In a time before forensic science, and even fingerprinting, the only way to prove someone committed a murder was to catch either him or her in the act, or get the suspect to confess, or alternatively have sufficient witnesses to prove the case.
Unhappily, the Whitechapel murders fall into this period. One interesting feature of this case is that not one but two police forces carried out investigations. The Metropolitan Police were responsible for crimes committed in all the boroughs of the capital except the City of London.
This single square mile in the heart of the capital had, as it still does, its own police force. Catherine Eddowes’s murder occurred within the jurisdiction of the City of London Police and so brought them into the case. It is believed that the rank and file of the two forces got along and worked well together, but there is evidence that their senior officers did not. How much influence their failure to co-operate fully had on solving the case is not known. It would be wrong to criticise either force for failing to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper, for catching serial killers is still a hard task, even with the advantages of today’s science and technology. Beyond referring to post-mortem reports and taking statements from anybody who might have seen something or known something of relevance, there was little that either police force could do.
The attitude of the people at the time was that the police were incompetent and the only use for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Charles Warren, and his force was policing crowds and keeping order, and certainly not detective work. Warren was especially criticised for not offering a reward in the hope that a confederate or accomplice would emerge and inform on the Ripper. In fact, Warren had no objection to the offer of a reward and it was his superior, Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, who initially rejected this approach, although after the killing of Mary Kelly a pardon was announced for any accomplice of the murderer. This attempt to obtain direct evidence on the killer proved fruitless, however.
The City of London Police seem to have made a better job of their part of the investigation. Although they did not apprehend the killer, their officers made crime-scene drawings and took many photographs of Catherine Eddowes. They also took photographs of Mary Kelly, even though she was not murdered within their jurisdiction. She was the only Ripper victim who was ever photographed at the crime scene.
So, as far as any direct evidence is concerned, the police had none at the time of the murders, and none has come to light since. Given the passage of so much time, it is highly unlikely that there will ever be any.
Unlike their counterparts today, the police did not preserve the murder scene. It was the accepted practice, after a doctor had visited the site and certified the person dead, to remove the body on a handcart to a mortuary, where it was stripped and laid out ready for the post-mortem. After this, the victim’s clothes were discarded. Already, following the removal of the body from the crime scene, any blood found there would have been washed away with buckets of water, destroying all traces of evidence.
Even circumstantial evidence in these murders is sparse, except for vague descriptions of persons seen with some of the victims before their deaths, these statements supposedly corroborated by timings that cannot be totally relied on. None of this testimony furnished a wholly accurate description of anyone who appears more than once throughout the enquiry into the series of murders.
I have no doubt that with the aid of modern investigative methods these murders would have been detected and the killer caught. So how have today’s methods changed from those of Victorian times?
Before considering this question I should explain how a murder inquiry is set up and the gathering of evidence takes place. At the start of the inquiry the police’s activity is split into two parts, but these run in conjunction.
One part begins with the finding of the body and includes the preservation of the murder scene and the gathering of forensic evidence. A police surgeon is called and pronounces life extinct. Meanwhile, the murder scene is preserved. It is crucial to protect a crime scene at the beginning of any investigation, to safeguard evidence. Therefore, the body is covered and the murder scene is usually cordoned off, along with the immediate area surrounding it. Scenes-of-crime investigators examine not only the scene where the body is found but also, later, a much larger area. Many clues can be obtained from their thorough examination. They examine the position of the body, items near the body or the condition of the ground around the scene for evidence such as footwear impressions and blood-flow patterns. If the crime scene is not preserved properly, valuable evidence may be destroyed or altered and fibres or DNA material may become contaminated. To prevent such contamination, scene-of-crime investigators wear special clothing.
I remember attending a lay-by beside a busy main road, where a body of a man had been discovered in the ditch. Everything in and around the body and the ditch was seized. One item I took possession of was a discarded recent till receipt from a mini-market some 120 miles away. On the face of it, this was insignificant, but it turned out to be one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in that murder case. The date and time shown on the receipt roughly matched the time when the victim was last seen. It transpired that the victim also came from the area where the shop was located. Enquiries were made at the shop, where the CCTV showed the victim in company with two other men, and these were identified from the CCTV images, arrested and later charged with murder. They had murdered the man in the lay-by and dumped his body, but the till receipt had been either thrown away or unintentionally dropped. This sort of find is what makes the search of a crime scene so important.
If a body is discovered at night, a thorough examination of the scene does not take place until daybreak, although a cursory examination may occur in the dark. When daylight comes, a photographer takes many photographs and videos the crime scene and the surrounding area.
In some murder inquiries, a forensic pathologist attends the scene and makes an initial examination of the body before it is moved to the mortuary, where he performs the post-mortem and seeks further evidence. If it is dark, the initial examination is left until daylight.
For removal to the mortuary, the body is placed in a body bag. A police officer accompanies the body on the journey and is met by the coroner’s officer. Nowadays this post is civilianised, but usually a retired police officer is appointed. The coroner’s officer takes charge of the body and is also present when the forensic pathologist carries out the post-mortem. This continuity ensures that no one touches or tampers with the body, and thus preserves the evidence. In the Whitechapel murders this was not done, leaving us with the unresolved question of where, when, how and by whom the organs were removed and taken away.
The body is then stripped and each item of clothing bagged separately and retained for later forensic examination. This examination may reveal fibres which can be forensically matched and screened for DNA, or there may be other forms of DNA that may have come from the killer. The bag containing the body is also preserved and forensically examined in case any valuable evidence has become dislodged or fallen off during removal of the body.
Before starting the post-mortem, the forensic pathologist makes a detailed examination of the body from top to bottom, which is recorded on video. As well as searching for marks on the body, he looks for fibres and hairs from the killer that may have been transferred to the victim. The victim’s hair is also combed and the comb and the residue from the hair are individually bagged for more detailed forensic examination.
Fingernail scrapings are taken as these are very important, and they would have been particularly crucial in the Ripper murders. It appears that his victims may have been throttled or strangled before mutilation began, in which case they may well have attempted to break free and in doing so dug their nails into their attacker, leaving his DNA under their nails.
The pathologist then carries out a detailed examination of the body to establish the cause of death and whether a weapon was used. If so, what type of weapon and what size? He also seeks to establish an accurate time of death.
In addition, he takes swabs from the mouth and other orifices of the body. This is to ascertain if any DNA from another person is present. In the Whitechapel murders, this information too would have been invaluable. All the victims were prostitutes and it is unknown if any contact was made between the victims and the killer, by kissing, oral sex, or vaginal or anal penetration, before they were killed. A DNA result may have answered that question, although because the victims were prostitutes many different DNA profiles may have been found. Even so, because each of us has our own unique DNA profile, such information would have been of great value.
Another important DNA issue relating to the Whitechapel murders concerns the half of a kidney sent to George Lusk, president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. The letter accompanying this, known as the ‘From Hell’ letter, purported to be from Jack the Ripper and stated that the half kidney was from the one the killer had removed from Catherine Eddowes’s body. A DNA examination would have determined conclusively whether it had indeed come from this victim.
If a positive identification could have been made, the police could have focused more effort on the letter, for it would have been good evidence that the letter was from the Ripper himself. They would then have had more information to work on in analysing the handwriting, paper and ink. The same benefit would have applied to all the other letters supposedly sent by the Ripper.
If modern technology had been available in 1888, experts could have obtained fingerprints and DNA from the letter, the stamp and the box containing the kidney. Many a crime has been detected from DNA obtained from saliva on a stamp or on a gummed envelope that was licked to seal it. Forensic handwriting experts would also have been available to the police. Sadly, fingerprinting was not introduced in England until 1901.
Having covered the forensic issues and the initial police action in respect of the body, let us now look at the other part of the inquiry, which is in effect the main part for the police. As soon as a body is found, the police seek to identify the victim as a matter of urgency, and the murder inquiry begins in earnest. This line of enquiry is invaluable in obtaining evidence on the last movements of the victim etc.
In addition, police officers are dispatched at once to begin initial house-to-house enquiries near to where the body was found. It is vitally important to obtain as much evidence as soon as possible. A full house-to-house operation is carried out later. This involves tracing, interviewing and taking statements from everyone residing in nearby dwellings. Even if an interviewee tells police that they did not see or hear anything, a statement is still taken. Statements will later be read back to interviewees at the incident room, which is normally at the nearest police station. Today statements are keyed into a computer database and cross-referenced, but it was not so long ago that manual databases and index cards were still used to store them. Anything of importance derived from statements is then followed up.
To give an example relating to the Whitechapel murders, if a witness had stated that they had seen a horse-drawn cab in the locality around the time of one of the murders, police officers would (or should) have been told to find and interview all drivers of horse-drawn cabs who may have been operating in that area at that time. It may have been that the killer escaped by summoning such a vehicle.
Returning to today, if the murder scene or the immediate location was covered by CCTV, the officer in charge instructs officers to seize camera footage in the hope that the victim was caught onscreen in the company of the killer. CCTV footage may prove of no help here, but the police may have traced a witness or witnesses who claim to have seen the victim with a person they believe to be the killer. In this case the witness is asked to co-operate in making a sketch or a computer image. Over the years this technique has improved greatly, with artists paying greater attention to details such as hair length and shape, distance between the eyes, shape of the nose and chin, and so on. The more sketches they did, the more artists realised that many facial features can be broken down into ‘sets’ or ‘types’. This led to the development of the Identikit technique, in which sheets of clear plastic, each imprinted with a separate facial feature, are superimposed on one another to create a composite image of what a suspect may look like. Nowadays, though, the police use computer imaging instead. This offers a larger variety of features to choose from and generally creates a far more accurate and lifelike image in a much shorter time.
It is important to bear in mind that no artist, no composite image and no computer can provide an accurate picture without a witness who can provide a good description of the suspect. Drawings of suspects would have been very useful in the Whitechapel murders, given the large number of men witnesses claimed to have seen with some of the victims before they were murdered. In fact, this technique was available to the police of the day, but it seems that it was not used in this case, despite the wealth of descriptions provided by witnesses.
In murder cases today the most valuable weapon the police have is DNA. Had it been around at the time of the Whitechapel murders it would have been of crucial importance, especially in relation to the blood that was found in large quantities at all the murder scenes. Maybe the killer cut himself during his savage attacks and left traces of his own blood. DNA would have identified which blood was whose.
DNA testing would, in the case of Catherine Eddowes, have been particularly important with regard to the bloodstained piece of apron. An examination of the blood on the apron would have shown whether it was hers. It would also have shown whether, as I suggest, the blood was from menstruation or another source. The apron was also wet, and DNA testing would have shown whether this was rain or the victim’s urine. It would also have shown any unknown DNA – perhaps the killer’s.
A forensic scientist would also have been able to state conclusively whether the piece of fabric did come from Eddowes’s apron and whether it was torn or cut, by forensically matching the edges of the apron and the piece.
In the recent history of crime investigation, DNA testing has been the biggest breakthrough. Under British law, almost everyone arrested now has to give a DNA sample and their fingerprints. A DNA sample is taken by a simple mouth swab. This is then sent to a laboratory for analysis and a profile is made of each individual. The odds against two people having the same profile are many millions to one. The profile is then placed on a national database, making it easier to identify suspects from DNA found at crime scenes. The DNA and fingerprints are then continuously the subject of speculative searches relating to unsolved crimes.
However, DNA and fingerprints can only help the police if they have a suspect or a speculative search has identified a suspect. When a crime is committed by a person who has not come to their notice before, the police will not have that person’s DNA or fingerprints. In this case, they must persist with old-fashioned methods of investigation in the hope that the suspect will come to their notice and that they are in a position to arrest, which will then allow them to take a DNA sample and fingerprints.
Britain’s police have the powers to take a non-intimate DNA sample and fingerprints by force if necessary. A non-intimate sample is a mouth swab or a strand of hair, fingernail scrapings, a footprint or similar impression of any part of the body, except part of the hand. When a sample is taken by force, this involves either a mouth swab or a strand of hair. In the case of a person arrested for a serious offence the police also ask for an intimate sample, which may be a sample of blood, urine or any other tissue fluid, a semen sample, pubic hair, a dental impression and a swab from any other orifice of the body (except the mouth, for which a non-intimate request would be made). None of these can be taken by force and they are taken by a doctor.
In later years the FBI were asked to look at the murders with a view to providing a psychological profile of the murderer. This is what they came up with:
• White male, aged 28 to 36, living or working in the Whitechapel area.
• In childhood there was an absent or passive father figure.
• The killer probably had a profession in which he could legally experience his destructive tendencies.
• Jack the Ripper probably ceased his killing because he was either arrested for some other crime, or felt himself close to being discovered as the killer.
• The killer probably had some sort of physical defect, which was the source of a great deal of frustration or anger.
Being an old-fashioned police officer, I am not a great believer in the accuracy of profiling. The results it provides are very hit and miss, tend to generalise rather than be specific and at times can hinder an investigation by leading officers to change the line of enquiry to accommodate the profile.
The FBI profile is not convincing in terms of its description of the killer. We know from witnesses the approximate ages of men seen with some of the victims before their deaths. Assuming we accept this data, the likely ages of these men seen were already documented, so here the FBI profile reveals nothing that is not already known.
As to the suggestion that the killer probably lived in Whitechapel, the FBI had a 50/50 chance of being right, so again this is not a major revelation.
When evaluating the profile’s suggestion that the killer had no father figure, we must bear in mind that in Victorian times many births were illegitimate, many children who had parents were fostered at birth because their parents could not afford to keep them, and some young children were simply abandoned on the street. So, again, the FBI profile offers nothing striking.
As to the killer having a job with destructive tendencies – a slaughterman, fishmonger or butcher come immediately to mind – it is well known that in the East End there were two major fish and meat markets as well as many backstreet slaughterhouses. I suspect this part of the profile derived from the idea of police officers at the time that the killer possibly had a job of this type.
As to why the killer stopped, I suspect that this theory was already common at the time of the murders, just as it is today. Nevertheless, I disagree with the suggestion that he stopped because he thought he was nearing capture. Serial killers do not suddenly stop for this reason. Once they have a hunger for killing they continue until capture or take their own life. So, once again there is nothing new in the profile to take the inquiry forward.
The East End was a very cosmopolitan area, as it still is. It was also a very violent area, with brutal crime a common occurrence, and knives were widely carried for use in criminal acts as well as for self-protection. Over the years it has been suggested that the cutting of the victims’ throats was unique to these crimes and therefore linked them as having been committed by the same person. However, it is a fact that an aspect of the violent society of that day was that the accepted method of killing a person was to cut their throat. So, while the Whitechapel victims were all killed in this manner, it was not unique to these murders. This means of killing was far more common then than it is today, when very few murders that are committed with a knife are the result of the victim’s throat being cut.