said that Fred Abberline suspected Klosowski, but the reports on this are second-hand and not from Abberline himself.
Klosowski later took the name George Chapman, and in 1903 he was hung for murdering three wives, but he was a poisoner and serial killers rarely change their method of killing.
VERDICT? NOT GUILTY. NO EVIDENCE LINKING HIM
William Bury
Bury left the East End shortly after the last murder, moving to Dundee in Scotland. In February 1889, just three months after the last Ripper murder, he killed his wife and mutilated her abdomen. Like most of the Ripper victims, she had been a prostitute. After his arrest, Bury was interrogated about the Ripper murders, but denied any link, and none could be proven. He was hung for murdering his wife.
Click here for part 2 of The Suspects