This poster was a high-profile appeal issued by the police in an attempt to identify the author(s) of a letter and postcard sent to the Central News Agency about the Whitechapel murders. The letter was the most famous one in a whole series of taunting or hoax letters, and was dated 25 September 1888. Addressed ‘Dear Boss’, and sent to the Central News Agency in the City of London rather than to the police, it was the first to use the name Jack the Ripper and read:
25 Sept 1888
Dear Boss
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. The joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me [now]. I love my work and want to st[art] again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Don’t mind me giving the trade name.
[At right angles] Wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now ha ha.
The letter below (known as the ‘saucy Jacky’ postcard), postmarked 1 October 1888, was also sent to the Central News Agency. It was apparently bloodstained and had a smudged finger and thumbprint:
I wasn’t codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping back last letter till I got to work again – Jack the Ripper.
The significance is partly the linked references to the victim’s ears, but also the reference to the ‘double event’ and whether the card could have been written before one or both of the two murders that occurred on Sunday, 30 September 1888 – those of Elizabeth Stride (between 12.45 a.m. and 1 a.m.) and Catherine Eddowes (between 1.35 a.m. and 1.45 a.m.).
The Whitechapel murders are perhaps the most famous unsolved series of murders in the world. Certainly they have generated an unprecedented amount of attention and speculation, driven, in recent years, by a series of books and television programmes that have drawn both on documents released by The National Archives and on other techniques that try to bring fresh light to bear on investigations that are more than 120 years old. The Whitechapel murders illustrate the difficulty of being certain, particularly in Victorian times, about how many crimes are committed by one person when dealing with serial murders.
Most commentators focus on five murders as being committed by one man, starting with that of Mary Ann Nichols on 31 August 1888, but the killings, at least as far as public anxiety was concerned, started earlier, with two beforehand and four afterwards for a total of eleven, and, where victims were identified, all involved prostitutes.
On Tuesday, 3 April 1888 at 1.30 a.m., Emma Elizabeth Smith was badly assaulted by a group of three men in Osborn Street and died of peritonitis the following day. She had suffered internal injuries from a blunt weapon, her head was bruised and her ear was torn. One of Emma Smith’s friends had suffered a similar attack. The police were only informed of the attack on 6 April.
On Tuesday, 7 August 1888 between 2 a.m. and 3.30 a.m. Martha Tabram (or Turner) was stabbed thirty-nine times, probably with a dagger. Martha’s colleague Mary Connelly (or ‘Pearly Poll’) said that she and Martha had been with two soldiers from 10 p.m. until 11.45 p.m. when they had paired off. Identification parades were held at the local barracks. Although Mary picked out two soldiers, they had alibis. A police officer, PC Thomas Barrett (226H), had spoken to a soldier outside George Yard that night but two that he picked out from the line-ups were also eliminated from suspicion.
The first of the core group of five murders occurred on Friday, 31 August 1888 between 2.30 a.m. and 3.45 a.m. at Buck’s Row when Mary Ann Nichols was found disembowelled and with her throat deeply cut from left to right, as if by a left-handed person. She had told another woman that she was trying to obtain 4d to pay for her bed for the night. At this point, some police officers started to think that all three murders might be linked. A newspaper report referred to gangs who would blackmail prostitutes in the early hours of the morning and abuse them if their demands were not met. Inspector Helson reported that inquiries were being made to trace a man named John or Jack Pizer (nicknamed ‘Leather Apron’), who had been in the habit of ‘ill-using’ prostitutes.
When the next murder occurred just over a week later, on Saturday, 8 September, Annie Chapman (alias Ann Siffey) was found, also with her throat cut, in the rear yard of No. 29 Hanbury Street in Spitalfields. Some of her intestines were found on her right shoulder. Her uterus and part of her bladder had been removed with a fair degree of skill. The injuries were similar to those suffered by Mary Ann Nichols, and the murders were only eight days apart. Two brass rings were missing from the victim’s fingers and were never recovered. A witness, Mrs Long, saw the back of a man talking to Annie Chapman at 5.30 a.m. and described him as being shabby but genteel. Dr George Phillips, the police divisional surgeon, believed the weapon was a small amputating knife, or a well-ground butcher’s knife, narrow and thin, with a blade about 6–8in long, used by somebody with some anatomical knowledge. John Pizer was arrested two days after Annie Chapman’s murder, but had an alibi for the night of Mary Nichols’ murder, corroborated by a lodging house proprietor from Holloway Road. Pizer also accounted for where he had been on the night of Annie Chapman’s murder, despite being picked out on an identification parade by somebody who identified him as bullying a woman in Hanbury Street.
An unemployed butcher, Joseph Isenschmid, had been seen with blood on his hands at 7 a.m. on the morning of Annie Chapman’s murder. He was suffering from mental health problems, his wife had reported him missing and he carried large butcher’s knives around with him, but no blood was found on his clothing, so he was confined to an asylum.
Three weeks later, two murders occurred on one night. On Sunday, 30 September 1888, Elizabeth Stride (also known as ‘Long Liz’) was killed between 12.45 a.m. and 1 a.m. at Dutfield’s Yard, by No. 40 Berner Street, Commercial Road East. Her throat was cut and it is possible that the murderer was disturbed by the arrival of members of a nearby Socialist club. There was no trace of the weapon. PC William Smith (452H) had seen the victim talking to a man aged about 28 years, 5ft 7in in height, with a dark complexion, a small black moustache, and dressed in a black coat with a white collar and tie.
The second murder on the night of 30 September occurred in Mitre Square, Aldgate, on City of London police territory within about an hour of the first. Catherine Eddowes (or Kate Kelly) was killed between 1.35 a.m. and 1.45 a.m.. Her throat was cut, she had been disembowelled, her right ear was cut through and her uterus and left kidney had been removed. Part of her bloodstained apron was found a few streets away in Goulston Street in the Metropolitan Police District. A message was found on the wall above it, written in chalk: ‘The Jewes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.’ The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, ordered this to be erased, something that was done before the arrival of the photographer called up to record it.
After a respite of five weeks, Mary Jane Kelly was murdered on Friday, 9 November 1888, not in the street, but in her lodgings at No. 13 Miller’s Court, No. 26 Dorset Street, Spitalfields. She suffered a cut throat, numerous gashes and mutilations and her heart had been removed. Her body was found at 10.45 a.m. the next day when Thomas Bowyer called to collect the rent. Mary Cox, another prostitute, had seen Mary Jane Kelly return to her room, drunk and with a man, at about 11.45 p.m. This was the last of the five main murders in the series.
Six weeks later, Rose Mylett was found dead in Clarke’s Yard, High Street, Poplar, in the early hours of 20 December 1888. There were no signs of violence or a struggle, but she had been strangled with a moderately thick cord and one of her earrings was missing.
The next year, Alice McKenzie was found dead on 17 July 1889 in Castle Alley, Whitechapel, with her throat cut and knife wounds to her abdomen. She had died between 12.20 a.m. and 12.50 a.m. Dr Bond, who had started to analyse the patterns of the deaths from a medical perspective, performed a second post-mortem and concluded that it had been a ‘sudden onslaught on the prostrate woman, the throat skilfully and resolutely cut, with subsequent mutilation, each mutilation indicating sexual thoughts and a desire to mutilate the abdomen and sexual organs’. Dr Phillips, who had examined earlier Whitechapel murder victims, disagreed with his colleague, however, because of the difference in abdominal wounds.
On 10 September 1889, the remains of a female torso were found at Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, under a railway arch. Donald Swanson concluded that this was not one of the main Whitechapel murders. There was no blood at the scene, which was a lonely spot away from habitation, and it looked as if the torso had been dumped there at a distance from the murder scene itself.
Finally, at 2.15 a.m. on Friday, 13 February 1891 in Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel, PC Ernest Thompson (240H) found the body of Frances Coles with her throat cut. She had not been mutilated in any other way. Dr Phillips thought that the nature of the wound and posture of the body suggested that this murder was not linked to other Whitechapel murders. Police inquiries did, however, result in the arrest of a sailor, James Sadler, who had consorted with Frances Coles, and there was a belief at the time that Jack the Ripper had at last been caught. Sadler was charged with Frances Coles’ murder and he was investigated in relation to the earlier crimes. Sadler was not identified by the witness in Mitre Square for the Catherine Eddowes murder, and the dates of his employment on various ships were examined to verify whether he could have been involved in the other murders. He was released on 3 March 1891 at Thames magistrates’ court when the prosecuting advocate offered no evidence against him. Later, on 16 May 1892, he was bound over to keep the peace at Lambeth court after his wife complained that he had threatened to cut her throat.
The Whitechapel murders caused a sensation in the newspapers, which reported crime and court proceedings in far greater detail than today. The press articles were fuelled by reported opinions of police officers, by private detectives and journalists conducting investigations, by correspondence from well-meaning members of the public, and by letters received by the police and the press purporting to come from the killer himself. The first such letter was dated 24 September 1888, after the Annie Chapman murder: ‘I do wish to give myself up … I have found the woman I wanted that is Chapman and I done what I called slautered [sic] her … Keep the Boro’ Road clear or I might take a trip up there …’
Hoax letters about murders are not unusual in high-profile murder cases. The motives of the writers would include ridiculing the police, creating mischief, seeking attention for their writing, or simply a perverted obsession with the murders. The flood of such letters about the Whitechapel murders continued for about two years, with a wide variety of handwriting.
A handbill dated 30 September 1888 appealing for information about the murders, copies of which were distributed to local residents, is also in the museum, but most surviving material about the Whitechapel murders is available in The National Archives.
Modern investigations are able to keep much tighter control over what details are released as public knowledge, and which facts could be known only to a perpetrator. There was a suspicion, even soon afterwards, that the two communications in the police’s appeal were part of a hoax from a member of the press. Detective Chief Inspector John Littlechild wrote, in retirement, that officers at Scotland Yard had suspected Tom Bulling of the Central News Agency, or his chief, John Moore, of writing the ‘Dear Boss’ letter and the ‘saucy Jacky’ postcard. Bulling and Moore signed the museum’s visitors’ book as having visited the collection on 26 July 1892, giving their address as ‘No. 5 New Bridge Street, EC’ (Central News).
It would have been wonderful for the Victorian police to have had access to modern crime scene technology and forensic science, not least the opportunity to have analysed the now lost, apparently bloodstained, ‘saucy Jacky’ postcard. Even today, murders of prostitutes can be notoriously difficult to solve, not least because of the transitory and anonymous nature of the transactions involved. Senior officers and medical experts disagreed with each other at the time; and disagreement by those who have studied the murders continues to this day.