The rest is silence, apart from the clamour of speculation at the time, as well as generations later, about the identity of the Whitechapel murderer.
Another heavy-drinking prostitute, Alice McKenzie, was murdered in Whitechapel, in Castle Alley, on 17 July 1889. She was found in the street with her throat cut (or rather, stabbed twice); her dress had been pushed above her knees, and there were cuts and scratches on her stomach. However, the death of ‘Clay-pipe Alice’ is not thought to have been the work of the Ripper, who is generally believed to have died or to have been imprisoned for other crimes soon after the murder of Mary Kelly.
Who was he? What happened to him? No one can say for certain. Sir Charles Warren is reported by his grandson to have believed the murderer ‘to be a sex maniac who committed suicide after the Miller’s Court murder – possibly the young doctor whose body was found in the Thames on December 31st 1888.’ Sir Robert Anderson, who became head of the CID in September 1888, wrote in his memoirs: ‘I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer … In saying that he was a Polish Jew, I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.’ A note scribbled in a copy of his memoirs given years later to the Crime Museum indicates that he believed the Ripper to be in fact a Polish barber, Aaron Kosminski.
Sir Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police at the time of the murders, thought the murderer must be the man described by Joseph Lawende. Chief Detective Inspector Abberline, who was the senior Yard detective investigating the murders, thought George Chapman (his real name was Severin Klosowski) was the killer. Chapman, a hairdresser’s assistant in Whitechapel in 1888, when he was twenty-three, was ultimately hanged in 1903 for poisoning his three wives – another kind of murder altogether. Other police officers involved at the time, such as Leeson and Dew, disagreed, writing in their autobiographies: ‘Nobody will ever know’ – ‘I am as mystified now as I was then.’
In February 1894, one man, Sir Melville Macnaghten, wrote what must be the most sensible account of the murders. It was a hand-written seven-page memorandum deposited in the Ripper file to discredit and disprove a newspaper story that a deranged fetishist, Thomas Cutbush, was the Ripper. Cutbush was arrested in 1891 for maliciously wounding two women by stabbing them in the rear. He was found guilty but insane, and incarcerated in an asylum. Macnaghten states: ‘The Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims – & 5 victims only.’ They were: Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly. Macnaghten continued:
It will be noticed that the fury of the mutilations increased in each case, and, seemingly, the appetite only became sharpened by indulgence. It seems, then, highly improbable that the murderer would have suddenly stopped in November 88, and been content to recommence operations by merely prodding a girl behind some 2 years and 4 months afterwards. A much more rational theory is that the murderer’s brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller’s Court, 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. 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 one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders:
(1) A Mr MJ Druitt, said to be a doctor and of good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller’s Court murder, and 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 and resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, especially of the prostitute class, and had strong homicidal tendencies. He was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many crimes connected with this man which made him a strong ‘suspect’.
(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was frequently 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 murders could never be ascertained.
Next to nothing is known about Kosminski and Ostrog. Much more has since been revealed about Montague Druitt.
Born on 15 August 1857 at Wimborne in Dorset, he was educated at Winchester College, where he was a prefect, played cricket for the First Eleven, was the best at playing Five’s, and won a scholarship to New College, Oxford. There he studied Classics and obtained a Third Class Honours degree in 1880. He may then have studied medicine for a year (he had a cousin who was a doctor) before switching to law, enrolling at the Inner Temple in May 1882. While he studied law, he taught at a crammer’s school in Blackheath, where forty-two boys were boarders. He was called to the Bar in April 1885. His father died in September, after which Druitt rented chambers at 9 King’s Bench Walk in the Temple. His career as a barrister was undistinguished and unrewarding; he continued to teach at the Blackheath school until he was sacked around 1 December 1888. The reason for the dismissal is not known: he may have shown homosexual tendencies or behaved unreasonably or oddly – the latter being not unlikely, as his mother had been certified as insane in July that year and put in a mental home in Chiswick. He apparently feared for his own sanity. Last seen alive on Monday, 3 December 1888, he penned a note – ‘Since Friday I felt I was going to be like Mother and the best thing was for me to die’ – weighted the pockets of his overcoat with stones and jumped or waded into the Thames. His body was found floating in the river near Chiswick on Monday, 31 December, four weeks after his disappearance. He was thirty-one.
Was he the Ripper? We know that he was a keen cricketer. A member of the MCC, for several years he played for Blackheath and also for teams in Dorset. The day after Mary Ann Nichols was murdered (about 3.30 am on Friday, 31 August), MJ Druitt played cricket for Canford against Wimborne in Dorset (on Saturday, 1 September). Some five hours after the murder of Annie Chapman (about 5.45 am on Saturday, 8 September) Druitt was playing cricket for Blackheath in south London. Where was he, one wonders, on the night of 29-30 September and at dawn on Friday, 9 November? To the question ‘Could he have committed such atrocious crimes and then played cricket?’ the answer must be ‘Yes.’
Of all the suspects, Druitt and Kosminski seem the ones most likely, from what we know now, to have been the Whitechapel murderer. But as in every other case there is no definite, conclusive proof. Other theories, about doctors, butchers, Jews, freemasons, lodgers, other murderers and a member of the monarchy (the Duke of Clarence), may reasonably, if regretfully, be dismissed. Of all the books written about the Whitechapel murders, the most useful are those by Donald Rumbelow, a police sergeant in the City, and Richard Whittington-Egan (see the Bibliography).
One area of interest remains – the actual scenes of the murders and the addresses of the victims: Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and Kelly. Why Whitechapel – rather than other areas of prostitution? And why, when about 1,200 prostitutes are said to have worked in Whitechapel, did the five murdered women, although murdered some distance apart, all live within a few hundred yards of each other? It is conceivable that they not only visited the same pubs and touted for custom in the same streets, but actually knew each other, at least by sight. Annie Chapman lived in 35 Dorset Street – so did Jack Pizer and Michael Kidney, with whom Elizabeth Stride used to live. Mary Kelly lived in and was killed at the back of 26 Dorset Street. Nichols, Stride and Eddowes all lodged at one time or another in Flower and Dean Street – as the last two also did in Fashion Street. Is it coincidence that these five possible acquaintances were killed?
It’s also possible that all five women were neighbours of the Ripper and were known to him, at least by sight, and that he also lived in or near Flower and Dean Street or Fashion Street or Thrawl Street, which were all parallel to each other and led off the main north-south artery in Whitechapel, Commercial Street. It seems highly probable that the Ripper was a local man, well acquainted with all the streets, alleys, yards, pubs and lodging houses in the area, as well as the beats paraded nightly by the police.