PC Thomas Barrett
PC Thomas Barrett was walking his beat around 2 a.m. on the morning of August 7th when he passed by the North entrance to George Yard on Wentworth Street. Since the day before had been a bank holiday, the night had been more active than usual, with the streets full of merry-makers and no shortage of fights.
Barrett noticed a soldier loitering at the entrance to the yard who he assumed had been out taking advantage of the festivities as well. He then approached the soldier and asked if it was about time for him to be getting back to his barracks. The soldier told him he was waiting for a ‘chum’ who had gone inside the yard with a girl. It was a good enough answer for Barrett, and he continued on his way.
A little over two hours later, a resident of the George Yard buildings named John Saunders Reeves found Barrett and summoned him to come along to see the body he’d found lying on a staircase landing.
The woman’s body was slumped in the staircase as if asleep, but her once green skirt, petticoat, and jacket were now soaked with blood. In fact, the body lay in a puddle of it. Dr. Timothy Killeen was called to do a post-mortem at 5:30 a.m., and he found a total of 39 stab wounds on the body including seven in the lungs, one to the heart, five to the liver, two to the spleen, and six to the stomach. Dr. Killeen said that most of the wounds had been made with an ordinary pen knife, but one to the sternum looked to have been made with something larger. Perhaps a bayonet.
PC Barrett thought immediately of the soldier he had seen standing in the doorway.
Martha Tabram (aka., Martha Turner)
The victim’s legal name was Martha Tabram, though she had been going by Martha Turner since she began to date Henry Turner about nine years previously. She was born Martha White on May 10, 1849, to Elisabeth Dowsett and Charles Samuel White, who worked in a warehouse. Martha grew up with four older siblings, and her parents separated when she was sixteen. Not long afterward they attempted to reconcile, but then, her father, Charles, died suddenly. Friends and relatives said she was never the same afterward.
At age 20, Martha married Henry Samuel Tabram, but the two only stayed together for six years as Martha was already drinking heavily. He continued to pay her an allowance until he discovered that she was living with with a carpenter named Henry Turner. By the time 39 year old Martha was murdered, her relationship with Turner had reached its end as well. “Since she has been living with me, her character for sobriety was not good. If I give her money she generally spent it in drink,” Turner said in the inquest, revealing that Martha would often disappear for an entire night and blame her long absence on a “hysterical fit” that caused her to lose her memory. Turner admitted that while he had seen her go into a “fit” in the past, he had no idea whether they were genuine or not.
The regular fixtures in her life had seen Martha very seldom in the days leading up to her death. Her last known address was 19 George Street, Spitalfields, a place known as Satchell's Lodging House. Before that she and Henry Turner had been staying with a woman named Mary Bousfield, to whom she had owed back-rent, and had bolted in the night without paying.
In a strange act of shame or remorse, perhaps, Mary reported that Martha had broken back in to Mary’s house and left the back rent sitting on a table for her to find. The last time Turner had seen Martha was on August 4. She had been looking very broken down, and Turner gave her 1 shilling and 6 pence with which he encouraged to buy her trinkets to hawk and make herself a living.
Selecting the Soldiers
Detective Inspector Edmund Reid
Edmund Reid hurried to bring his constable PC Barrett to have a look at the local troops and identify the soldier he’d seen. After having a look at the soldiers that had been detained in the Tower (serving as a “drunk tank” to hold soldiers who had broken rules over the bank holiday), PC Barrett could not identify anyone.
A parade of soldiers who had either been absent or on leave at the time of the murder was arranged for August 8. As he described in a report to the police commissioner, Reid cautioned Barrett to ‘be careful as to his actions because many eyes were watching him and a great deal depended on his picking out the right man and no other.’ Barrett viewed all the men in the lineup, selecting one with medals on his chest. When Reid reminded him to be very careful in his choice, he picked out a different man with no medals on his chest. He said later that he picked the second man after remembering that the man he had seen in George Yard had not had any.
This selection of two different people would be a subject of suspicion and mockery later on.
Wild-Card Witness: Pearly Poll
After the inquest, there were reports that someone who'd attended had identified the as-yet-unknown victim as Emma Turner. On August 11th, officers tracked down the person who claimed to have spent the evening with “Emma” Turner on the night she was murdered: Mary Ann Connelly, better known as Pearly Poll. She was the only one who called Tabram by that name, and Henry Turner had never met her before. Connelly's whereabouts after the inquest were unverified, though she claimed to have been staying at a cousin’s house. Despite her elusiveness, Connelly’s account of what occurred that night would become the most often-repeated storyline.
Entrance to George Yard Buildings on Wentworth Street
Connelly claimed that she had spent the evening bar hopping with Tabram, having made friends with her while they both lived in a lodging house. The two had picked up a couple of soldiers while out and about, with Martha pairing off with her soldier at the entrance to George Yard around 11:45pm. Connelly and the soldier she was with went on to Angel Alley, returning to George Yard about half an hour later, at which point Connelly waited briefly and went home when Martha didn’t show.
Whitechapel police set up two separate identity parades of soldiers, first bringing her to the Tower and then later to the Wellington Barracks at Pimlico. At the first, Reid reported that she had behaved in a “flamboyant” way, shouting, “He ain’t here!” when pressed to identify someone. At the second identity parade she was more subdued and nervous, but made an unsettling move: identifying two military men without hesitating. To both the press and the police, it appeared that she had just walked up and chosen two random people. The soldiers' alibis checked out and they were pursued no further.
Ripper Murder or Not?
Pearly Poll’s odd, shifty behavior made her testimony difficult to use, and the case never yielded a prosecutable suspect. Her changing story, disappearance and reappearance, and other inconsistencies lead some to believe that Tabram’s death was related to gangster activity or organized crime. Reid told local papers that he believed that the killer of Martha Tabram was probably “belonging to the same miserable class” as Pearly Poll, but had been intimidated into reporting what they knew by some “scoundrels of the locality.” The shifty behavior of the major witness, the argument goes, smacks more of a criminal coverup than a lone-wolf serial killer like Jack the Ripper.
Mortuary photo of Martha Tabram
On the other hand, the Hewitts', whose room was right beside the place where Martha’s body was found, reported not hearing a struggle taking place outside their bedroom door that night. By this logic, this would mean that they had not heard two people climbing the stairs and speaking to one another or the sound of the killer exerting himself while inflicting 39 stab wounds. It could have been that they were accustomed to tuning out their surroundings, or that they had ignored the sound of an altercation because they thought it was an interpersonal dispute and didn’t realize it was a murder and then felt ashamed. Or else, the customary stealth of a killer like Jack the Ripper had been used to silently end Martha’s life. Papers reported part of the Hewitts' testimony at the inquest as follows:
“Mrs. Hewitt remarked that early in the evening she had heard a single cry of ‘Murder!' It echoed through the building, but did not emanate from there. ‘But,' explained Mr. Hewitt and Mrs. Hewitt in a breath, ‘the district round here is rather rough, and cries of ‘Murder!' are of frequent, if not nightly, occurrence in the district.”
The arrow marks the spot which was likely the scene of Martha Tabram's murder.
Another point of controversy for whether or not Martha was a victim of the Ripper was the nature of her wounds. She had been stabbed multiple times by a pen knife, as well as a larger wound that Dr. Killeen had at first believed was inflicted by, if not a bayonet, then at least by a larger knife. The Ripper, however, would later become recognizable by his particular style of slashing victims, including a mortal wound across the throat and large tears in the abdomen. In Martha’s case, however, there were 39 puncture wounds all over the body without the characteristic slashes of the Ripper. The fact that Martha was stabbed rather than slashed caused her to be written off as a non-Ripper murder for many years.
Despite her exclusion from the list of “canonical” victims, the sheer savagery of her murder, the crime having taken place only weeks before the first Ripper murder, as well as her similarity to the other victims, means she may always linger on the fringes of possibility.
Sources- The Bank Holiday Murders by Tom Wescott. Crime Confidential Press. October 18, 2013.
- A Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Phillip Sudgeon. Chapter 2. Robinson Publishing. January 2, 2002.
- “The Silence of Violence: A Witness to the Martha Tabram Murder Exposed” by Tom Wescott. Casebook.org.
George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (both the same guy) was almost without doubt Jack The Ripper. Inspector Frederick Abberline knew it 100 years ago, and every “ripperologist” who has ever looked carefully at the evidence should know it today. This is certainly my feeling about it. Klosowski would become notorious as the ‘Bourogh-poisoner’ in 1903, but it was 15 years earlier, in 1888, when he lived on George Yard Road in the heart of Whitechaple, that he had almost certainly heard about an unconventional American who was then in town, (person or persons unknown), who was going around offering London medical schools twenty pounds apice for uteruses left over from hysterectomy procedures. The medical schools had outright refused this American, but it seems that Klosowski ( who had been trained in Poland as a surgeon-barber!) wanted the money, and was more obliging….. in his own unhinged way. And as unlikely as that may seem today, it was common knowledge throughout the medical community of London at the time that an American had made this highly unusual 20 pound offer, and the coroner at the Annie Chapman inquest knew it, and brought it up as the probable motive for the then current Whitechaple murders of 1888. This American had even specified exactly how he had wanted the organ to be preserved during its shipment to the States. (You can read this in the inquest transcription, which has also been published in Evans & Skinner, ‘Ultimate Jack The Ripper Companion’ pgs 102-107. But more importantly, read the 1903 interview that was conducted by the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ with inspector Fredrick Abberline right after ‘Chapman’/Klosowski had been arrested for murdering his 3 wives; this interview is the Rosetta Stone of ripperology I feel. It is printed in the final chapter of Philip Sugdens great book, and it is also in the last chapter of ‘The ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion” by Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner. Evans had discovered this interview in the 1990s for the first time since 1903, but its significance has never really been appreciated or acknowledged by the ‘ripperologists’ as of yet) .
And the most logical reason for ‘Jack The Rippers’ elaborate mutilations of the corpse’s was to disguise his motive of killing the women for their reproductive organs’, so that the people in the U.S who had ordered the specimens wouldn’t become suspicious about how their organs had been procured. The bizarre cuts on the victims face and elsewhere were intended to take attention away from noticing the missing organs. ( If you notice, the corpses which received the really elaborate mutilations were the corpses which had missing organs, and the corpses that did not have missing organs were those in which the attacks had been done in the almost complete darkness, so that he couldn’t find the organs quickly enough to get at them on time in those instances, (he must have given himself a time limit which he would then have stuck to like clockwork.) But every cut on each woman had been necessary to either kill the woman or to obtain her womb, EXCEPT for the facial mutilations, which were done only to take attention from this ‘uterus motive’ of his. And on the second attack, on Annie Chapman, done one week after he had failed to obtain the uterus of Polly Nicholls, he waited around until the crack of dawn to strike on that attack, so that he would have enough light to be able to see what he was doing in order to locate and extract the womb quickly, and he was successful: it was his first successful job extracting the womb.). But his trick of hiding the motive didn’t work, the coroner and the doctor who did the autopsy weren’t fooled by this disguising, they knew that the mutilations were done only to obscure the real motive of obtaining the victims uterus. It is a mystery whether or not these Americans who wanted to be supplied with womens organs became suspicious, after hearing about the Ripper crimes. As far as I have discovered, these people have never gone down on record about any of this, the investigation never went in that direction. It has not even been proven that the ripper was in fact killing for that purpose. But the coroner believed it was obvious that he was, and the coroner had been approached by the same people asking to be supplied with womens organs. Again, they offered twenty pounds for each, even specifying that they should be shipped back to the states preserved in glycerine. (see page 106, ‘the ultimate Jack The Ripper Companion) It is not known what the organs were needed for. The coroner, Dr Baxter, said it had something to do with a publication “on which the American was engaged”*. …Whatever. But this was being said by the coroner at the inquest of the second victim, or rather, of Annie Chapman, and it was repeated by Frederick Abberline in his 1903 interview. They both seemed certain that the ripper had come into contact with this American at some point.
And at that same inquest, both the coroner, Dr. Wynne Baxter, and the attending police-surgeon, Dr. George Bagster Phillips, stated that:
“The abstraction of the missing portion of abdominal viscera (uterus) was the object” of the murders, and that:
“The difficulty in believing that the purporse of the murderer was the possession of the missing abdominal organ was natural, as it is abhorrent to our feelings that a life would be taken for so slight an object”
– From the transcript of the Annie Chapman inquest, Sept 1888
This “difficulty in believing the purpose of the murderer”, by investigators, was a source of the Rippers good luck, and one reason why he was never caught. It blinded the investigators then, and it still blinds us today.
(* I have, since I first wrote this, recently become aware of a likely candidate for this American entity who wanted the female organ. There is a fairly recent ripper-suspect, an American named Francis Tumblety. The likelihood of him being Jack The Ripper is not likely, He was a gay man who did not match the witnesses descriptions in any way. ( FBI profilers are adamant that the ripper would not be homosexual) However, it seems he was fascinated with collecting female organs . Not only that, but he was in London during the time of the ripper (which is why some people suspected him of being the ripper) and could have somehow come into contact with Klosowski before the Ripper attacks began, and made him this same offer that coroner Baxter related to the inquest jurists. Klosowski may have made the rounds in some of those same medical schools looking for employment in some surgical teaching capacity, perhaps. Also, C.A. Dunham, an American Lawyer who knew Tumblety, recalled in 1888 having once seen Tumblety’s ‘anatomical museum’. It contained, he said, ‘a dozen or more jars containing …the matrices [wombs] of every class of woman.’)
I don’t know if Chapman/Klosowski had any preference either way about the method he used to kill women, weather he enjoyed using a knife to butcher them or weather he enjoyed watching them waste away slowly from his poison, but I feel he probably got a kick out of leaving the body, in all its bloody, decapitated glory, to be discovered by the first innocent bystander to pass its way. I bet it made him chuckle when he thought about the expression on the face of whoever it was to stumble upon his ‘work’. He was killing prostitutes to get body parts ( The womb), that’s all, a big difference from killing his “wives” by poison, slowly, for the fun of watching them suffer- and ridding himself of the obstacle that was standing between himself and his next female conquest. And he couldn’t have carved his wives up, now could he? How would he have explained to police that all three of his life-partners were cut to bits and pieces, even Jack The Ripper was not bold enough to try to get away with that! ( and if he had cut them up, it would have likely exposed him as being ‘Jack The Ripper’ also, right?) And since he knew he couldn’t get away with carving all three of them up, then why not put his other skills to use, show people that he is multi-talented and ambidextrous! But the “Ripperologists” can’t seem to believe that a killer who would later go on to watch women slowly suffer and die by poison would also, 15 years earlier, use a blade to kill prostitutes. But FBI profiler John Douglas knows all too well that serial killers have taken on new methods as time goes on, and “Chapman” didn’t begin using poison to kill his victims until 9 years after the ripper crimes had ended,(his 1st poisoning was in 1897). Killing women is the thing that turns them on, making them suffer, that was the rippers goal ( I believe that when “Chapman” began ‘ripping’ prostitutes, I think he might have believed that nobody would even care about them, not the police, not even any family members. He was hoping he could have the fun of killing them, also making 20 pounds on each one by sending the procured organ over to the states, and nobody would be the wiser- Twenty pounds was a large chunk of change back in 1888- He found out different real quick, and he quit doing it in the East End fairly soon also, but he went to New York right when he quit and tried the same thing there)
‘George Chapman’ arrived in England from Poland just one year before the ripper murders began, ( but there was another set of murders, of women being dumped into the Thames, which began only one MONTH after he arrived in London!) and when he moved to New York for a while, (just after the ripper murders stopped, by the way) similar murders started in New York also, one in particular was the ripper-like murder of Carrie Brown in the Bowery. If you check out all the things that line up in these series of murders, the dates, the places Klosowski lived in Whitechaple ( He lived at the exact spot where the first murder (Tabram) happened, and was living there WHEN it happened also! – something that FBI pro-filer John Douglas had predicted would be the case, 30 years ago!) then add to everything else the fact that Chapman/Klosowski had been trained in Poland as a surgeon! Why, he knew more about cutting people up than he did poisoning them, or just as much.
If you check out all these “coincidences” and put it in a computer, the odds would be about a billion to one for him being the ripper, for real. The deeper it is looked into, the more only a fool would disagree with it I bet
The reason current “ripperologists” now like to scoff at the ‘Chapman theory’,( they “Poo Poo” this theory,) is because they feel if people believe that the ripper murders have been solved, then the ripperologists themselves wont have anything to write about any more- THIS is what concerns them, their meal ticket. The only thing that ever stops the Jack The Ripper murders from ever being officially solved is the so called “ripperologists” themselves, the very people who claim to be interested in solving it. This has been the case for as long as books have been written on the subject. Ironic, right? But it is so easy to ridicule the theory when you get into the motive of an American having offered 20 pounds apice for female organs. But then consider the source of where we know about the offer from; from Coroner Wynne Baxter, who did the autopsy on Annie Chapman. And consider who it was who agreed with him; Fredrick Abberline himself, probably the most respected and effective officer to have worked on the Ripper case, or who had ever worked in Whitechaple for that matter. Abberline would believe that Klosowski was the Ripper until his dying day. Personally, I would believe him over Sir Melville Magnaughton, or Sir Robert Anderson too. Those two are politicians.
One more thing: witnesses at a couple of the ripper killings have described seeing a suspect matching Chapman/Kolsowoski in every detail: his handlebar mustache, his pale complexion, the type of clothes and hat he was fond of wearing, his height, etc etc. The only difference was that they said he was older, Klosowski was 23, but they said the person they saw was about 30. But wouldn’t a man who was being looked for by everybody in the city, for crimes that everybody wants solved, wouldn’t it seem logical that this person would do something to look different? Think about it. Its hard to make yourself look younger, but its not hard to look older, not at all. Right? I bring this up because it is the witnesses’ statements that the suspect they saw was in his 30s that “ripperologists”,( I.E. Martin Fido & Paul Begg,) use to “prove” that these few witnesses must have seen someone other than ‘Chapman’/ Klosowski. So prejudice are they in their “belief” that they almost totally ignore the fact that the witnesses’ identified Klosowski in about five out of six details. Yet only the age discrepancy, that’s all Fido & Begg notice. The age is about the most common thing for a witness to get wrong, never mind the fact that if the ripper were disguising himself, the age would be the easiest place to begin for him, and the most logical. About the only other place these two guys go to in their attempt to discredit this theory, and thereby discredit inspector Abberline and Phillip Sugden also, is their problem about not believing that a serial killer could possibly use a knife to butcher prostitutes in one instance, and then ten years later be killing a different class of women (women who live with him) by poison. But Kolowoski was using a knife at a younger age, before he probably ever used poison to kill. And he was using the knife and cutting prostitutes up for a specific, premeditated purpose, a purpose that the coroner in Whitechaple was wise to when he had observed that the killers main goal was to procure the reproductive organ, as if that were the killers only motive. And it got very dangerous for the ripper to use that method. But he didn’t only learn about anatomy when he was trained as a surgeon, he took classes in chemistry as well. And an egomaniac like this ripper here would probably want to put all his skills to use, that’s my feeling about the guy. He knows all about poison as well,…. but he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. I guess he never learned that the poison he bought to kill his “wives” ( his wives that he never even married) would preserve the corpse, making it obvious to investigators, if they ever exhumed the body, how they had met their end. This is what got Kolowoski hung (hanged?) Jack The Ripper never got caught, but as the “wife”-poisoner he did. He was investigated and arrested by an Inspector Godley, an officer who was very much involved with Abberline in the Ripper killings 15 years earlier. And Godley was certain that “Chapman” was the ripper also, and he had even kept Abberline appraised of his progress during the whole investigation into Chapman. Abberline had retired from Scotland Yard by that time, but was in charge of the European branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency
And by the way, while we are on the subject of ‘Egomania’, let’s not overlook the motive of the police themselves, ( I am speaking most specifically about Sir Norville Macnaughten). In 1894 he wrote that “Jack the Ripper had five victims, and five victims only”. Now, how can he possibly make this statement, and make it as if it is the final word, not to be disputed by anybody? What evidence does he have that Martha Tabram was not killed by the ripper? …NONE! But the police were facing the most severe criticism they had ever faced because of not capturing Jack The Ripper, they were ridiculed about it. Any time the subject came up, Magnaughten would feel he was being made the butt of a cruel joke. During the time of these murders, the N.Y. Times had called Scotland Yard the “stupidest police force on the planet”. Magnaughten wanted to diminish the successes that the ripper had had against his police force. If he thought he could have gotten away with stating that the Ripper had only ever killed TWO people, he would have tried it I bet. It was a case of EGO. Just like ‘Ripperologists’ today. Any time someone suggests a new theory that goes against the one that they had, they ridicule it, in a passive-aggressive manner. Doctors also were under a cloud of suspicion, due to the fact that Coroner Baxter had correctly pointed out that the ripper could not have found the organs he was so specifically seeking unless he had received some training as a surgeon. Later on, Dr. Thomas Bond would attempt to downplay this idea, going so far as to say that even a butcher would know where to find the uterus in a human, and be able to extract it so effectively .. But who could blame him for saying this, and for being defensive, there was a mania at work, and citizens were looking to lynch doctors practically. This defensiveness of Doctors, Police, Jews, East Europeans, etc etc, ended up compromising the investigation.
And since Magnaughtens comments were first made public, Ripperologists everywhere have spoken so reverently about them, as if Magnaughtons words have been carved in STONE almost. “The canonical Five” of Sir Melvin Macnaughton! These were comments made by a very defensive Scotland Yard officer who was trying his best to lessen the impact of his greatest failure, to knock ‘Jack the Ripper’ down a few pegs…………. “Big deal….he only got five women!”, this is what he was insinuating!. And remember too, those comments were made almost 10 years before “George Chapman” came to the British public’s attention, so Kolosowski COULDN’T have been included in Magnaughtens report, because Magnaughten had never been successful in discovering him!
One problem is that we want to believe that ‘Jack The Ripper’ was a supernatural fiend, when in fact he was simply a crude little woman-hating creep with a Napoleon complex who had dumb luck on his side. ( a clear portrait of Klosowski’s personality can be found in the 1930 book “The Trial of George Chapman” by H.L Adam. Adam had attended his trial, and seen Klosowski up close and personal) But he was a rarity, and thank God for that much. His being a such a rarity is good evidence that Carrie Brown of the Bowery was also killed by nobody but Jack the Ripper, especially considering that Klosowski had recently arrived in New York before she was killed. Or was that just simply another coincidence also maybe? Sure thing.
It is absolutely ASTOUNDING to me that although Klosowski was a total match to so many witness statements, and that he both worked AND resided within short walking distance from each of the ripper attacks, that he was a trained surgeon who had migrated from Poland only months before the ripper attacks began…….Yet he was NEVER questioned by the London Police, that we know of, and his name appears on NO POLICE REPORT before he had been arrested for murder in 1902! It seems absolutely APPALLING! And Scotland Yard, who supposedly questioned every man in Whitechaple during the ripper manhunt, seems to have had NO CLUE that Severin Klosowski even EXISTED in 1888!
Not only that, but even today, ‘ripperologists’ CONTINUE to downplay the ‘Chapman theory’, and they use the weakest logic to make their argument, in the face of, by far, the strongest evidence that has EVER been compiled about any other ripper suspect! But yet they keep putting fourth the most unlikely suspects imaginable! It is BIZARRE!
I think that one other reason that British “Ripperologists” like to downplay the ‘Chapman theory’ is because it DOES so make Scotland Yard look awful……because they SHOULD have caught him! And if they would have pursued the line of inquiry that coroner Wynne Baxter had started up during the Annie Chapman inquest, they probably WOULD have caught Klosowski in 1888!
Unfortunately, some of Abberline’s accounts are unreliable. I have had a passing interest in the ripper for many years, and it was disappointing to view a recent UK program which had Martha Tabram as a ripper victim. Both the Met and City forces recognised at the time that there were only five ripper victims. The programme introduced a suspect, Charles Lechmere who was new to me, and was put forward as the ripper on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. I personally believe that many years ago, Martin Fido made a strong case for Aaron Kosminski, which later studies seemed to corroborate, but the problem is that it suits nobody except the writer, putting forward his pet suspect, to have the matter finally resolved.
The painter Walter Sickert has again been mentioned, even though, on his deathbed, he confessed to lying about it. I half expect someone to come up with evidence that Prince Eddy was the true culprit, let alone Gull, Druitt, Ostrog, Tumbelty et al. Certainly after Kosminski was incarcerated in a Hertfordshire mental institution, the police believed the murders would cease. There was however pressure on the police not to accuse a member of the East-end Jewish community.
Was klosowski also a Mason?
Re Douglas Barr’s comment above. I am startled that someone supposedly a student of Jack the Ripper would spell Whitechapel incorrectly.
who ever said I was a student? not me
It wasn’t Klosowski or any other East Ender. In 2015 I privately corresponded with Fiona Kendall-Lane whose Great-Grandfather John McCarthy was final victim Mary Kelly’s landlord at Millers Court. Fiona knows JtR’s real ID & motive though was prevented from stating either to me by a book contract she’s signed, but she did tell me that John actually saw the killer arriving to visit Mary in her room late on the night before she was found murdered. Fiona told me that the Police knew who he was & mounted a cover-up because he was “one of the highest in the land” but NOT Lord Randolph Churchill, & that there were more than 5 victims. Her Dad – John’s Grandson, told her John knew of at least one more of whom Fiona would say only that she’d been killed “prior to Mary”. Fiona added that the victims ALL knew each other & were all killed for the same specific reason – implying JtR wasn’t a random killer as is commonly supposed. Fiona also confirmed that the man Thomas Bowyer had seen with Mary in Commercial Street circa 8.45pm on Wed Nov 7th was JTR. Bowyer described him as aged about 27-28 meaning he could realistically have been anywhere in his 20s, smartly dressed with a dark moustache, peculiar-looking eyes, showy very white shirt cuffs, & a white shirt collar the long ends of which protruded over his black coat – implying the shirt collar was of unusually prominent appearance hence Bowyer particularly recalling it.
yes, it was definately Klosowski, anybody can tell,> This is being agreed upon now by almost everybody who looks objectively into the case now. The only people insisting it was not klosowski are those who have some sort of hidden agenda to eithe not want the case solved, or who have some sort of agenda, like you
I have no “agenda” other than seeking the truth. Fiona Kendall-Lane told me John McCarthy had many Police pals including Abberline (same masonic Lodge) & that Abberline knew who it was John had seen, assisting in keeping the killer’s ID quiet to facilitate the Police cover-up. In 1978, the late Nigel Morland, Founding Editor of The Criminologist, said that in the early 1920s he’d privately discussed JtR with Abberline, who’d told him there’d been “a lot of stuff not entered in the files, orders from above in 1888/9 to forget about the whole affair” & that JtR “wasn’t a butcher, Jew or foreign skipper as he was meant to be. You’d have to find him not at the bottom of London Society as it was then, but a long way up”. When pressed for more details, Abberline had simply replied “I will say only this: of course we knew who he was, one of the highest in the land”. When I raised this with Fiona she confirmed the cover-up & that Abberline would indeed have classed JtR as “one of the highest in the land” – implying the rest was true too. But neither Abberline nor anyone else would’ve classed Klososwski as any of that because he was at the bottom of Society! Fiona also told me John & JtR had known each other a few years; that JtR hated John for personal reasons; & that John had considered JtR a liar & fraud well before his suspicion the man might be the Ripper had begun to grow – hence John having told Bowyer to let him know if he ever saw that particular person near Millers Court. Circa 3am on the murder morning, Bowyer did see him there & told John. Fiona also revealed that on seeing JtR arriving to visit Mary late that Thurs night, John had “assumed he was there buying sex having seen the same man around the court before” – implying John knew sex had been the reason for his previous visits too. Factor in Fiona’s disclosure John ran “knocking shops” & reference to the witness George Hutchinson being a regular visitor to all the court’s “ladies of disrepute” & the obvious, overall implication is that Millers Court was one of John’s brothels where JtR had been a high class client until John caught him in some act of deception deemed sufficient to warrant warning him off. As to what that deception might have been, “one of the highest in land” would surely have attended such a dubious establishment under a false ID for fear of scandal if his presence became known. So John, on discovering his real ID, would’ve feared scandal if the truth got out & barred JtR to prevent that. As to a possible motive for the murders, when 6 different people who all know each other are all slain by the same man for the same reason, he clearly isn’t a random killer. But a man driven simply by a mania to kill prostitutes WOULD have chosen his victims randomly as it wouldn’t matter to him which prossies he killed. So I now suspect prostitution was simply how those women all knew each other, NOT the actual motive. I think they were killed for something else they had in common – shared knowledge leaked to them by Mary as only she had lived at Millers Court albeit just for a few months, so JtR’s association with it had significantly predated her’s. My working hypothesis is thus that the victims were blackmailing VIP Jack by threatening to expose his previous patronage of the Millers Court brothel, & that as such exposure would mean social ruin to “one of the highest in the land”, he’d killed them knowing the Police would have to shield him if they found out it was him. Fiona also told me JtR “considered himself well above mere detectives & Coppers, treating them like dirt!”. So to a man who looked that far down on even the Police, killing underclass whores daring to blackmail him would surely have been akin to stamping on cockroaches. As to who he was, I suspect Prince Albert Victor whom Bowyer’s now-confirmed description of JtR would’ve fitted both physically & sartorially (his nickname was “Collar & Cuffs”!) Stowell implicitly accused him in his famous article, & after Stowell’s death in 1970 Colin Wilson revealed that 10 years earlier he’d lunched with Stowell at the latter’s London club & that Stowell “had stated Jack the Ripper was the Duke of Clarence”. In 1978, journalist Richard Nobile confirmed Stowell had indeed been implicitly accusing PAV & had come under pressure from “The Crown” to falsely withdraw the allegation! That explains the unseemly haste with which Stowell’s son burned his Ripper Archive after his death. Nor was Stowell alone in accusing PAV: the author Anthony Burgess actually named him as JtR. Another piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to him is the fact that after 130 years the cover-up is STILL in operation. As the only member of the Royal Family on the suspect list, PAV is the most likely to still be protected even today.
you are startled by it? You should have seen it before I applied ‘spellcheck’, you might have died from fright. Yup, I am not very good at spelling correctly, not at all. I am fairly good at analyzing events correctly though, and I believe I was pretty successful in this instance above, don’t you?
Bad spellling? Oh boo hoo!
The Ripper attempted to obscure his ‘uterus motive’ with those nasty cuts on the victims faces because he knew that he could be tracked down if police knew his motive. The Ripper (Klosowski) would have worried that the police may have heard about the offer to those London medical Schools by the ‘American’, and if they had they could have then tracked the American, interrogated him, and gotten the American to tell them about everything he knew, which would mean even about ‘Severn Klosowski’ also! Klosowski was cunning, and this obscuring of the motive is an example of it, and shows how he could have been successful in avoiding detection.
And when Klosowski stopped the Ripper-type murders (it looks as though sometime close to when he returned to London from America, in the summer of 1892. He came to the realization that if he continued in that manner, he would soon be exposed) he stuck to it. If he had ever again been connected to ANY new murder – (done with a knife in some bloody fashion) – he knew he would then also likely be connected to those Whitechapel murders that he had done. It must have weighed on his mind. (this is also why he changed the ‘Klosowski’ name he was using in 1888, and would never admit now to even knowing who Severin Klosowski was, once he had returned to London) Killing his “wife” by poison, and making it look like ‘natural causes’, this would not arouse suspicion to anybody wondering about the Ripper murders. Even if it had got out that they had been poisoned, the public would not link that to the Ripper killings. People would say “serial killers don’t alter their methods”. This is another example of his animal cunning that so many people don’t believe he has. Its not genius on his part, simply a survival mechanism he has developed and learned to trust in. Killing his “wives” by poison also gave him the opportunity to showcase a different “skill” of his, something that seemed important to this maladjusted egomaniac.
* * * * *
Francis Tumblety, I believe, was the ‘American’ referred to by Coroner Wynn Baxter at Annie Chapman’s inquest; he is the “American agent” who Klosowski was procuring uterus for, as referred to by Inspector Abberline in his 1903 ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ interview. But Tumblety was not the Ripper (as has been suggested in some books recently). Many of those who knew Tumblety said he was a coward. The Ripper was many things, but he was no coward. You can’t be a coward and also calmly dissect women within mere feet and inches of bystanders who are ready and willing to lynch you at the first opportunity, as so many East End Londoner’s were ready, willing, and able to do to the Ripper. There are many other reasons to suggest that Tumblety was not the Ripper, and I have stated the most obvious reasons previously already. Tumblety knew Klosowski was the Ripper I believe, he was a big reason Klosowski WAS the Ripper, and he continued to exert influence over Klosowski during the entire murder spree. I also believe that the reason Klosowski went to New York at the beginning of the 1890s was to meet up with Tumblety again. But Klosowski was the actual Ripper, the man getting the disgusting work done. Tumblety was the man who gave the Ripper his commission, as stated by Abberline in 1903. ( I have no idea if Abberline suspected Tumblety of being the “American” who wanted the uterus’s, we will never know about that for certain, but he certainly believed Klosowski was the Ripper.)
Abberline may not have known that Tumblety was coroner Baxter’s “American” for sure, but you can be certain that Abberline knew that Tumblety wasn’t the Ripper, in 1903, when he told the press that Klosowski/ Chapman was the Ripper. Just as he knew that the other so-called suspects; i.e. Druit, Kosminski, Ostrog, etc etc. were not the Ripper. Abberline was one of the best experienced detectives in England, and he had interviewed all the suspects, including Tumblety. (inspectors McNaughton, Littlechild, Robert Anderson, etc; during the Whitechapel Murders those guys were all paper-pushers. Abberline was the real deal, and was out there on the same streets the Ripper was.) He knew the suspects were all false leads, all of them except Klosowski. He said so. And Tumblety was in police custody when Mary Kelly was murdered, so he couldn’t be the Ripper. Klosowski was in close proximity to each victim during every single murder (He HAD to be, he DID them all), and he was in New York the night Carrie Brown was murdered Ripper-style in the Bowery . He was given his incentive by Tumblety I believe, (Tumblety was a collector of human uterus. Also, it is reported that Klosowski admired America and Americans, and Tumblety, it is said, could be a very charismatic American) but Klosowski was the actual Ripper. Coincidentally, both men died in 1903, but it was Klosowski who was executed by the hangman’s knot, not Tumblety. Tumblety was a free man when he died.
* * * * *
In November of 1888, Tumblety had been arrested in connection with the Whitechapel murders. The exact, precise date of his arrest is unclear, but it was earlier the same week as the murder of Marie Kelly on Dorset Street. (The final ‘official’ Ripper murder) Remember, it has been put forward that Severin Klosowski was committing these murders to obtain uterus for Tumblety, and that Tumblety had been ‘the American’ that coroner Baxter was referring to, during the inquest of Annie Chapman.
So how did Tumblety ever come to be suspected by the London Police in the Whitechapel Murder Case in the first place? Scotland Yard was checking up on his every move, but why? Some writers have speculated it was because it had become known that Tumblety hated women, especially prostitutes. I would think if the police were following every man in London who hated women, if that’s all it took to have the kind of police manpower used that they had used on Tumblety, then there would be no police left over to do anything else, and England’s jails would have been filled to capacity twice over with men who hated women! It seems doubtful that he would have received the amount of suspicion he did simply because he had somehow made it known that he hated women; to the point that the police would have arrested him, and years later, tell a writer that Tumblety had been the most likely suspect in the Whitechapel Murders! And the only evidence they had on him was that he hated women? This does not make sense.
Was it instead because the police had learned that Tumblety had been the “American” who had made the twenty pound offer for uterus to the London medical schools? This, to my way of thinking, would seem far more plausible, and there is good reason to conclude that the curator at the medical school would have contacted the police, after having already contacted the coroner. At that late stage in the Ripper murders, Scotland Yard wasn’t sharing much information with anybody, especially the British press. If they had, they felt it could only be used to tip off The Ripper himself. So we don’t know much about what the London Police thought about Tumblety when they arrested him, or if they had been contacted by the curator beforehand. But remember, the curator had contacted coroner Baxter after reading that the Ripper-victim (Annie Chapman) was missing the very same organ that the “American ‘ had offered to pay him twenty pounds apiece for, so it would seem a pretty safe bet that he would also be contacting the Police next, if he hadn’t done it already. If the curator were worried enough about this “American” to contact the coroner, I think it likely that he would also contact the police next. (and if the curator didn’t contact the police about it, the coroner certainly would have. After all, he felt it important enough to have told the jurists of the inquest all about it!) Think about it, Tumblety had told the staff at the medical school exactly how he wanted the female organs to be preserved for their shipment to the States, so he must have also provided them with his name, address, etc. so that they could know exactly where to send them. Tumblety had no knowledge, back at the time when the curator said he had been contacted by him, that he would soon be involved in the most notorious murders of modern times. The only thing he had to hide at that point was his sexual preference; which the police would soon be using as an excuse to hold him on while they investigated into whether he was Jack-the-Ripper or not. But Tumblety had no reason not to give his name to the medical schools, not at that early date. I think that the curator would feel it his duty to contact police and provide them with the name of the “American”. Police wouldn’t have arrested Tumblety simply because they had heard he hated prostitutes, there had to be something else. (offering to pay 20 pounds apiece for the same organ that was the motive for these women having been killed is definitely something else!). It wouldn’t have been till after police did some extensive investigating that they would have learned about Tumblety’s sexuality, his young ‘male escorts’,and the mischief he was getting himself into, all of which was a crime in the 1880s, a crime police could detain him for, and bring charges against him on, while they investigated the claims made by the medical school.
Can you imagine Klosowski’s panic when he heard Tumblety was in police custody? He had to DO something about this! Tumblety, Klosowski knew, would be made to talk, and soon the whole WORLD might know the identity of Jack-the-Ripper! The murder of Marie Kelly…. the way it soon went down, it seemed to capture the mood and the state of mind Klosowski must have been in at the time.
Tumblety was still in custody the night that Mary Kelly was brutally murdered, maimed, and mutilated. He would bail himself out in less than a week. Is it possible that the only reason that Marie Kelly was murdered on that night was because Klosowski, who knew Tumblety had been arrested, was out to exonerate him, mainly so that Tumblety would not talk? The Ripper had not struck in well over a month by that time, which had been by far the biggest gap in the murders, and its possible that after the Ripper obtained that second uterus, that of Catherine Eddowes, that those two organs were all that Tumblety had wanted, and the Ripper murders were over and done with at that point. If so, then why was Mary Kelly murdered, and murdered far more violently than anybody else in the entire series?
The evidence suggests that Klosovski was extremely angry when he hunted Kelly down. (make no mistake about it, to Klosowski this WAS a hunt, and a sport! But I don’t think he was in a sporting mood on the night he butchered Mary Kelly) Klosowski had the perfect opportunity to procure the uterus of Mary Kelly that night, it was indoors, he had plenty of time. But he did not do it. It is obvious from the murder scene that Klosowski was in a maniacal rage that night. And he went totally ape-sh*t; completely berzerk. It is possible that the reason he did not take her uterus was because this murder had a different motive for him than the other murders in the series: that being to exonerate Tumblety of any involvement in the Whitechapel murders, for which both Klosowski and Tumblety knew that Tumblety was being suspected of. If another Ripper-killing, the worst one yet, happened while Tumblety was safe behind bars, then Tumblety COULDN’T be the Ripper! The police would be forced to let him go, this is what Klosowski would have likely reasoned. ‘Coincedently’, one week later, Tumblety would skip out on the bail that he himself had put up on himself (Tumblety was fairly well off financially), go back to New York and never return to England again. (I get the feeling though that the London police were not too surprised when it turned out that Tumblety was not the Ripper. But they still believed he was connected to the killings in some way)
In a couple years Klosowski and his then-new ‘wife’ (Lucy Baderski) would follow Tumblety to New York, though both he and she would eventually return to London, separately; she pregnant and frightened for her life, after Klosowski repeatedly attempted murder on her, once with a very long knife. During that attack, when Lucy had tried to scream, Klosowski pushed his head up against her face, covering her mouth with his forehead so she could neither scream nor breathe,(like this were a move he was used to), using his arms and hands to hold hers down. The only thing that saved Lucy was that a customer to their bar came in right as this was happening, and Klosowsky got up to tend to him. Lucy was nearly unconscious from lack of oxygen, but as Klosowski got up to deal with the customer, Lucy was able to hide the knife he had been ready to use on her. Later, a more composed and friendly Klosowski would calmly assure Lucy that, had it not been for the customer, he would have surely cut her head off. He then showed her where he had planned to bury her dead body, as if he were letting her in on a good joke he had once heard.
Is it possible that Tumblety, the women-hating homosexual Entrepreneur, and Klosowski, the creepy secretive Barber/Surgeon/Publican, were, in their own way, in love with one another? Is it possible that the two of them blamed the very prostitutes that they were butchering for the fact that Tumblety had been arrested and jailed? I feel Klosowski might have been secretly bi-sexual , while Tumblety was known to have been gay. (Klosowski was a womanizer- to put it mildly. It has long been noted that many ‘womanizers’ go from woman to woman as a subconscious attempt to prove to themselves that they are not in reality homosexual.) There is something about Klosowski that suggests that, even though he had an animal magnetism that attracted certain women to him, he himself was contemptuous of women, and could far more easily be swayed by a man. I think he may have been ashamed about it, (he was proud of his ‘macho’ self image of himself) and probably did his best to stay away from most men because of it. I think it might be possible that Klosowski blamed women for the awful feelings which this all produced in him, and I think that this might account for his bloodthirsty rage towards them. Maybe he blamed women for standing in the way of what he really wanted. Klowsowski looked up to men. And I think that the 20 pound commission from Tumblety provided Klosowski with all the justification he needed to keep this one close male attraction/relationship ongoing. (I just get the feeling somehow that Tumblety possessed characteristics that Klosowski felt attracted to. Klosowski looked up to Americans, and he admired wealth and success; Tumblety represented all of that. Klosowski also seemed to admire ultra right-wing politics, as did Tumblety. (Klosowski lost business in his pub due to his vocal support of the Boers, arguing with patrons about the war) I also think that Klosovski and Tumblety, together, had planned out the Jew-baiting “Lipski” comment on Berner street, and the “Juwes” message on Goulston St, not to mention the “Lusk” letter, which was sent to a largely Jewish vigilance organization, [and the “Lusk” letter, due to its syntax, is believed by many to have been written by an Irishman, and Tumblety was born in Ireland]. – and remember that Stride’s murder was purposely staged on the premises of a Jewish socialist club. Incidentally, all of these incidence, intended to bring suspicion for the murders upon the Jews, were connected to the night of the ‘double event’, the night that the Ripper was seen on Berner Street with a second man who stood 5’11” in height – same height as Tumblety. Berner Street is just around the corner from Batty street, the street that Tumblety was reported to have been living on) But as with everything else in his life, only for a short time would it remain ongoing. Largely because of the Slavic, male-oriented culture he was raised in, Klosowski would try his best to maintain the charade of female relations afterward. But from what we know of his future, and about why he ended up getting caught, we see it did not turn out very well, not for anyone.
(for a good portrait of and better understanding for Klosowski’s personality, read the introduction (and entire text for that matter) to the 1930 book ‘The Trial Of George Chapman’ by H. L. Adam. It is a relatively rare book, (especially considering its being the only first hand account of who was actually Jack-the-Ripper that was ever written) .
The biggest surprise regarding Tumblety is the fact that he had been virtually forgotten for a hundred years before having been rediscovered in the 1990’s. Back in 1889, his name had been mentioned in American Newspapers from New York to San Francisco in connection with the Ripper murders as a possible suspect, beginning the very week after the murder of Mary Kelly. He was well known by anybody interested in the case back then. By the time the first real book on the Ripper was written, in the late 1920s by Leonard Matters, it had been almost 40 years, and Tumblety didn’t fit into Matter’s version of events I guess. These books all built upon each other as the decades passed, and “ripperologists” only seemed to know the “facts” from what they had shared with one another, it was like a club. They completely had lost touch with that part of the Ripper story. This was up untill Phillip Sugden came along, he set the new standard for research into the case, and for the need to be objective also. He turned the tide (although he missed Tumblety too!). It is STILL surprising that nobody learned about Tumblety through going back and looking at the old newspaper articles; perhaps nobody was looking at any of the American newspapers from the era, only the British ones maybe. It was in a letter from police officer Littlechild, sold in auction, where Tumblety’s name was finally rediscovered.
* * * * *
The whole inspiration for me writing this essay, in the first place, was in retaliation over the fact that so many “ripperologists” had been calling the single most logical and likely theory of them all, ‘stupid’, as if they were personally threatened by the Klosowski theory. And it wasn’t my theory at that point, but I could see that there was something rotten about what they were doing, something phony. There you have it. Just go and look at what Stewart Evans said about the “Chapman Theory” in his ‘Ripper’ book about Tumblety: ‘JTR, First American Serial Killer’ , and this was after Phillip Sugden had pointed out that Klosowski was the only suspect, out of all of the suspects, that could not be eliminated – (He successfully eliminated all of the other so-called “suspects” that the Ripperologists have debated on over the years). But Evans, in his book about Tumblety, “eliminates” Klosowski so quickly that it could make your head spin. The trouble is that the only reason he “eliminated” him so quickly was because if he had spent more time doing it, it would have only more clearly exposed the fact that he had nothing of any substance to eliminate Klosowski on; but he simply wanted his readers to believe that Tumblety was the Ripper instead, because it was he himself who had rediscovered Tumblety, for which he deserves credit. Fido and Begg called George Chapman an “alleged” Ripper-suspect, but they didn’t use any such negative prefix when calling the far less likely Kosminski, or Druitt “SUSPECTS”, in their ‘Jack-the-Ripper A thru Z’ book! Martin Fido has gone on TV and stated “Anybody suggesting that Montegue Druitt is Jack-the-Ripper can do so knowing he has made a serious, respectable choice” or some such nonsense, yet he reprimands anybody who seriously makes his vote for George Chapman / Severin Klosowski, as if he and his friends know so much better than Abberline himself did, or Phillip Sugden even. It just gets to me that these people set themselves up as the ‘Grand Ol’ Men of Ripperology’, and then passive-aggressively twist the facts in order to support their own personal views of events, and go on TV speaking so condescendingly and patronizingly towards anybody with a different idea, no matter how sound that idea may be
And remember, Inspector Abberline was the only man from the original investigation who had integrity enough to admit what had really happened, no matter how bad it may have made him and the rest of Scotland yard appear, and no matter how angry it might have made the public at him. This was largely due to him having retired from the force and working for an independent agency at the time. But that only adds to his credibility. He never wrote any books on the case in later years, as so many of his peers were doing, he was only interested in finding what had happened, never with his own ‘reputation and image’, as so many others from the original investigation were.(he never had his photo taken!) And now, Ripperologists have even put words in his mouth, and have told lies saying that he changed his mind about ‘Chapman’ in later years- which was all based on that book by Donald McCormick, ‘The Identity Of Jack The Ripper’, which, instead of simply telling us the truth, that Klosowski was the Ripper, for some reason made the preposterous and bizarre allegation that Klosowski had a ‘secret Russian double’ who was the ‘actual’ Ripper, (and was also a Russian spy sent over by Rasputin to boot! – I mean, at that early date, how would Rasputin have even known about Klosowski to go looking for a ‘double’ to put in his place?) and that Abberline changed his mind about Klosowski being the Ripper when he learned it was the ‘double’ who was the ‘true’ Ripper! Can you imagine the great Abberline ever believing such an outrageous, preposterous thing!? It is libelous to even suggest that he believed something so ludicrous in print!……… Klosowski simply had all the same traits, and was just coincidentally a surgeon, and had lived in all the right places…etc etc etc. Sure thing Bud. The fact of the matter is that Abberline’s comments indicate that he himself didn’t even know about Klosowski until 1902! He did not suspect him until the trial of “George Chapman”! (this was pointed out in Phillip Sugden’s remarkable book)
And Abberline never changed his mind about ‘Chapman’ either, certainly never on record. So any suggestion that he did is putting words in his mouth after he had died, which also demonstrates how low these people will stoop in discrediting this important theory. The only reason to do that is because it is correctly acknowledged that Abberline’s opinion is THE most significant of all. (Even Paul Begg, in his ‘Jack the Ripper; the Facts’, stated that Abberline ‘ ‘might have’ changed his mind [regarding Chapman being the Ripper] in later years’ , Yet he provided no proof of where he might have heard this, and no other details, which tells me that he was probably just embarrassed to admit that he had gotten it from Donald McCormick’s book)
And it was Abberline’s opinion that Klosowski was the Ripper! There is ZERO evidence that his opinion ever changed.
message 19: by Leslie Nov 02, 2018 05:55AM
Excellent reading. A lot of research obviously went into it. You may like to have a read of my “Whitechapel Nights”, available on Kindle for 99p. All the actual ‘Ripper’ murders are factually correct, taken from witness statements, police records and coroner’s reports. Chapters in between concern an ordinary, Victorian middle-aged couple. However, there is a link. The book contains several twists and offers an explanation to the ending of the murders in Whitechapel. Would like to hear your views.
message 20: by Bob Nov 02, 2018 06:05AM
Only Kate Eddowes and Mary Kelly were left with mutilated faces. Only Annie Chapman and Kate Eddowes had their uteruses taken away. I fail to see the unmistakable pattern pointing only to Chapman. And while Abberline did indeed consider him the Ripper. Many other contemporary police officials held many other opinions. You may be right. You may be far afield. The debate goes on.
It’s all fun for me, as I write Fiction.
Saucy Jacky The Whitechapel Murders As Told By Jack The Ripper by Doug Lamoreux
message 21: by Douglas (last edited Dec 11, 2018 07:01AM) Nov 02, 2018 07:51AM
I already addressed my thoughts about those other “contemporary police officials”, and their “opinions” also, especially Macnaghten. (see message 16)
Yes, out of five ‘official’ victims, Klosowski was only successful in obtaining the uterus twice. (can you imagine, though, how difficult it must be to perform such an extraction out on the cold, wet, very dark streets in the middle of the night, or even if under ideal conditions? And also having to worry about possibly getting caught while doing it?! It would take a couple tries to get it right, at least, even for a first-class surgeon) But as I reported, I don’t believe that he was trying to get Marie Kelly’s uterus, her murder had a different motive. So he only really FAILED twice. (actually he also failed on Martha Tabrum too, but he was, understandably, very nervous during those first two attacks on Tabrum & Nichols, still only a novice in that early stage of the murder spree; he would get better, and more relaxed, by the time of the Hanbury Street backyard) . In Liz Stride’s case, the killer was obviously interrupted, the only wound Stride received was the throat having been slashed; the cut inflicting death (attempting to guess what happened, in the case of Stride, is futile. Maybe the Ripper had been interrupted, maybe he had intended only to murder her as a means to lay the murders on the doorstep of Jewish socialists [her body was left on the site of a Jewish socialist club], and to further obscure his motive. After all, directly following the murder of Stride, a number of things happened this same night that make it appear he was planning on ‘framing’ the Jews and making them scapegoats: the ‘Lipski’ comment happened as Stride was murdered [Israel Lipski, another Polish poisoner; well known in his trial as a Jew, had famously been arrested on Batty Street in 1887, see Wikipedia] , the Goulston St. ‘Jewes’ message was later that night, the ‘Kidney letter’ to the largely Jewish vigilance club was in connection with this night. I believe he hit upon the idea of implicating the local Jews after the newspaper’s ‘Leather Apron’ incident a little earlier….cunning! It would also have been typical of Klosowski to attempt to blame an innocent party; for he would encourage innocent people to be falsely arrested and jailed for criminal acts that he was responsible for on at least a couple of known instances) So it is really only with the first woman, Polly Nichols, where the darkness and the time-limit prevented him from being uterus-successful (but from the nature of Polly Nichols’ abdominal mutilations, we can see that he was working on getting the uterus). But he was still learning the ropes. This is my feeling anyway.
As for Eddowes face being the only one with the grotesque face-cuts, it was only after newspaper accounts telling of Annie Chapman’s missing organs that Klosowski came upon that idea of attempting to take attention away from the missing uterus by means of shocking facial mutilation (nose cut-off, v’s cut into her cheeks, eyelids slit, etc.). The uterus is so well hidden in a body, and so tiny, that the Ripper had probably been counting on investigators not noticing that it was missing; until he had read in the papers that they had noticed it. (but as for Mary Kelly’s face being cut up, so was her entire body. This had no connection to obscuring any motive, as he did not even attempt to take her uterus, and her abdominal area had not been the focus of the attack so much, as in most of the other four cases. Kelly’s murder had an entirely different motive besides, and he purposely left the uterus intact in an attempt to prove to police that taking the uterus had never been his motive. He just wanted police to make no mistake that this murder of Kelley definitely was a Ripper murder, so that they would know that the recently incarcerated Tumblety could not have been Jack-the-Ripper, and they would be forced to set bail for him [which, of course, Tumblety would skip-out on the next week.] In my view, his attempt here was successful, and it exonerated Tumblety, – but actually this murder of Kelly served two purposes, and it also helped to further obscure the ‘uterus motive’) Again, this is only my theory.
But Klosowski’s being the Ripper is NOT only my theory, that was Inspectior Abberline’s theory. And I really trust him a lot, he and Phllip Sugden are ALL I trust when it comes to this case, and I trust them both more than I trust myself even. (Abberline was a different sort of officer from the likes of Magnaughten, Anderson, Swanson, Littlechild, etc., which is why his remarkable expertise was needed on the streets, not behind a desk) I also believe that Abberline suspected Tumblety of being the ‘American’, but he did not have enough evidence to openly speak of it to the newspapers.
(and there had been no intended element of ‘masonic ritual’ in the fact that the victims, beginning with Annie Chapman, had their intestine ‘tossed over their shoulder’, as has been suggested by Stephen Knight. The uterus is directly under the lower intestine as he is cutting, he had to tear out the lower intestine to get at this organ that was the object of his goal, that’s all, as quickly as possible, it’s packed with human filth. He was just getting it out of his way, as quickly as possible, he didn’t have time to be neat about it, did he? Rip-bam-splat, he got it over with and was out of there as quickly as he possibly could have been; he was long gone the second after the uterus was out of the body and inside his black leather bag.)
I believe that Klosowski had MANY victims that were not part of the so-called “canonical murders”. I believe that what distinguishes those five particular murders was that they were the murders in which the Ripper was motivated by this ‘uterus motive’ of Tumblety’s (except in Mary Kelly’s case), and on those instances the abdomen is far more mutilated than on his other victims.
If we look more closely at those five ‘canonical’ murders, (besides Mary Kelly), we should first ask ourselves what possible sexual thrill can there be in butchering a 50 year old, gin-soaked, toothless old hag (or pretty close to it), and doing it in under 5 minutes, all the while knowing that you better get out of there as fast as you can or else be captured and pummeled (to say the least) by one of the most frenzied mobs that had ever been set loose on anybody else in history, and afterwards hanged by the police? Does this sound the least bit erotic to anybody? No, these crimes were done for material gain, that’s all, people will only subject themselves to that degree of risk for money; and only if they are hard-up for cash in the 1st place. And by noticing that the old women’s uterus are usually missing, and had been taken in record-time, (and also noting that twenty pounds apiece had earlier been offered, in London, for this same organ) we know what the goal of the crimes is, just as the coroner knew it in 1888. The killer, in choosing his victims, was looking for ‘expendable’ women, women he could kill and take their uterus with nobody missing them; drunk women who were already feeling no pain, that was his goal. At least it was his goal as far as these ‘canonical’ murders were concerned. This was not about any sexual thrill, none of the women had been raped. It was something else entirely. If more people could have recognized the motive, it would have been a lot easier to solve. They keep thinking in terms of sexual thrill-killing. For this killer, women were pretty much just human garbage, to be disposed of as soon as he was done with them, just as Klosowski dispatched with his ‘wives’ later on. And THAT is the most distinctive aspect of the ripper’s profile. What is so awful about first seeing the photos of these women is seeing the un-Godly, disrespectful state they had been left by the killer, just like somebody might leave a bag of dog-poop they had just cleaned-up on the street after their pet. These women were human beings, yet the only thing that they had represented to Klosowski at the time was the 20 pound note he would receive for cutting out their uterus and handing it over to Tumblety. And it would be with this same lack of empathy that Klosowski would kill his ‘wives’ later on, but killing them slowly, unemotionally and indifferently, caring not one bit that they were suffering greatly, and for such a prolonged period of time. The guy was a monster, especially where women were concerned, and his distinct fingerprint is there to be seen on every murder he commit throughout his 15 years of savage but detached cruelty.
But we also need to look at the fact that, for the first couple of years after arriving in England from Poland, Klosowski was flat-broke almost, living in places no better than where these prostitutes themselves lived. He was hard-up for money, very much. Because he was so broke he was living by himself (for the final time in his life, until he went to jail). Being flat broke, and alone, and at heart a cruel brute who had also been trained as a surgeon; he thus had time, opportunity, and the motivation and training to get himself into any and all kind of trouble. Not only that, but there were aspects of this type of ‘trouble’ that Klosowski actually enjoyed very much. When Klosowski had 1st come to England he harbored dreams of advancement in life, and of personal wealth. Hearing of this offer of money for uterus, this would have been the answer to the prayers of a flat-broke, hungry thug with training in surgery, who was looking desperately for more work; which describes Klosowski’s situation at the time perfectly. Klosowski was to become a fairly successful publican, the ‘Crown’ pub would become fairly famous, and it was on the money made from these murders that his success had originally been built. These murders, and Francis Tumblety, would help establish Klosowski as the successful businessman that he would soon become .
-( By the way, and I don’t like to speak of it because I am afraid that people will accuse me of getting totally carried away with Klosowski’s guilt, but I also believe that Klosowski was responsible for the “Thames Torso Killings” that began the month after he 1st arrived in England from Poland. (5 female victims over a period of 14 years, the bodies having been surgically dissected and dumped in the River Thames ). I mean, if he was, he is still far behind the murder total of Ted Bundy in 20th century United States, so its not all that unbelievable. And I am not alone in believing this about him. But even if he is not, his known crimes are so reprehensible that it is not going to hurt his feelings too much if I were wrong about this accusation. But again, the timing is just too ‘coincidental’ for my believing it was not him, and it’s just too much for me to believe that there just happened to be another similar serial killer working the same area at the same time, stopping right when Klosowski is executed. Klosowski lived in London from 1887 till his execution in 1903, and just look at all the ghastly murder that was going down in East London at that time, starting up his 1st year there and ending right before he was eradicated. Serial killing is not some contagious disease. And a ‘copycat killer’ could not have simply ‘copied’ Klosovski’s ability to slyly evade capture also, or his animal-like cunning. No one has ever been held responsible for any of the murders that happened during this time in East London. With all of the police manpower that was being used on these killings, it seems almost impossible that someone else could get away with this also, at the same time; let alone someone who would resort to being a copycat. A copycat by definition is not very imaginative or clever, which is why he needs to copy what other people do. Right? Besides, the ‘Torso Killings’ began 1st, so it would have been the Ripper himself who was the copycat.)
message 22: by Douglas (last edited Nov 24, 2018 07:20AM) Nov 02, 2018 09:00AM
I want to read your piece on the Whitechapel Murders Leslie, please give me a little time. I am really still unsophisticated about ‘kindel’ books, but I need to bring myself up with the times. I have always been sort of an ‘old books’ snob, but there is no reason for it. But thank you, your words offer encouragement> I would like to get back to you sometime. Also, one thing that I was off on in my essay was the date that Klosowski returned from New York to London. I believe I have him returning a year early. It doesn’t affect anything, but I need to change it. It was an accident, and in no instance did I purposely alter anything so that it would fit into my account. I was not interested in ‘my account’ I was only interested in reporting what I believed actually happened, because I myself wanted to KNOW what really happened. When I first wrote that, I was not thinking of anybody else even seeing it. I wanted to have it for myself. I have edited it many times since then, but never did I change it in order to make it seem more interesting.(it was written in two parts, and part two begins at the beginning of message #17. The second part was written a little bit later, and is more subjective than the first part [-and now the 3rd part begins with your 1st comment; message #19.] ) But I believe that what I wrote is the truth of the matter. The fact that nothing can actually be proven really allows many writers to write anything that they like about it. THIS is why I felt I needed to write my own account; in order to have something in which I myself felt was written only in order to report what I felt had actually happened
message 23: by Leslie (last edited Nov 02, 2018 03:48PM) Nov 02, 2018 03:45PM
And you did right, my friend. Be true to yourself and what you believe. What I have written is mostly fiction based on facts. The beauty of fiction writing is that you can embellish the truth to suit your own ends. What you have done is to present the facts as they are. Well done to you.
Like you, I was a ‘hard copy’ book enthusiast. I was bought a Kindle for a stay in hospital as I could read whatever book took my fancy and the Kindle is small enough to slip into your pocket. I am now converted and wouldn’t do without it.
When you have read “Whitechapel Nights”, I would appreciate your thoughts on it. I am told it can be downloaded to a phone from Amazon. Unfortunately, I am a bit behind the times with technology so am not certain. Keep up the good work. Best wishes. P.s. Don’t hesitate to visit my Facebook page :- L P Gibbs Author
message 24: by Douglas (last edited Dec 09, 2018 07:15AM) Nov 04, 2018 07:28AM
Incidentally, something I left out: Francis Tumblety was also a fairly close physical match to the description given by Miss Emily Marsh , in Oct of 1888, of a man who came into her shop inquiring about the address of George Lusk, just prior to the time that Lusk received the famous ‘kidney letter’. ( She was displaying a reward poster of Lusk’s in her window, and the man inquired about Lusk’s address.) Lusk received the ‘Kidney-letter’ the very next day, addressed exactly as Miss Marsh had given it to this man, with no house number.
Miss Marsh stated that this mysterious man stood approx. 6 foot tall, was slim; ostentatious; dark moustache and beard; sallow; spoke with what to her sounded like Irish brogue; and seemed to act suspicious, or’furtive’, so much so that she asked her assistant to follow the Man as he left. She said she thought he was around 45. Tumblety was 56. But I do not put too much stock in witness guesses at age anymore, not at all. Height, sure; eye and hair color, yes; type of clothes, of course. But age can be very deceiving. I do put put stock in what my gut tells me though, and my gut feeling is that Miss Marsh’s story is significant. The thing that really stands out about it for me is that she describes the man having worn a ‘Prussian clerical’ collar, turned up, along with very long single-brested dark overcoat. This is not only quite unusual, but describes Tumblety’s dress habits to a tee, he is almost always described dressing in this manner, wearing that military style look, representing many older European nations, even though he was American. He seemed to be proud of an extensive knowledge of military history, and would also greatly exaggerate his participation in the American Civil War and his “friendships” with important people, such as Lincoln, Robert E Lee, etc. If any of these people were even aware of him, it is likely they viewed him as a pest, although he had made quite a lot of money with a purported ‘pimple cream’ for young people, and would spend it on lavish dinners in an attempt to ingratiate himself to some of these major figures.
(Getting back to the ‘ripperologists’ ; one of the few things that I believe the late Stephen Knight got right in his ‘Final Solution’, was that the ‘From Hell / kidney-letter’, that was sent to George Lusk, had been the ONLY letter, purported to be from the Ripper (out of hundreds sent), that was genuine. (He said all the others were fakes). There was a time when I thought that Mr. Knight had been correct about most everything he wrote in that book of his. It had been his book which first introduced me to the Ripper story, many years ago, (1987?) in a Australian TV special about his ‘Final Solution’. Looking back at his book now, I am suprised at having been so “Gullible”. I was taken in, hook line & sinker, by the entire book (Freemasons and all). It really was a fascinating theory to me, (I had WANTED it to be true, and that, I think, was my mistake) but many years later, while trying to prove to myself that it was true beyond any doubt, I only succeeded, in my mind, in proving that Stephen Knight had been totally incorrect, for it was right then (just last year in fact, late 2017) that I first came upon ‘George Chapman’, and the more closely I looked at Mr. Severin Klosowski (as well as the statements made by the coroner at Annie Chapman’s inquest, & the 1903 PMG interview with Abberline), the more difficult it became for me to deny that Klosowski had been the man who murdered those five unfortunate women in Whitechapel, and many more besides. But initially I did not want to believe that Klosowski was the Ripper either, just like so many others still don’t. As much as we want to know what happened; we also do not want the hunt to be over. Right?….Lets put it this way, if Klosowski wasn’t the Ripper, he sure was doing his utmost to make it appear he was, with an unbelievable amount of foresight, being trained as a surgeon far in advance, moving, ahead of time, to each and every place the Ripper would soon be striking. This is only scratching the surface of things we can point out about Klosowski being the Ripper, as has already been pointed out above. And if he was going to all that trouble and then not doing the murders, why not? Its not as if he had any morale resistance to commiting murder, right? Why would anyone think he wouldn’t be the Ripper?! After all, he soon would be involved in homicides to the extant that he would one day be hanged for it.) No, I’m afraid that for me, the debate has ended. There is no more debate about it. For years ‘ripperologists have been making people feel silly for believing Klosowski was the Ripper. But what is in fact silly is that there are still people who have spent years studying this case who are making the argument that he is not.
message 25: by Bob Nov 05, 2018 02:07AM
Ignoring the ‘facts’ stretched out of proportion to fit your theory (as some ripperologists have been known to do), I quote two sentences that damage the credibility of your argument.
‘Why would anyone think he wouldn’t be the Ripper?!’
and
‘But what is in fact silly is that there are still people who have spent years studying this case who are making the argument that he is not.’
How could anybody disagree with me?! – no matter how many exclamation points are employed – is not an argument.
And ‘silliness’ by definition is not a matter of ‘fact’. It is a matter of opinion. One man’s silly is another’s deadly serious. Your claim the debate has ended for you is legitimate. You know (or have faith without proof) and are satisfied. Fair enough. Your insistence the debate for everyone else should reasonably be ended as well is, to me, silly. You’ve offered many points to be considered. You have offered NO proofs. History prevents you.
There is more to making a case than simply shouting until everyone else leaves the room. You make valid points for Chapman. Others make valid points for other suspects. A valid theory could be made for the killer (or killers) being completely unknown, never considered, individual(s). The debate continues.
message 26: by Douglas (last edited Nov 05, 2018 01:59PM) Nov 05, 2018 06:53AM
Believe me, I completely understand that probably 95% of ‘ripperologists’ do not agree with this theory, and I am 100% used to it. It means so much to them, they NEVER want the “mystery” to be solved and ended . I get it. Nothing will ever change that. It is almost comic sometimes, especially considering the stature that some of these people have attained. But I was once in the same boat, and I did not want it to end. That was the point of my last comment, thats all.
I have offered no proof? Tell me though, what “proof” do you ever envision anybody ever offering you that would satisfy? A film of the Ripper butchering Marie Kelly maybe? For him to come back from the dead and give a full confession? I think that even if either of these things were possible, even that would not satisfy the ripperologists. It would take away their meal ticket, maybe thats another reason. “Proof” is never possible for you, and you know it, and this is why you ask for “proof”. It is the aim of “ripperologists” to forever go ’round in circles, no matter how obvious to a reasonable thinking adult it is that the killer has been exposed, and was exposed as far back as 1903. Some people simply do not want it to be solved, and thats something else that Inspector Abberline discovered, and accepted.
But I too have a right to give my opinion on a case that I have spent much of my time looking into, can we at least agree on that? Also, people who believe that Klosowski is the ripper have seen their belief ridiculed in books about the Ripper for generations, and now I am being accused of “shouting”? Maybe I was provoked into “shouting”, and exclamation points also!!!
Ripperologists, for years now, have been saying things in their books designed to make people who disagree with them about Klosowski feel intimidated about expressing their beliefs about him. And when we finally do, we get accused of being bullies almost.
I will say this in my defense; at least I never put words in anybody’s mouth, after they had died, in an attempt to “prove” my case, as ‘ripperologists’ have done with Abberline, in their attempt to “prove’ the illegitimacy of Klosowski (see end of message #18). The only reason anybody would ever do that would be because they felt it was necessary; because there is no HONEST way to show that Klosowski wasn’t the Ripper. Maybe I DON’T have absolute proof (and either do you), but I do have honesty.
message 27: by Bob Nov 05, 2018 07:12AM
I clearly said History prevents ANYBODY proving his (or her) theory. You cannot satisfy me that you are right. Neither can anyone else, regardless of their theory. That’s neither here nor there to me. My interest in the Whitechapel murders was never ‘who dunnit’. My bread and butter does not depend on the answer to that question.
Their is no debate that a final solution, regardless of its makeup, would take away the meal ticket of many ripperologists. Absolutely agreed. And they might fight your theory on those grounds. I, on the other hand, am doing no such thing. I am a fiction writer. I wrote my fictional account, but that is what it is; a fictional account.
Your theory has interesting points. (As do others.) It also has big holes that can’t be explained away. Go with your theory, why not. Defend it, if you think it necessary. But, frankly, when the case cannot be proved – and it cannot – it’s a waste of time calling others names if they disagree with you. And it stains your argument, whether you think so or not.
message 28: by Douglas (last edited Dec 04, 2018 11:25AM) Nov 05, 2018 08:54AM
well congradulations, you will never be satisfied, by anybody. I, however, am satisfied, 100%. And it was Inspector Abberline who convinced me.
By the way, what “holes” do you see in the theory? You told me already about having a problem with only 2 uteruses missing, and about the facial wounds on only Eddowes. Those were not holes, in fact they end-up supporting the theory more strongly, as I feel that I demonstrated already in message #21. What other holes? Or was that all you got? That is your “big holes”?
I like the way you complain about “holes” in the theory without offering any evidence of it. Its something you ‘ripperologists’ seem to love doing.
Or maybe it is a “hole” that inspector Abberline changed his mind about Klosowski, except that he changed his mind only after having died first? No, that is not a “hole”. That is a flat-out LIE
incidentally, maybe you could simply write a good fictional account of the Ripper where Klosowski and Tumblety are the main protagonists. I would be seriously interested in reading that. It could BASED on mostly fact, as most good fiction is based. I can think of all kinds of mischief to get those two characters into if I tried.
But in all seriousness Bob, I would like to thank you for pointing out certain things in my account that perhaps needed some clarification by me
message 30: by Leslie Nov 05, 2018 03:31PM
I can’t fault your commitment and wholeheartedly defend your right to say what you think. Maybe your conclusion is correct; I don’t know and, as you say, we will never actually know for certain 100%. We can only speculate. I feel you are also correct about ‘Ripperologists’. There would be no need for them if the problem was solved. As for myself, I can only offer my completely fictional ending for Jack The Ripper, a figment of my over-enthusiastic imagination. Fortunately, it has proved popular if a little far-fetched.
message 31: by Douglas (last edited Dec 10, 2018 10:19AM) Nov 06, 2018 08:55AM
“Why he took to poisoning his women victims on his 2nd visit to this country can only be ascribed to his diabolical cunning, or some insane idea or urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity”
– ex-Police Superintendent Arthur Neil, 1932
Had Severin Klosowski not ever been caught murdering his “wives” by poison, he would almost surely have ended up, right now, being the number one favorite suspect for nearly every “ripperologist” who there is, due to the evidence alone: the fact that he arrived in the East End just before the murders began, that he had been trained in surgery, that he had been such a close match to so many witness descriptions, that the murders stopped right when he left for America, and that similar murders began in America right after he arrived there, etc etc etc. The evidence against Klosowski is just so much far greater than any ‘evidence’ that might exist against any of the other favorite ‘suspects’ (ie Druitt, Kosminski, Ostrog, etc etc) It is only the fact that he would, ten years later, use another method, that he had also learned about while being trained as a ‘barber/surgeon in Poland, to kill his ‘wives’, that seems to eliminate him as a serious choice for suspect in their minds. It is only due to the fact that he, out of necessity and cunning (and a different motive for the murders), later changed his modus operandi. Can you imagine? Out of all the seriously considered popular ‘suspects’ in the ripper killings, he is the only one to be a proven killer of women, yet it is this same fact that precludes him from being a legitimate suspect in their opinions! How did they EXPECT him to kill these ‘wives’ then? To butcher them also? Did they think that this cunning murderer who had never been caught would be so foolhardy as to butcher these three women that he had such close ties to? If the theory that the Whitechaple murders were done in order to procure uterus for the American who had offered money for them is correct (and I believe it is), if Klosowski had taken up the American on his offer, what reason would there be for him to kill his “wives”, nine years later, by the same means he had needed to use in killing women for their sexual organs? If Klosowski had not been the overachieving murderer that he was, he would have likely been accepted as being the Ripper long ago in the minds of most Ripperologists. Now isn’t that ironic?
Klosowski, as well as being a serial killer of women, was also a devoted womanizer. It has long been the position of many in the field of psychiatry that many womanizers go from woman to woman only as a desperate attempt to prove their masculinity; often to prove to themselves that they are not bisexual. I have already stated that I believe that Klosowski and Tumblety might have been secretly in love with one-another. (what attracted Tumblety about Klosowski? Tumblety may have hated women, but he was an AMATEUR compared to ‘Chapman’. Klosowski could treat women like garbage. I feel certain this both amused and attracted Tumblety, while Klosowski was attracted to Tumblety’s being an American, highly successful, charismatic, etc) But I also believe that this ‘uterus motive’, that while it may have been the obvious motive for the five established Ripper murders, Klosowski had many other victims for whom this motive was not a factor. I believe that the biggest motive for those other murders was a deep seated resentment towards women that he himself was not even fully aware of nor understood in himself, it was compulsive in him, arising unchecked from his subconscious. (it’s also why he beat his ‘wives’) His sexuality was complex, and he had a lot of guilt over it, and shame, especially due to him having originated in such a male oriented ‘macho’ culture. (A violent culture also, ask any Bosniak) I know a few people from Slavic cultures, this fits. (As proud as he was that women found him desirable, at times he also hated them for finding him desirable.) When you add up the training as a ‘barber/surgeon’, being exposed to the cutting up of people at such a young age, and whatever unknown trauma he obviously suffered through at some point in his youth, its not difficult to believe that he might go on to do such things as we are suggesting that he did. The more you look into Severin Klosowski, the more it seems doubtfull that anybody else could be more suited, or better qualified, to have been Jack-the-Ripper than he. This, at least, is my opinion.
But lets pretend for a minute that he was not the Ripper. What do you think the odds are, that just by coincidence, another serial killer, of such renown, who fit the profile so perfectly, just happened to be in the same exact places that the “real” ripper was, at the very same times?? We know Klosowski was a serial killer, and we know he was there on those same East London streets in the autumn of 1888, we even know he was living in George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was butchered and mutilated there. And we are now going to believe that not only was serial killer Klosowski there, but also another serial killer; the Ripper, who would be killing women in Whitechapel for exactly as long as Klosowski would be living there, and would stop right when Klosowski would leave? Not even in the movies would they expect you to believe that something like that would happen I bet. Yet this is only a fraction of the evidence against him that we have already looked at!
For many sober-thinking people, this adds up as “proof”.
And while it may not have been enough proof to get him actually hanged, (for they did not know him back in 1888 as we now know him) his personality and character were such that his being hanged was going to get done no matter how cunning he might have been, no matter how good he might have been at pulling the wool over the police’s eyes. For as cunning as he was, he hadn’t accounted for the tenacity of officers Godley and Abberline! The ‘Ripperologists’ may not appreciate what those two men believed and did, but the murdered women of Whitechaple probably would have
message 32: by Douglas (last edited Nov 19, 2018 06:31AM) Nov 07, 2018 07:11AM
One other thing I would like to clarify. At no time has it been my intention to suggest that anybody, wanting to write fictional accounts of these murders, shouldn’t be encouraged to do so. I would like to offer them my sincerest encouragement. I have enjoyed some of these stories myself, especially in the movies (‘Murder By Decree’ ‘Time after Time’ ‘The Lodger’ etc. I also liked the comic books ‘From Hell’ that were based largely on Stephen Knight’s work. I love this sort of thing- I even wondered if the Pole ‘Svengali’ may have been a fictionalized account of the Pole Klosowski. Its author, George Du Maurier, had been the top illistrater at ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ during the Murders, and lived nearby. Maybe he had recieved one of Klosowski’s ‘Musical haircuts’ and had come up with the inspiration for a music teaching serial killer who had a strange control over women! I am half-joking)
But I had felt absolutely driven to try to discover, even if only for myself alone, what had really happened in this case, and I was pleased with my essay. In my personal life, I had no one to share it with, I know nobody who is interested in this case.I had hoped that if I posted it here, that the intelligent readers of this website might like and appreciate it. I had first tried to post it on CASEBOOK.ORG, but was told that I did not have “permission” to post things on their website. I don’t know how to get permission, I tried to contact them but never received any reply.
But I see no reason why, if it were proven that Klosowski was the Ripper, why that should deter anybody from writing anything they like. I really wished that my paper would please people who were writing things of their own, and most hopefully of all even inspire them in the future. This was my hope. The only thing that I HAD taken issue with was when certain writers, writers who had reached a position of certain world acclaim, seemed to ridicule the notion of Klosowski being the Ripper. There was no need for them to do so, in my opinion. It got my dander up, as they say. I even attempted to find the Email address for some of these writers to talk to them about it confidentially. I felt they had been in error, and I wanted the matter rectified.
This emotion may have accounted for the weakest parts of my essay, but it also was the inspiration for me writing it in the first place. But I am looking foerward to reading the works of the people who I have shared my paper with on this webpage. Thank you
I would like to add though, that I believe that the true story of Klosowski and Tumblety, re-told in motion picture form, told with all of the incidents I have put down here, could, if filmed by a competent director, make one of the most effective and blood chilling horror films of all time. As long as they kept it real; mysterious and dark, …not gratuitous, as seems the fashion nowadays
message 33: by Leslie Nov 07, 2018 07:49AM
It has been a pleasure to read your reports. You write in such an eloquent manner that I would suggest you insert greater details and extend the work into a full-length book. It is expensive to self-publish in hard copy but only costs around £150 to publish to Kindle. You will not make much money from it but for me, the pleasure I get from knowing people enjoy my work is payment enough. I have certainly enjoyed reading yours. Best wishes. L P Gibbs.
message 34: by Douglas (last edited Dec 04, 2018 10:29AM) Nov 11, 2018 03:03PM
“THERE was no more authorative voice on the Whitechapel murders than that of Abberline”…..
“Recent writers, anxious to promote theories suggested in the writings of Macnaghten or Anderson, have sometimes found it necessary to disparage Abberline’s knowledge or contribution to the case”…
-Phillip Sugden, ‘The Complete History Of Jack The Ripper’ 1994. Chapter 22; ‘You’ve Got Jack the Ripper At Last! : George Chapman’
This ‘disparaging’ of Abberline that Sugden points out is what most people refer to as a ‘hidden-agenda’. Highly subjective reporting, twisting the facts in order to ‘prove’ a pet theory of the authors, disregarding what is then being done to the reputation of one who had deserved to be treated so much better than this by us. Unfortunately, it is common practice in the history of ‘ripperology’, particularly in regards to Frederick Abberline.
I find it incredible that nobody has yet written a biography of Frederick Abberline. Why is that? So many books have been written on the Ripper, purporting to be true, each more preposterous than the last in many cases. Abberline’s story is the one book that could do the world of Ripperology some actual good, and nobody writes it. The research that would need be done for such an account might provide some new information helpful in solving the Ripper case. Knowing something of Abberline myself, I also know that the fact that he was so intimately involved in the Ripper investigation would be only one of many interesting chapters in this remarkable policeman’s career. He had twenty-five years working the streets of East London under his belt when the first Ripper attack happened. It is said that if you ever visited East London and had something stolen from you, Abberline would know who had pilfered the merchandise and where to find it, such was his knowledge of the East London streets and underworld. He knew what was going on better than any police informant did. (This reminds me of the detective in the movie ‘Pickup On South Street’, and the little jewish woman in that same movie, who was saving up money so that when she died her body would not end up in the Potter’s field. They both had the same Abberline-like knowledge of the streets, but in 1950s New York instead of Victorian era London.) More than just about anybody else I can think of, the life story of Abberline, and the research that would go into it’s telling, could bring into focus what it was like living in the seamy side of foggy, gas lit, horse-drawn Victorian London better than anything since Dickens himself.
This, I feel, is also why, when Abberline said to Inspector Godley, “congradulations, you just caught ‘Jack the Ripper’ “, that his remark to Godley should be given special consideration by us. Far more consideration than that we give to just about every ‘ripperologist’ with a new idea that he hopes will be successful in making his next book a bestseller, and far more too than we give to Macnaughtens 1894 report; Abberline had been ten times more involved in the case than Mcnaughten had ever been, Mcnaughten only got involved after it was all over. It blows my mind the lack of credence we give this extraordinarily talented police officer of Victorian era London, while at the same time we grant book authors who were nowhere around at the time expert status on these crimes that Abberline had so thoroughly investigated for so long, and was so certain that he had found the instigator of them finally. It is even harder to believe when you consider the good sense his theory of the crimes makes, and how every detail has been accounted for and fits so nicely in place. ( it is my feeling that the reason so many writers have been unconcerned about possibly being unfair to Abberline is because they believe he should have captured the Ripper in 1888, and he didn’t. This would haunt him for the remainder of his career, as it did the entire police force. But Abberline never wrote books later in an attempt to justify his lack of success, as just about all of the others did. He admitted his shortcoming openly when interviewed, and he had nothing to hide about it.)
Only Phillip Sugden, only he seems equally believable, also without ulterior motive. Sugden stopped short in naming anybody as being the Ripper, he knew the backlash it could cause, and he was perfectly aware that Ripperologists would forever disparage him from then on if he did. But he certainly gave good reasons for eliminating every serious ‘ripper suspect’ that had previously been named up to the point of his book (Kosminski, Druitt, Ostrog, etc). The only one he could not eliminate is Klosowski. It was from Sugdens own book that I first became aware of ‘George Chapman’, even though he claimed he could not name Klosowski as the Ripper with any degree of certainty. But I sure got the feeling that he believed Klosowski was guilty, even though he couldn’t offer proof that would stand up to the Ripperologists protests that he knew were sure to follow if he did name him! (But in fact Sugden DID point the finger of guilt directly at Klosowski, he pointed at Klosowski at LEAST as strongly as Mcnaughten had pointed out Kosminski or Druitt in his 1894 report, and he devoted the entire closing chapter of his book to it. And Sugden also included reams of evidence against Klosowski, while Mcnaughten provided almost none, on anybody; only implication.)
message 35: by Douglas (last edited Dec 04, 2018 11:04AM) Nov 11, 2018 04:40PM
“The Chapman theory, while given additional credibility by being advanced by no less an authority than Abberline, suffers from one fundamental flaw: why would Jack-the-Ripper have SUDDENLY changed from throat cutting to poisoning?”
– ‘Jack-the-Ripper; the Definitive Story’ 2011 TV documentary (a good one)
It was nine years between the final ‘Ripper murder’ of Mary Kelly and the first ‘Borough poisoning’ of Mary Spink. Since when has nine years been defined as “suddenly”? THIS (above) is how Ripperologists continually try to confuse readers, and it has been working for them pretty well up to now (it will probably continue to work for them). Never have I seen it pointed out that the reason the Ripper stopped using a knife was because he only really needed the knife in the 1st place to cut out the uterus with, and that he did not need the uterus of his “wives”,(as Tumblety was out of the picture by that time) and thus there was no reason for him to kill by that method any longer. Klosowski had been trained in medicine and poisons, in addition to surgery. Poison better demonstrated the resourcefulness of this inadequate little egomaniac to himself; it better demonstrated how ‘clever’ he was. Besides, while these women were not, in fact, his “wives”, he lived with them, how could he get away with cutting them up like that? He is going to be the first person the police suspect, and he knows it. The only way for Klosowski to ‘outsmart’ the police in this instance is for it to be made to seem like natural causes, right?
I mean, when you think about it, why do we even take these ‘ripperologists’ seriously at all? What breakthroughs in the Ripper-case have ever come via the ‘ripperologists”? These writers who tell us who and what to believe, and who have told us that Abberline probably didn’t know what he was talking about when he said Klosowski was the Ripper!? Or who have lied to us and told us that Abberline actually changed his mind about Klosowski late in life!? These writers who have come up with absurd suspect after even more absurd suspect!?
This is how inept they are: Francis Tumblety had been one of the main players at the close of the Ripper case in Nov 1888. Everybody who was following the case at all knew about him, he had been followed by detectives from England to America, and many newspapers in America had covered these facts . Not only that, but he is one of the few people actually arrested in connection with the case who is still today spoken seriously as a valid suspect. But during at least sixty years of books on the Ripper, from the late 1920s through the early 1990s, ‘Ripperologists’ didn’t even know who Tumblety was! What were they researching? How did they get information? When Stewart P Evans rediscovered Tumblety in the 1990s, (through a letter he had found in an auction written by officer Littlechild) he didn’t deserve the relative acclaim he was given for his discovery, but rather ‘ripperologists’ should have themselves been ridiculed for a change, for having been so neglectful for so long up to then. (and Evans certainly did not deserve any acclaim for the attempt to market his discovery into being the latest Ripper suspect, especially when you read his theory for the murder of Liz Stride: [Tumblety, who is the Ripper, had just coincidentally passed by the location where somebody else was murdering Stride, one block from Tumblety’s lodgings, as he, Tumblety, was returning home from butchering Eddowes! And this other murderer of Stride, why, he was never caught either, in the middle of the largest police manhunt in history almost! The police refuse to catch anybody at ALL it seems!]. He had all the evidence he then needed to have known Tumblety’s actual role in the murders. It just seems he was too intent on naming his new discovery the actual Ripper. (I sometimes feel guilty about being critical of someone like Evans, who was working on this for so much longer, and so much harder, than I ever would have. But it is getting at the truth that matters to me, and if anybody can appreciate that, Evans can. My main problem with Evans is that he wants to believe that there were many killers at work in that very limited time frame, when the odds are that only one person would be responsible, and the odds against anyone else being involved are just too great, as is the common sense against it. It seems far more likely that the Ripper was not responsible for LESS than the popular five victims, but rather he did ALL of the bizarre murders that happened in London in 1888 (and probably even more). Evans wants to believe that there were two or three killers, all in that short time frame, all of them cunning enough to evade the largest police manhunt in London’s history?! He explains it by suggesting ‘copycat killers’ had been responsible for some of the murders. But it is difficult enough to believe that the Ripper himself was as lucky as he was, evading the largest police dragnet in the history of London. But now Evans wants us to believe that not only was the Ripper so lucky, but at least one other was cunning enough to get away with bloody serial-killing in this environment also, at the very same time as the Ripper was doing it, and that this other ‘copycat’ killer never got caught either? )
And these ‘Ripperologists’ are the people we listen to before we listen to the greatest police officer to have worked the case? We are going to believe THEM before we believe Abberline himself? What is wrong with US then? Thats all we can be left asking ourselves! The answer to the ripper mystery has been right there in front of our very faces since 1903, yet we won’t look at it. Why? Because if we do, ‘ripperologists’ might not be able to sell any more books on the subject, that’s how it seems. ‘Ripperologists have carefully, and sometimes perhaps subconsciously, been leading people away from the true murderer since 1929; the date of the first real book on the subject, written by the first real ‘ripperologist’; Leonard Matters. (1929 had also been 26 years since Abberline had congradulated Godley for having captured the Ripper).
And there had been people who were telling us Klosowski was probably the Ripper since 1903, and they have been pretty-well ridiculed by these same ripperologists since. (the standing-room-only audience that had packed the trial of ‘George Chapman’ had, for the most part, been sure they had been watching justice being handed down in the Jack-the-Ripper murders; and they almost certainly had been) ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’ was telling it, so had crime writer H.L. Adam, ex-police Superintendent Arthur Neil. These early writers had to be more diplomatic about it though, because the ‘Chapman theory’ did not make the London police look good; far from it. People like H.L. Adam had many friends on the police force: Mcnaughten and Robert Anderson being two of his closest friends. Suggesting that the police had let a man slip by them who had been living AND working at the very bulls-eye of the killing zone in the autumn of ’88 was not going to make Adam popular with those two men. He had to be careful about what he said while naming Klosowski, and he was.
And there are currently at least two books (by less established publishers, to be sure, but well researched books just the same), by writers R. Michael Gordon and Helena Wojtczak, both about Klosowski’s being the Ripper. Yet so few people know about it, and even fewer believe it.
But hundreds of thousands of people know about Ripper suspect William Gull, & his Freemasons; they also know ‘Prince Eddy’; painter Walter Sickert ; the Maybrick “Diary”, ….etc etc! And lets not omit that Queen Victoria herself has had many people believe that she had been involved also, Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley too, even Lewis Carroll! It is names like these that keep books on ‘Ripperology’ selling in such big numbers, keeping it such a big business. No wonder ripperologists hate the name of the real murderer, the person who, if people believed he was the Ripper, could end it all.
When you take a look at all of the books on Jack-the-Ripper that have been published by any of the major, established book-publishing firms, everybody has been named as being the Ripper EXCEPT Klosowski it seems! (and when he has been mentioned by them, it is usually to ridicule the very idea of him being the Ripper)
message 36: by Douglas (last edited Dec 10, 2018 08:14PM) Nov 11, 2018 04:55PM
Isn’t it convenient how, when somebody begins the story of the Ripper Murders, they usually begin at George Yard Buildings, where the 1st two victims, Emma Smith and Martha Tabrum, were both attacked at the opening of the Whitechapel Murder spree, and where Severin Klosowski, too, was both residing and being employed in a barber shop in the basement under the ‘White Hart’ pub, at the very same instant that those two attacks took place? Even if the account of the murders does not mention Klosowski by name, it often begins by showing a photo of where he was living at the very time of the first murder in the series; the same place where Martha Tabrum’s murder occurred. The story begins with another million-to-one coincidence in a account that is positively riddled with unlikely, bizarre coincidence! [although all this unlikely coincidence is explained quite simply once we understand that Klosowski was the Ripper]
(the Emma Smith attack seems to have been, by her own account, a gang-rape, done about four months before the real murder-spree began. I only mention it here because it has often been associated with the Whitechapel murders, and because I feel that its having happened so close to his home, it may have partly inspired Klosowski when he heard about it, or set him off somehow, maybe even in an attempt to top it)
I feel that anybody, any fair-minded thinker, reading these past number of messages, from #15 on down, will come to the conclusion that Severin Klosowski has been proven GUILTY of being the Whitechapel Murderer, beyond any reasonable doubt. I may not have proven his guilt to the extant that most ‘Ripperologists’ would declare necessary, but I have also proven that the ‘Ripperologists’ do not really want the case solved at all, which is the reason they have been, for so long now, set so specifically against even naming Klosowski as a suspect,(the single suspect who has had more circumstantial evidence discovered against him than any other, by far), going only so far as to name him an “alleged” suspect, while naming at least five others ‘SUSPECTS’, who have nowhere near the amount of evidence against them that Klosowski has. All these other “suspects” had, in fact, was that Macnaughten had pointed the finger of suspicion at them in his 1894 report, a report, incidentally, that was written more than 10 years before Klosowski had come to public attention! Macnaughten COULDN’T have named Klosowski in his precious report because he had never even heard of him yet at that time. The reason he had never heard of Klosowski goes back to Klosowski’s cunning, and we know how cunning the Ripper was, to have been able to cut up all those women whilst the entire police force was looking in each nook and cranny for him as he was doing it. It’s just one more thing, besides the surgery, besides being in the same locations at the same times, etc, that the Ripper and Klosowski have in common (besides sharing the same parents, and the same body): they both share the same identical degree of animal cunning. (yet as cunning as Klosowski might seem, he was also capable of making foolish mistakes. For example, when the police searched his residence after having arrested him in 1902, they discovered among his possessions evidence proving that ‘George Chapman’ was also Severin Klosowski, something they had been completely unaware of. Chapman would continue to vehemently deny that he was Klosowski. But he had kept records that would go on to implicate him in a number of crimes (for more detail, see ‘Trial of George Chapman’ by H.L. Adam) It amazed police that he would keep all this evidence. And among the few photographs that exist of Klosowski which had been among his possessions, in one of them he is wearing the same nautical ‘peaked’ cap that Jack-the-Ripper had been described as wearing by witnesses. It seemed he was so certain he would never be caught that he foolishly kept these things, almost as if he had planned on one day telling his life story to the world at large, and that he was certain they wanted to know every detail about him. He really had a huge Ego! As a criminal/killer it was his one fault it seems. This Ego made him very proud that he had been successful in ‘outsmarting’ police for so long, but it also convinced him he would never get caught. I believe he was completely aware that his crimes would be very famous, and they made him an important figure in his mind, and that this gave him an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction in himself. Both he and Tumblety were very caught-up in this type of thing, on being ‘important’. It was not the killing that made him feel important so much, but the fact that he had outsmarted so many police, and had been the focus of so much newspaper attention. It gave him the sense that he was far more important than the average person. This feeling was something that Tumblety thrived on also. Tumblety took great pride in having important world figures as his ‘personal friends’, and he even wrote about it. I wonder if, in his mind, Jack-the-Ripper was one of these world figures he was proud of being friendly with?)
Let’s return to topic. Since Abberline had pointed the finger of guilt at Klosowski, why doesn’t that count as much as Macnaughten’s report to these ‘ripperologists’? It should count even more! Why does the opinion of Macnaughten , who was not even working the case at the time of the murders, carry so much more weight than the opinion of Abberline, who was running the show during the time of the murders? Such is the threat they see Klosowski posing for them it seems. (And it is interesting to note that Macnaughten did not include Francis Tumblety in his 1894 report. For while Klosowski was unknown to the police at that time, Tumblety was well known to them. Officer Littlechild maintained that Tumblety was the police’s main suspect. Yet Macnaughten did not mention Tumblety at all. What’s up with that? THIS is why Tumblety had been forgotten all those years. It seems ‘Ripperologists’ had become blind to everything that was not included in that erroneous report of Macnaughten’s; a policeman who had not even been working on the case at the time of the murders!) As Phillip Sugden said; ‘the contrasting writings of Macnaughten, Anderson, and Littlechild, and the fact that they agree on almost nothing, only prove that, in the end, the police were only grasping at straws concerning Jack-the-Ripper, and that the police investigation ended in abysmal failure, they were clueless about the Ripper in 1888, and would only continue to remain clueless about it’. Abberline had admitted pretty much the same thing himself, prior to 1903, when he first learned all about Klosowski. (Learning of Klosowski’s movements in 1888 clearly answered 15 years of questions for Abberline.) And if police had really suspected the truth, the ‘ripperologists’ would probably have only cast doubt on them, like they did with Abberline, so that they themselves could continue selling books about their bizarre ‘Ripper-theories’.
Each day, in almost every nation on the planet, people are sent to serve life sentences in prison having been convicted of murder on less evidence than I have, in these comments above, compiled against our friend Klosowski here. This has been done now, I have no doubt about it. Read it again if you do not believe me, from the beginning on down, see for yourself. I hope you will. And if you believe that you see any “holes” in my argument against Klosowski, please take note, be specific about them, so that I can clarify the misunderstanding for you. Thank you
Dedicated to:
Police-Detective Extraordinaire, Chief-Inspector Frederick G. Abberline
Dr. Wynne E. Baxter
Dr. George Bagster Phillips
Chief-Inspector George Godley
Police Superintendent Arthur Neil
Sir Edward Carson, Solicitor General, 1903
The staff at ‘Pall Mall Gazette’, circa 1903
Hargrave L. Adam
Phillip Sugden
Keith Skinner
Stewart P. Evans
R. Michael Gordon
Helena Wojtczak
To the memories of:
Annie Millwood, 1850-1888
Martha Tabrum, 1849-1888
Mary Ann Nichols, 1845-1888
Annie Chapman, 1841-1888
Elizabeth Stride, 1843-1888
Cathrine Eddowes, 1842-1888
Mary Jane Kelly, 1863-1888
Rose Mylett, 1863-1888
Alice McCkenzie, 1849-1889
Francis Coles, 1865-1891
Carrie Brown, 1829-1891
Elizabeth Senior, 1819-1892
Mary Spink, 1856-1897
Bessie Taylor, 1865-1901
Mary Ann Austin, 1873-1901
Maud Marsh, 1884-1902
the five anonymous ‘torso murder’ victims of London, beginning in 1888 and ending 1902(isn’t that a coincidence!?)
and any other of his victims that we are unaware of, along with those who most certainly had been murdered prior to 1888, in Poland, Russia, or France
-[note the 5 year break (above) in murders, in-between 1892-1897, between Elizabeth Senior and Mary Spink, when Klosowski had returned from America. This, ‘coincidentally’ was when Klosowski was trying his ‘best’ to turn over a new leaf, becoming an (unsuccessful) ‘family man, and (successful) proprietor of pubs. (intuition alone tells me that Tumblety may have helped get Klosowski established in his first business: running a ‘public house’ in New Jersey in 1891- maybe this was the deal they had made at the beginning of their partnership). It seems to me that, after his return to England in 1892, he sincerely tried to stop the murdering, and to take up other pursuits (sailing, cycling, photography), but it always came back down to the stalking of women; the hunt and the killing. It was like an addiction for him it seems. There is no 12-step, ‘serial-killers anonymous’ meeting for that! (He almost reminds me of that Russian-Count-hunter, ‘Zaroff’, [played so well by Liverpudlian actor Leslie Banks], who trapped people on his remote island and then hunted them down in the jungle for sport, in the old B&W movie ‘The Most Dangerous Game’, RKO 1932). If I sound flippant here, I do not mean to be. It is only because the murders occurred over a century ago, and nobody alive now has known any of the people involved.]
Tom Wescott 3 months ago
Douglas Barr, it does not reflect well at all on you that you’re spamming all the Ripper book review pages with your outdated, flawed theory. If you’re so concerned about getting your theory out, then write a book, or submit an article to a journal such as Ripperologist, or create your own web page documenting your theory. Do not SPAM pages devoted to the hard works of others.
message 38: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
Let me worry about how it reflects on me, OK? And I don’t have time or the drive it takes to get it published, its only 10 pages anyway. So how else are people going to be able to find out what really happened unless I post it here? Certainly not from any of these books about the Ripper that you are so touchy about. I got a right to state what I feel are the true facts about it, and anybody with half a brain can see that it is mostly correct. I am not trying to charge money or even ask for any recognition; all recognition should go to Abberline finally.
Another thing, I will “spam”, write, copy, cut&paste, etc….. or anything ELSE I see fit to do! If you want to tell people about what they need to do, tell it to someone else. Hard work of others??? Brother! if it is so delicate that it is so easally threatened by what I write, it sure cant be very true.
And tell me something; other than Klosowski, what theory ISN’T flawed? Yours?
I don’t know how to make a web page and havn’t the patience to learn. I tried to put my piece here up on CASEBOOK.ORG, but I was told that I didn’t have “permission” to submit posts on their website. That left Amazon book reviews. Amazon has a surprising amount of courage in comparison to most of these webpages that allow comments to be posted. I put it up on as many Ripper reviews as I could because I wanted people to see it, thats all. It’s up to them whether they want to read it or not, after seeing that its there. Believe it or not, some people have actually liked it.
“Outdated theory”?! thats good, coming from the latest generation of ‘ripperologists’; people whos only real concern is the latest ‘trending theories’, theories that are currently selling books best.
One more thing: The truth is NEVER “outdated”. Judging by what you ‘ripperologists’ have been writing lately, you wouldn’t know much about the truth, or even care. All you care about is selling a few books, and keeping people from actually learning what really happened, because if they did know, the careers of the ‘Ripperologists’ would likely be over. THIS is why you people try to suppress the Chapman theory! And if you were one fraction as passionate about the Ripper murders as you pretend to be, you would have congradulated me on the piece!
Sorry if I come off as being angry, but you didn’t merely complain about me “spamming”, you also ridiculed my thoughts and ideas, I poured my heart into that essay. The whole inspiration for me writing it in the first place was in retaliation over the fact that so many “ripperologists” had been calling the single most logical and likely theory of them all stupid, as if they were personally threatened by the Klosowski theory. And it wasn’t my theory at that point, but I could see that there was something rotten about what they were doing, something phony. There you have it. Just go and look at what Stewart Evans said about the “Chapman Theory” in his ‘Ripper’ book about Tumblety: ‘1st American serial killer’ , and this was after Phillip Sugden had pointed out that Klosowski was the only suspect, out of all of the suspects, that could not be eliminated – (He successfully eliminated all of the other so-called “suspects” that the Ripperologists have debated on over the years). But Evans, in his book about Tumblety, “eliminates” Klosowski so quickly that it could make your head spin. The trouble is that the only reason he “eliminated” him so quickly was because if he had spent more time doing it, it would have only more clearly exposed the fact that he had nothing of any substance to eliminate Klosowski on; but he simply wanted his readers to believe that Tumblety was the Ripper instead, because it was he himself who had rediscovered Tumblety, for which he deserves credit. But how can people like this be in charge of our notions about the truth on Jack-the-Ripper? Fido and Begg called George Chapman an “alleged” Ripper-suspect, but they didn’t use any such negative prefix when calling the far less likely Kosminski, or Druitt “SUSPECTS”, in their ‘Jack-the-Ripper A thru Z’ book! Martin Fido has gone on TV and stated “Anybody suggesting that Montegue Druitt is Jack-the-Ripper can do so knowing he has made a serious, respectable choice” or some such nonsense, yet he reprimands anybody who seriously makes his vote for George Chapman / Severin Klosowski, as if he and his friends know so much better than Abberline himself did, or Phillip Sugden even. It just gets to me that these people set themselves up as the ‘Grand Ol’ Men of Ripperology’, and then passive-aggressively twist the facts in order to support their own personal views of events, and go on TV speaking so condescendingly and patronizingly towards anybody with a different idea, no matter how sound that idea may be.
And remember, Inspector Abberline was the only man from the original investigation who had integrity enough to admit what had really happened, no matter how bad it may have made him and the rest of Scotland yard appear, no matter how angry it might have made the public at him. This was largely due to him having retired from the force and working for an independent agency at the time. But that only adds to his credibility. He never wrote any books on the case in later years as so many of his peers were doing, he was only interested in finding results, never with his own ‘reputation and image’, as so many others were. And now, Ripperologists have even put words in his mouth, and told lies that he changed his mind about Chapman in later years- which was all based on that book by ‘Ripperologist’ Donald McCormick; ‘The Identity Of Jack The Ripper’, which, instead of simply telling us the truth that Klosowski was the Ripper, instead made the preposterous and bizarre allegation that Klosowski had a ‘secret Russian double’ who was the actual Ripper, (and was also a Russian spy sent over by Rasputin to boot! – I mean, at that early date, how would Rasputin even know about Klosowski to go looking for a ‘double’ to put in his place?) and that Abberline changed his mind about Klosowski being the Ripper when he learned early on that it was ‘Klosowski’s double’ who was the ‘true’ Ripper! Can you imagine the great Abberline ever believing such an outrageous, preposterous thing!? It is libelous to even suggest that he believed something so ludicrous in print!……… Klosowski simply had all the same traits, and was just coincidentally a surgeon, and had lived in all the right places in Whitechapel…etc etc etc. Sure thing Bud! The fact of the matter is that Abberline’s comments in ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of 1903 indicate that he himself did not even know about Klosowski/Chapman until 1902! He did not suspect Klosowski/Chapman of being the Ripper until the trial of ‘George Chapman’! (This was also pointed out by Phillip Sugden in his remarkable book on the Whitechapel Murders; ‘The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper’; a book which also debunks Donald McCormick’s untrustworthy book better than I ever could. In my opinion, more than any other book by any other ‘Ripperologist’, McCormick’s book, and his fabrications about George Chapman, Inspector Abberline, Dr Thomas Dutton, William LeQueux, ‘Pedachenko’ (who surely never even existed), Rasputin, etc., set the Ripper theories back at least 50 years. I believe that if not for that book, Severin Klosowski probably would have been known as being Jack-the-Ripper thirty years ago. But it is a testament to how seriously these ‘books’ by ‘Ripperologists’ are taken by other ‘Ripperologists’. How could they simply take McCormick at his word that he had ever even seen this alleged ‘crime-notebook’ by Dr Dutton?!! Convienant for McCormick how everything in his book has no way of ever being substantiated, right? Or maybe ‘Ripperologists’ never took it seriously at all, they just knew a good thing when they saw it. To sell a lot of books is a good thing I guess. But even if it misleads people? Oh well, at least that book of McCormick’s has been totally disgraced. Yet ‘Ripperologists’ still speak fairly respectfully about McCormick himself in their books.)
Abberline never changed his mind, certainly never on record. So any suggestion that he did is putting words in his mouth after he had died, which also demonstrates how low these people will stoop in discrediting this important theory. The only reason to do that is because it is correctly acknowledged that Abberline’s opinion is THE most significant of all. (Even Paul Begg, in his book ‘Jack the Ripper; the Facts’, stated that Abberline might have changed his mind [regarding Chapman being the Ripper] in later years’ , Yet he provided no proof of where he might have heard this, and no other details about why he says this, which tells me that he was probably just embarrassed to admit that he had gotten it from Donald McCormick’s book.)
It was Abberline’s opinion that Klosowski was the Ripper! There is ZERO evidence that his opinion ever changed.
My so-called “spamming” was in reality an attempt by me to respect and substantiate Inspector Abberilne’s opinion, after so many other people have dragged it through the mud.
( I edited this reply and included much of it in the original essay, posted above, in messages #15 on down) D.B.
message 39: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
Helena_Wojtczak 3 months ago
As the universally-acknowledged world expert on George Chapman/Seweryn Klosowski (note correct spelling) , I welcome Douglas B Barr’s review. My biography of George Chapman is available on Amazon. It’s called “JACK THE RIPPER AT LAST?”
message 40: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
Thank you Ms Wojtczak, I had not been aware of this book of yours. I have never seen that cover photo of ‘Seweryn’ before either. I am looking 4ward to getting your book and reading it
message 41: by Douglas Feb 09, 2019
One incident that I believe Phillip Sugden might be wrong about, (in his masterwork on the Ripper: ‘Jack the Ripper, the Complete History’) is that he excludes Ada Wilson as having been attacked by the Ripper, because the motive for her assault was apparently robbery.
In the chronology of the Ripper attacks, Ada Wilson was an early attack, done almost six months prior to the first ‘canonical’ murder. In my estimation, Klosowski would have most likely heard about Tumblety’s uterus-offer soon after this attack on the Wilson woman (Ada was very lucky to survive, and had spent 30 days in hospital recovering from the assault). But at the time of Ada Wilson’s attack, robbery might well have been a motive for him. Why not? It was Abberline’s theory that the Ripper crimes were done for material gain; the sum of £20 that had been the offer for the organs. If Klowsowski was willing to kill for twenty pounds after having met with Tumblety, it seems likely to me that before meeting Tumblety he might have attempted attacking women with robbery as the motive, in fact I would think it was likely that he would have. (see message #21, regarding Klosowski’s financial situation at that time) One reason that Tumblety’s offer of money to obtain the female sex organs for him could have sounded attractive to Klosowski could have been because he had been attacking women already, so it wouldn’t require much more risk to cut them up afterwords and do some basic ‘feldscher’ work on some of them. If he had been doing attacks on women already and getting only pennies for it, why not put in this extra effort then, for the then-princely sum of twenty pounds? Maybe he reasoned that it would stop him from getting rusty, surgically speaking. When that offer was first put to Mr Klosowski, I would think the only reason he would consider actually doing it was because he had already done something similar, on his own initiative, to obtain money as one of his motives already. Many criminals, when they are driven to armed robbery out of desperation, usually pick out wealthy looking men as their likely targets. Not so with Klosowski, women are always his targets, and these women always get hurt badly, and are almost always discovered dead afterwards, and left in the most disrespectful condition imaginable . I bring this up only to demonstrate that, if I am correct, material gain was not the only reason he resorted to crime. It was not his most significant or compelling reason either I bet.
He had, almost certainly, both performed minor surgery in Poland AND had now carried out brutal assaults on women in London. And even though he may have had never performed a hysterectomy before (although maybe he had!), he had studied anatomy thoroughly. No mere butcher of cows, pigs, or sheep could have extracted uterus from an elderly woman, outdoors in the cold dark night in the time limit that these assaults were carried out in. But I think Klosowski could have done it, possibly, though he would probably have failed on his first couple tries (and he did). But consider the difficult conditions these attacks were carried-out under: the darkness, the cold, the fog, the apprehension due to bystanders in close proximity, police behind every corner, or the fact that he needs to get it done as quickly as humanly possible or suffer the consequences….etc. And most of these things only increase with each subsequent attack! I find it incredible he had been able to do it successfully (on both Chapman & Eddowes) after a mere two failed attempts (Tabrum & Nicholls). (Again, procuring the uterus, I feel, was not the motive on Kelly, see message #17) At least this is my understanding of the crimes. And if Klosowski couldn’t have done it successfully, with his somewhat limited surgical training, who then could have? I believe he is one of the only accused ‘suspects’ that could have done it. And considering the type of person it would take to keep his nerve during such a ghastly procedure, I believe he is the ONLY one that could have. Consider how he had kept his nerve during the long, drawn-out poisonings of his three ‘wives’, as friends and relatives first grew suspicious, then suspected and questioned him as the murders were being carried out. And then to continue doing it, one after the other! It is remarkable that those poisonings, that so clearly demonstrate the bone-chilling character and the morbid lack of feeling in this man, continue to be the main reason ‘ripperologists’ dismiss Klosowski as a legitimate suspect in the Ripper murders! It’s because they feel if he had been the Ripper, then he would have butchered his ‘wives’ like he did the others, not use poison. Even though that would have TOTALLY exposed him, in every way! But this cunning killer was not capable of altering his methods, right? Even though ten years had already passed by that time, and there was no reason for him to use a knife any longer, and even though the killing of these ‘wives’ had a different motive. There had been an important reason to use the knife ten years previously, and that reason no longer applied anymore by the time he was killing with poison. And he was well-off financially when he decided to remove the obstacle of his ‘wives’, he did not need to kill for any reasons other than his own insanity by that time.
That’s right, maybe he didn’t need money anymore, but as the sociopath he was, he still needed to kill. Having become financially successful in business changes his motive, but it didn’t change the fact that he was mentally unbalanced still. He was not particular about the method he used I suppose, only that he could terrorize and dominate women again, thereby striking back at them for whatever reason that he felt his mother (or perhaps some other influential woman who had power over his childhood) was responsible, in his opinion, for damaging his life for him. His anger at women always ends up re-emerging. (if I were forced to guess, I would guess it had been some type of abandonment issue, experienced by him as having been hugely unfair and personal. Something of this type must have been driving him to do what he was doing to women). That was probably the true motive all along. At least this is what the criminal profiler’s like to say. I don’t think any of those women had been sexually assaulted, right? This was all about a feeling of payback in Klosowski’s mind. (perhaps he felt that you can’t hurt a prostitute by having sex with her, as she is far to accustomed to it. And there was no time for sex, not with the surgical operation that he needed to perform. He had to hurry and get out of there! Could anybody have become sexually stimulated under all of that pressure?!) Payback is a motive, and in the case of the ‘canonical’ victims, £20 from ‘the American’ as well. In the mind of a sociopath, I understand, it does not matter if the woman you are killing is innocent, and is not the actual woman who was responsible for his humiliation. All women are the same, for they all do the same types of things, and they all share a similar power over men. This is the ‘reasoning’ of a madman I guess.
– epilouge –
The 1903 interview with Inspector Abberline (see appendix) was published in the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ on March 24 and 31, 1903. Klosowski was executed on April 7. In those two weeks, I wonder if Severino had been given the opportunity to read that interview? Police provided him with newspapers, eg ‘The Times’, would they possibly also have provided him with a ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ that included an interview with his old nemesis, if for no other reason than to antagonize him? Did Klosowski go to his death knowing that he had finally been exposed as being the ‘Ripper’, after years spent having been so proud that he had outsmarted Scotland Yard?
I really hope he did.
‘Ripperologists’ never want to give Abberline the credit he deserved. Maybe, just maybe, Klosowski ended-up having been forced to give Abberline that credit. And wouldn’t that have been so much better? As far as the Whitechapel Murders went, Klosowski had been smugly laughing at Scotland Yard well onto fifteen years by the time of his trial. But did Abberline have the last laugh? It all depends on if Klosowski was given a copy of that magazine or not. Seeing that it was the police themselves who were deciding what ‘George Chapman’ would read, it would seem likely that he did get that ‘Gazzette’. (I would not be one bit surprised if Abberline himself had directed them to give the magazine to Klosowski)
THIS ENTIRE PIECE ON ‘JACK-THE-RIPPER’ ORIGINALLY BEGAN ON A WEBPAGE THAT IS devoted to Phillip Sugden’s great book ‘The Complete History Of Jack The Ripper’. I really believe that what it attempts to describe is very close to being what actually happened in foggy east London, all those many years ago, in regards to the Whitechapel Murders. Incidentally , it is not necessarily my aim to convince people that Klosowski was Jack-the-Ripper. But I would like it if people would admit that he is equally as ‘valid’ a suspect as any other, and probably more likely than the other ‘suspects’, mainly because of the circumstantial case that can be made against him. I would also like for them to believe/admit that a serial murderer might change his method of killing over the years, that it wouldn’t be all that unlikely, especially after 10-15 years have passed and one of the motives for his killings has changed, that this is in no way unlikely, especially as these were not sexually motivated murders committed by a sexual lunatic, as was the case with the more recent BTK killer, or even someone as perverted as Jeffery Dahmer. Most writers want to believe that the Ripper murders too were the result of some sexual perversion. The fact that these were prostitutes who were being murdered and mutilated proves that sex was the motive, this is their reasoning. I feel one of the reasons people may not like this Klosowski theory is because it almost makes it look as if Jack-the-Ripper was not a sexual lunatic, and that he was motivated as much by ‘rational’ monetary gain as he was by sexual perversion. It is far too reprehensible to believe that he commit such blasphemous atrocities in the name of something so mundane yet essential as money, the same motivation that spurns us all on each day. (if the need for money could drive Klosowski to do what he did, does it make us evil also? After all, we have done things we are not always proud of to get money before also! It seems to put us on less firm ground when we judge him, a slight feeling of being hypocritical possibly. We want to feel much more superior to this sort of thing, right?) This monetary motive will change for Klosowski as the years pass, and as he becomes successful in his business and thereby fairly wealthy on his own. But in my opinion, one word sums up Severin Klosowski’s continuing motivation to kill women better than any others do: anger. Not sexual stimulation, or even money; but it was his beastly rage against women that was at the root of everything.
I sometimes wonder if this anger was something he did not acknowledge in himself, and that he felt he was a good person, a caring public benefactor who was doing the unfortunate women a favor. He knew what it was to struggle to keep a roof over his head, especially in the wintertime of gas lit, horse drawn, Victorian London town. He knew these women were getting older, and how difficult life would be for them from then on; the degrading sexual favors they needed to provide for strangers in order to obtain money, to stay in some degree comfortable as they lived out the remainder of their lonely lives, which would only get more difficult to find takers for as they continued to age. He knew that the reason many of them needed to stay intoxicated was to obscure the horrors of their own lives from themselves, that the only thing keeping them alive was the fear of killing themselves; even if this was not true it is probably what the Ripper told himself in order to maintain the illusion for himself that he was a decent person, as all people want to believe. His murderous anger at women may have remained unacknowledged in himself, only acknowledging that women had been unfair to him before. And even if he was capitalizing on these ‘mercy killings’, as he likely thought of them, even if he cut out their uterus and sold it for £20 afterwards, it didn’t alter the fact that he was doing them a ‘favor’! In his mind. he was a humanitarian, it was a shame that the Metropolis was not filled with more like him! But as time passed, and as he read more of the newspaper articles about what a monster ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ was, it would get more and more difficult to have these illusions about himself. And for all I know he really enjoyed being the brute he was from the very outset. There is evidence to support that way of looking at it also, especially if any of those messages to the papers, or on Goulston St. were genuine.
But I digress, and likely have been going down the wrong path.
Only the Ripper himself would know if it is likely or not that he might change his method of killing, after more than 10 years had passed. A sexual thrill killer might never alter his method of killing later on, but somebody who had been ripping up women to procure female organs in order to fulfill a £20 order from an American who wanted uterus’ might easily do it . You couldn’t put ANYTHING past a person who would do that, he is probably capable of anything at all; even convincing young Victorian women who he does not love into living with him ‘in sin’, and telling their parents that he had married their daughters when he actually had not, then proceeding to poison each of the ‘wives’ to death, slowly & painfully, savoring each moment, dragging it out to prolong both his enjoyment of it and the suffering of his ‘wives’ at the same time. No ‘Ripperologist’ has any business eliminating a likely ‘suspect’ on the reasoning that a serial killer would never alter his method of killing, especially when they don’t know what the motive for his killing was. The Ripper, I feel, was motivated by anger at women, ‘getting back’ at them was the underlying motivation, just like it was, mostly, with Ted Bundy (another serial-killer you couldn’t put ANYTHING past; a killer who was capable of anything at all. There are no ‘rules’ that apply to these killers, in fact breaking rules might just motivate them more). In his past he had likely felt betrayed by some female who had some degree of control over his youthful existence, and now he was repaying the outrage, tit-for-tat (how is that for pun?)Sexual contact was besides the point with the Ripper, and the victims had not been sexually violated. (the £20 offer for the uterus was his justification for the crimes, aside from the fact that he also needed the money- but it was Klosowski’s rage against women, not the money, and not sexual gratification, that was the real motive for what he does, this is my theory. This becomes obvious later on, I feel, as he is eliminating his ‘wives’, one-by-one, in the cruel manner that he chose for them) With those other killers, living out some perverted and violent sexual fantasy is the entire point of their crimes. This, I feel, is another reason why the ‘ripperologists’ always seem so ready to dismiss Klosowski as a suspect, and it is also what makes Klosowski interesting to me. As crude as he first appears, judging by the photographs of his victims, he seems more complex the more you look into what seems to have been propelling him to do it. Not sympathetic, but only more complex, which also becomes more interesting. (how is it that he has this hateful rage against women, yet at the same time he seemingly can’t bear to live without one?) But I never found some crude brute who tortures and then murders women only to satisfy his personal sexual fantasies, eg. BTK Killer, Jeffery Dahmer, Boston Strangler, etc , anything but revolting and embarrassing, at best. Yet some ripper ‘experts’ seem like they will be disappointed if it turned out that the Ripper too was not from that same class of perverts.
Phillip Sugden, in his book ‘Jack the Ripper, The Complete History’, wrote that Klosowski/Chapman was the only one of the popular ‘Ripper suspects’ that he could not eliminate as being a suspect, and he had also explained why all the others could & should be eliminated in that respect. In other words, in Sugden’s final summation, Klosowski is the only ‘Ripper suspect’ who could possibly be the Jack-the-Ripper. If it wasn’t Klosowski, according to Phillip Sugden, then Jack-the-Ripper could only be somebody who we have never considered before, and likely we never will. (And consider the fact that the only thing excluding Klosowski from being the most likely Ripper suspect, even in the minds of his harshest critics, is the fact that they do not believe that a sexual-serial killer would ever alter his method of killing. But because he poisoned his ‘wives’, and did not mutilate them, he goes from being the most likely suspect of all to an absurd choice, in the estimation of most ‘ripperologists’. Considering all of the evidence against Klosowski, if altering his method of killing [after 10 years had passed and his motive for killing had changed] if that is the only ‘evidence’ that excludes him from being the Ripper, then it seems to me rather likely that we have considered the identity of the true Ripper after having considered Klosowski).
So why is it that Sugden’s book gets almost universal acclaim, across the spectrum, from most ‘Ripperologists’, yet they continue to ridicule the idea of Klosowski being the Ripper? Why would these people who respect Sugden’s book more than any other ripper book ridicule Sugdens only possible choice for ripper ‘suspect’, as if Sugden doesn’t know what he is talking about? Certainly Phillip Sugden did not come out and name Severin Klosowski as definitely having been Jack-the-Ripper, but he did infer that he was the only known suspect who could possibly have been. My only guess about it is that ‘ripperologists’ are fearful of having their readers believe that the Ripper case has been solved, because if that were the case then why should their readers continue to purchase more Ripper-books? (And I would like to commend ‘Ripperologists’ Stewart Evans & Keith Skinner, authors of ‘The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook’. Both writers have gone on record previously as opponents of the ‘Chapman’ theory, but they did not allow that to get in the way of keeping their personal opinions to themselves in the penultimate chapter of their book, and only printing the evidence alone, which points the finger of guilt directly at Klosowski. Their book convinced me of Klosowski’s guilt just as much as Sugden’s had). Many of these authors have made a career from Jack-the-Ripper. I don’t think they need to worry. All I can tell them is this: that I myself believe that the killer has been correctly named, I believe that I myself have named him. But it does not stop me from reading more books about the case, on the contrary, especially if the author has something he feels is honest to say about it. I like to hear his reasoning. But only if his reasoning is honest, and not something colorful that is mainly intended to sell books, such as that Lewis Carrol was the Ripper, or Queen Victoria perhaps. Or some bizarre sexual fetish is exploited in order to sell books. Or even worse yet; the author tries to obscure the possibility of someone like Klosowski being the Ripper only in order to maintain the mystery of an unsolved case. All of this has been done, and is still being done, in order to make as much off the Ripper case as is possible. One thing is certain: much more money has been made off of the Ripper case by ‘ripperologists’ than had ever been made by Severino Klosowski at twenty pounds per uterus.
APPENDIX 1 :
THE 1903 ABBERLINE / PALL MALL GAZETTE INTERVIEW
In my opinion, one of the most important contributions to ‘ripperology’ ever made by any ‘ripperologist’ was the 1987 re-discovery, by Keith Skinner & Martin Howells, of the 1903 ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ interview with Detective-Inspector Frederick G. Abberline, conducted as Klosowski’s trial for ‘wife’ poisoning was in it’s final stage. As Ripper-historian Phillip Sugden has noted, the interviews were “more important than those two authors realized”. (they were researching for a book they were then writing together; ‘The Ripper Legacy- The Life & Death of Jack the Ripper’) “Howells and Skinner were primarily interested in (Montague) Druitt. And certainly Abberline’s dismissals of Druitt and others were well worth finding. But the central thrust and principal value of the PMG interviews lies in Abberline’s indictment of an altogether different suspect- George Chapman, the Polish multiple murderer, hanged in 1903”
If this interview had not been found by them, my own conclusions about the ripper case would have been impossible, or at least until someone else had uncovered it. (Incidentally, it would be Skinner’s other writing partner, Stewart Evans, who would himself rediscover Francis Tumblety, in the 1990’s).
I call the interviews the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of Ripperology:
Pall Mall Gazette
24 March 1903
Should Klosowski, the wretched man now lying under sentence of death for wife-poisoning, go to the scaffold without a “last dying speech and confession,” a great mystery may for ever remain unsolved, but the conviction that “Chapman” and “Jack the Ripper” were one and the same person will not in the least be weakened in the mind of the man who is, perhaps, better qualified than anyone else in this country to express an opinion in this matter. We allude to Mr. F. G. Abberline, formerly Chief Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard, the official who had full charge of the criminal investigations at the time of the terrible murders in Whitechapel.
When a representative of the Pall Mall Gazette called on Mr. Abberline yesterday and asked for his views on the startling theory set up by one of the morning papers, the retired detective said: “What an extra-ordinary thing it is that you should just have called upon me now. I had just commenced, not knowing anything about the report in the newspaper, to write to the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Macnaghten, to say how strongly I was impressed with the opinion that ‘Chapman’ was also the author of the Whitechapel murders. Your appearance saves me the trouble. I intended to write on Friday, but a fall in the garden, injuring my hand and shoulder, prevented my doing so until today.”
Mr. Abberline had already covered a page and a half of foolscap, and was surrounded with a sheaf of documents and newspaper cuttings dealing with the ghastly outrages of 1888.
“I have been so struck with the remarkable coincidences in the two series of murders,” he continued, “that I have not been able to think of anything else for several days past–not, in fact, since the Attorney- General made his opening statement at the recent trial, and traced the antecedents of Chapman before he came to this country in 1888. Since then the idea has taken full possession of me, and everything fits in and dovetails so well that I cannot help feeling that this is the man we struggled so hard to capture fifteen years ago.”
“My interest in the Ripper cases was especially deep. I had for fourteen years previously been an inspector of police in Whitechapel, but when the murders began I was at the Central Office at Scotland Yard. On the application of Superintendent Arnold I went back to the East End just before Annie Chapman was found mutilated, and as chief of the detective corps I gave myself up to the study of the cases. Many a time, even after we had carried our inquiries as far as we could– and we made out no fewer than 1,600 sets of papers respecting our investigations–instead of going home when I was off duty, I used to patrol the district until four or five o’clock in the morning, and, while keeping my eyes wide open for clues of any kind, have many and many a time given those wretched, homeless women, who were Jack the Ripper’s special prey, fourpence or sixpence for a shelter to get them away from the streets and out of harm’s way.”
“As I say,” went on the criminal expert, “there are a score of things which make one believe that Chapman is the man; and you must understand that we have never believed all those stories about Jack the Ripper being dead, or that he was a lunatic, or anything of that kind. For instance, the date of the arrival in England coincides with the beginning of the series of murders in Whitechapel; there is a coincidence also in the fact that the murders ceased in London when ‘Chapman’ went to America, while similar murders began to be perpetrated in America after he landed there. The fact that he studied medicine and surgery in Russia before he came here is well established, and it is curious to note that the first series of murders was the work of an expert surgeon, while the recent poisoning cases were proved to be done by a man with more than an elementary knowledge of medicine. The story told by ‘Chapman’s’ wife of the attempt to murder her with a long knife while in America is not to be ignored, but something else with regard to America is still more remarkable.”
“While the coroner was investigating one of the Whitechapel murders he told the jury a very queer story. You will remember that Dr. Phillips, the divisional surgeon, who made the post-mortem examination, not only spoke of the skillfulness with which the knife had been used, but stated that there was overwhelming evidence to show that the criminal had so mutilated the body that he could possess himself of one of the organs. The coroner, in commenting on this, said that he had been told by the sub-curator of the pathological museum connected with one of the great medical schools that some few months before an American had called upon him and asked him to procure a number of specimens. He stated his willingness to give £20 for each. Although the strange visitor was told that his wish was impossible of fulfillment, he still urged his request. It was known that the request was repeated at another institution of a similar character in London. The coroner at the time said: ‘Is it not possible that a knowledge of this demand may have inspired some abandoned wretch to possess himself of the specimens? It seems beyond belief that such inhuman wickedness could enter into the mind of any man; but, unfortunately, our criminal annals prove that every crime is possible!”
“It is a remarkable thing,” Mr. Abberline pointed out, “that after the Whitechapel horrors America should have been the place where a similar kind of murder began, as though the miscreant had not fully supplied the demand of the American agent.”
“There are many other things extremely remarkable. The fact that Klosowski when he came to reside in this country occupied a lodging in George Yard, Whitechapel Road, where the first murder was committed, is very curious, and the height of the man and the peaked cap he is said to have worn quite tallies with the descriptions I got of him. All agree, too, that he was a foreign- looking man,–but that, of course, helped us little in a district so full of foreigners as Whitechapel. One discrepancy only have I noted, and this is that the people who alleged that they saw Jack the Ripper at one time or another, state that he was a man about thirty- five or forty years of age. They, however, state that they only saw his back, and it is easy to misjudge age from a back view.”
Altogether Mr. Abberline considers that the matter is quite beyond abstract speculation and coincidence, and believes the present situation affords an opportunity of unravelling a web of crime such as no man living can appreciate in its extent and hideousness.
Pall Mall Gazette
31 March 1903 (Part 2)
Since the Pall Mall Gazette a few days ago gave a series of coincidences supporting the theory that Klosowski, or Chapman, as he was for some time called, was the perpetrator of the “Jack the Ripper” murders in Whitechapel fifteen years ago, it has been interesting to note how many amateur criminologists have come forward with statements to the effect that it is useless to attempt to link Chapman with the Whitechapel atrocities. This cannot possibly be the same man, it is said, because, first of all, Chapman is not the miscreant who could have done the previous deeds, and, secondly, it is contended that the Whitechapel murderer has long been known to be beyond the reach of earthly justice.
In order, if possible, to clear the ground with respect to the latter statement particularly, a repre- sentative of the Pall Mall Gazette again called on Mr. F. G. Abberline, formerly Chief Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard, yesterday, and elicited the following statement from him:
“You can state most emphatically,” said Mr. Abberline, “that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago. It is simple nonsense to talk of the police having proof that the man is dead. I am, and always have been, in the closest touch with Scotland Yard, and it would have been next to impossible for me not to have known all about it. Besides, the authorities would have been only too glad to make an end of such a mystery, if only for their own credit.”
To convince those who have any doubts on the point, Mr. Abberline produced recent documentary evidence which put the ignorance of Scotland Yard as to the perpetrator beyond the shadow of a doubt.
“I know,” continued the well-known detective, “that it has been stated in several quarters that ‘Jack the Ripper’ was a man who died in a lunatic asylum a few years ago, but there is nothing at all of a tangible nature to support such a theory.”
Our representative called Mr. Abberline’s attention to a statement made in a well-known Sunday paper, in which it was made out that the author was a young medical student who was found drowned in the Thames.
“Yes,” said Mr. Abberline, “I know all about that story. But what does it amount to? Simply this. Soon after the last murder in Whitechapel the body of a young doctor was found in the Thames, but there is absolutely nothing beyond the fact that he was found at that time to incriminate him. A report was made to the Home Office about the matter, but that it was ‘considered final and conclusive’ is going altogether beyond the truth. Seeing that the same kind of murders began in America afterwards, there is much more reason to think the man emigrated. Then again, the fact that several months after December, 1888, when the student’s body was found, the detectives were told still to hold themselves in readiness for further investigations seems to point to the conclusion that Scotland Yard did not in any way consider the evidence as final.”
But what about Dr. Neill Cream? A circumstantial story is told of how he confessed on the scaffold–at least, he is said to have got as far as ‘I am Jack–‘ when the jerk of the rope cut short his remarks.
“That is also another idle story,” replied Mr. Abberline. “Neill Cream was not even in this country when the Whitechapel murders took place. No; the identity of the diabolical individual has yet to be established, notwithstanding the people who have produced these rumors and who pretend to know the state of the official mind.”
“As to the question of the dissimilarity of character in the crimes which one hears so much about,” continued the expert, “I cannot see why one man should not have done both, provided he had the professional knowledge, and this is admitted in Chapman’s case. A man who could watch his wives being slowly tortured to death by poison, as he did, was capable of anything; and the fact that he should have attempted, in such a cold- blooded manner to murder his first wife with a knife in New Jersey, makes one more inclined to believe in the theory that he was mixed up in the two series of crimes. What, indeed, is more likely than that a man to some extent skilled in medicine and surgery should discontinue the use of a knife when his commission–and I still believe Chapman had a commission from America–came to an end, and then for the remainder of his ghastly deeds put into practice his knowledge of poisons? Indeed, if the theory be accepted that a man who takes life on a whole- sale scale never ceases his accursed habit until he is either arrested or dies, there is much to be said for Chapman’s consistency. You see, incentive changes; but the fiendishness is not eradicated. The victims, too, you will notice, continue to be women ; but they are of different classes, and obviously call for different methods of despatch.”
There were six East End murders of prostitute between Aug. 7 and Nov 9, 1888. The first five occur in August and September: two in August and three more in September, two of those on the same night. It is my feeling that this last night of September, the night of the so called ‘double event’, was intended to be the last night of all……and this was why The Ripper wanted to wrap up all loose ends that night, (Sept 30), and why there was so much activity that night. The ripper was seen by a witness that night in the company of a second man, and there is reasonable evidence that this other man could possibly have been Francis Tumblety. The place where the witness reportedly saw them at (Berner Street Jewish socialist club) was just around the corner, only yards away, from where Tumblety was reportedly staying while in London (on Batty Street), and this second man was described as being Tumblety’s same height, 5’11”. Also, two weeks after Sept 30, (Oct 15), a man answering Tumblety’s description was seen making inquiries to leather shop proprietor Emily Marsh, about needing the home address of vigilante committee leader George Lusk, (who she had allowed to place a reward poster, for the Ripper, in her stores window – see message #24, above) a day before Lusk received by mail a human kidney that had likely been procured from Cathrine Eddowes on this same ‘double event’ night. The package with the kidney in it was addressed just as Miss Marsh had given the address to this man, with the street name, but no house number. In the ‘From Hell’ note which accompanied the kidney, Lusk was being taunted by the notes author in a manner strikingly similar to the manner in which the Ripper seemed to be taunting the “Juwes” in Goulston St. on the ‘double event’ night.
No more murders happen the month following the ‘double event’ (none in October), or during the first week of November either. It would seem that either Tumblety had been supplied with all the uteri he had wanted, or the Ripper felt the ‘heat’ had gotten too intense for him to go on in this manner any longer. But this was by far the longest break in the murders, and I believe that as far as Klosowski and Tumblety were concerned, the hunt for uterus was over and done with at that point.
But something significant does happen that first week of November! Because that was the week that Tumblety was arrested in connection with the Ripper murders. Then, on November 9, 1888, a woman known as Mary Kelly was obscenely slaughtered in her tiny room on Dorset Street, just like a cow on the killing floor of a butcher’s shop might be done. This is the first murder by the Ripper that was done indoors, and the first where the abdominal wounds didn’t seem to be so much the killers focus, as it had been on the previous five victims. It seemed that on Mary Kelly’s murder, a different motive was at play from the first five. (she was also significantly younger than the others, and possibly slightly attractive this time…… my point being that the Ripper is attempting to make it appear that sex is the motive now, to throw the police off in their search for a motive. But still, from the evidence of the autopsy it appears there was no sexual intercourse forced upon the victim on this attack either, so how would sex have been a motive?)
This last attack (Mary Kelly) is the murder that has me convinced that Klosowski was out to exonerate Tumblety as a ripper suspect in the eyes of police that night, and to manipulate the police into having to set bail on Tumblety so that they wouldn’t be able to grill him about the murders, and more importantly they couldn’t then get him to ‘spill the beans’ about Klosowski. It seems that the Ripper’s single goal on this murder was to leave no doubt, both to the police and reporters, that this latest murder of Mary Kelly was the work of Jack-the-Ripper, who had been laying low the past month. And if that were the case, if it had been the Ripper who had done this murder while Tumblety was sitting at Police headquarters, then police must have the wrong man in their jail. And that, I believe, was Klosowski’s message, and his motive, in this murder of Mary Kelly: to convince authorities that they had the wrong man, and that by law, they needed set bail for him. (it is also why Mary’s uterus was not missing, even though the Ripper had plenty of time to have taken it. Because he also needed to convince investigators that procuring a uterus was not his motive, right?)
It would be useful to know if Tumblety had hired an attorney while being incarcerated that week (I am almost certain he did) , an attorney who may have relayed messages between Klosowski and himself while he was being kept in jail. (and an attorney could also have persuaded police, or maybe a judge, to see that they had no grounds any longer not to set a bail). And maybe records that show that he did hire a lawyer would still exist….(although records which would show the exact day Tumblety was arrested, and precisely when he was released, seem to have disappeared.) He certainly had the means to hire a good lawyer, of course he did. But I think it is likely that after this night, Klosowski never saw Tumblety again in England, and I also have reason to believe that Tumblety might have skipped bail without having paid Klosowski the money he had offered for the uterus in the first place!
If Tumblety were the suspicious type, he might have reason to believe, as he was financing his own bail, that it was likely Klosowski’s plan to kill him after arranging his release. Human life doesn’t seem to mean much to Klosowski, right? It would have been one sure-fire way for Klosowski to make certain that Tumblety would never ‘spill the beans’ about him. Maybe it was not only the British justice system that Tumblety was fleeing when he skipped out to New York after having been released by the British authorities, maybe he was skipping out on his partner also; maybe skipping out on his very ‘boyfriend’! But then, who could blame him if he did, right? In my estimation, it would have shown a degree of intelligence on his part. And who could blame him also for having spent the remainder of his days, as he did, in hiding? (My reasons for possibly believing this last bit here are Klosowski’s reported actions, two years later, after having followed Tumblety to America, and his changing his name after returning; and his insistance, for the remainder of his life, that he was not then, or never had been, Severin Klosowski – see message 54, above)
It is ironic that it was not due to Tumblety having ‘spilled the beans’ about anybody which finally alerted Inspecter Abberline about Klosowski, it was Klosowski’s own insanity and over-confidence, 15 years later, that was responsible for his own capture. And once he was hanged, Abberline could only reason and believe that it didn’t really matter which murders he was executed over, as long as he got hanged. Abberline told the world his conclusions, if ‘ripperologists’ chose not to want to believe it, that was not his problem, let them make fools of themselves, let them make their money. It is frustrating though that they also make fools of their readers
It is my feeling that the ripper made the cuts in Eddowes’ face to divert the attention of investigators from noticing that the uterus was once again missing, a second time now. I feel that he was on the alert to this type of ‘red herring’ diversion due to the fact that he had already discovered that, during his flight from the murder sights, he could tell that nobody was successful in noticing him as he escaped due to the fact that everyones attention was being diverted by the shock of just having discovered the dead body in the awful state that the Ripper had left it. They were in a state of some shock, even police were. I feel that the Ripper intentionally left the body in the most shocking state he could manage because of this effect that it’s discovery had on his escape afterwords. The Ripper seemed to be in no extreme hurry as he fled from Mitre Square on the evening of the double event, as he stopped to leave his message on Goulston Street; and he must have even appeared a little conspicuous with his little bag or whatever it was he used to hold his stolen uterus in. Witnesses were in a state of shock and panic after discovery of any of these murders, and would likely have been occupied with thoughts that the person standing right next to them might have been the murderer, they would have looked at everybody with the same feeling for a good amount of time. The witnesses would have been overwhelmed with thoughts for their own safety also, they would have had as much Adrenalin running through their veins as the Ripper did, possibly more, because the Ripper has had experience at it by this time. This, and the fact that investigators would not accept the coroner’s idea on the motive, was the reason for so much of the Ripper’s luck, and why he was able to consistently elude discovery and capture
Might he have also been carrying one of those early police lantern/torches with him, as he went into Mitre Square that night with Catherine Eddowes? It is difficult to figure how else he might have caused all the injury that he did; those graphic mutilations on her face, (which took precious time, so if they were not done to divert investigators from noticing that the uterus is missing again, then why were they made? Just to be creepy? He NEEDS to keep the fact that he is doing all this only to procure uterus – he needs to keep that clue hidden, remember that. It is the singular clue that could expose him, and lead to his capture. This clue did soon get Mr Tumblety arrested) and then after cutting up her face, (or maybe he cut up the face after) have located and extracted both the kidney and the intended uterus once again also, and have done all that in well under 10 minutes (5 min?….and the police surgeon admitted he couldnt have done the operations in less than an hour! So how could they pretend to believe that the killer wouldn’t need to have had medical training? They said that only because they didnt want the public believing that a doctor might be responsible! They were worried about their own reputations more than they were with ending the killing!), unless he had some means of seeing what he was doing. Because it was pitch dark in that corner of the Square while he was carrying on with his mutilations. Klosowski seemed like he enjoyed collecting weapons and military-type equipment, you can see things of this nature hanging on his walls in one of his personal photos of himself and Bessie Taylor. He might have easily owned one of those police lamps also. It seems like he enjoys shopping at those Army surplus stores, I am certain that they would carry lights like those. Whatever….he worked successfully in that darkness somehow, almost as if he had radar. Almost as if he were certain that he would not be caught. Or maybe he wasn’t even aware that police were nearly behind every corner as he was going about his business. Maybe that hadn’t even dawned on him. Maybe both cops and killer were each missing each other by seconds as they played out the night, like in a keystone cop film. Then as he is leaving he takes time to write his message about “juwes”. Was he cunning? or was he just stupid but lucky?
Neither….he was determined, and he was confident. And like many egomaniac criminals, he believed he was superior to everybody that might come after him (and it seems as though he was, for a time. It took Abberline a few years to realize just how clever the man he had been after truly had been)
He almost surely had made a living doing something similar before ever leaving Poland, it seems obvious. At Klosowski’s 1903 trial people commented how it was that, with ‘George Chapman’, you always get the feeling that there was far more in his background than we will ever know about. He most probably was killing people and selling the bodies to medical schools in Warsaw, for medical research. This is my feeling about him. It was common practice back in the 1800s. Look up ‘Burke & Hare killings’.- see wikipedia. This also may have had something to do with those ‘Thames Torso murders’, and also with why he happened to meet Tumblety at one of the medical schools where Tumblety was first looking to get uterus from. Maybe Klosowski was turned away by the schools also, (Burke & Hare had been selling their bodies to a doctor at a medical school) and maybe he had killed some of those women dumped in the Thames before he was turned away by them