While Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel during the fall of 1888, another unknown killer (or killers) had also been leaving macabre tokens of murder throughout the London area. Like Jack, they taunted police. Like Jack, they were never caught. And, like Jack, they were capable of showing an element of precision that led pursuers to believe they may be a butcher or have medical training.
Unlike Jack, they never compromised that precision with blitz attacks and disembowelment—the remains they left behind were always neatly cut and neatly packaged. Unlike Jack, their taunts were more subtle than the cryptic letters to police and neighborhood watch.
And—if the murders were carried out by a single person—their reign of terror may have lasted much, much longer than a single autumn. From 1873 through 1889, a series of 6 torsos were found in the greater London area. Only one was ever identified.
The Thames Mysteries of 1873 and 1874
Whereas we can memorialize the victims of Jack the Ripper by name—see our victim profile page for their stories—we can not do the same for most of the victims of this undiscovered killer. The first two bodies were especially impossible to identify, due to their being discarded in a watery grave. Beware: The following paragraphs go into some especially graphic details.
On September 5, 1873, near the Battersea Pier in the Southwest of London, a police patrol removed the left side of a woman's torso from the mud on the banks of the Thames river. As the day progressed, more parts of the body were found, including the right side of the torso and portions of lungs. The following day, a woman's face and scalp, detached from the head, were found floating in the water off Limehouse. Next came a thigh and right shoulder.
Divisional police surgeon Dr. Kempster and officers reassembled the body as best they could with the parts on a mechanical frame. They even went so far as to stretch the victim’s face over a butcher's block, hoping that it may be recognized by someone whose loved one had gone missing.
Dr. Kempster determined that the victim was very likely around 40 years old with short, thin dark hair. One feature they hoped would make identification easier was a burn scar on her left breast.
Dozens of people who were looking for female middle-aged family members passed through to view the corpse, but no one could be sure that it was who they were looking for. Photos were passed around, a reward was offered, but by September 21, nothing had come of it. The unknown woman's remains were buried at Battersea cemetery.
The following year, another woman's remains were found, missing a head, hands, and feet. She also was unable to be identified. Additionally, while the cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head for the 1873 victim, investigators were not even able to determine a cause of death for this victim.
But the extent of the verdict for both victims was the same: “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.”
The River Thames circa 1895 (photo credit: Evening Standard)
The Thames Torso Murders of 1887–1889
In May of 1887, the first victim of what is considered the “official” Thames Torso Murders was discovered in the Thames near Rainham, wrapped in a bundle.
Over the next several weeks, body parts washed up onto the shore of the Thames until everything but the body’s head and neck had been pieced together. An assistant police surgeon, Dr. Charles Hebbert, examined the remains for clues to the person’s identity, and due to the lack of a head and the long submersion in water, was only able to identify that the victim had been a woman. Again, the cause of death could not be determined, and the only description on the record for what had happened was that the unknown victim was “found dead.”
The Whitehall Mystery
September 11, 1888, heralded the start of a gruesome game of hide and seek, later called the Whitehall Mystery. It began with the discovery of a right arm and shoulder on an embankment near Pimlico. Police at first believed it to be a prank carried out by medical students (a common suspicion when any body parts were found). They were not terribly concerned.
At that point, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols and Annie Chapman had already been murdered on August 31th and September 8th respectively. The “Dear Boss” letter would not be received by the Central News Agency until September 27, three days before the night of the Double Event, and true Ripper hysteria had not reached fever pitch.
Another arm was found on September 28, lying by the side of a road.
On October 2 ,1888 a wrapped-up woman’s torso was discovered by a construction worker in an unfinished vault near Whitehall in Westminster. The construction project was, of all things, for the new Metropolitan Police headquarters. This is one of the first indications that the perpetrator was a morbid prankster, and would continue to taunt police.
“The Whitehall Mystery” (from the Illustrated Police News, October, 1888)
Dr. Bond, Dr. Hebbert, and other medical professionals noticed that the victim’s right arm had been tourniqueted before the body had been dismembered. They agreed this indicated that whoever had dismembered the body very likely had some medical knowledge, specifically of anatomy. As far as identification went, the Westminster coroner noted that the body was of a woman who was “of large stature and well nourished” and was approximately 24 years old. They were unable to determine the cause of death, so again, the jury at the inquest could only declare that the anonymous victim was “found dead.”
The Murder of Elizabeth Jackson
On the morning of June 4, 1889, three young boys were playing in the Thames near Battersea Park, under the Albert Bridge. They caught sight of an object lapping against the embankment, and were horrified to discover that it was a human arm. They wrapped up the arm and brought it to Scotland Yard, where Dr. Kempster determined it had only been in the water for 24 hours at most. It was wrapped in a garment that was embroidered with the name “L.E. Fisher.” More body parts were found in various embankments throughout the area over the next few days. The coroner, Dr. Braxton-Hicks, observed that the skill used to dismember the body had not been that of a medical professional, but rather that of “a butcher or a knacker.”
A combination of the found garment, a childhood scar found upon the wrist, and the fact that she had been eight months pregnant helped identify her as Elizabeth Jackson. She was from County Cork, Ireland, but was currently homeless and working in the sex trade in London’s SOHO square. She was 24 years old when she died. Immediately, newspapers began to speculate that the Ripper had returned from his several month’s-long hiatus, going as far as to claim that the killer had sent more letters to the publication, but police determined this was very unlikely.
The killer once more displayed a tendency to taunt, as he had tossed Elizabeth’s right thigh over the wall of the Shelley estate—owned by Percy and Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.”
The Pinchin Street Torso
The final crime is the one most associated with the Jack the Ripper murders, stoking the fires of Ripper hysteria once more. On the morning of September 10, 1889, P.C. William Pennett came upon a woman’s torso under the railway arch on Pinchin Street, Whitechapel. The arms were still attached, though there were no legs or head. These parts were never found.
PC William Pennett discovering the headless and legless body of a woman beneath a railway arch on Pinchin Street
There was no evidence that the woman had been killed in that location, which makes it a high possibility that she had been killed elsewhere and her remains were left (perhaps strategically?) in the Whitechapel neighborhood. The body was never identified, nor was a cause of death determined. It was interred in an East London cemetery.
Too many questions
Very little can be determined from this series of gruesome murders and dismemberments. Was the culprit a surgeon, a butcher or a knacker? Was it truly Jack the Ripper after all? Was it two, three, or more perpetrators? Who were those poor, unidentified victims? Unlike in the Ripper case, there is no roll of named suspects, only a series of unknown corpses and as many disturbing, unfulfilling investigations and inquests.
Perhaps it is because of this ambiguity is what makes it less popular for study than the Ripper case. Perhaps there are just too many mysteries to handle.
Sources- https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/crimcorpse/2016/05/31/thames-torso-murders/
- https://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3600
- https://soundcloud.com/lastpodcastontheleft/minisode-the-thames-torso
- https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/thames-torso-murders.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehall_Mystery
- https://www.casebook.org/victims/jackson.html
George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (both the same guy) was almost without a doubt Jack-the-Ripper. Inspector Frederick Abberline knew it over a hundred years ago, and every “ripperologist” who looks objectively at the evidence today should know it also. In 1903 Klosowski would (as George Chapman) become notorious as the ‘Borough wife poisoner’. But 15 years earlier, in 1888, when he lived on George Yard Road in the heart of London’s East End, his disgustingly sneaky and insanely brutal manner of going after what he wanted would lead him (as Jack-the-Ripper) to achieve far more notoriety than he would have ever imagined.
It all began when Klosowski first heard of an American who was then in London, who was contacting various London medical schools, offering twenty pounds apiece for uteruses left over from hysterectomy procedures. (20 pounds was quite a large sum in 1888) Naturally, the staff at these medical schools had outright refused this unidentified American, but it seems that Klosowski (who had been trained in Poland as a ‘surgical-barber’) wanted the money, and was more obliging….. in his own unhinged way. As unlikely as that all may sound now, it was known throughout the medical community of London at that time that an American had made this highly unusual 20 pound offer. The coroner at the Annie Chapman inquest knew about it (Annie had been one of Jack-the-Rippers early victims), and had brought it up as the probable motive for the current Whitechapel murders of 1888. The American had even specified how he had wanted the organs to be preserved during their shipment to the States. (You can read about this in the inquest transcript, published in Stewart P. Evans & Keith Skinner’s book, ‘The Ultimate Jack-the-Ripper Companion’, pgs. 102-107. More importantly, read the 1903 interview by the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ with inspector Frederick Abberline, conducted as “Chapman” was on trial for murdering his 3 “wives”; the interview is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of ripperology. It’s also in Philip Sugden’s ‘The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper’.)
I feel that the reason the Ripper was mutilating the faces of his victims was to disguise his motive of killing the women for their uterus. The grotesque cuts on Catherine Eddowes’ face were intended to take attention from noticing the missing organ. (The corpses which received the really awful facial wounds were the corpses which had missing uterus, and the corpses that didn’t have the missing organs were those in which the attacks had been carried-out in almost complete darkness, and the Ripper hadn’t found the organs quickly enough to get at them on time in those instances. [this was foggy, gas-lit, Victorian London; it was very dark at night. To safely avoid detection, the Ripper would have needed to work very quickly, calmly, on a strict time limit. On some attacks he would not be able to beat the clock, and would need to abort the mission before obtaining a uterus] Most every cut on each victim had been necessary to either kill the woman or to obtain her uterus, EXCEPT for that grisly slicing on Eddowes face, which had been done only to take attention from this ‘uterus motive’. And the attack on Annie Chapman, one week after he had failed to obtain the uterus of Polly Nicholls; witness statements indicate that the Ripper waited on Hanbury Street until the break of dawn to strike on that attack, in order to have enough light to see what he was doing so that he could locate and extract the womb quickly. And he was successful: Annie Chapman was his first successful uterus extraction). But after it had been in the newspapers that the Ripper was taking the uterus, (following Annie Chapman) the Ripper felt he needed to obscure this motive, or police might track him down.
After it had been printed in the 1888 newspapers that the uterus of Annie Chapman had been so expertly removed and taken, the coroner reported that he had:
-“received an urgent communication from the sub-curator of one of London’s great medical schools; that they had information which might have a distinct bearing on our case. Some months previous an American had called on him and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the same organ (uterus) that was now missing in our deceased woman. The American stated his willingness to give 20 pounds apiece for each specimen. He was told his request was impossible to be complied with, but he still urged his request”……
-“And it was known that this request was repeated at other institutions of similar character.”…….
-“Isn’t it likely that the knowledge of this demand might have incited some ‘abandoned wretch’ to possess himself of a specimen?”…..
(excerpts from the Annie Chapman inquest report, 1888.)
It is not known why the American ‘needed’ the organs. Dr Baxter said it had something to do with a “publication” of the American’s……whatever. Perhaps he was simply some unbalanced transexual who was resentful that he’d been born without female organs.* Regardless, coroner Baxter had explained all this to the jurists in Annie Chapman’s inquest, and much of what he said was repeated by Frederick Abberline in his 1903 interview. Both men seemed certain that the Ripper had come into contact with this American at some point before the attacks.
(* After I first wrote this I became aware of a likely candidate for this American who wanted the female organs [see Phillip Sugden’s introduction to the revised edition of his ‘Ripper’ book, pg. xxvi] . There is a relatively recent Ripper-suspect; an American named Francis Tumblety [see wikipedia]. He being Jack-the-Ripper is unlikely; he was 58 years old, homosexual, tall, and he basically didn’t match any witnesses descriptions. [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 Tumblety was in the East End during the time of the Ripper and could have easily come into contact with Klosowski before the Ripper attacks began, and made him the same offer that coroner Baxter related to the inquest jurists. It’s likely that Klosowski [who had reportedly sought out employment at London Hospital] also made the rounds in some of those same medical schools, perhaps looking for employment in some surgical-teaching capacity. Also, C.A. Dunham, an American Lawyer who knew Tumblety, recalled in 1888 having once seen Tumblety’s ‘anatomical museum’. It included, he said, “a dozen or more jars containing …the matrices [wombs] of every class of woman.”
I have even wondered if Tumblety (who was reportedly lodging just around the corner from Berner St ; on Batty St.), was that 2nd man who was with the Ripper, seen by Israel Schwartz on Berner Street the night Liz Stride was killed there. Same height; 5’11”. “LIPSKI!” )
And at that same inquest, both the coroner; Dr. Wynne Baxter, and the 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 purpose 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”
(both quotes from the transcript of the Annie Chapman inquest, Sept 1888)
-This “difficulty in believing the purpose of the murderer”, by investigators, was a major source of the Rippers incredible luck, and one reason why he was never caught. It blinded the investigators then, and it blinds us today.
I don’t know if Klosowski (a convicted serial killer of women, who was tried and executed in 1903) had any preference either way about the method he used to kill women. He was carving up prostitutes, quickly, to procure women’s organs in order to obtain money from an American who wanted them. Nearly ten years later he would begin killing his “wives” by poison, slowly, to rid himself of the obstacle that was standing between himself and his next female conquest. And he couldn’t have carved his “wives” up, right? How would he have explained to police that all three of his “wives” were cut to shreds? Some ‘Ripperologists’ can’t believe that a killer who would later go on to watch women slowly suffer and die by poison would also, 15 years earlier, have used a knife to kill prostitutes. But FBI profiler John Douglas knows that some serial killers take up new methods of killing as time passes. When motive changes, so does the means.
Severin Klosowski arrived in East London from Poland about April 1887; less than a year before the Whitechapel murders began, -(there was another set of murders, of 5 women being dumped into the Thames, which began about one month after he 1st arrived in England)- and when he moved to New York for a year, -(he left London for NYC in April of 1891, two months after the final Ripper murder, that of Francis Coles)- similar murders started happening in N.Y. also.-(And not too long after returning to London from New York he never went by the name Severin Klosowski again, and he wouldn’t ever admit to even knowing anything about “that fellow”, after returning to London in the wake of the Whitechapel murders, even when asked under oath in 1902!)- If you check out all the “coincedences” that occur in these series of murders; the dates, the places Klosowski lived in Whitechapel, -(It is known that he was living on George Yard Road when the 1st Ripper murder happened on this very block; that of Martha Tabrum. Later, in 1987, while on a TV show about the Ripper, FBI profiler John Douglas had predicted that, going by his profile of serial killers: “when Jack-the-Ripper commit his very 1st murder, he was most likely living or working within just a couple blocks of this first attack!” Douglas was surprisingly adamant about this; he felt that if they wanted to learn the Ripper’s real identity, they should try to check any and all census records on that immediate area at the precise time of the 1st murder)- then add to everything else the fact that Klosowski had been trained as a surgeon in Poland! So he knew more about cutting people up than he did poisoning them. But if you added up all of these “coincidences” and entered them into a computer spreadsheet, the odds would be about a-billion-to-one that Klosowski was the Ripper I bet. And now, the only thing preventing the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ from ever being officially solved is the so called “Ripperologists” themselves, the very people who claim to be interested in solving them. Ironic, right? But it is so easy to doubt & ridicule the “Chapman-theory”, especially when you get into the 20 pound offer for uteruses. But consider the source of where we know about the offer from; from Coroner Wynne Baxter, who did the autopsy on Annie Chapman. Consider who it was who agreed with him; inspector Frederick Abberline , probably the greatest, most respected officer to have worked on the Ripper case. Abberline believed that Klosowski was the Ripper until his dying day. Personally, I find Abberline a lot more credible in regard to all this than I do the Ripperologists, (or anybody else).
Also; witnesses at a couple of the Ripper killings have described seeing a suspect matching Chapman/Klosowski in almost every detail: foreign accent and appearance, handlebar mustache, the type of clothes and hat Klosowski usually wore, his same height: approx 5′ 5”…..etc etc. The main difference was that they said he was older, Klosowski was 23, but they said the person they saw was in his 30s. Remember though, these old-world Slavic types from East Europe often appear to be older than they really are, especially to people unfamiliar with them. Also, wouldn’t a man, being looked for by everybody in the city, wouldn’t it seem likely that this person would do something to alter his appearance? I bring this up because it is the witnesses statements that the suspect they saw was in his 30’s that some ripperologists (i.e. Martin Fido & Paul Begg,) use to ‘prove’ that these few witnesses must have seen someone other than Klosowski. So stubborn are they in this ‘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. Age is the most common thing for a witness to get wrong, ESPECIALLY in the pitch-dark….and fog.
Something else that Begg and Fido don’t like about this theory is that they can’t believe that a serial killer would use a knife to butcher prostitutes in one instance, and then ten years later start killing his “wives” by poison. They don’t believe its possible for a serial killing ghoul like Klosowski to do both. But Klosowski was killing with a knife much earlier, at a much younger age. Also, he was using the knife to cut up prostitutes for a specific, premeditated purpose: he needed to cut out their reproductive organs. He didn’t need to do that anymore by the time he was killing his “wives”. But he didn’t only learn about anatomy when he was trained as a surgeon, and a cunning egomaniac like Klosowski would probably want to put all his skills to use if he could. He had learned a little about medicine and poisons also,…. except he didn’t know as much as he thought. Or maybe he simply forgot that the poison he bought to kill his “wives” would also preserve their corpses, making it obvious to investigators, if they ever exhumed the bodies, what had killed them. This is what got Klosowski hanged. He had gotten away with so much, for so long, that he became over-confident. He probably began to believe he could never be caught. But he was arrested by Inspector George Godley, who had been involved with Abberline in investigating the Ripper killings 15 years earlier. And Godley was certain that “Chapman” was the Ripper also, and he kept Abberline appraised of his progress during his (Godley’s) investigation, prior to “George Chapman’s” trial. Abberline had retired from Scotland Yard by that time, but was in charge of the European branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
The only other ‘problem’ these Ripperologists have brought up with the ‘Klosowski theory’ goes something like this: “He would have been a valid suspect, except that there is simply NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE we can find linking Klosowski to the murders”. There is no ‘concrete evidence’ linking ANY of the ‘suspects’ to the Ripper murders!!! Right? But that sure doesn’t stop these two Ripperologists from nominating certain OTHER ‘suspects’ as ‘strong candidates’; suspects who have far less evidence against them than Klosowski does! Some Ripperologist’s entire careers have been built upon the Ripper mystery, do they feel they need to keep it a mystery? Why else are they always so prejudice against Klosowski, who has so much circumstantial evidence pointing squarely at him, while at the same time promote suspects who barely have any?
(And the only reason there is no concrete evidence against Klosowski is because he was extremely cunning, and had repeatedly eluded detection. You can’t find “concrete evidence” retroactively; you can only find ‘circumstantial evidence’ for a crime as old as this one. Concrete evidence needed to be found in 1888. Abberline might have had a shot at finding it in 1903, after learning of Klosowski’s newest murders, but after Klosowski was hanged it seems police just dropped it for the time being; they felt it was over.)
But let’s not overlook the motive of the police either, (I am speaking most specifically about Sir Melville Macnaghten). In a famous 1894 report, Macnaghten wrote that: “Jack-the-Ripper had five victims, and five victims only”. Now, how can he possibly make this statement, and state it as if it were the Gospel Truth?? What evidence does he have, for instance, that Martha Tabram was not killed by the Ripper? …NONE! But London police were facing the most severe criticism they had ever faced because of not capturing The Ripper, they were ridiculed about it. Any time the subject of the Ripper came up, Magnaghten felt he was being made the butt of a rude joke. The N.Y. Times was calling Scotland Yard the “stupidest police force on the planet”. Magnaghten wanted to diminish the successes that the Ripper had had against his police force; he probably would have claimed that the Ripper had only killed TWO women if he thought people might have believed it. Also, Doctors were under a cloud of suspicion, due to the fact that coroner Baxter had correctly pointed out that the Ripper could not have found those sexual organs he was so specifically seeking; extracted them; have done it so quick and nicely, unless he had received some training as a surgeon. Later, Dr. Thomas Bond would attempt to downplay this theory, saying that even a butcher could find the uterus in a woman and be able to extract it so expertly. But who could blame him for being so defensive? There was a mania at work, and East End citizens were out to lynch doctors nearly. This defensiveness of Doctors, Police, Jews, immigrants, etc, ended up compromising the investigation.
It is absolutely ASTOUNDING that although Klosowski was a close match to so many witness statements, and that he had both worked AND resided within short walking distance from each of the Ripper attacks…. that he had been trained as a surgeon, and had migrated from Poland only months before the Ripper attacks began…….etc…..etc…etc, yet he was never so much as QUESTIONED by the London Police! His name appears on NO POLICE REPORT, prior to his arrest as a serial murderer in 1902! It’s appalling! …… Scotland Yard, who supposedly questioned every man in Whitechapel during the Ripper manhunt, seems to have had no clue that Severin Klosowski even existed in 1888! I mean, the guy was working right under their noses, at the very epicenter of the killing-zone, right on Whitechapel High St., at that archway into George Yard, right under the ‘White Hart’ pub. He must have been LAUGHING as police would pass by!
Yet even today, ‘Ripperologists’ (eg.Fido) downplay the ‘Chapman theory’, and they use the weakest of logic to make their argument, in the face of, by far, the strongest evidence that has ever been compiled about any other Ripper suspect! And they keep offering up the most unlikely suspects imaginable (Kosminski, Gull, Druitt, etc), while rolling their eyes in condescending derision when you mention Klosowski. It is bizarre!
How many people in Victorian England do you suppose there were who had been trained to protect human life as a surgeon, but had also been a known serial killer of women? In my entire life I have heard of only two; Severin Klosovski/ George Chapman is one. Jack the Ripper is the other. And “BOTH” ‘just happened’ to be living in the heart of Whitechaple in 1888! “Both” were also on tiny George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was killed and mutilated there. I mean, what are the odds?? And out of all the many popular ‘suspects’ that are ever accused of being Jack-the-Ripper, only ONE of them is a known perpetrator of homicide: Severin Klosovski, … A.K.A. George Chapman , … A.K.A ‘Borough poisoner’, …… A.K.A JACK-THE-RIPPER!
message 17: by Douglas (last edited Nov 17, 2018 07:56AM) Nov 01, 2018 06:36PM
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 shop 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.
I will say that I need to read more but I have questions-
Didn’t Klosowski have work as a barber in Whitechapel?
Did he profit from killing his wives?
Would not a barber have less freedom of movement then a meat cart driver or any cart driver?
Also I thought at least some if not all the body parts found floating in the river could be the result of mishandling of medical school property or cast aways from cementary digs. I recently watched a program about the discovery of unidentified bones being buried in Ben Franklins former London residence.
As to a barbers “freedom of movement”. I don’t know any reason why a barbers freedom in this regard should be in any way more restricted than anybody else’s. ‘Barber’ was only one of Klosowski’s vocations, along with, most famously, medic and Pub operator (The profession he was busy at as his “wives”were all murdered by him)
I do not see why you want to hold on to Klosowski as Jack. I have been reading, I have kept an open mind to all suspects, but I would say almost certainly, it was a man that seems to have been overlooked but if the invest was going on today he would be a main suspect. I also believe that he started killing long before the ripper murders. I believe he was responsible
for the body parts in the Thames that were considered murders. I do think it possible that you are correct about the Tumblety guy having a part in this by offering money for body parts and Lechmere already being a murder…
THE 1903 ABBERLINE PALL MALL GAZETTE INTERVIEW
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
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.”
ANNIE CHAPMAN INQUEST TRANSCRIPT
SUMMATION OF THE CORONER:
Day 5, Wednesday, September 26, 1888
(The Daily Telegraph, Thursday, September 27, 1888, Page 2)
Yesterday [26 Sep] afternoon Mr. Wynne Baxter, coroner for East Middlesex, concluded his inquiry, at the Whitechapel Working Lads’ Institute, relative to the death of Mrs. Annie Chapman, whose body was found dreadfully cut and mutilated in the yard of 29, Hanbury-street, Whitechapel, early on the morning of Saturday, the 8th inst.
The Coroner inquired if there was any further evidence to be adduced.
Inspector Chandler replied in the negative.
The Coroner then addressed the jury. He said: I congratulate you that your labours are now nearly completed. Although up to the present they have not resulted in the detection of any criminal, I have no doubt that if the perpetrator of this foul murder is eventually discovered, our efforts will not have been useless. The evidence is now on the records of this court, and could be used even if the witnesses were not forthcoming; while the publicity given has already elicited further information, which I shall presently have to mention, and which, I hope I am not sanguine in believing, may perhaps be of the utmost importance. We shall do well to recall the important facts. The deceased was a widow, forty-seven years of age, named Annie Chapman. Her husband was a coachman living at Windsor. For three or four years before his death she had lived apart from her husband, who allowed her 10s a week until his death at Christmas, 1886. Evidently she had lived an immoral life for some time, and her habits and surroundings had become worse since her means had failed. Her relations were no longer visited by her, and her brother had not seen her for five months, when she borrowed a small sum from him. She lived principally in the common lodging houses in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, where such as she herd like cattle, and she showed signs of great deprivation, as if she had been badly fed. The glimpses of life in these dens which the evidence in this case discloses is sufficient to make us feel that there is much in the nineteenth century civilisation of which we have small reason to be proud; but you who are constantly called together to hear the sad tale of starvation, or semi-starvation, of misery, immorality, and wickedness which some of the occupants of the 5,000 beds in this district have every week to relate to coroner’s inquests, do not require to be reminded of what life in a Spitalfields lodging-house means. It was in one of these that the older bruises found on the temple and in front of the chest of the deceased were received, in a trumpery quarrel, a week before her death. It was in one of these that she was seen a few hours before her mangled remains were discovered. On the afternoon and evening of Friday, Sept. 7, she divided her time partly in such a place at 35, Dorset- street, and partly in the Ringers public-house, where she spent whatever money she had; so that between one and two on the morning of Saturday, when the money for her bed is demanded, she is obliged to admit that she is without means, and at once turns out into the street to find it. She leaves there at 1.45 a.m., is seen off the premises by the night watchman, and is observed to turn down Little Paternoster-row into Brushfield-street, and not in the more direct route to Hanbury-street. On her wedding finger she was wearing two or three rings, which appear to have been palpably of base metal, as the witnesses are all clear about their material and value. We now lose sight of her for about four hours, but at half-past five, Mrs. Long is in Hanbury-street on her way from home in Church- street, Whitechapel, to Spitalfields Market. She walked on the northern side of the road going westward, and remembers having seen a man and woman standing a few yards from the place where the deceased is afterwards found. And, although she did not know Annie Chapman, she is positive that that woman was deceased. The two were talking loudly, but not sufficiently so to arouse her suspicions that there was anything wrong. Such words as she overheard were not calculated to do so. The laconic inquiry of the man, “Will you?” and the simple assent of the woman, viewed in the light of subsequent events, can be easily translated and explained. Mrs. Long passed on her way, and neither saw nor heard anything more of her, and this is the last time she is known to have been alive. There is some conflict in the evidence about the time at which the deceased was despatched. It is not unusual to find inaccuracy in such details, but this variation is not very great or very important. She was found dead about six o’clock. She was not in the yard when Richardson was there at 4.50 a.m. She was talking outside the house at half-past five when Mrs. Long passed them. Cadosh says it was about 5.20 when he was in the backyard of the adjoining house, and heard a voice say “No,” and three or four minutes afterwards a fall against the fence; but if he is out of his reckoning but a quarter of an hour, the discrepancy in the evidence of fact vanishes, and he may be mistaken, for he admits that he did not get up till a quarter past five, and that it was after the half-hour when he passed Spitalfields clock. It is true that Dr. Phillips thinks that when he saw the body at 6.30 the deceased had been dead at least two hours, but he admits that the coldness of the morning and the great loss of blood may affect his opinion; and if the evidence of the other witnesses be correct, Dr. Phillips has miscalculated the effect of those forces. But many minutes after Mrs. Long passed the man and woman cannot have elapsed before the deceased became a mutilated corpse in the yard of 29, Hanbury-street, close by where she was last seen by any witness. This place is a fair sample of a large number of houses in the neighbourhood. It was built, like hundreds of others, for the Spitalfields weavers, and when hand-looms were driven out by steam and power, these were converted into dwellings for the poor. Its size is about such as a superior artisan would occupy in the country, but its condition is such as would to a certainty leave it without a tenant. In this place seventeen persons were living, from a woman and her son sleeping in a cat’s-meat shop on the ground floor to Davis and his wife and their three grown-up sons, all sleeping together in an attic. The street door and the yard door were never locked, and the passage and yard appear to have been constantly used by people who had no legitimate business there. There is little doubt that the deceased knew the place, for it was only 300 or 400 yards from where she lodged. If so, it is quite unnecessary to assume that her companion had any knowledge – in fact, it is easier to believe that he was ignorant both of the nest of living beings by whom he was surrounded, and of their occupations and habits. Some were on the move late at night, some were up long before the sun. A carman, named Thompson, left the house for his work as early as 3.50 a.m.; an hour later John Richardson was paying the house a visit of inspection; shortly after 5.15 Cadosh, who lived in the next house, was in the adjoining yard twice. Davis, the carman, who occupied the third floor front, heard the church clock strike a quarter to six, got up, had a cup of tea, and went into the back yard, and was horrified to find the mangled body of deceased. It was then a little after six a.m. – a very little, for at ten minutes past the hour Inspector Chandler had been informed of the discovery while on duty in Commercial-street. There is nothing to suggest that the deceased was not fully conscious of what she was doing. It is true that she had passed through some stages of intoxication, for although she appeared perfectly sober to her friend who met her in Dorset-street at five o’clock the previous evening, she had been drinking afterwards; and when she left the lodging-house shortly before two o’clock the night watchman noticed that she was the worse for drink, but not badly so, while the deputy asserts that, though she had evidently been drinking, she could walk straight, and it was probably only malt liquor that she had taken, and its effects would pass off quicker than if she had taken spirits. Consequently it is not surprising to find that Mrs. Long saw nothing to make her think that the deceased was the worse for drink. Moreover, it is unlikely that she could have had the opportunity of getting intoxicants. Again the post-mortem examination shows that while the stomach contained a meal of food there was no sign of fluid and no appearance of her having taken alcohol, and Dr. Phillips is convinced that she had not taken any alcohol for some time. The deceased, therefore, entered the yard in full possession of her faculties; although with a very different object from her companion. From the evidence which the condition of the yard affords and the medical examination discloses, it appears that after the two had passed through the passage and opened the swing-door at the end, they descended the three steps into the yard. On their left hand side there was a recess between those steps and the palings. Here a few feet from the house and a less distance from the paling they must have stood. The wretch must have then seized the deceased, perhaps with Judas-like approaches. He seized her by the chin. He pressed her throat, and while thus preventing the slightest cry, he at the same time produced insensibility and suffocation. There is no evidence of any struggle. The clothes are not torn. Even in these preliminaries, the wretch seems to have known how to carry out efficiently his nefarious work. The deceased was then lowered to the ground, and laid on her back; and although in doing so she may have fallen slightly against the fence, this movement was probably effected with care. Her throat was then cut in two places with savage determination, and the injuries to the abdomen commenced. All was done with cool impudence and reckless daring; but, perhaps, nothing is more noticeable than the emptying of her pockets, and the arrangement of their contents with business-like precision in order near her feet. The murder seems, like the Buck’s-row case, to have been carried out without any cry. Sixteen people were in the house. The partitions of the different rooms are of wood. Davis was not asleep after three a.m., except for three-quarters of an hour, or less, between five and 5.45. Mrs. Richardson only dosed after three a.m., and heard no noise during the night. Mrs. Hardman, who occupies the front ground-floor room, did not awake until the noise succeeding the finding of the body had commenced, and none of the occupants of the houses by which the yard is surrounded heard anything suspicious. The brute who committed the offence did not even take the trouble to cover up his ghastly work, but left the body exposed to the view of the first comer. This accords but little with the trouble taken with the rings, and suggests either that he had at length been disturbed, or that as the daylight broke a sudden fear suggested the danger of detection that he was running. There are two things missing. Her rings had been wrenched from her fingers and have not been found, and the uterus has been removed. The body has not been dissected, but the injuries have been made by some one who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge. There are no meaningless cuts. It was done by one who knew where to find what he wanted, what difficulties he would have to contend against, and how he should use his knife, so as to abstract the organ without injury to it. No unskilled person could have known where to find it, or have recognised it when it was found. For instance, no mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations. It must have been some one accustomed to the post-mortem room. The conclusion that the desire was to possess the missing part seems overwhelming. If the object were robbery, these injuries were meaningless, for death had previously resulted from the loss of blood at the neck. Moreover, when we find an easily accomplished theft of some paltry brass rings and such an operation, after, at least, a quarter of an hour’s work, and by a skilled person, we are driven to the deduction that the mutilation was the object, and the theft of the rings was only a thin-veiled blind, an attempt to prevent the real intention being discovered. Had not the medical examination been of a thorough and searching character, it might easily have been left unnoticed. The difficulty in believing that this was the real purport of the murderer is natural. It is abhorrent to our feelings to conclude that a life should be taken for so slight an object; but, when rightly considered, the reasons for most murders are altogether out of proportion to the guilt. It has been suggested that the criminal is a lunatic with morbid feelings. This may or may not be the case; but the object of the murderer appears palpably shown by the facts, and it is not necessary to assume lunacy, for it is clear that there is a market for the object of the murder. To show you this, I must mention a fact which at the same time proves the assistance which publicity and the newspaper press afford in the detection of crime. Within a few hours of the issue of the morning papers containing a report of the medical evidence given at the last sitting of the Court, I received a communication from an officer of one of our great medical schools, that they had information which might or might not have a distinct bearing on our inquiry. I attended at the first opportunity, and was told by the sub-curator of the Pathological Museum that some months ago an American had called on him, and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the organ that was missing in the deceased. He stated his willingness to give œ20 for each, and explained that his object was to issue an actual specimen with each copy of a publication on which he was then engaged. Although he was told that his wish was impossible to be complied with, he still urged his request. He desired them preserved, not in spirits of wine, the usual medium, but in glycerine, in order to preserve them in a flaccid condition, and he wished them sent to America direct. It is known that this request was repeated to another institution of a similar character. Now, is it not possible that the knowledge of this demand may have incited some abandoned wretch to possess himself of a specimen. 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. I need hardly say that I at once communicated my information to the Detective Department at Scotland- yard. Of course I do not know what use has been made of it, but I believe that publicity may possibly further elucidate this fact, and, therefore, I have not withheld from you my knowledge. By means of the press some further explanation may be forthcoming from America if not from here. I have endeavoured to suggest to you the object with which this offence was committed, and the class of person who must have perpetrated it. The greatest deterrent from crime is the conviction that detection and punishment will follow with rapidity and certainty, and it may be that the impunity with which Mary Ann Smith and Anne Tabram were murdered suggested the possibility of such horrid crimes as those which you and another jury have been recently considering. It is, therefore, a great misfortune that nearly three weeks have elapsed without the chief actor in this awful tragedy having been discovered. Surely, it is not too much even yet to hope that the ingenuity of our detective force will succeed in unearthing this monster. It is not as if there were no clue to the character of the criminal or the cause of his crime. His object is clearly divulged. His anatomical skill carries him out of the category of a common criminal, for his knowledge could only have been obtained by assisting at post-mortems, or by frequenting the post-mortem room. Thus the class in which search must be made, although a large one, is limited. Moreover it must have been a man who was from home, if not all night, at least during the early hours of Sept. 8. His hands were undoubtedly blood-stained, for he did not stop to use the tap in the yard as the pan of clean water under it shows. If the theory of lunacy be correct – which I very much doubt – the class is still further limited; while, if Mrs. Long’s memory does not fail, and the assumption be correct that the man who was talking to the deceased at half-past five was the culprit, he is even more clearly defined. In addition to his former description, we should know that he was a foreigner of dark complexion, over forty years of age, a little taller than the deceased, of shabby-genteel appearance, with a brown dear-stalker hat on his head, and a dark coat on his back. If your views accord with mine, you will be of opinion that we are confronted with a murder of no ordinary character, committed not from jealousy, revenge, or robbery, but from motives less adequate than the many which still disgrace our civilisation, mar our progress, and blot the pages of our Christianity. I cannot conclude my remarks without thanking you for the attention you have given to the case, and the assistance you have rendered me in our efforts to elucidate the truth of this horrible tragedy. The Foreman: We can only find one verdict – that of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown. We were about to add a rider with respect to the condition of the mortuary, but that having been done by a previous jury it is unnecessary.
A verdict of wilful murder against a person or persons unknown was then entered.
On both of his successful extractions of uterus (those of Annie Chapman and Cathrine Eddowes) the Ripper attempted to divert the police from knowing his motive; first by making it appear that robbery were the motive on Annie Chapman by the taking of her cheap brass rings, and second on the Cathrine Eddowes murder/mutilation, by after once obtaining her uterus he then made bizarre cuts on her face; whittling her nose off, slicing V’s into her cheeks and slitting her eyelids so that investigators might not focus on his true motive in this instance also. Both these attempts at camouflage failed. {They were not even necessary though, for nobody, nobody it seems except for the expert coroner and highly experienced police inspectors, were willing to believe that this sneaky little creep would commit such bloody atrocities over such a seemingly valueless goal. Even after knowing that the offer of twenty pounds had been made for it, they still would not believe it. Nor will most ‘Ripperologists’ believe it today. And it is precisely this reluctance to believe that anybody would commit murder over such a seemingly meaningless, valueless, vulgar goal, and the snobbish notions of some of these modern ‘criminal experts’ and writers, that have allowed Severin Klosowski to remain unknown as Jack-the-Ripper all these generations now. It honestly makes you want to laugh out loud at times! Especially when you remember all those bizarre theories some of these same ‘Ripperologists’ have come up with, all in order to not have to believe, or take serious, the real facts of the matter as understood by Abberline and some of the other original investigators} The police who were so opposed to this theory, the Magnaughtens, the Andersons, the Littlechilds, etc., were the high ranking police who were so rightfully ashamed and embarrassed by these facts, these facts that demonstrated how poorly they had done their jobs, allowing one cunning little crook from Poland to get away with the most notorious bloody serial murders in history, while at the same time residing in the very same district the entire time that the murders were being done, all the while looking pretty much exactly as witnesses had described him looking! No wonder cops like Magnaughten claimed the only reason they did not catch Jack-the-Ripper was because he had drowned himself, or that they actually HAD caught him but could not divulge where they had put him away because he was a lunatic. Of course they would say something like this! They either had to make excuses and outright lie in this manner, or admit that they had been proven to be pretty-much inept at a time when it counted most to be effective! If they didn’t make those excuses that they made they basically would then be admitting that yes, ‘The New York Times’ had been 100% correct in calling them “the stupidest Police Force on the planet”. That comment had hurt, and it was unfair also. And it had given everybody in Britain with any degree of power a reason to question Magnaughten and the rest of them. Magnaughten never said anything publicly about these excuses, (that the killer had drowned himself, etc.), but only in notes that he hoped would be seen someday.
But anyway, so it was only on the two occasions when the Ripper was successful in his beastly motive that he attempted any such smoke screen. This is because he was well aware that knowledge of this uterus-motive was the police’s best chance for tracking him down, because he knew that other people were aware of the 20 pound offer for uterus (people such as the curator of the school where ‘the American’ 1st made the 20 pound offer).
(If a knowledge of the uterus motive was the best chance for tracking down the real Ripper, then what are the chances that modern ‘Ripperologists’ will ever admit that they, either unknowingly or intentionally, discarded and turned a blind eye to the best chance of ever solving the case? This is why they are so opposed to this theory that has so much evidence supporting it, and will always rather endorse newer theories, no matter how strange, no matter that they have almost zero evidence supporting them)
Think about it, what other means could The Ripper have used to try to obscure his motive? He is doing exactly what you might expect him to do in such circumstance. Other than making it appear that robbery were the motive, or making it appear to be the work of a sexual lunatic, or by making police investigators look in a different direction from the missing uterus(at those facial cuts), what could you think of doing to divert attention from the fact that the uterus is missing? He is a manipulator. He was also attempting to manipulate the police when he exonerated Tumblety, who was sitting in jail the night when he (Klosowski) killed Mary Kelley, and also when he killed Carrie Brown in New York he was manipulating Tumblety into becoming extremely frightened so that he would pay the money he owed. It happens in example after example.
Hey Doug, been a while since we last spoke! I was wondering if I could get your opinion on Joseph Barnett. That is if we can just pretend that George Chapman didn’t exist and that we were trying to nail down our man. Barnett’s Wikipedia looks so convincing.
It appears that the reason that the Ripper mutilated the face of one of his ‘final’ victims was to disguise his motive of killing that woman; Catherine Eddowes, in order to obtain her uterus. Those now famously grotesque cuts on Ms. Eddowes face were originally intended to divert the attention of investigators from noticing the fact that the uterus was once again missing from the mutilated corpse of a Ripper victim. And on both of the two corpses on which the uterus had been successfully removed (Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes), the Ripper had done something on both of those bodies in an attempt to lead investigators attention away from that clue. Most every cut on each of the Rippers victims was necessary to either kill the woman or to remove her uterus, except for those grisly cuts that were made on Catherine Eddowes face, which had only been done to take police attention away from this ‘uterus motive’. And in the investigation into the attack on Annie Chapman, a murder he had done one week after having failed to obtain the uterus of Polly Nicholls; witness statements indicate that the Ripper had waited on Hanbury St until the break of dawn to strike on that back-yard attack, in order to have some twilight as he was killing her so that he could see what he was doing in order to locate and extract her womb more quickly (near-pitch darkness was the reason he had failed to procure the uterus of Polly Nicholls the week prior to that attack on Hanbury Street) And he was successful; Annie Chapman was his first successful uterus extraction (although he also made off with Annie’s three brass rings she was wearing, in order to convince police that it was robbery, not possession of the uterus, that had been his motivation, and his goal, in that awful slaughter of a fellow human being). The only reason for Eddowes’ gruesome facial wounds and Annie’s missing rings, was to provide a ‘red herring’, so to speak, that might obscure the fact that the tiny uterus had been located and removed from the body. And of the two corpses that did not have the missing reproductive organ, (I am referring here to Martha Tabrum and Polly Nichols, the first two murders of the series) those two attacks had been carried out in the streets of the busy metropolis at night, in almost pitch darkness, and the Ripper hadn’t found the small reproductive organ quickly enough to get at in in time in those two early attacks. Remember, this was busy, gas-lit, Victorian East London; it was very dark at night, and the Ripper was still ‘learning the ropes’ , so to speak. He was still nervous at that early stage in the murder spree. He knew police might walk up him at any time as he carried out his mutilations. Yet he was extremely cunning; he knew that to safely elude capture he would need to work very quickly, calmly, and most importantly of all, on a strict time limit. Due to his inexperience and anxiety during these first couple of attacks, (not to mention the difficult conditions that these murders were carried out under, outside at night in the dark, police patrolled streets) at times he would not be able to ‘beat the clock’, and in some cases his time ran out (or possibly he jumped-the-gun) and he needed to abort the mission before obtaining a uterus. He would get better, less nervous, and quicker, by his third attack, in Hanbury Street.[We will get to Mary Kelly, and the reason her uterus was not missing, a bit later Definitely]
Criminologically, no, a poisoner and a butcher serial, it’s 2 different kinds of murderer. See a criminology book, or try to find examples of serial butcher who used poison.
“I feel that the reason the Ripper was mutilating the faces of his victims was to disguise his motive of killing the women for their uterus.”
It’s your feeling, but it could have psychological reasons, and even with the face cut, the striking fact is still the ablation of the uterus. If someone wanted to hide the uterine ablation, he could have make an ablation of the whole area. It’s the opposite, the uterine ablation is shown, and it’s possible, by hypothesies, that it may even show a kind of proudness, from this corpse without uterus.
The face cutting murder in criminology could be either a way to hide the victim’s identity (not the case here) or to deny the victim an identity (= reify someone)
I have been studying the Ripper case for well unto 35 years now, and I believe that I am as close to being 100% correct in the above essay as anybody else has ever so far come before me. The facts are all there, in two books most especially; “The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper”, by Phillip Sugden, and “The Ultimate Jack-the-Ripper Companion”, by Stewart Evans & Keith Skinner. Read the final chapters of those two books after reading the above essay by myself, and you should understand what really happened on that fog-bound autumn of 1888 in east london. If after doing that you still do not understand the case clear, then I doubt you ever will understand it
It’s worth noting that the crux of your argument that “ Chapman has surgical training “ is entirely 100% wrong . There’s not an iota of info which can possibly even allude to it as barber surgeons were almost completely outlawed from the mid 1700’s as surgeons disassociated themselves entirely from barbers .
wow, so you know more that Phillip Sugden, and many other historians who have written books on the subject? Where is your book, or essay, so we can learn from your expertise? The real cruz of my argument was that there are so many people who want to discount this true theory so that the “mystery” can always endure. you seem to be in that boat
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 sensitive to this type of diversion due to the fact that he had already discovered that, during his flight from the murder sights so soon after the body was being discovered, he could tell that nobody was noticing his escape due to the fact that everyone’s attention was being diverted by the shock of having just discovered the dead body in the awful state that the ripper had left it in. 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
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 these types of 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 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, 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!), 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?
Was he cunning? or was he just stupid but lucky? neither….he was determined, and he was confident. He almost surely had made a living doing something similar before ever leaving Poland, it is obvious. He most probably was killing people and selling the bodies to medical schools in Warsaw, for medical research. It was common back in the 1800s. Look up ‘Burke & Hare killings’. This also probably had something to do with those ‘Thames Torso murders’, and also with why he met Tumblety at one of the medical schools where Tumblety was first looking to get uterus from. I think Klosowski was probably turned away by the schools also, and maybe he had killed some of those people dumped in the Thames before he was turned away by them
I honestly wish that I could share with you guys the detailed, much illustrated so far 100 page booklet I have put together using these notes of mine. It totally keeps me entertained on stormy nights by the fire. This was the whole teason I began collecting my thoughts on this case in this case in the first place. While there were many books out there on the Ripper, no book had been written that told what I believed were the real facts, regarding Klosowski and Tumblety. But the book turned out mush better than I had ever anticipated. Sometime I hope I can share it
My essay, as it appears on this website, is, unfortunately, from the very earliest draft/version. It has, in my opinion, been greatly edited/corrected/improved/ and generally made better. Unfortunately, I can’t edit here on this webpage, sorry. Anybody who would want to read the much better version can do it by going to the ‘Goodreads’ website, and from that webpage look for the reviews of the book “The Complete History of Jack the Ripper”, by Phillip Sugden. The entire essay is there, completely updated, beginning on review #15. I hope you look it up
i am not “holding on to Klosowski as Jack”, I have simply looked at the evidence objectively and solved the murders, as you can see if you read what I wrote. Actually, it was inspecter Abberline who solved the case, its only that a gaggle of half witted “ripperologists” do not want to believe him that keeps it from being officially solved, because too much money is still being made from it staying unsolved
There were six East End murders of prostitute between Aug. 7 and Nov 9, 1888. The first five (this includes Martha Tabrum) 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?) The sheer boldness of the plan is what makes it so difficult to discover, or to even believe.
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 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
Something that has bothered me regarding this Chapman-Klosowski-Tumblety theory though, one thing that I have avoided up until recently, is in relation to the murder of Carrie Brown near the old 5 points neighborhood of Manhattan Island, almost two years after Mary Kelley’s murder (in Dorset street in East London, a murder who’s motive, I believe, was to have exonerated Tumblety of being Jack-the-Ripper in the eyes of police). But why would Klosowski now follow Tumblety to New York after not seeing him for two years, and commit another ripper-type murder in Tumblety’s known stomping grounds the very day Klosowski arrives in New York (April 24, 1891), or very close to the day he arrived? We can only speculate on why he did it, just as we can only speculate on just about every aspect of the case.
Now, could it be that when Tumblety skipped out on the London police in 1888, that he skipped out on Klosowski also? Is it possible that when he left London so quickly, he left without ever bothering to pay Klosowski the money he owed to him for those 2 uterus that Klosowski was successful in procuring for him? Maybe Tumblety had even offered more money to Klosowski in return for getting him exonerated of the Ripper crimes? If so, did Tumblety think that he was safe from Klosowski all the way in New York?? (Not only that, but did Tumblety believe that it had been Klosowski’s plan to murder him after his release from jail, so that there would be no way he could ever open his mouth? And if Tumblety DID believe this, was he right??!!
Was Tumblety safe? One thing is known,…. he spent the brief remainder of his life hiding-out (incedently, Tumblety died May 28, 1903, one month after Klosowski was hanged, on 7 April 1903. Not that this signifies anything, I just put it there for whatever it’s worth as just one more coincidence in a case that is positively bursting with unlikely coincidence. It is my contention that this theory of mine explains, and makes sense of the number of strange coincidence)
Did Klosowski believe that Tumblety was now laughing at him??!!
If Klosowski’s motive for the earlier murders was the twenty pound offer by the ‘American’ (£20 per specimen) that we have earlier discussed in such detail, then it seems likely to me that when he traveled all the way to New York, where he knew Tumblety had returned to, and he commit another one of what he must think of as his ‘jobs’ as soon as he arrived, it seems likely to me that money is likely to have been his motive yet again. He commit the murder so soon after arriving that it certainly appears that this murder was one of the main reasons for having taken that long ocean voyage all the way to America in the first place; in order to put the fear of God into Tumblety so that Tumblety would now pay him (and perhaps also to make Tumblety suffer for having had crossed him. After all, he is the great Klosowski, how dare Tumblety forget that!).
Klosowski knew that London police were still keeping tabs on Tumblety in New York, he had to know, it was in many of the local papers. Klosowski knew that Tumblety was under a lot of pressure (Klosowski seems to do some of his best work under pressure, but he seems to know others do not). He also knew that Tumblety could not turn him in for the Ripper-murders without probably going to jail himself, and knowing Klosowski, he probably convinced Tumblety that if the police ever tracked him down through information supplied by Tumblety, he would be able to convince those police that Tumblety was the person they really wanted, instead of himself. I doubt that he actually could have convinced the police of this, but he probably could have convinced Tumblety that he could convince them, and in doing so frighten Tumblety from ever talking to police.
I can just imagine Klosowski, telling Tumblety something along the lines of these words: “Tumblety, I can implicate you just as easily as I exonerated you. Don’t ever cross me again.”
Did Klosowski travel all the way to the legendary Five Points area of old New York mainly in order to carve-up a New York prostitute in the style of the ripper, whereby sending out a message to Tumblety that Jack-the-Ripper was in town, (a message he knew Tumblety would recognize better than anybody else on the planet) and that Tumblety now better pay his debt? (with interest too I bet!) Was it Klosowski’s plan to convince Tumblety that if he didn’t pay up, then Ripper-murders would follow Tumblety wherever he went, like a shadow? This murder of Carrie Brown was so similar to the earlier Ripper murders that the theory that the Ripper had come to New York was started by the New York police and the local newspapers immediately, even though they could have had no knowledge that a man named Severin Klosowski had arrived in town that very week! Was the murder of the prostitute known as ‘Old Shakespeare’, (and ‘old’ she was, the oldest in the series, at 57) a murder done so similar to the other ripper-murders, was this murder part of the reason that the London police sent one of their detectives out to New York, to shadow Tumblety, as was reported at the time in the New York papers?
Why is it, also, that I have never heard these questions being asked before, especially considering that ‘ripperologists’ have been asking every other question imaginable ?
But why else would Klosowski, so soon after arriving in New York, commit bloody murder there; a murder that had all of the trademarks of his previous murders in the series, in an unfamiliar town that he had never been to before? Many people feel that “Jack-the-Ripper” did it because he is a sexual lunatic, and he was ‘turned-on’ by risk and danger. This may be partly true, but in my estimation of the ripper he is also a PRACTICAL criminal. As well as being a serial murdering fiend, he was also a capitalistic businessman (and in this respect he would become successful also, just as he had been successful in the pursuit of serial-murder. Or rather, he was successful up until 1903.) . His practicality also inspired him to change his name from ‘Klosowski’ to ‘Chapman’ soon after returning back to England……he knew that British authorities were still tracking Tumblety in New York, he knew there was a danger that they might one day get Tumblety to to squeal. Tumblety might give police the name ‘Klosowski’, which he knew, but he could not give them the name ‘Chapman’, that he had never heard Klosowski use before. And Klosowski, once he took the name of ‘George Chapman’, would never acknowledge to anybody that he was once ‘Severin Klosowski’. He would not ever admit knowing anything about ‘that fellow’, as he referred to the name when asked about it during his 1903 trial for murder. Even when presented with undeniable evidence that had been found on his property, evidence that proved he indeed WAS Klosowski, he still persisted in his denial. From the perspective of the authorities it did not make sense why he would persist in this weak denial. From his own perspective though it made all the sense in the world, because after he was behind bars for the murder of his three ‘wives’, he knew Tumblety had no reason to fear him anymore, and might then say something to the newspapers that ‘George Chapman’ did not want them to know in relationship to him having been ‘Klosowski’,………. one & the same! The verry Ripper himself, from days gone bye!
Its also possible that Klosowski never found Tumblety in New York. It is possible that the reason Tumblety left without paying his bill to Klosowski was because he feared Klosowski might just kill him once he was released from jail back in England. There is a legitimate motive for that also, right? It’s possible that as soon as Tumblety learned of the new New York murder that he became impossible to find again. After all, if Klosowski murdered Tumblety he would never have to worry about Tumblety possibly informing police about him. Its possible that the reason Klosowski remained in the New York area for as long as he did was because he could not locate Tumblety, and he did not want to leave without killing him. He hung around for about 13 months before getting tired and then returning to East London. (and it is possible that the reason Klosowski couldnt locate Tumblety was because Tumblety understood that the money Klosowski claimed he wanted was only a lure. It is possible that he knew that what Klosowski really wanted was his life)
I’ve read everything you’ve written in these comments. Took me 2 and a half hours and came upon it completely by chance. I’m very new to the case in that I’ve not read much of any of the books so to stumble upon this so early on is very lucky. That Pall Mall Gazette interview really hooks me in. That Abberline was in no doubt is very telling, that the likes of Fido or Begg would try to discredit his opinion saying that he later changed his mind o Chapman based on nothing is outrageous and if Abberline had existing family they should have taken action. Have you written a book on this or do you plan to?
I have written an essay about it for myself, about 150 pages. I had followed this case since about 1985, reading just about anything I could ever find about it. In those days I had thought Willian Gull was the Ripper. I was trying to prove he was the Ripper when I sort of stumbled upon Klosowski and Tumblety. It was finding that interview and reading the inquest transcripts that convinced me 100%. Then I went back over all of the evidence again with Klosowski in mind and it became undeniable to me that he was the ripper. Those ideas about why he cut up Ms Eddowes face and other motives seemed to just come to me. I wrote the essay originally only so I could have my own book that I could come back to, if I didnt put it all down on paper I might have forgotten some of it. Now I read the essay and it helps me see other things that I feel must have happened also. I cant read that essay without adding more notes to it. Maybe someday I will have enough for a book of some kind, but with my luck somebody else will have seen all this and write their own book about it. But I only did it out of my interest in the subject. When you start writing with selfish motives, you are likely to add things that arnt really true. Thats how I feel
Do you think the killer would have needed intimate knowledge of the area?
To be able to evade police, know shortcuts in the heat of the moment and be able to speak enough English to get these girls to go with him.
A year and a half or so seems like quite a short time span to learn all these things unless Tumblety taught him English and gave him the lay of the land, it doesn’t seem to be known if he spoke any English when he first arrived either.
this is my 2nd try at posting this
I would recommend to you two books. The first is Phillip Sugden’s ‘The Complete History of Jack the Ripper’, (this is the book that first alerted me to Klosowski) and the second is’The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion’ by Stewart P Evans and Keith Skinner. This second book is indispensable for it’s police documents and also its reproductions of newspaper articles of the day. You can find both books on amazon used for cheap. Get a paperback print of Sugdens book because it is updated a little. It’s too bad that Sugden died so soon after his book came out, because I really would like to read his ideas on recent developments that have come out since the rediscovery of Tumblety ( I would love to have his thoughts on some of my ideas on the case) It is fairly simple to eliminate every single suspect that has ever come down the pike, suspects that authors have made quite a lot of money on, and Sugden successfully eliminates them all, all that had been named up to his time. except Klosowski! Klosowski is the one suspect that Sugden admits he can not eliminate, and he spends the closing chapter of his book trying to do it. Most well known books try to convince us that a man who would go on to kill his wives by poison simply could not be the same man who cut up prostitutes 15 years earlier…. but that is their only evidence. But there seems to be a motive for them not wanting us to believe that Klosowski is the Ripper, and they seem to argue a little too strongly against the possibility that he could be, it gives you the feeling that they “protest too much” as they say in Shakespear. Read the two books, and decide for yourself if klosowski should be eliminated simply because he went on to murder his wives later on by poison. Can you imagine if he had killed all his wives by the same means he had done as the Ripper? Or try to imagine if all the women that were murdered by Jack the ripper, imagine if all of them had been married to the same man! That man would be the very first suspect, and if he had done it he could not get away with it. Klosowski seems far more cunning than these other writers want to give him credit for being. But you have to be extremely cunning to successfully elude the greatest manhunt in history I bet. To get away with killing three women that he was married to, the only way to possibly get away with it would be to make it look like they had died of natural causes. Even doing that he still got caught, eventually. They knew from the get go he had killed them, but it took time and evidence to prove it to a jury. But these writers seem to believe that the only way the ripper could have killed was with a knife. He needed to kill with a knife in the earlier murders, because one of his objectives was to also cut out the abdominal organ. And he had to get everything done quick, there was no time for poison
Please excuse my repeating myself. I had thought that my post had not been received successfuly
No worries, I repeated myself before with 3 comments the day before yesterday I think. The comments can take a half hour to an hour to register on here but they definitely do. I thought it was a website error, it just turns out to be a little slow. I bought the Philip Sugden book New edition for like 4 quid on Google Play Books, I don’t have Kindle but I prefer reading in the dark on my phone. I’m hoping the New Edition is the updated one you speak of.
Klosowki is a fascinating fellow and a quick look on his Wikipedia brings this up: It has even been suggested that he carried out a Ripper-style killing in New York City, the murder of Carrie Brown,[12] but recent research suggests he did not reach the United States until after this murder.[16]
Do you have any update on this? I’d like to buy in to the rest of the theory on him continuing to murder in the States but without definitive proof he was in the area it’s a little hard. Do you happen to have a timetable of his movements during these atrocities, from the moment he stepped foot in London until his arrest and execution?
I would really like to believe this theory of him going to New York and killing Carrie Brown but on his Wikipedia page I came across this: It has even been suggested that he carried out a Ripper-style killing in New York City, the murder of Carrie Brown,[12] but recent research suggests he did not reach the United States until after this murder.[16]
Do you happen to have a timetable of his movements from the moment he stepped foot in London until the moment of his execution? Would really like to verify if he was there and if Wikipedia got it wrong.
Yes, people have claimed that Klosowski did not arrive in New York City until the day after the old woman was butchered, and she was butchered in the same precise manner that the Ripper victims were ( I don’t remember now if her uterus was missing) The fact is though that there is really no reliable evidence on exactly when he arrived. But wouldn’t you agree that it certainly looks suspicious? (That is putting it mildly) Even back in 1888, when they had no knowledge that a man like Klosowski had arrived in their city, newspapers were saying that Jack the Ripper had arrived in New York after seeing the remains of ‘Old Shakespear’. And just like in the other ripper murders, the killer is never found. All this after New York’s Chief of Police had promised that Jack the Ripper could never get away with his crimes in New York. I think it seems far more likely that it happened after Klosowski arrived than it just coincidently happened the day before he got there
No, that is a fair point. I’m not doubting you in anyway as all the material you have provided has most definitely convinced me he was responsible. I would also be inclined to think he was the culprit for Carrie Brown’s death, even just basing it off approximate times should be more than sufficient.
I think it’s very poor of Wiki to word it in such a negative way, the recent research suggesting that he hadn’t arrived until after Carrie’s death yet not bothering to elaborate on this supposed research. It echoes what you were saying about the likes of Fido and Begg not wanting to take Chapman seriously. They know he’s their man but they want to perpetuate the legend for their own gain and even Wiki who you would expect to be a fairly trustworthy source seems complicit in this perpetuation. I think it’s an insult to the victims that their killer go largely unnamed and for Ripperologists to continue the cycle of disrespect by moving around in the circles of their little boys club where anything unpopular mentioned that doesn’t fit the narrative gets shouted down and derided. Even going so far as to discredit the one man(Abberline) who genuinely gave a fuck about these girls.
I have some other questions for you and I ask them sincerely as you seem very knowledgeable.
Was Chapman a Jew? I thought being Polish he might have been but if he was it would make little sense for Tumblety and Klosowski to go about attempting to frame the Jews.
Do you think that the killer would have needed to be an expert surgeon or are you of the belief that surgical training at a minimum would be enough to carry out these tasks?
Did Chapman move residences multiple times in Whitechapel to be closer to the kill sites?
If so where would he have been living on the night of the double event, near Goulston St? I recall mention of the route he took with investigators thinking he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to move East to then risk doubling back on himself and running into police to the West.
Also do you believe that perhaps he met Tumblety that night after the murder who took Eddowes’ apron, dumped it in the alleyway and wrote the cryptic message himself while the killer made his escape? Or perhaps gave Francis the Kidney and Uterus, then proceeded to the alleyway while Francis went home. Dumped the apron and wrote the message himself. Blood could possibly be explained from a cursory search from a beat copper but if they were to look further he would most certainly be incriminated with innards on his person. Although by that point he may not have even had blood on his hands if he had cleaned it off with the apron.
Klosowski liv d in a number of locations ion throughout whitechaple/spitafields, I do not believe it is possible to accurately know the exacts dates of places he lived, although it is widely believed he was staying on ‘Georgeyard buildings’ at the same time Tabrum was killed there. But it is also known he stayed at Greenfield st and Cabel st, and a couple other streets. Later he relocated just across the river. He was not Jewish, I think catholic or Orthodox Christian, forget. He could speak Yiddish though. But he was prejudice. He nearly fainted as they marched him to the gallows, I guess he believed in hell allrite
So I checked the map of all the locations again and the Ripper moves West from Dutfields Yard to Mitre Square after which the apron is found 5 mins East of the square in an alleyway. It doesn’t make any sense to me why the Ripper would go East again, that is taking a huge risk which is why I was wondering if it was feasible that Tumblety met him again later that night to take the innards and the apron off him. Especially when Israel Schwartz claims to have seen a man who shouted Lipski who he was afraid was following him and maybe he was. Maybe Tumblety was trying to scare him away even if deep down he was a coward.
That was earlier in the evening, before the killing of miss Eddowes.
I don’t think you should try to make too much sense of Klosowskis movements, it is my feeling he was fairly spontaneous. But that is just my feeling. Although there were aspects of these crimes that were thought-out, such as those marks on ms eddowes face, and his waiting around in Hanbury street (as witnesses have testified to) till dawn for some light
I would recommend to you two books. The first is Phillip Sugden’s ‘The Complete History of Jack the Ripper’, (this is the book that first alerted me to Klosowski) and the second is’The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion’ by Stewart P Evans and Keith Skinner. This second book is indispensable for it’s police documents and also its reproductions of newspaper articles of the day. You can find both books on amazon used for cheap. Get a paperback print of Sugdens book because it is updated a little. It’s too bad that Sugden died so soon after his book came out, because I really would like to read his ideas on recent developments that have come out since the rediscovery of Tumblety ( I would love to have his thoughts on some of my ideas on the case) It is fairly simple to eliminate every single suspect that has ever come down the pike, suspects that authors have made quite a lot of money on, and Sugden successfully eliminates them all, all that had been named up to his time. Except Klosowski! Klosowski is the one suspect that Sugden admits he can not eliminate, and he spends the closing chapter of his book trying to do it. Most well known books try to convince us that a man who would go on to kill his wives by poison simply could not be the same man who cut up prostitutes 15 years earlier…. but that is their only evidence. But there seems to be a motive for them not wanting us to believe that Klosowski is the Ripper, and they seem to argue a little too strongly against the possibility that he could be, it gives you the feeling that they “protest too much” as they say in Shakespear. Read the books, and decide for yourself if klosowski should be eliminated simply because he went on to murder his wives later on by poison. Can you imagine if he had killed all his wives by the same means he had done as the Ripper? I think he was far too cunning. Most of his detractors dont seem to be able to think in this cunning manner, thats how it seems to me. Try to imagine if all the women murdered by Jack the ripper, imagine if all of them had been married to the same man! Thats how it would be if Klosowski had killed his wives by the same means that he used in the Ripper murders.
Doug you couldnt detect a pork pie in tesco, it was Maybrick no argument.
my, I am really impressed by your lack of any evidence. It almost matches your lack of intelligence
I have updated and edited this piece into a fuller book. Here are some of the changes from the introduction above:
George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (both the same guy) was almost without a doubt Jack-the-Ripper. Inspector Frederick Abberline knew it over a hundred years ago, and every “ripperologist” who looks objectively at the evidence today should know it also. In 1903 Klosowski would (as George Chapman) become notorious as the ‘Borough wife poisoner’. But 15 years earlier, in 1888, when he lived on George Yard Road in the heart of London’s East End, his disgustingly sneaky and insanely brutal manner of going after what he wanted would lead him (as Jack-the-Ripper) to achieve far more notoriety than he would have ever imagined.
It all began when Klosowski first heard of an American who was then in London, who was contacting various London medical schools, offering twenty pounds apiece for uteruses left over from hysterectomy procedures. (20 pounds was quite a large sum in 1888) Naturally, the staff at these medical schools had outright refused this unidentified American, but it seems that Klosowski (who had been trained in Poland as a ‘surgical-barber’) wanted the money, and was more obliging….. in his own unhinged way. As unlikely as that all may sound now, it was known throughout the medical community of London at that time that an American had made this highly unusual 20 pound offer. The coroner at the Annie Chapman inquest knew about it (Annie had been one of Jack-the-Rippers early victims), and had brought it up as the probable motive for the current Whitechapel murders of 1888. The American had even specified how he had wanted the organs to be preserved during their shipment to the States. (You can read about this in the inquest transcript, published in Stewart P. Evans & Keith Skinner’s book, ‘The Ultimate Jack-the-Ripper Companion’, pgs. 102-107. More importantly, read the 1903 interview by the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ with inspector Frederick Abberline, conducted as “Chapman” was on trial for murdering his 3 “wives”; the interview is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of ripperology. It’s also in Philip Sugden’s ‘The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper’.)
I feel that the reason the Ripper was mutilating the faces of his victims was to disguise his motive of killing the women for their uterus. The grotesque cuts on Cathrine Eddowes’ face were intended to take attention from noticing the missing organ. (The corpses which received the really awful facial wounds were the corpses which had missing uterus, and the corpses that didn’t have the missing organs were those in which the attacks had been carried-out in almost complete darkness, and the Ripper hadn’t found the organs quickly enough to get at them on time in those instances. [this was foggy, gas-lit, Victorian London; it was very dark at night. To safely avoid detection, the Ripper would have needed to work very quickly, calmly, on a strict time limit. On some attacks he would not be able to beat the clock, and would need to abort the mission before obtaining a uterus] Most every cut on each victim had been necessary to either kill the woman or to obtain her uterus, EXCEPT for the grisly facial mutilations on Eddowes, those were done only to take attention from this ‘uterus motive’. And the attack on Annie Chapman, one week after he had failed to obtain the uterus of Polly Nicholls; witness statements indicate that the Ripper waited on Hanbury Street until the break of dawn to strike on that attack, in order to have enough light to see what he was doing so that he could locate and extract the womb quickly. And he was successful: Annie Chapman was his first successful uterus extraction). But after it had been in the newspapers that the Ripper was taking the uterus – following Annie Chapman – the Ripper felt he needed to obscure this motive, or police might track him down.
After it had been printed in the 1888 newspapers that the uterus of Annie Chapman had been so expertly removed and taken, the coroner reported that he had:
-“received an urgent communication from the sub-curator of one of London’s great medical schools; that they had information which might have a distinct bearing on our case. Some months previous an American had called on him and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the same organ (uterus) that was now missing in our deceased woman. The American stated his willingness to give 20 pounds apiece for each specimen. He was told his request was impossible to be complied with, but he still urged his request”…
-“And it was known that this request was repeated at other institutions of similar character.”…
-“Isn’t it likely that the knowledge of this demand might have incited some ‘abandoned wretch’ to possess himself of a specimen?”…
(excerpts from the Annie Chapman inquest report, 1888.)
It is not known why the American ‘needed’ the organs. Dr Baxter said it had something to do with a “publication” of the American’s……whatever. Perhaps he was simply some unbalanced transexual who was resentful that he’d been born without female organs.* Regardless, coroner Baxter had explained all this to the jurists in Annie Chapman’s inquest, and much of what he said was repeated by Frederick Abberline in his 1903 interview. Both men seemed certain that the Ripper had come into contact with this American at some point before the attacks.
(* After I first wrote this I became aware of a likely candidate for this American who wanted the female organs [see Phillip Sugden’s introduction to the revised edition of his ‘Ripper’ book, pg. xxvi] . There is a relatively recent Ripper-suspect; an American named Francis Tumblety [see wikipedia]. He being Jack-the-Ripper is unlikely; he was 58 years old, homosexual, tall, and he basically didn’t match any witnesses descriptions. [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 Tumblety was in the East End during the time of the Ripper and could have easily come into contact with Klosowski before the Ripper attacks began, and made him the same offer that coroner Baxter related to the inquest jurists. It’s likely that Klosowski [who had reportedly sought out employment at London Hospital] also made the rounds in some of those same medical schools, perhaps looking for employment in some surgical-teaching capacity. Also, C.A. Dunham, an American Lawyer who knew Tumblety, recalled in 1888 having once seen Tumblety’s ‘anatomical museum’. It included, he said, “a dozen or more jars containing …the matrices [wombs] of every class of woman.”
I have even wondered if Tumblety (who was reportedly lodging just around the corner from Berner St ; on Batty St.), was that 2nd man who was with the Ripper, seen by Israel Schwartz on Berner Street the night Liz Stride was killed there. Same height; 5’11”. (“LIPSKI!”)
And at that same inquest, both the coroner; Dr. Wynne Baxter, and the 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 purpose 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”
(both quotes from the transcript of the Annie Chapman inquest, Sept 1888)
-This “difficulty in believing the purpose of the murderer”, by investigators, was a major source of the Rippers incredible luck, and one reason why he was never caught. It blinded the investigators then, and it blinds us today.
I don’t know if Klosowski (a convicted serial killer of women, who was tried and executed in 1903) had any preference either way about the method he used to kill women. He was carving up prostitutes, quickly, to procure women’s organs in order to obtain money from an American who wanted them. Nearly ten years later he would begin killing his “wives” by poison, slowly, to rid himself of the obstacle that was standing between himself and his next female conquest. And he couldn’t have carved his “wives” up, right? How would he have explained to police that all three of his “wives” were cut to shreds? Some ‘Ripperologists’ can’t believe that a killer who would later go on to watch women slowly suffer and die by poison would also, 15 years earlier, have used a knife to kill prostitutes. But FBI profiler John Douglas knows that some serial killers take up new methods of killing as time passes. When motive changes, so does the means.
Severin Klosowski arrived in East London from Poland less than a year before the Ripper murders began, -(there was another set of murders, of 5 women being dumped into the Thames, which began just one month after he 1st arrived in England)- and when he moved to New York for a year, -(he left London for NYC two months after the final Whitechapel murder, that of Francis Coles)- similar murders started happening in N.Y. also.-(And after returning from New York in the summer of 1892 he never went by the name Severin Klosowski again, and he wouldn’t ever admit to even knowing anything about “that fellow”, after returning to London in the wake of the Whitechapel murders, even when asked under oath in 1902!)- If you check out all the “coincedences” that occur in these series of murders; the dates, the places Klosowski lived in Whitechapel, -(It is known that he was living on George Yard Road when the 1st Ripper murder happened on this very block; that of Martha Tabrum.
Later, in 1987, while on a TV show about the Ripper, FBI profiler John Douglas had predicted that, going by his profile of serial killers: “when Jack-the-Ripper commit his very 1st murder, he was most likely living or working within just a couple blocks of this first attack!” Douglas was surprisingly adamant about this; he felt that if they wanted to learn the Ripper’s real identity, they should try to check any and all census records on that immediate area at the precise time of the 1st murder)- then add to everything else the fact that Klosowski had been trained as a surgeon in Poland! So he knew more about cutting people up than he did poisoning them. But if you added up all of these “coincidences” and entered them into a computer spreadsheet, the odds would be about a-billion-to-one that Klosowski was the Ripper I bet. And now, the only thing preventing the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ from ever being officially solved is the so called “Ripperologists” themselves, the very people who claim to be interested in solving them. Ironic, right? But it is so easy to doubt & ridicule the “Chapman-theory”, especially when you get into the 20 pound offer for uteruses. But consider the source of where we know about the offer from; from Coroner Wynne Baxter, who did the autopsy on Annie Chapman. Consider who it was who agreed with him; inspector Frederick Abberline , probably the greatest, most respected officer to have worked on the Ripper case. Abberline believed that Klosowski was the Ripper until his dying day. Personally, I find Abberline a lot more credible in regard to all this than I do the Ripperologists, (or anybody else).
Also, witnesses at a couple of the Ripper killings have described seeing a suspect matching Chapman/Klosowski in almost every detail: foreign accent and appearance, handlebar mustache, the type of clothes and hat Klosowski usually wore, his same height: approx 5′ 5”…..etc etc. The only difference was that they said he was older, Klosowski was 23, but they said the person they saw was in his 30s. Remember though, these old-world Slavic types from East Europe often appear to be older than they really are, especially to people unfamiliar with them. Also, wouldn’t a man, being looked for by everybody in the city, wouldn’t it seem likely that this person would do something to alter his appearance? I bring this up because it is the witnesses statements that the suspect they saw was in his 30’s that some ripperologists (i.e. Martin Fido & Paul Begg,) use to ‘prove’ that these few witnesses must have seen someone other than Klosowski. So stubborn are they in this ‘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. Age is the most common thing for a witness to get wrong, ESPECIALLY in the pitch-dark….and fog.
Something else that Begg and Fido don’t like about this theory is that they can’t believe that a serial killer would use a knife to butcher prostitutes in one instance, and then ten years later start killing his “wives” by poison. They don’t believe its possible for a serial killing ghoul like Klosowski to do both. But Klosowski was killing with a knife much earlier, at a much younger age. Also, he was using the knife to cut up prostitutes for a specific, premeditated purpose: he needed to take out their reproductive organs. He didn’t need to do that anymore by the time he was killing his “wives”. But he didn’t only learn about anatomy when he was trained as a surgeon, and a cunning egomaniac like Klosowski would probably want to put all his skills to use if he could. He had learned a little about medicine and poisons also,…. except he didn’t know as much as he thought. Or maybe he simply forgot that the poison he bought to kill his “wives” would also preserve their corpses, making it obvious to investigators, if they ever exhumed the bodies, what had killed them. This is what got Klosowski hanged. He had gotten away with so much, for so long, that he became over-confident. He probably began to believe he could never be caught. But he was arrested by Inspector George Godley, who had been involved with Abberline in investigating the Ripper killings 15 years earlier. And Godley was certain that “Chapman” was the Ripper also, and he kept Abberline appraised of his progress during his (Godley’s) investigation, prior to “George Chapman’s” trial. Abberline had retired from Scotland Yard by that time, but was in charge of the European branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
The only other ‘problem’ these Ripperologists have brought up with the ‘Klosowski theory’ goes something like this: “He would have been a valid suspect, except that there is simply NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE we can find linking Klosowski to the murders”. There is no ‘concrete evidence’ linking ANY of the ‘suspects’ to the Ripper murders!!! Right? But that sure doesn’t stop these two Ripperologists from nominating certain OTHER ‘suspects’ as ‘strong candidates’; suspects who have far less evidence against them than Klosowski does! Some Ripperologist’s entire careers have been built upon the Ripper mystery, do they feel they need to keep it a mystery? Why else are they always so prejudice against Klosowski, who has so much circumstantial evidence pointing squarely at him, while at the same time promote suspects who barely have any? (And the only reason there is no concrete evidence against Klosowski is because he was extremely cunning, and had repeatedly eluded detection. You can’t find “concrete evidence” retroactively; you can only find ‘circumstantial evidence’ for a crime as old as this one. Concrete evidence needed to be found in 1888. Abberline might have had a shot at finding it in 1903, after learning of Klosowski’s newest murders, but after Klosowski was hanged it seems police just dropped it for the time being; they felt it was over.)
But let’s not overlook the motive of the police either, (I am speaking most specifically about Sir Norville Macnaghten). In a famous 1894 report, Macnaghten wrote that: “Jack-the-Ripper had five victims, and five victims only”. Now, how can he possibly make this statement, and state it as if it were the Gospel Truth?? What evidence does he have, for instance, that Martha Tabram was not killed by the Ripper? …NONE! But London police were facing the most severe criticism they had ever faced because of not capturing The Ripper, they were ridiculed about it. Any time the subject of the Ripper came up, Magnaghten felt he was being made the butt of a rude joke. The N.Y. Times was calling Scotland Yard the “stupidest police force on the planet”. Magnaghten wanted to diminish the successes that the Ripper had had against his police force; he probably would have claimed that the Ripper had only killed TWO women if he thought people might have believed it. Also, Doctors were under a cloud of suspicion, due to the fact that coroner Baxter had correctly pointed out that the Ripper could not have found those sexual organs he was so specifically seeking; extracted them; have done it so quick and nicely, unless he had received some training as a surgeon. Later, Dr. Thomas Bond would attempt to downplay this theory, saying that even a butcher could find the uterus in a woman and be able to extract it so expertly. But who could blame him for saying this, and for being so defensive? There was a mania at work, and East End citizens were out to lynch doctors nearly. This defensiveness of Doctors, Police, Jews, immigrants, etc, ended up compromising the investigation.
It’s absolutely ASTOUNDING that although Klosowski was an exact match to so many witness statements, and that he had both worked AND resided within short walking distance from each of the Ripper attacks… that he had been trained as a surgeon, and had migrated from Poland only months before the Ripper attacks began…etc…etc…etc, yet he was never so much as QUESTIONED by the London Police! His name appears on NO POLICE REPORT, prior to his arrest as a serial murderer in 1902! It’s appalling! … Scotland Yard, who supposedly questioned every man in Whitechapel during the Ripper manhunt, seems to have had no clue that Severin Klosowski even existed in 1888! I mean, the guy was working right under their noses, at the very epicenter of the killing-zone, right on Whitechapel High St., at that archway into George Yard, right under the ‘White Hart’ pub. He must have been LAUGHING as police would pass by!
Yet even today, ‘Ripperologists’ (eg.Fido) continue to downplay the ‘Chapman theory’, and they use the weakest of logic to make their argument, in the face of, by far, the strongest evidence that has ever been compiled about any other Ripper suspect! And they keep offering up the most unlikely suspects imaginable, while rolling their eyes in condescending derision when you mention Klosowski. It is bizarre!
How many people in Victorian England do you suppose there were who had been trained to protect human life as a surgeon, but had also been a known serial killer of women? In my entire life I have heard of only two; Severin Klosovski/ George Chapman is one. Jack the Ripper is the other. And “BOTH” ‘just happened’ to be living in the heart of Whitechaple in 1888! “Both” were also on tiny George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was killed and mutilated there. I mean, what are the odds?? And out of all the many popular ‘suspects’ that are ever accused of being Jack-the-Ripper, only ONE of them is a known perpetrator of homicide: George Chapman, … A.K.A. Severin Klosovski, … A.K.A ‘Borough poisoner’, … A.K.A Jack-the-Ripper!
George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (both the same guy) was almost without a doubt Jack-the-Ripper. Inspector Frederick Abberline knew it over a hundred years ago, and every “ripperologist” who looks objectively at the evidence today should know it also. In 1903 Klosowski would (as George Chapman) become notorious as the ‘Borough wife poisoner’. But 15 years earlier, in 1888, when he lived on George Yard Road in the heart of London’s East End, his disgustingly sneaky and insanely brutal manner of going after what he wanted would lead him (as Jack-the-Ripper) to achieve far more notoriety than he would have ever imagined.
It all began when Klosowski first heard of an American who was then in London, who was contacting various London medical schools, offering twenty pounds apiece for uteruses left over from hysterectomy procedures. (20 pounds was quite a large sum in 1888) Naturally, the staff at these medical schools had outright refused this unidentified American, but it seems that Klosowski (who had been trained in Poland as a ‘surgical-barber’) wanted the money, and was more obliging….. in his own unhinged way. As unlikely as that all may sound now, it was known throughout the medical community of London at that time that an American had made this highly unusual 20 pound offer. The coroner at the Annie Chapman inquest knew about it (Annie had been one of Jack-the-Rippers early victims), and had brought it up as the probable motive for the current Whitechapel murders of 1888. The American had even specified how he had wanted the organs to be preserved during their shipment to the States. (You can read about this in the inquest transcript, published in Stewart P. Evans & Keith Skinner’s book, ‘The Ultimate Jack-the-Ripper Companion’, pgs. 102-107. More importantly, read the 1903 interview by the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ with inspector Frederick Abberline, conducted as “Chapman” was on trial for murdering his 3 “wives”; the interview is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of ripperology. It’s also in Philip Sugden’s ‘The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper’.)
I feel that the reason the Ripper was mutilating the faces of his victims was to disguise his motive of killing the women for their uterus. The grotesque cuts on Cathrine Eddowes’ face were intended to take attention from noticing the missing organ. (The corpses which received the really awful facial wounds were the corpses which had missing uterus, and the corpses that didn’t have the missing organs were those in which the attacks had been carried-out in almost complete darkness, and the Ripper hadn’t found the organs quickly enough to get at them on time in those instances. [this was foggy, gas-lit, Victorian London; it was very dark at night. To safely avoid detection, the Ripper would have needed to work very quickly, calmly, on a strict time limit. On some attacks he would not be able to beat the clock, and would need to abort the mission before obtaining a uterus] Most every cut on each victim had been necessary to either kill the woman or to obtain her uterus, EXCEPT for the grisly facial mutilations on Eddowes, those were done only to take attention from this ‘uterus motive’. And the attack on Annie Chapman, one week after he had failed to obtain the uterus of Polly Nicholls; witness statements indicate that the Ripper waited on Hanbury Street until the break of dawn to strike on that attack, in order to have enough light to see what he was doing so that he could locate and extract the womb quickly. And he was successful: Annie Chapman was his first successful uterus extraction). But after it had been in the newspapers that the Ripper was taking the uterus – following Annie Chapman – the Ripper felt he needed to obscure this motive, or police might track him down.
After it had been printed in the 1888 newspapers that the uterus of Annie Chapman had been so expertly removed and taken, the coroner reported that he had:
-“received an urgent communication from the sub-curator of one of London’s great medical schools; that they had information which might have a distinct bearing on our case. Some months previous an American had called on him and asked him to procure a number of specimens of the same organ (uterus) that was now missing in our deceased woman. The American stated his willingness to give 20 pounds apiece for each specimen. He was told his request was impossible to be complied with, but he still urged his request”……
-“And it was known that this request was repeated at other institutions of similar character.”…….
-“Isn’t it likely that the knowledge of this demand might have incited some ‘abandoned wretch’ to possess himself of a specimen?”…..
(excerpts from the Annie Chapman inquest report, 1888.)
It is not known why the American ‘needed’ the organs. Dr Baxter said it had something to do with a “publication” of the American’s……whatever. Perhaps he was simply some unbalanced transexual who was resentful that he’d been born without female organs.* Regardless, coroner Baxter had explained all this to the jurists in Annie Chapman’s inquest, and much of what he said was repeated by Frederick Abberline in his 1903 interview. Both men seemed certain that the Ripper had come into contact with this American at some point before the attacks.
(* After I first wrote this I became aware of a likely candidate for this American who wanted the female organs [see Phillip Sugden’s introduction to the revised edition of his ‘Ripper’ book, pg. xxvi] . There is a relatively recent Ripper-suspect; an American named Francis Tumblety [see wikipedia]. He being Jack-the-Ripper is unlikely; he was 58 years old, homosexual, tall, and he basically didn’t match any witnesses descriptions. [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 Tumblety was in the East End during the time of the Ripper and could have easily come into contact with Klosowski before the Ripper attacks began, and made him the same offer that coroner Baxter related to the inquest jurists. It’s likely that Klosowski [who had reportedly sought out employment at London Hospital] also made the rounds in some of those same medical schools, perhaps looking for employment in some surgical-teaching capacity. Also, C.A. Dunham, an American Lawyer who knew Tumblety, recalled in 1888 having once seen Tumblety’s ‘anatomical museum’. It included, he said, “a dozen or more jars containing …the matrices [wombs] of every class of woman.”
I have even wondered if Tumblety (who was reportedly lodging just around the corner from Berner St ; on Batty St.), was that 2nd man who was with the Ripper, seen by Israel Schwartz on Berner Street the night Liz Stride was killed there. Same height; 5’11”. “LIPSKI!” )
And at that same inquest, both the coroner; Dr. Wynne Baxter, and the 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 purpose 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”
(both quotes from the transcript of the Annie Chapman inquest, Sept 1888)
-This “difficulty in believing the purpose of the murderer”, by investigators, was a major source of the Rippers incredible luck, and one reason why he was never caught. It blinded the investigators then, and it blinds us today.
I don’t know if Klosowski (a convicted serial killer of women, who was tried and executed in 1903) had any preference either way about the method he used to kill women. He was carving up prostitutes, quickly, to procure women’s organs in order to obtain money from an American who wanted them. Nearly ten years later he would begin killing his “wives” by poison, slowly, to rid himself of the obstacle that was standing between himself and his next female conquest. And he couldn’t have carved his “wives” up, right? How would he have explained to police that all three of his “wives” were cut to shreds? Some ‘Ripperologists’ can’t believe that a killer who would later go on to watch women slowly suffer and die by poison would also, 15 years earlier, have used a knife to kill prostitutes. But FBI profiler John Douglas knows that some serial killers take up new methods of killing as time passes. When motive changes, so does the means.
Severin Klosowski arrived in East London from Poland less than a year before the Ripper murders began, -(there was another set of murders, of 5 women being dumped into the Thames, which began just one month after he 1st arrived in England)- and when he moved to New York for a year, -(he left London for NYC two months after the final Whitechapel murder, that of Francis Coles)- similar murders started happening in N.Y. also.-(And after returning from New York in the summer of 1892 he never went by the name Severin Klosowski again, and he wouldn’t ever admit to even knowing anything about “that fellow”, after returning to London in the wake of the Whitechapel murders, even when asked under oath in 1902!)- If you check out all the “coincedences” that occur in these series of murders; the dates, the places Klosowski lived in Whitechapel, -(It is known that he was living on George Yard Road when the 1st Ripper murder happened on this very block; that of Martha Tabrum. Later, in 1987, while on a TV show about the Ripper, FBI profiler John Douglas had predicted that, going by his profile of serial killers: “when Jack-the-Ripper commit his very 1st murder, he was most likely living or working within just a couple blocks of this first attack!” Douglas was surprisingly adamant about this; he felt that if they wanted to learn the Ripper’s real identity, they should try to check any and all census records on that immediate area at the precise time of the 1st murder)- then add to everything else the fact that Klosowski had been trained as a surgeon in Poland! So he knew more about cutting people up than he did poisoning them. But if you added up all of these “coincidences” and entered them into a computer spreadsheet, the odds would be about a-billion-to-one that Klosowski was the Ripper I bet. And now, the only thing preventing the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ from ever being officially solved is the so called “Ripperologists” themselves, the very people who claim to be interested in solving them. Ironic, right? But it is so easy to doubt & ridicule the “Chapman-theory”, especially when you get into the 20 pound offer for uteruses. But consider the source of where we know about the offer from; from Coroner Wynne Baxter, who did the autopsy on Annie Chapman. Consider who it was who agreed with him; inspector Frederick Abberline , probably the greatest, most respected officer to have worked on the Ripper case. Abberline believed that Klosowski was the Ripper until his dying day. Personally, I find Abberline a lot more credible in regard to all this than I do the Ripperologists, (or anybody else).
Also; witnesses at a couple of the Ripper killings have described seeing a suspect matching Chapman/Klosowski in almost every detail: foreign accent and appearance, handlebar mustache, the type of clothes and hat Klosowski usually wore, his same height: approx 5′ 5”…..etc etc. The only difference was that they said he was older, Klosowski was 23, but they said the person they saw was in his 30s. Remember though, these old-world Slavic types from East Europe often appear to be older than they really are, especially to people unfamiliar with them. Also, wouldn’t a man, being looked for by everybody in the city, wouldn’t it seem likely that this person would do something to alter his appearance? I bring this up because it is the witnesses statements that the suspect they saw was in his 30’s that some ripperologists (i.e. Martin Fido & Paul Begg,) use to ‘prove’ that these few witnesses must have seen someone other than Klosowski. So stubborn are they in this ‘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. Age is the most common thing for a witness to get wrong, ESPECIALLY in the pitch-dark….and fog.
Something else that Begg and Fido don’t like about this theory is that they can’t believe that a serial killer would use a knife to butcher prostitutes in one instance, and then ten years later start killing his “wives” by poison. They don’t believe its possible for a serial killing ghoul like Klosowski to do both. But Klosowski was killing with a knife much earlier, at a much younger age. Also, he was using the knife to cut up prostitutes for a specific, premeditated purpose: he needed to take out their reproductive organs. He didn’t need to do that anymore by the time he was killing his “wives”. But he didn’t only learn about anatomy when he was trained as a surgeon, and a cunning egomaniac like Klosowski would probably want to put all his skills to use if he could. He had learned a little about medicine and poisons also,…. except he didn’t know as much as he thought. Or maybe he simply forgot that the poison he bought to kill his “wives” would also preserve their corpses, making it obvious to investigators, if they ever exhumed the bodies, what had killed them. This is what got Klosowski hanged. He had gotten away with so much, for so long, that he became over-confident. He probably began to believe he could never be caught. But he was arrested by Inspector George Godley, who had been involved with Abberline in investigating the Ripper killings 15 years earlier. And Godley was certain that “Chapman” was the Ripper also, and he kept Abberline appraised of his progress during his (Godley’s) investigation, prior to “George Chapman’s” trial. Abberline had retired from Scotland Yard by that time, but was in charge of the European branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
The only other ‘problem’ these Ripperologists have brought up with the ‘Klosowski theory’ goes something like this: “He would have been a valid suspect, except that there is simply NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE we can find linking Klosowski to the murders”. There is no ‘concrete evidence’ linking ANY of the ‘suspects’ to the Ripper murders!!! Right? But that sure doesn’t stop these two Ripperologists from nominating certain OTHER ‘suspects’ as ‘strong candidates’; suspects who have far less evidence against them than Klosowski does! Some Ripperologist’s entire careers have been built upon the Ripper mystery, do they feel they need to keep it a mystery? Why else are they always so prejudice against Klosowski, who has so much circumstantial evidence pointing squarely at him, while at the same time promote suspects who barely have any?
(And the only reason there is no concrete evidence against Klosowski is because he was extremely cunning, and had repeatedly eluded detection. You can’t find “concrete evidence” retroactively; you can only find ‘circumstantial evidence’ for a crime as old as this one. Concrete evidence needed to be found in 1888. Abberline might have had a shot at finding it in 1903, after learning of Klosowski’s newest murders, but after Klosowski was hanged it seems police just dropped it for the time being; they felt it was over.)
But let’s not overlook the motive of the police either, (I am speaking most specifically about Sir Norville Macnaghten). In a famous 1894 report, Macnaghten wrote that: “Jack-the-Ripper had five victims, and five victims only”. Now, how can he possibly make this statement, and state it as if it were the Gospel Truth?? What evidence does he have, for instance, that Martha Tabram was not killed by the Ripper? …NONE! But London police were facing the most severe criticism they had ever faced because of not capturing The Ripper, they were ridiculed about it. Any time the subject of the Ripper came up, Magnaghten felt he was being made the butt of a rude joke. The N.Y. Times was calling Scotland Yard the “stupidest police force on the planet”. Magnaghten wanted to diminish the successes that the Ripper had had against his police force; he probably would have claimed that the Ripper had only killed TWO women if he thought people might have believed it. Also, Doctors were under a cloud of suspicion, due to the fact that coroner Baxter had correctly pointed out that the Ripper could not have found those sexual organs he was so specifically seeking; extracted them; have done it so quick and nicely, unless he had received some training as a surgeon. Later, Dr. Thomas Bond would attempt to downplay this theory, saying that even a butcher could find the uterus in a woman and be able to extract it so expertly. But who could blame him for saying this, and for being so defensive? There was a mania at work, and East End citizens were out to lynch doctors nearly. This defensiveness of Doctors, Police, Jews, immigrants, etc, ended up compromising the investigation.
It’s absolutely ASTOUNDING that although Klosowski was an exact match to so many witness statements, and that he had both worked AND resided within short walking distance from each of the Ripper attacks…. that he had been trained as a surgeon, and had migrated from Poland only months before the Ripper attacks began…….etc…..etc…etc, yet he was never so much as QUESTIONED by the London Police! His name appears on NO POLICE REPORT, prior to his arrest as a serial murderer in 1902! It’s appalling! …… Scotland Yard, who supposedly questioned every man in Whitechapel during the Ripper manhunt, seems to have had no clue that Severin Klosowski even existed in 1888! I mean, the guy was working right under their noses, at the very epicenter of the killing-zone, right on Whitechapel High St., at that archway into George Yard, right under the ‘White Hart’ pub. He must have been LAUGHING as police would pass by!
Yet even today, ‘Ripperologists’ (eg.Fido) continue to downplay the ‘Chapman theory’, and they use the weakest of logic to make their argument, in the face of, by far, the strongest evidence that has ever been compiled about any other Ripper suspect! And they keep offering up the most unlikely suspects imaginable, while rolling their eyes in condescending derision when you mention Klosowski. It is bizarre!
How many people in Victorian England do you suppose there were who had been trained to protect human life as a surgeon, but had also been a known serial killer of women? In my entire life I have heard of only two; Severin Klosovski/ George Chapman is one. Jack the Ripper is the other. And “BOTH” ‘just happened’ to be living in the heart of Whitechaple in 1888! “Both” were also on tiny George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was killed and mutilated there. I mean, what are the odds?? And out of all the many popular ‘suspects’ that are ever accused of being Jack-the-Ripper, only ONE of them is a known perpetrator of homicide: George Chapman, … A.K.A. Severin Klosovski, … A.K.A ‘Borough poisoner’, … A.K.A Jack-the-Ripper!
I would really like to believe this theory of him going to New York and killing Carrie Brown but on his Wikipedia page I came across this: It has even been suggested that he carried out a Ripper-style killing in New York City, the murder of Carrie Brown,[12] but recent research suggests he did not reach the United States until after this murder.[16]
Do you happen to have a timetable of his movements from the moment he stepped foot in London until the moment of his execution? Would really like to verify if he was there and if Wikipedia got it wrong.
I assume you are making a “joke”, as best as you can manage. The “Maybrick Diary” fraud has been exposed thoroughly , and even before it was exposed nobody with any real understanding of the case was taken-in by the hoax
In considering the murder of Elizabeth Stride, in Dutiful’s Yard, It has long been believed by most people who follow this case that the reason that Liz Stride did not receive the signature mutilations to the abdomenal area was only because the Ripper had been interrupted during her murder, and he had been frightened away just after slitting her throat and causing her death. Or it has been argued by some that her murder, on the grounds of a Jewish/Socialist club, was an attempt by the Ripper to frame local Jews for the crimes. The more I look into these murders, however, and the more I feel I am becoming better acquainted with the thinking of this killer, the more I become convinced of just how important the tactic of diversion was to him. I feel it played a part in his incredible escapes, as the bystanders to his crimes were all unable to focus much on anything but the horrible, mutilated corpse that they had recently stumbled upon, they were almost in panic mode, and it interfered with their ability to properly pursue him.Some of them felt as if they were about to be sick after having just seen that mutilated corpse.. I believe that Klosowski took advantage of this, and that it helped keep him calm as he led his pursuers in chase. He left the corpse in the most shocking state as possible because he knew it would upset and rattle whoever might discover the body, keeping their attention of their pursuit of him diverted. All he had to do was make it to the barber shop below the ”White Hart’ pub, at the gateway from Whitechapel Road into George Yard, for which he held the keys to, being that it was where he worked . The White Hart was dead center of the killing zone. He probably snuck into the shop quickly, kept the lights out, and did not make a sound all night. I feel diversion had a part in keeping the public from knowing about Klosowski’s motive of doing these murders as a means to procure the uterus of the woman by the fact that he used gashes cut into Ms Eddowes face to divert attention from the uterus being gone this time also, as it had been taken on Annie Chapman too. Klosowski can’t have the police link him to that American fellow who was offering the medical schools twenty pounds apiece for uterus’s. If they link him to that its all over for him. But the most obvious use of diversion occurs during the first murder of the night on what is known as the ‘double event’. There were over a hundred people in that socialist club that Saturday night as Liz Stride was murdered, all of them drinking and singing loudly, and club members were marching both in and out of the place at around one o’clock AM, when she was killed. The Ripper knew this area, and he knew this Jewish club. His good friend Tumblety reportedly lived just around the corner, on Batty St. The Ripper would have known that the freshly murdered body of Liz Stride would have been discovered by somebody from the club in less than five minutes after he killed her (and it was). He would have known these loud Jewish singing socialists would scream bloody murder when they discovered her body, and wake up the entire neighborhood, (and they did). He knew the entire police force would hear about it, and a good percentage of them would be drawn to the murder site (this happened too).He chose the place purposely, and he knew what he was doing. The Ripper was probably even able to hear the beginning of the panic, as he began to make his way, quickly, to his real business at hand that night; he had to acquire another uterus for his American friend Francis Tumblety. By means of this murder of Ms Elizabeth Stride, the Ripper was drawing as many police away from the area around Mitre Square as he possibly could. By this time in the murder spree, each night the city streets were TEAMING with police officers out to catch Jack-the-Ripper. Whitechapel was CRAWLING with cops! Klosowski needed to draw them all to one area in Whitechapel so that they would be drawn away from the other area. I have no idea why the Ripper didn’t want to take his business to some other section of town, but it seems he was comfortable here in Spitafields, this was his new stompin’ grounds. I guess he knew his way around here, not so much in other neighborhoods in London. The murder of Stride had taken place at about 12:55am, and her body was found five minutes later at 1:00. Miss Eddowes dead body would be discovered in Mitre Square only about forty five minutes after that. It took around 15 minutes to walk over to Mitre Square area from Berner St. When you read the testimony of the police who were patrolling that night in the Mitre Square area, you learn that the Ripper worked at an almost unbelievable speed that night, as he had to first find a suitable candidate for murdering, talk her into going off alone with him in a dark corner in Mitre Square in the middle of the worst murder spree of history, choke her, slit her throat so that her head is barely attached, gut her like a pig, find her kidney and remove it (which takes incredible surgical skill), find her uterus and remove it (which also calls for skill, and a steady hand too during all of this excitement), then slash those bizarre gashes over her face to hopefully divert investigators attention from noticing that the uterus is once again missing, and do it all in nearly complete darkness as police are crawling around each and every corner, (on Polly Nichols murder, only a few weeks earlier, he had failed to simply get a uterus because the light was poor. There had been 50 times less pressure on him during that attack, but he failed. He certainly had improved in a short time! He got all of that done in Mitre Square in little more than 5 minutes, reportedly) But I think one thing that the Ripper didn’t know was that even though Mitre Square was only a few blocks away from Berner st, it is under a wholly different police department.But those police surely would have heard about the first attack, they wouldn’t have thought he was about to strike again that night. So they had probably relaxed somewhat It seems as if the Ripper likes to do things that most people would think are not possible. Maybe it is because of his ego, maybe it is he thinks it won’t be expected, and that he will get away because it is not expected
In considering the murder of Elizabeth Stride, in Dutiful’s Yard, It has long been supposed by most people who follow this case that the reason that Liz Stride did not receive the signature mutilations to the abdomenal area was only because the Ripper had been interrupted during her murder, and he had been frightened away just after slitting her throat and causing her death. Or it has been argued by some that her murder, on the grounds of a Jewish/Socialist club, was an attempt by the Ripper to frame local Jews for the crimes.
The more I look into these murders, however, and the more I feel I am becoming better acquainted with the thinking of this killer, the more I become convinced of just how important the tactic of diversion was to him. I feel it played a part in his incredible escapes, as the bystanders to his crimes were all unable to focus much on anything but the horrible, mutilated corpse that they had recently stumbled upon, they were almost in panic mode, and it interfered with their ability to properly pursue him.Some of them felt as if they were about to be sick after having just seen that mutilated corpse.. I believe that Klosowski took advantage of this, and that it helped keep him calm as he fled the areas that he had commit his crimes in. He left the corpse in the most shocking state as possible because he knew it would upset and rattle whoever might discover the body, keeping their desire to potentially pursue the killer diverted. All the Ripper had to do was make it to the barber shop below the ”White Hart’ pub, at the gateway from Whitechapel Road into George Yard, a shop which he held the keys to, (being that it was where he was lawfully employed as a barber) . The White Hart was dead center of the killing zone. He probably snuck into the shop quickly, kept the lights out, and did not make a sound for the remainder of the night (did he possibly take a nap?).
I feel diversion had a part in keeping the public from knowing about Klosowski’s motive of doing these murders as a means to procure the uterus of the woman by the fact that he used gashes cut into Ms Eddowes face to divert investigators attention from noticing that the uterus was gone this time also, as it had been taken on Annie Chapman as well. Klosowski can’t have the police link him to that American fellow who was offering the medical schools twenty pounds apiece for uterus’s. If they link him to that its all over for him. Klosowski knew that police might have heard about that, especially since the papers had reported on the fact that Annie Chapmans uterus had been taken. (That report by the newspapers is what had led the medical-school curator to call up Coroner Baxter and tell him about the offer of 20 pounds for uterus that had been offered to him. And indeed, Baxter had alerted Scotland Yard about it, although it appears that Scotland Yard didn’t give the report much credence. At least not until early November, when they arrested Francis Tumblety).
But the most obvious use of diversion occurs during the first murder of the night on what is known as the ‘double event’. There were over a hundred people in that socialist club that Saturday night as Liz Stride was murdered, all of them drinking and singing loudly, and club members were marching both in and out of the place at around one o’clock AM, when she was killed. The Ripper knew this area, and he knew this Jewish club. His good friend Tumblety reportedly lived just around the corner, on Batty St. The Ripper would have known that the freshly murdered body of Liz Stride would have been discovered by somebody from the club in less than five minutes after he killed her (and it was). He would have known these loud Jewish singing socialists would scream ‘bloody murder’ when they discovered her body, and wake up the entire neighborhood, (and they did). He knew the entire police force would hear about it, and a good percentage of them would be drawn to the murder site (this happened too).He chose the place purposely, and he knew what he was doing. The Ripper was probably even able to hear the beginning of the panic, as he began to make his way, quickly, to his real business at hand that night; he had to acquire another uterus for his American friend Francis Tumblety. By means of this murder of Ms Elizabeth Stride, the Ripper was drawing as many police away from the area around Mitre Square as he possibly could. By this time in the murder spree, each night the city streets were TEAMING with police officers out to catch Jack-the-Ripper. Whitechapel was CRAWLING with cops! Klosowski needed to draw them all to one area in Whitechapel so that they would be drawn away from the other area. I have no idea why the Ripper didn’t want to take his business to some other section of town, but it seems he was comfortable here in Spitafields, this was his new stompin’ grounds. I guess he knew his way around here, not so much in other neighborhoods in London. Besides, he had a good hideout there in Whitechapel, that he could easily make his escape into, right in the middle of everything. This was essential for him.
The murder of Stride had taken place at about 12:55am, and her body was found five minutes later at 1:00. Miss Eddowes dead body would be discovered in Mitre Square only about forty five minutes after that. It took around 15 minutes to walk over to Mitre Square area from Berner St. When you read the testimony of the police who were patrolling that night in the Mitre Square area, you learn that the Ripper worked at an almost unbelievable speed that night, as he had to first find a suitable candidate for murdering, then talk her into going off alone with him into a dark corner of Mitre Square in the middle of one of the worst murder sprees of history, ….choke her…. slit her throat so that her head is barely attached, gut her like a pig, find her kidney and remove it (which takes incredible surgical skill), find her uterus and expertly cut it from her body (which also calls for great skill, and a steady hand too during all of this excitement), then slash those bizarre gashes over her face to hopefully divert investigators attention from noticing that the uterus is once again missing, and do it all in nearly complete darkness as police are crawling around each and every corner, (on Polly Nichols murder, only a few weeks earlier, he had failed to simply get a uterus because the light was poor. There had been 50 times less pressure on him during that attack, but he failed. He certainly had improved in a short time! he did all of that in Mitre Square in little over 5 minutes reportedly. [The police surgeon admitted it would have probably taken him an hour, all told] And then, as he makes off to hide himself in his barbershop, he first stops to leave his message on Goulston Street with a piece of chalk he had brought along in anticipation, dropping a piece of bloody apron he had cut off of Eddowes dress to make certain people will understand that it was he who wrote this! During all of that cutting in Mitre Square, he had not forgotten to cut off a piece of apron to use for this purpose! It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that he had calmly been whistling a tune as he carried on with his work!)
But I think one thing that the Ripper didn’t know was that even though Mitre Square was only a few blocks away from Berner st, it is under a wholly different police department.But those police surely would have heard about the first attack, they wouldn’t have thought he was about to strike again that night. So they had probably relaxed somewhat
It seems as if the Ripper likes to do things that most people would think are not possible. Maybe it is because of his ego, maybe it is he thinks it won’t be expected, and that he will get away because it is not expected
I apologize for the fact that I have seemingly put up some of my entries more than e too repetativeonce. This webpage does not offer the luxuary of being able to edit posts. Other than that it is a fine website for ripper posting. I have though, in my opinion, greatly improved the essay, but I don’t want to post it again until I can somehow delete the first versions, it would be too repetitive
ninguno de los dos existio. los crimenes de witchapel no tienen relacion entre si.los crimenes del torso pudieron deberse a estudiantes de medicina que no sabian que hacer con los cuerpos . o gastando bromas pesadas. si alguien quiere contestar acepto comentarios en ingles, ya usare un traductor.