The Debacle of Burgho and Barnaby

Comments

1. Corinna Jane Torcato says

   July 6, 2021 at 12:07 am

   The whole form of investigation is to focus on the non guilty party such as the bloodhounds. I don’t want to know the use of Barnaby and Burgho in the case, I’d like to know about them. Their bloodline, relations and where they can be found among the bloodhounds of today.

   An act of terror in the name of love instead of hate isn’t worth my time.

   Those hounds deployed found the victim, how they tracked her isn’t because they were sent to her, I’d like to know how they ended up there.

   It is a major falsity that this was a hate crime.

   The streets of London were cleaned up after the incident.

   Reply

2. Douglas Barr says

   November 19, 2021 at 1:57 pm

   After it had been printed in the local papers that the Ripper’s victim had had her uterus removed, and that the organ was, in some instances, missing, (reported in papers the day following Annie Chapman’s murder) it seems that Klosowski must have then decided that he needed to better obscure this fact. He would have realized that investigators could have used this clue to track him down, and that it was maybe the only clue that could have led to his capture; that all police would need to do was track down the ‘American’, and force him to talk about that £20 per uterus offer he had made to the medical schools, while at the same time explaining to him that if he could give them any information that might help their investigation, that they would then let him go.

   Klosowski would need people to believe that these Ripper-murders he was committing were the

   work of a sexual maniac, or a robber; he wanted people to believe that something like that was the motive, not that the killer was murdering these women only to make-off with their uterus in order to sell it for £20 to an unbalanced, perverted American. Also, the Ripper seemed to become more confident, as he began reading in the headlines about how completely he was fooling the police. The Annie Chapman murder on Hanbury Street was written about far more extensively than earlier attacks had been, and it seems that after that murder the Ripper began acting far more brazenly. The papers made it seem that these murders were the work of a mad sex fiend. On his next night of murder, the Ripper would go after two women, he would also leave the ‘Juwes’ message on Goulston Street, and follow-up with what many ‘experts’ feel was the Ripper’s one genuine letter (even including with it bloody evidence in the form of a human kidney), a letter which taunted the head of a ‘vigilance’ organization which had been formed to capture him. All the better to convince everybody that this was the work of a lone madman. It seems that Klosowski felt that this would keep police from suspecting someone like himself. It seems too that he was adept at maintaining a convincing front for himself, as he would prove 15 years later for a time also. It seems that most serial-killers are good at this.

   During the week following the murder of Annie Chapman, at her inquest, after it had been printed in the 1888 newspapers that Miss Chapman’s uterus had been so expertly removed and taken, the city coroner stated to jurists 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 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’ these organs. Coroner 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, verbatim, fifteen years later 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 mysterious American who wanted possession of the female organs [see Phillip Sugden’s introduction to the paperback 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 of the witness descriptions. [ FBI profilers are adamant that the Ripper himself would not be homosexual] However, it seems this man Tumblety was fascinated with collecting female organs. Not only that, but he was also in the East End during the time of the Ripper murders and could have easily come into contact with Severin Klosowski before the Ripper attacks began, and made him the same offer that coroner Wynn 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 is said to have known Tumblety, recalled 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.” [although I do not know the source of this claim] I have even wondered if Tumblety (who, while in London that year, 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!” )

   At that same inquest, of Annie Chapman, 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, allegedly, carving up prostitutes, quickly, to procure women’s organs in order to obtain money from an American who wanted them. Then 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 serial- 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 pro-filer John Douglas knows that sometimes 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 “coincidences” that occur in these series of murders; the dates, the places Klosowski lived in Whitechapel, -(It is known that he was living in an alley named ‘George Yard Buildings’ when the 1st likely ‘Ripper murder’ happened on this same small backstreet; that of Martha Tabrum. Later, in 1987, while on a TV show about Jack-the-Ripper, FBI profiler John Douglas had predicted that, going by his profile of serial killers: “when Jack-the-Ripper commit his very first 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 on those precise days of the 1st murder)- and then add to everything else the fact that Klosowski had been trained as a barber/surgeon in Poland! He knew more about cutting people up than he did poisoning. 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 the case. Ironic, right? But it is so easy to doubt & ridicule the ‘Chapman-theory’, especially when you get into the £20 offer for uteruses. But consider the source of where we know about the offer from; from Coroner Wynne Baxter, who conducted the inquest on Annie Chapman. Consider who it was who agreed with him; Inspector Frederick Abberline; probably the greatest, most respected officer to have worked the Ripper case. Abberline believed that Klosowski was the Ripper until his dying day. Personally, I find Abberline a lot more credible and qualified in regard to his ideas on all of 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. The main difference was that they said he was older; Klosowski was 23, but one of the witnesses said the person she 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 due to a witness statement that the suspect she saw was in his 30’s, that some ‘ripperologists’ (i.e. Martin Fido & Paul Begg,) attempt 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 alleged age discrepancy, that’s all Fido & Begg notice. Experts admit that age is the most common thing for a witness to get wrong when attempting to identify a suspect, especially when having seen the suspect only from behind, and in the pitch-dark.

   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 it’s 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 it seems 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 never stops 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? If not,why are they always so prejudice against Klosowski, who has so much circumstantial evidence pointing squarely at him, while at the same time they promote suspects who barely have any evidence at all against them?

   (And the only reason there is no concrete evidence against Klosowski is because he was extremely cunning, and had repeatedly eluded detection. It is very difficult to 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; I wouldn’t doubt he would have claimed that the Ripper had only killed TWO women, if he thought it possible that people might have believed it. Also, Doctors were under a cloud of suspicion also, 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 Dr Bond 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 even 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 nearly 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, Begg, etc) 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 (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 two; Severin Klosovski/ George Chapman is one. Jack the Ripper is the other. And “both” ‘just happened’ to be living in the heart of Whitechapel 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 Klosowski, … A.K.A. George Chapman , … A.K.A ‘Borough poisoner’, …… A.K.A ‘JACK-THE-RIPPER’!

   message 17: by Douglas Nov 01, 2018

   The Ripper attempted to obscure his ‘uterus motive’ with those awful cuts on Ms. Eddowes face because he knew that he could be tracked down if police knew his motive. The Ripper (Klosowski) would have worried that the police might have heard about the offer made 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 telling 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 capture.

   And when Klosowski stopped with the Ripper-type murders (it looks as though sometime close to when he returned to London from America, in the summer of 1892. It seems 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 his rightful name of ‘Klosowski’ that he was still using in 1888, and would never admit now to even knowing who Severin Klosowski was, soon after returning to London from New York. Because while in New York, Klosowski would have learned that the British authorities were still attempting to locate and question Francis Tumblety there . Klosowski would have then realized that he would always be in potential danger of being exposed as having been ‘the Ripper’, as long as this was the case with Tumblety. This is Klosowski’s motivation for changing his name to ‘George Chapman’ after having returned back to England. Francis Tumblety might give-up the name of Severin Klosowski to police if they pressed him hard enough, but he could not give them a name he did not know! So from the point of changing his name to ‘George Chapman’, soon after returning to London from New York, Klosowski would never admit to knowing anything at all about ‘Severin Klosowski’, [or “that fellow”, as he referred to the name when questioned about it in court in 1903] despite having had papers discovered in his possession when he had been arrested in 1902 which would prove he actually WAS Severin Klosowski. Even with such undeniable evidence against him, ‘George Chapman’ steadfastly persisted in his denial of being, in reality, Severin Klosowski.)

   And killing his “wife” by poison, and making it look like ‘natural causes’, this should not arouse suspicion to anybody wondering about the Ripper murders. Even if it had got out that they had been poisoned, the public shouldn’t 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. It’s not genius on his part, simply a survival mechanism that 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.

   THE AMERICAN

   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 collecting uterus for, as referred to by Inspector Abberline in his 1903 ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ interview. But Tumblety was not ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ (as has been suggested in some books recently). Many people 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 true Ripper, the man getting the disgusting work done. Tumblety was the man who gave the Ripper his commission, as articulated 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 or may not have known that Tumblety was coroner Baxter’s “American”, but you can be certain that Abberline knew that Tumblety wasn’t the Ripper, in 1903, when he told the British 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 Murder-spree those guys were all paper-pushers. Abberline was the real deal, and was out there on the same streets the Ripper was.) He knew those ‘suspects’ were all false leads, all of them except Klosowski. He said so. And Tumblety was in police custody when Mary Kelly was murdered, (as I will get into shortly) so he couldn’t have been the Ripper. Klosowski was in close proximity to each victim during every single Ripper-murder, 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 womens organs. 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 killer. 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.

   -CULMINATION IN MILLERS COURT-

   #26 Dorset Street November 9

   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 ‘canonical’ 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 that 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 Tumblety 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, have told 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 had 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. (it is stated in the inquest transcript that the police indeed had been alerted about the offer of money in exchange for uterus) But 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, he expected that the staff of this school would ship it to America for him. 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. He hadn’t yet met Klosowski at that point. 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, and did, detain him for, and bring charges against him on, while they investigated the claims made by the medical school.

   But can you imagine Klosowski’s panic when he heard Tumblety was in police custody? He had to DO something about this! Francis 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, seemed to capture the mood and the state of mind Klosowski must have been in on that night, November 9.

   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 entire murder spree, so it seems 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 Klosowski 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 seems obvious from the murder scene that Klosowski was in a maniacal rage that night. And he went totally ape-sh*t; completely berzerk. It seems 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, of 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. ‘Coincidently’, 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 Jack-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 homosexual. (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 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 suspect 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’s, 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).

   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!). But 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.

   message 19: by Leslie Gibbs Nov 02, 2018

   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 (I changed Doug’s name to ‘Bob’ in the ‘messages’ to avoid confusion between his name and my own. -D.B.)

   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 Barr Nov 02, 2018

   I already addressed my thoughts about those other “contemporary police officials”, and their “opinions” also, especially Macnaghten. (see message 16)

   But 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 the final victim, Marie Kelly’s uterus. I believe her murder had a different motive. So he only really FAILED twice. (actually he also failed on Martha Tabrum too, but he was, understandably, quite 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, or 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 that same night that make it appear he was planning on ‘framing’ the local 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. ‘Juwes’ wall-message was done later that night, and the ‘Lusk/Kidney letter’ that taunted a largely Jewish vigilance club was in connection with this night. I believe he hit upon this idea of both implicating and taunting 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- the most well known is the case of Ameer Ben Ali, i.e. “Frenchie”, who was framed in New York for the murder of “Old Shakespear” Carrie Brown,soon after Klosowski arrived in N.Y.C. in 1891) So it is really only with the first two women; Tabrum and Nicholls, where his inexperience, the darkness, and the time-limit prevented him from being uterus-successful (but from the nature of both victim’s abdominal mutilations, we can see that he was working on getting the uterus in these early cases, when his time ran out). 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. (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 other 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 were sometimes missing, and had been taken in record-time, (and also noting that £20 apiece had earlier been offered, in London, for this same organ) we know what the goal of the crimes probably is, just as the coroner knew it in 1888. The killer, in choosing his victims, was looking for ‘expendable’ women, women who 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 flat 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 Nov 02, 2018

   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 wanted to know for myself 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 Nov 02, 2018

   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 Nov 04, 2018

   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? It’s not as if he had any morale resistance to committing murder, right? Why would anyone insist he isn’t the Ripper? After all, he soon would be involved in homicides to the extant that he would one day be hanged for it.) 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 is the Ripper. But what is more ‘silly’ is that there are still people who have spent years studying this case who are making the argument that he can’t be.

   Message 25: By ‘Bob’…. i.e. Doug Lamoreux Nov 05 2018

   Ignoring the ‘facts’ stretched out of proportion to fit your theory (as some ripperologists have been known to do), I quote two sentences that damage the credibility of your argument.

   ‘Why would anyone think he wouldn’t be the Ripper?!’

   and

   ‘But what is in fact silly is that there are still people who have spent years studying this case who are making the argument that he is not.’

   How could anybody disagree with me?! – no matter how many exclamation points are employed – is not an argument.

   And ‘silliness’ by definition is not a matter of ‘fact’. It is a matter of opinion. One man’s silly is another’s deadly serious. Your claim the debate has ended for you is legitimate. You know (or have faith without proof) and are satisfied. Fair enough. Your insistence the debate for everyone else should reasonably be ended as well is, to me, silly. You’ve offered many points to be considered. You have offered NO proofs. History prevents you.

   There is more to making a case than simply shouting until everyone else leaves the room. You make valid points for Chapman. Others make valid points for other suspects. A valid theory could be made for the killer (or killers) being completely unknown, never considered, individual(s). The debate continues.

   message 26: by Douglas Barr Nov 05, 2018

   Believe me, I completely understand that probably 95% of ‘ripperologists’ do not agree with this theory, and I am 100% used to it. It means so much to them, they NEVER want the “mystery” to be solved or ended. I get it. Nothing will ever change that. It is almost comic sometimes, especially considering the stature that some of these people have attained. But I was once in the same boat, and I did not want it to end. That was the point of my last comment, thats all.

   I have offered no proof? Tell me though, what “proof” do you ever envision anybody ever offering you that would satisfy you? A film of the Ripper butchering Marie Kelly maybe? For him to come back from the grave and give a full confession? I think that even if either of these things were possible, even that would not satisfy the ripperologists. It would take away their meal ticket, maybe thats another reason. “Proof” is never possible for you, and you know it, and this is why you ask for “proof”. It seems to be the aim of “ripperologists” to forever go ’round in circles, no matter how obvious to a reasonable thinking adult it is that the killer has been identified, and was identified as far back as 1903. Some people simply do no

   Reply

   • douglas says

     November 19, 2021 at 2:01 pm

     message 30: by Leslie Nov 05, 2018
     I can’t fault your commitment and wholeheartedly defend your right to say what you think. Maybe your conclusion is correct; I don’t know and, as you say, we will never actually know for certain 100%. We can only speculate. I feel you are also correct about ‘Ripperologists’. There would be no need for them if the problem was solved. As for myself, I can only offer my completely fictional ending for Jack The Ripper, a figment of my over-enthusiastic imagination. Fortunately, it has proved popular if a little far-fetched.

     message 31: by Douglas Nov 06, 2018
     “Why he took to poisoning his women victims on his 2nd visit to this country can only be ascribed to his diabolical cunning, or some insane idea or urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity”
     – ex-Police Superintendent Arthur Neil, 1932

     Had Severin Klosowski not ever been caught murdering his “wives” by poison, he would almost surely have ended up, right now, being the number one favorite suspect for nearly every “ripperologist” who there is, due to the evidence alone: the fact that he arrived in the East End just before the murders began, that he had been trained in surgery, that he had been such a close match to so many witness descriptions, that the murders stopped right when he left for America, and that similar murders began in America right after he arrived there, etc etc etc. The evidence against Klosowski is just so much far greater than any ‘evidence’ that might exist against any of the other favorite ‘suspects’ (ie Druitt, Kosminski, Ostrog, etc.) It is only the fact that he would, ten years later, use another method, that he had also learned about while being trained as a ‘barber/surgeon in Poland, to kill his ‘wives’, that seems to eliminate him as a serious choice for suspect in their minds. It is only due to the fact that he, out of necessity and cunning (and a different motive for the murders), later changed his modus operandi. Can you imagine? Out of all the seriously considered popular ‘suspects’ in the ripper killings, he is the only one to be a proven killer of women, yet it is this same fact that precludes him from being a legitimate suspect in their opinions! How did they expect him to kill these ‘wives’ then? To butcher them also? Did they think that this cunning murderer who had never been caught would be so foolhardy as to butcher these three women that he had such close ties to? If the theory that the Whitechapel murders were done in order to procure uterus for the American who had offered money for them is correct (and I believe it is), if Klosowski had taken up the American on his offer, what reason would there be for him to kill his “wives”, nine years later, by the same means he had needed to use in killing women for their sexual organs? If Klosowski had not been the overachieving murderer that he was, he would have likely been accepted as being the Ripper long ago in the minds of most Ripperologists. Now isn’t that ironic?
     Klosowski, as well as being a serial killer of women, was also a devoted womanizer. It has long been the position of many in the field of psychiatry that many womanizers go from woman to woman only as a desperate attempt to prove their masculinity; often to prove to themselves that they are not bisexual. I have already stated that I believe that Klosowski and Tumblety might have been secretly in love with one-another. (what attracted Tumblety about Klosowski? Tumblety may have hated women, but he was an AMATEUR compared to ‘Chapman’. Klosowski could treat women like garbage. I feel certain this both amused and attracted Tumblety, while Klosowski was attracted to Tumblety’s being an American, highly successful, charismatic, etc) But I also believe that this ‘uterus motive’, that while it may have been the obvious motive for the five established Ripper murders, Klosowski had many other victims for whom this motive was not a factor. I believe that the biggest motive for those other murders was a deep seeded resentment towards women that he himself was not even fully aware of nor understood in himself, it was compulsive in him, arising unchecked from his subconscious. (this is also why he beat his ‘wives’) His sexuality was complex, and he had a lot of guilt and confusion over it, and shame, especially due to him having originated in such a male oriented ‘macho’ culture. (A violent culture also, ask any Bosniak) I know a few people from Slavic cultures, this fits. (As proud as he was that women found him desirable, at times he also hated them for finding him desirable.) When you add up the training as a ‘barber/surgeon’, being exposed to the cutting up of people at such a young age, and whatever unknown trauma he obviously suffered through at some point in his youth, it’s not difficult to believe that he might go on to do such things as we are suggesting that he did. The more you look into Severin Klosowski, the more it seems doubtful that anybody else could be more suited, or better qualified, to have been Jack-the-Ripper than he. This, at least, is my opinion.
     But let’s pretend for a minute that he was not the Ripper. What do you think the odds are, that just by coincidence, another serial killer, of such renown, who fit the profile so perfectly, just happened to be in the same exact places that the “real” ripper was, at the very same times? We know Klosowski was a serial killer, and we know he was there on those same East London streets in the autumn of 1888, we even know he was living in George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was butchered and mutilated there. And we are now going to believe that not only was serial killer Klosowski there, but also another serial killer; the Ripper, who would be killing women in Whitechapel for exactly as long as Klosowski would be living there, and would stop right when Klosowski would leave? Not even in the movies would they expect you to believe that something like that would happen I bet. Yet this is only a fraction of the evidence against him that we have already looked at!
     For many sober-thinking people, this adds up as “proof”.
     And while it may not have been enough proof to get him actually hanged, (for they did not know him back in 1888 as we now know him) his personality and character were such that his being hanged was going to get done no matter how cunning he might have been, no matter how good he might have been at pulling the wool over the police’s eyes. For as cunning as he was, he hadn’t accounted for the tenacity of officers Godley and Abberline! The ‘Ripperologists’ may not appreciate what those two men believed and did, but the murdered women of Whitechaple probably would have.

     message 32: by Douglas Nov 07, 2018
     One other thing I would like to clarify. At no time has it been my intention to suggest that anybody, wanting to write fictional accounts of these murders, shouldn’t be encouraged to do so. I would like to offer them my sincerest encouragement. I have enjoyed some of these stories myself, especially in the movies (‘Murder by Decree’ ‘Time after Time’ ‘The Lodger’ etc. I also liked the comic books ‘From Hell’ that were based largely on Stephen Knight’s work. I love this sort of thing- I even wondered if the Pole ‘Svengali’ (‘Trilby’) may have been a fictionalized account of the Pole Klosowski. Its author, George Du Maurier, had been the top illustrator at ‘Punch’ magazine during the Murders, and lived nearby. Maybe he had recieved one of Klosowski’s ‘Musical haircuts’ and had come up with the inspiration for a music teaching serial killer who had a strange control over women! I am half-joking)
     But I had felt absolutely driven to try to discover, even if only for myself alone, what had really happened in this case, and I was pleased with my essay. In my personal life, I had no one to share it with, I know nobody who is interested in this case.I had hoped that if I posted it here, that the intelligent readers of this website might like and appreciate it. I had first tried to post it on CASEBOOK.ORG, but was told that I did not have “permission” to post things on their website. I don’t know how to get permission, I tried to contact them but never received any reply.
     But I see no reason why, if it were proven that Klosowski was the Ripper, why that should deter anybody from writing anything they like. I really wished that my paper would please people who were writing things of their own, and most hopefully of all even inspire them in the future. This was my hope. The only thing that I had taken issue with was when certain writers, writers who had reached a position of certain world acclaim, seemed to ridicule the notion of Klosowski being the Ripper. There was no need for them to do so, in my opinion. It got my dander up, as they say. I even attempted to find the Email address for some of these writers to talk to them about it confidentially. I felt they had been in error, and I wanted the matter rectified.
     This emotion may have accounted for the weakest parts of my essay, but it also was the inspiration for me writing it in the first place. But I am looking foerward to reading the works of the people who I have shared my paper with on this webpage. Thank you
     I would add though, that I believe that the true story of Klosowski and Tumblety, re-told in motion picture form, told with all of the incidents I have put down here, could, if filmed by a competent director, make one of the most effective and blood chilling horror films of all time. As long as they kept it real; mysterious and dark, …not gratuitous, as seems the fashion nowadays
     message 33: by Leslie Nov 07, 2018
     It has been a pleasure to read your reports. You write in such an eloquent manner that I would suggest you insert greater details and extend the work into a full-length book. It is expensive to self-publish in hard copy but only costs around £150 to publish to Kindle. You will not make much money from it but for me, the pleasure I get from knowing people enjoy my work is payment enough. I have certainly enjoyed reading yours. Best wishes. L P Gibbs.
     message 34: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018
     “THERE was no more authorative voice on the Whitechapel murders than that of Abberline”…..
     “Recent writers, anxious to promote theories suggested in the writings of Macnaghten or Anderson, have sometimes found it necessary to disparage Abberline’s knowledge or contribution to the case”…
     -Phillip Sugden, ‘The Complete History of Jack the Ripper’ 1994. Chapter 22; ‘You’ve Got Jack the Ripper At Last! : George Chapman’
     This ‘disparaging’ of Abberline that Sugden points out is what most people refer to as a ‘hidden-agenda’. Highly subjective reporting, twisting the facts in order to ‘prove’ a pet theory of the authors, disregarding what is then being done to the reputation of one who had deserved to be treated so much better than this by us. Unfortunately, it is common practice in the history of ‘ripperology’, particularly in regards to Frederick Abberline.
     I find it incredible that nobody has yet written a biography of Frederick Abberline. Why is that? So many books have been written on the Ripper, purporting to be true, each more preposterous than the last in many cases. Abberline’s story is the one book that could do the world of Ripperology some actual good, and nobody writes it. The research that would need be done for such an account might provide some new information helpful in solving the Ripper case. Knowing something of Abberline myself, I also know that the fact that he was so intimately involved in the Ripper investigation would be only one of many interesting chapters in this remarkable policeman’s career. He had twenty-five years working the streets of East London under his belt when the first Ripper attack happened. It is said that if you ever visited East London and had something stolen from you, Abberline would know who had pilfered the merchandise and where to find it, such was his knowledge of the East London streets and underworld. He knew what was going on better than any police informant did. (This reminds me of the detective in the movie ‘Pickup on South Street’, and the little jewish woman in that same movie, who was saving up money so that when she died her body would not end up in the Potter’s field. They both had the same Abberline-like knowledge of the streets, but in 1950s New York instead of Victorian era London.) More than just about anybody else I can think of, the life story of Abberline, and the research that would go into it’s telling, could bring into focus what it was like living in the seamy side of foggy, gas lit, horse-drawn Victorian London better than anything since Dickens himself.
     This, I feel, is also why, when Abberline said to Inspector Godley, “congradulations, you just caught ‘Jack the Ripper’ “, that his remark to Godley should be given special consideration by us. Far more consideration than that we give to just about every ‘ripperologist’ with a new idea that he hopes will be successful in making his next book a bestseller, and far more too than we give to Macnaughtens 1894 report; Abberline had been ten times more involved in the case than Mcnaughten had ever been, Mcnaughten only got involved after it was all over. It blows my mind the lack of credence we give this extraordinarily talented police officer of Victorian era London, while at the same time we grant book authors who were nowhere around at the time expert status on these crimes that Abberline had so thoroughly investigated for so long, and was so certain that he had found the instigator of them finally. It is even harder to believe when you consider the good sense his theory of the crimes makes, and how every detail has been accounted for and fits so nicely in place. ( it is my feeling that the reason so many writers have been unconcerned about possibly being unfair to Abberline is because they believe he should have captured the Ripper in 1888, and he didn’t. This would haunt him for the remainder of his career, as it did the entire police force. But Abberline never wrote books later in an attempt to justify his lack of success, as just about all of the others did. He admitted his shortcoming openly when interviewed, and he had nothing to hide about it.)
     Only Phillip Sugden, only he seems equally believable, also without ulterior motive. Sugden stopped short in naming anybody as being the Ripper, he knew the backlash it could cause, and he was perfectly aware that Ripperologists would forever disparage him from then on if he did. But he certainly gave good reasons for eliminating every serious ‘ripper suspect’ that had previously been named up to the point of his book (Kosminski, Druitt, Ostrog, etc). The only one he could not eliminate is Klosowski. It was from Sugdens own book that I first became aware of ‘George Chapman’, even though he claimed he could not name Klosowski as the Ripper with any degree of certainty. But I sure got the feeling that he believed Klosowski was guilty, even though he couldn’t offer proof that would stand up to the Ripperologists protests that he knew were sure to follow if he did name him! (But in fact Sugden did point the finger of guilt directly at Klosowski, he pointed at Klosowski at least as strongly as Mcnaughten had pointed out Kosminski or Druitt in his 1894 report, and he devoted the entire closing chapter of his book to it. And Sugden also included reams of evidence against Klosowski, while Mcnaughten provided almost none, on anybody; only implication.)

     message 35: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018
     “The Chapman theory, while given additional credibility by being advanced by no less an authority than Abberline, suffers from one fundamental flaw: why would Jack-the-Ripper have SUDDENLY changed from throat cutting to poisoning?”
     – ‘Jack-the-Ripper; the Definitive Story’ 2011 TV documentary (a good one)

     It was nine years between the final ‘Ripper murder’ of Mary Kelly and the first ‘Borough poisoning’ of Mary Spink. Since when has nine years been defined as “suddenly”? This (above) is how Ripperologists continually try to confuse readers, and it has been working for them pretty well up to now (it will probably continue to work for them). Never have I seen it pointed out that the reason the Ripper stopped using a knife was because he only really needed the knife in the 1st place to cut out the uterus with, and that he did not need the uterus of his “wives”, (as Tumblety was out of the picture by that time) and thus there was no reason for him to kill by that method any longer. Klosowski had been trained in medicine and poisons, in addition to surgery. Poison better demonstrated the resourcefulness of this inadequate little egomaniac to himself; it better demonstrated how ‘clever’ he was. Besides, while these women were not, in fact, his “wives”, he lived with them, how could he get away with cutting them up like that? He is going to be the first person the police suspect, and he knows it. The only way for Klosowski to ‘outsmart’ the police in this instance is for it to be made to seem like natural causes, right?
     I mean, when you think about it, why do we even take these ‘ripperologists’ seriously at all? What breakthroughs in the Ripper-case have ever come via the ‘ripperologists”? These writers who tell us who and what to believe, and who have told us that Abberline probably didn’t know what he was talking about when he said Klosowski was the Ripper? Or who have lied to us and told us that Abberline actually changed his mind about Klosowski late in life? These writers who have come up with absurd suspect after even more absurd suspect?
     This is how inept they are: Francis Tumblety had been one of the main players at the close of the Ripper case in Nov 1888. Everybody who was following the case at all knew about him, he had been followed by detectives from England to America, and many newspapers in America had covered these facts. Not only that, but he is one of the few people actually arrested in connection with the case who is still today spoken seriously as a valid suspect. But during at least sixty years of books on the Ripper, from the late 1920s through the early 1990s, ‘Ripperologists’ didn’t even know who Tumblety was! What were they researching? How did they get information? When Stewart P Evans rediscovered Tumblety in the 1990s, (through a letter he had found in an auction written by officer Littlechild) he didn’t deserve the relative acclaim he was given for his discovery, but rather ‘ripperologists’ should have themselves been ridiculed for a change, for having been so neglectful for so long up to then. (Evans certainly did not deserve any acclaim for the attempt to market his discovery into being the latest Ripper suspect, especially when you read his theory for the murder of Liz Stride: [Tumblety, who is the Ripper, had just coincidentally passed by the location where somebody else was murdering Stride, one block from Tumblety’s lodgings, as he, Tumblety, was returning home from butchering Eddowes! And this other murderer of Stride, why, he was never caught either, in the middle of the largest police manhunt in history almost! The police refuse to catch anybody at ALL it seems!]. He had all the evidence he then needed to have known Tumblety’s actual role in the murders. It just seems he was too intent on naming his new discovery the actual Ripper. (I sometimes feel guilty about being critical of someone like Evans, who was working on this for so much longer, and so much harder, than I ever would have. But it is getting at the truth that matters to me, and if anybody can appreciate that, Evans can. My main problem with Evans is that he wants to believe that there were many killers at work in that very limited time frame, when the odds are that only one person would be responsible, and the odds against anyone else being involved are just too great, as is the common sense against it. It seems far more likely that the Ripper was not responsible for less than the popular five victims, but rather he did ALL of the bizarre murders that happened in London in 1888 (and probably even more). Evans wants to believe that there were two or three killers, all in that short timeframe, all of them cunning enough to evade the largest police manhunt in London’s history? He explains it by suggesting ‘copycat killers’ had been responsible for some of the murders. But it is difficult enough to believe that the Ripper himself was as lucky as he was, evading the largest police dragnet in the history of London. But now Evans wants us to believe that not only was the Ripper so lucky, but at least one other was cunning enough to get away with bloody serial-killing in this environment also, at the very same time as the Ripper was doing it, and that this other ‘copycat’ killer never got caught either?)
     And these ‘Ripperologists’ are the people we listen to before we listen to the greatest police officer to have worked the case? We are going to believe them before we believe Abberline himself? What is wrong with US then? Thats all we can be left asking ourselves! The answer to the ripper mystery has been right there in front of our very faces since 1903, yet we won’t look at it. Why? Because if we do, ‘ripperologists’ might not be able to sell any more books on the subject, that’s how it seems. ‘Ripperologists have carefully, and sometimes perhaps subconsciously, been leading people away from the true murderer since 1929; the date of the first real book on the subject, written by the first real ‘ripperologist’; Leonard Matters. (1929 had also been 26 years since Abberline had congradulated Godley for having captured the Ripper).
     And there had been people who were telling us Klosowski was probably the Ripper since 1903, and they have been pretty-well ridiculed by these same ripperologists since. (the standing-room-only audience that had packed the trial of ‘George Chapman’ had, for the most part, been sure they had been watching justice being handed down in the Jack-the-Ripper murders; and they almost certainly had been) ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’ was telling it, so had crime writer H.L. Adam, ex-police Superintendent Arthur Neil. These early writers had to be more diplomatic about it though, because the ‘Chapman theory’ did not make the London police look good; far from it. People like H.L. Adam had many friends on the police force: Mcnaughten and Robert Anderson being two of his closest friends. Suggesting that the police had let a man slip by them who had been living AND working at the very bulls-eye of the killing zone in the autumn of ’88 was not going to make Adam popular with those two men. He had to be careful about what he said while naming Klosowski, and he was.
     And there are currently at least two books (by less established publishers, to be sure, but well researched books just the same), by writers R. Michael Gordon and Helena Wojtczak, both about Klosowski’s being the Ripper. Yet so few people know about it, and even fewer believe it.
     But hundreds of thousands of people know about Ripper suspect William Gull, & his Freemasons; they also know ‘Prince Eddy’; painter Walter Sickert; the Maybrick “Diary”, ….etc etc! And lets not omit that Queen Victoria herself has had many people believe that she had been involved also, Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley too, even Lewis Carroll! It is names like these that keep books on ‘Ripperology’ selling in such big numbers, keeping it such a big business. No wonder ripperologists hate the name of the real murderer, the person who, if people believed he was the Ripper, could end it all.
     When you take a look at all of the books on Jack-the-Ripper that have been published by any of the major, established book-publishing firms, everybody has been named as being the Ripper EXCEPT Klosowski it seems! (when he has been mentioned by them, it is usually to ridicule the very idea of him being the Ripper)
     message 36: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018
     Isn’t it convenient how, when somebody begins the story of the Ripper Murders, they usually begin at George Yard Buildings, where the 1st two victims, Emma Smith and Martha Tabrum, were both attacked at the opening of the Whitechapel Murder spree, and where Severin Klosowski, too, was both residing and being employed in a barber shop in the basement under the ‘White Hart’ pub, at the very same instant that those two attacks took place? Even if the account of the murders does not mention Klosowski by name, it often begins by showing a photo of where he was living at the very time of the first murder in the series; the same place where Martha Tabrum’s murder occurred. The story begins with another million-to-one coincidence in a account that is positively riddled with unlikely, bizarre coincidence! [although all this unlikely coincidence is explained quite simply once we understand that Klosowski was the Ripper]
     And just consider the number of bizarre coincidence we have looked at. Remember ‘The Maltese Falcon’, when Sam Spade was going over the clues implicating Brigid O’Shaughnessy? “Maybe some of them are unimportant, I won’t argue that…..but look at the NUMBER of them!” Look at the number of them, consider they’re significance, and then consider the odds against them all being incorrect. (if only HALF of them were correct it would still be a devastating case against Klosowski.)
     (the Emma Smith attack seems to have been, by her own account, a gang-rape, done about four months before the real murder-spree began. I only mention it here because it has often been associated with the Whitechapel murders, and because I feel that its having happened so close to his home, it may have partly inspired Klosowski when he heard about it, or set him off somehow, maybe even in an attempt to top it)
     I feel that anybody, any fair-minded thinker, reading these past number of messages, from #15 on down, will come to the conclusion that Severin Klosowski has been proven guilty of being the Whitechapel Murderer, beyond any reasonable doubt. I may not have proven his guilt to the extant that most ‘Ripperologists’ would declare necessary, but I feel I have also proven that the ‘Ripperologists’ do not really want the case solved at all, which is the reason they have been, for so long now, set so specifically against even naming Klosowski as a suspect,(the single suspect who has had more circumstantial evidence discovered against him than any other, by far), going only so far as to name him an “alleged” suspect, while naming at least five others ‘SUSPECTS’ who have nowhere near the amount of evidence against them that Klosowski has. All these other “suspects” had, in fact, was that Macnaughten had pointed the finger of guilt at them in his 1894 report, a report, incidentally, that was written more than 10 years before Klosowski had come to public attention! Macnaughten couldn’t have named Klosowski in his precious report because he had never even heard of him yet at that time. The reason he had never heard of Klosowski goes back to Klosowski’s cunning, and we know how cunning the Ripper was, to have been able to cut up all those women whilst the entire police force was looking in each nook and cranny for him as he was doing it. It’s just one more thing, besides the surgery, besides being in the same locations at the same times, etc, that the Ripper and Klosowski have in common (besides sharing the same parents, and the same body): they both share the same identical degree of animal cunning. (yet as cunning as Klosowski might seem, he was also capable of making foolish mistakes. For example, when the police searched his residence after having arrested him in 1902, they discovered among his possessions evidence proving that ‘George Chapman’ was also Severin Klosowski, something they had been completely unaware of. Chapman would continue to vehemently deny that he was Klosowski. But he had kept records that would go on to implicate him in a number of crimes (for more detail, see ‘Trial of George Chapman’ by H.L. Adam) It amazed police that he would keep all this evidence. And among the few photographs that exist of Klosowski which had been among his possessions, in one of them he is wearing the same nautical ‘peaked’ cap that Jack-the-Ripper had been described by witnesses as having worn. It seemed he was so certain he would never be caught that he foolishly kept these things, almost as if he had planned on one day telling his life story to the world at large, and that he was certain they wanted to know every detail about him. He really had a huge Ego! As a criminal/killer it was his single fault it seems. This Ego made him very proud that he had been successful in ‘outsmarting’ police for so long, but it also convinced him he would never get caught. I believe he was completely aware that his crimes would be very famous, and they made him an important figure in his mind, and that this gave him an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction in himself. Both he and Tumblety were very caught-up in this type of thing, on being ‘important’. It was not the killing that made him feel important so much, but the fact that he had outsmarted so many police, and had been the focus of so much newspaper attention. It gave him the sense that he was far more important than the average person. This feeling was something that Tumblety thrived on also. Tumblety took great pride in having important world figures as his ‘personal friends’, and he even wrote about it. I wonder if, in his mind, Jack-the-Ripper was one of these World figures he was proud of being friendly with?)
     Abberline had pointed the finger of guilt at Klosowski, so why doesn’t that count as much as Macnaughten’s report to these ‘ripperologists’? It should count even more, shouldn’t it? Why does the opinion of Macnaughten , who was not even working the case at the time of the murders, carry so much more weight for most ‘ripperologists’ than the opinion of Abberline does, who was running the show during the time of the murders? Such is the threat they see Klosowski posing to their book-theories it seems. And it is also interesting to note that Macnaughten did not include Francis Tumblety in his 1894 report. For while Klosowski was unknown to the police at that time, and thusly could not have been known to Macnaughten at the time he wrote his report, Tumblety was well known to to police, and had been for five years. Officer Littlechild maintained that Tumblety was the police’s main suspect. Yet Macnaughten did not mention Tumblety at all. What’s up with that?
     THIS is why Tumblety had been forgotten all those years. It seems ‘Ripperologists’ had become blind to everything that was not included in that erroneous report of Macnaughten’s; a policeman who had not even been working on the case at the time of the murders! As Phillip Sugden said; ‘the contrasting writings of Macnaughten, Anderson, and Littlechild, and the fact that they agree on almost nothing, only prove that, in the end, the police were only grasping at straws concerning Jack-the-Ripper, and that the police investigation ended in abysmal failure; they were clueless about the Ripper in 1888, and would only continue to remain clueless about it’. Abberline had admitted pretty much the same thing himself, prior to 1903, when he first learned about Klosowski. (Learning of Klosowski’s movements in 1888 clearly answered 15 years of questions for Abberline in 1903.)
     And if police had really suspected the truth, the ‘ripperologists’ would probably have only cast doubt on them, like they did with Abberline, so that they themselves could continue selling books about their bizarre ‘Ripper-theories’. (Remember too, when Abberline was interviewed by the ‘Gazette’ in 1903, Macnaughtens report was by that time nine years old. Macnaughten may have not known about Klosowski when he wrote his report, but Abberline, when interviewed in 1903, knew more about the suspects named by Macnaughten in his report than Macnaughten ever did, and he obviously had never believed any of them were the Ripper. For it was Abberline who had interviewed all the suspects, including those named by Macnaughten.)
     See the appendix for Abberline’s complete ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ interview.
     Each day, in almost every nation on the planet, people are sent to serve life sentences in prison having been convicted of murder on less evidence than I have, in these comments above, compiled against our friend Klosowski here. This has been done now, I have no doubt about it. Read it again if you do not believe me, from the beginning on down, see for yourself. I hope you will. And if you believe that you see any “holes” in my argument against Klosowski, please take note, be specific about them, so that I can clarify the misunderstanding for you.

     Dedicated to:
     Police-Detective Extraordinaire, Chief-Inspector Frederick G. Abberline
     Dr. Wynne E. Baxter
     Dr. George Bagster Phillips
     Chief-Inspector George Godley
     Police Superintendent Arthur Neil
     Sir Edward Carson, Solicitor General, 1903
     The staff at ‘Pall Mall Gazette’, circa 1903
     Hargrave L. Adam
     Phillip Sugden
     Keith Skinner
     Stewart P. Evans
     R. Michael Gordon
     Helena Wojtczak
     To the memories of:
     Annie Millwood, age 38 Died 1888 – Feb 25 (White’s Row, George Yard)
     Ada Wilson, age 39 (Survived) attack occoured March 28 1888, (Maidman Street)
     Emma Smith, age 45 Died 1888 – April 2 (George St. Spitafields)
     Martha Tabrum, 1849-1888 – Aug 7 (George Yard Buildings)
     Mary Ann Nichols, 1845-1888 – Aug 31 (Bucks Row)*
     Annie Chapman, 1841-1888 -Sept 8 (Hanbury St)*
     Elizabeth Stride, 1843-1888 -Sept 30 (Berner St)*
     Cathrine Eddowes, 1842-1888 -Sept 30 (Mitre Sq)*
     Mary Jane Kelly, 1863-1888 -Nov 9 (Millers Ct, Dorset St)*
     Rose Mylett, 1863-1888 -Dec 20 (Poplar High St, Poplar)
     Alice McCkenzie, 1849-1889 – July 17 (Castle Alley)
     Francis Coles, 1865-1891 -Feb 13 (Cable St)
     Carrie Brown, 1829-1891 – April 24 (Water St., New York City)
     Mary Spink, 1856-1897 -Dec 25** (Bartholomew Sq., Prince of Wales Pub)
     Bessie Taylor, 1865-1901 -Feb 13** (Union St. Lambeth)
     Mary Ann Austin, 1873-1901 -May 27 (Millers Court, Dorset St)
     Maud Marsh, 1884-1902 -Oct 22** (Borough High St, Southwark) *- ‘canonical’ murders **- poisoned over time
     the five anonymous ‘torso murder’ victims of London, beginning in 1888 and ending 1902 (isn’t that a coincidence!?)
     and any other of his victims that we are unaware of, along with those who most certainly had been murdered prior to 1888, in Poland, Russia, or France
     -[note the 5 year break (above) in murders, in-between 1891-1897, between Carrie Brown and Mary Spink, when Klosowski had returned from America. This, ‘coincidentally’ was when Klosowski was trying his ‘best’ to turn over a new leaf, becoming an (unsuccessful) ‘family man, and (successful) proprietor of pubs. It seems to me that, after his return to England in 1892, he sincerely tried to stop the murdering, and to take up other pursuits (sailing, cycling, photography), but it always came back down to the stalking of women; the hunt and the killing. It was like an addiction for him it seems. There is no 12-step, ‘serial-killers anonymous’ meeting for that! (He almost reminds me of that Russian-Count-hunter, ‘Zaroff’, [played so well by Liverpudlian actor Leslie Banks], who trapped people on his remote island and then hunted them down in the jungle for sport, in the old B&W movie ‘The Most Dangerous Game’, RKO 1932). If I sound flippant here, I do not mean to be. It is only because the murders occurred over a century ago, and nobody alive now has known any of the people involved.]

     message 37: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
     I copied and pasted from the review/comments on Amazon book reviews for the book ‘PRISONER 4374’ by A J Griffiths-Jones, where, among other places, I had posted the above essay

     Tom Wescott 3 months ago
     Douglas Barr, it does not reflect well at all on you that you’re spamming all the Ripper book review pages with your outdated, flawed theory. If you’re so concerned about getting your theory out, then write a book, or submit an article to a journal such as Ripperologist, or create your own web page documenting your theory. Do not SPAM pages devoted to the hard works of others.
     message 38: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
     Let me worry about how it reflects on me, OK? And I don’t have time or the drive it takes to get it published, its only 10 pages anyway. So how else are people going to be able to find out what really happened unless I post it here? Certainly not from any of these books about the Ripper that you are so touchy about. I got a right to state what I feel are the true facts about it, and anybody with half a brain can see that it is mostly correct. I am not trying to charge money or even ask for any recognition; all recognition should go to Abberline finally.
     Another thing, I will “spam”, write, copy, cut&paste, etc….. or anything ELSE I see fit to do! If you want to tell people about what they need to do, tell it to someone else. Hard work of others??? Brother! if it is so delicate that it is so easally threatened by what I write, it sure cant be very true.
     And tell me something; other than Klosowski, what theory ISN’T flawed? Yours?
     I don’t know how to make a web page and havn’t the patience to learn. I tried to put my piece here up on CASEBOOK.ORG, but I was told that I didn’t have “permission” to submit posts on their website. That left Amazon book reviews. Amazon has a surprising amount of courage in comparison to most of these webpages that allow comments to be posted. I put it up on as many Ripper reviews as I could because I wanted people to see it, that’s all. It’s up to them whether they want to read it or not, after seeing that it’s there. Believe it or not, some people have actually liked it.
     “Outdated theory”?! thats good, coming from the latest generation of ‘ripperologists’; people whos only real concern is the latest ‘trending theories’, theories that are currently selling books best.
     One more thing: The truth is NEVER “outdated”. Judging by what you ‘ripperologists’ have been writing lately, you wouldn’t know much about the truth, or even care. All you care about is selling a few books, and keeping people from actually learning what really happened, because if they did know, the careers of the ‘Ripperologists’ would likely be over. THIS is why you people try to suppress the Chapman theory! And if you were one fraction as passionate about the Ripper murders as you pretend to be, you would have congradulated me on the piece!
     Sorry if I come off as being angry, but you didn’t merely complain about me “spamming”, you also ridiculed my thoughts and ideas, I poured my heart into that essay. The whole inspiration for me writing it in the first place was in retaliation over the fact that so many “ripperologists” had been calling the single most logical and likely theory of them all stupid, as if they were personally threatened by the Klosowski theory. And it wasn’t my theory at that point, but I could see that there was something rotten about what they were doing, something phony. There you have it. Just go and look at what Stewart Evans said about the “Chapman Theory” in his ‘Ripper’ book about Tumblety: ‘1st American serial killer’ , and this was after Phillip Sugden had pointed out that Klosowski was the only suspect, out of all of the suspects, that could not be eliminated – (He successfully eliminated all of the other so-called “suspects” that the Ripperologists have debated on over the years). But Evans, in his book about Tumblety, “eliminates” Klosowski so quickly that it could make your head spin. The trouble is that the only reason he “eliminated” him so quickly was because if he had spent more time doing it, it would have only more clearly exposed the fact that he had nothing of any substance to eliminate Klosowski on; but he simply wanted his readers to believe that Tumblety was the Ripper instead, because it was he himself who had rediscovered Tumblety, for which he deserves credit. But how can people like this be in charge of our notions about the truth on Jack-the-Ripper? Fido and Begg called George Chapman an “alleged” Ripper-suspect, but they didn’t use any such negative prefix when calling the far less likely Kosminski, or Druitt “SUSPECTS”, in their ‘Jack-the-Ripper A thru Z’ book! Martin Fido has gone on TV and stated “Anybody suggesting that Montegue Druitt is Jack-the-Ripper can do so knowing he has made a serious, respectable choice” or some such nonsense, yet he reprimands anybody who seriously makes his vote for George Chapman / Severin Klosowski, as if he and his friends know so much better than Abberline himself did, or Phillip Sugden even. It just gets to me that these people set themselves up as the ‘Grand Ol’ Men of Ripperology’, and then passive-aggressively twist the facts in order to support their own personal views of events, and go on TV speaking so condescendingly and patronizingly towards anybody with a different idea, no matter how sound that idea may be.
     And remember, Inspector Abberline was the only man from the original investigation who had integrity enough to admit what had really happened, no matter how bad it may have made him and the rest of Scotland yard appear, no matter how angry it might have made the public at him. This was largely due to him having retired from the force and working for an independent agency at the time. But that only adds to his credibility. He never wrote any books on the case in later years as so many of his peers were doing, he was only interested in finding results, never with his own ‘reputation and image’, as so many others were. And now, Ripperologists have even put words in his mouth, and told lies that he changed his mind about Chapman in later years- which was all based on that book by ‘Ripperologist’ Donald McCormick; ‘The Identity of Jack the Ripper’, which, instead of simply telling us the truth that Klosowski was the Ripper, instead made the preposterous and bizarre allegation that Klosowski had a ‘secret Russian double’ who was the actual Ripper, (and was also a Russian spy sent over by Rasputin to boot! – I mean, at that early date, how would Rasputin even know about Klosowski to go looking for a ‘double’ to put in his place?) and that Abberline changed his mind about Klosowski being the Ripper when he learned early on that it was ‘Klosowski’s double’ who was the ‘true’ Ripper! Can you imagine the great Abberline ever believing such an outrageous, preposterous thing!? It is libelous to even suggest that he believed something so ludicrous in print!……… Klosowski simply had all the same traits, and was just coincidentally a surgeon, and had lived in all the right places in Whitechapel…etc etc etc. Sure thing Bud! The fact of the matter is that Abberline’s comments in ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of 1903 indicate that he himself did not even know about Klosowski/Chapman until 1902! He did not suspect Klosowski/Chapman of being the Ripper until the trial of ‘George Chapman’! (This was also pointed out by Phillip Sugden in his remarkable book on the Whitechapel Murders; ‘The Complete History Of Jack-the-Ripper’; a book which also debunks Donald McCormick’s untrustworthy book better than I ever could. In my opinion, more than any other book by any other ‘Ripperologist’, McCormick’s book, and his fabrications about George Chapman, Inspector Abberline, Dr Thomas Dutton, William LeQueux, ‘Pedachenko’ (who surely never even existed), Rasputin, etc., set the Ripper theories back at least 50 years. I believe that if not for that book, Severin Klosowski probably would have been known as being Jack-the-Ripper thirty years ago. But it is a testament to how seriously these ‘books’ by ‘Ripperologists’ are taken by other ‘Ripperologists’. How could they simply take McCormick at his word that he had ever even seen this alleged ‘crime-notebook’ by Dr Dutton?!! Convienant for McCormick how everything in his book has no way of ever being substantiated, right? Or maybe ‘Ripperologists’ never took it seriously at all, they just knew a good thing when they saw it. To sell a lot of books is a good thing I guess. But even if it misleads people? Oh well, at least that book of McCormick’s has been totally disgraced. Yet ‘Ripperologists’ still speak fairly respectfully about McCormick himself in their books.)
     Abberline never changed his mind, certainly never on record. Any suggestion that he did is putting words in his mouth after he had died, which also demonstrates how low these people will stoop in discrediting this important theory. The only reason to do that is because it is correctly acknowledged that Abberline’s opinion is THE most significant of all. (Even Paul Begg, in his book ‘Jack the Ripper; the Facts’, stated that Abberline might have changed his mind [regarding Chapman being the Ripper] in later years’ , Yet he provided no proof of where he might have heard this, and no other details about why he says this, which tells me that he was probably just embarrassed to admit that he had gotten it from Donald McCormick’s book.)
     It was Abberline’s opinion that Klosowski was the Ripper! There is ZERO evidence that his opinion ever changed.
     My so-called “spamming” was in reality an attempt by me to respect and substantiate Inspector Abberilne’s opinion, after so many other people have dragged it through the mud.
     ( I edited this reply and included much of it in the original essay, posted above, in messages #15 on down) D.B.
     message 39: by Douglas Jan 28, 2019
     Helena_Wojtczak 3 months ago
     As the universally-acknowledged world expert on George Chapman/Seweryn Klosowski (note correct spelling) , I welcome Douglas B Barr’s review. My biography of George Chapman is available on Amazon. It’s called “JACK THE RIPPER AT LAST?”

     Reply

     • douglas Barr says

       November 19, 2021 at 6:01 pm

       #1. Martha Tabrum (Aug 7)   #2. Polly Nicholls (Aug 31)   #3. Annie Chapman (Sept 8)  #4. Liz Stride (Sept 30)   #5. Catherine Eddowes (Sept 30)      #6. Marie Kelley (Nov 9)             George Chapman/Severin Klosowski (both the same guy) was almost without a doubt Jack-the-Ripper. Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline knew it over a hundred years ago, and any ‘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 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 offer. The coroner at the murder inquest for Annie Chapman knew about it (Annie had been one of Jack-the-Rippers earlier victims), and had brought it up as the probable motive for the current Whitechapel murders of 1888. The American had even specified just how he had wanted these sexual organs to be preserved during their shipment to the United States. (You can read about this in the inquest transcript, published in Stewart Evans’ & Keith Skinner’s amazing book; ‘The Ultimate Jack-the-Ripper Companion’, pgs. 102-107. More importantly, read the 1903 interview for the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ with inspector Frederick Abberline, conducted as ‘George Chapman’ was on trial for murdering his three ‘wives’; the interview is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of ripperology. This interview is also included in Philip Sugden’s excellent book, ‘The Complete History of Jack-the-Ripper’, which is still today the definitive book on the Ripper case.  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 on 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) on some attacks 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]         

       Reply

3. Douglas Barr says

   November 19, 2021 at 2:14 pm

   Some people simply do not want the case to be solved, and thats something else that Inspector Abberline discovered, and accepted.

   But I too have a right to give my opinion on a case that I have spent much of my time looking into, can we at least agree on that? Also, people who believe that Klosowski is the ripper have seen their belief ridiculed in books about the Ripper for generations, and now I am being accused of “shouting”? Maybe I was provoked into “shouting”, and exclamation points also!!!

   Ripperologists, for years now, have been saying things in their books designed to make people who disagree with them about Klosowski feel intimidated about expressing their beliefs about him. And when we finally do, we get accused of being bullies almost.

   I will say this in my defense; at least I never put words in anybody’s mouth, after they had died, in an attempt to “prove” my case, as ‘ripperologists’ have done with Abberline, in their attempt to “prove’ the illegitimacy of Klosowski (see end of message #18). The only reason anybody would ever do that would be because they felt it was necessary; because there is no HONEST way to show that Klosowski wasn’t the Ripper. Maybe I don’t have absolute proof, but I do have honesty. Another thing, I have never heard anybody ‘prove’ that Klosowski is NOT the Ripper either. As opposed as many are against this theory, you would think if he were not the Ripper, somebody could have proved that by now. Phillip Sugden pretty well proved the other ‘suspects couldn’t have been. But he said he could not do the same for Klosowski. Now isn’t that something?

   message 27: by ‘Bob’ Nov 05, 2018

   I clearly said History prevents ANYBODY proving his (or her) theory. You cannot satisfy me that you are right. Neither can anyone else, regardless of their theory. That’s neither here nor there to me. My interest in the Whitechapel murders was never ‘who dunnit’. My bread and butter does not depend on the answer to that question.

   There is no debate that a final solution, regardless of its makeup, would take away the meal ticket of many ripperologists. Absolutely agreed. And they might fight your theory on those grounds. I, on the other hand, am doing no such thing. I am a fiction writer. I wrote my fictional account, but that is what it is; a fictional account.

   Your theory has interesting points. (As do others.) It also has big holes that can’t be explained away. Go with your theory, why not. Defend it, if you think it necessary. But frankly, when the case cannot be proved – and it cannot – it’s a waste of time calling others names if they disagree with you. And it stains your argument, whether you think so or not.

   message 28: by Douglas Nov 05, 2018

   Well congratulations, you will never be satisfied, by anybody. I, however, am satisfied, 100%. It was Inspector Abberline who convinced me.

   By the way, what “holes” do you see in the theory? You told me already about having a problem with only two uteruses missing, and about the facial wounds on Eddowes only. Those were not holes, in fact they end-up supporting the theory more strongly, as I feel that I demonstrated already in message #21. What other ‘big holes’? Or was that all you got? That is your “big holes”?

   I like the way you complain about “big holes” in the theory without offering any evidence of it. It seems to be something you ‘ripperologists’ love doing.

   Or maybe it is a “big hole” that inspector Abberline changed his mind about Klosowski, except that he changed his mind only after having died first? No, that is not a “hole”. That is a flat-out LIE

   ……But in all seriousness Bob, I would like to thank you for pointing out certain things in my account that perhaps needed some clarification by me

   message 30: by Leslie Nov 05, 2018

   I can’t fault your commitment and wholeheartedly defend your right to say what you think. Maybe your conclusion is correct; I don’t know and, as you say, we will never actually know for certain 100%. We can only speculate. I feel you are also correct about ‘Ripperologists’. There would be no need for them if the problem was solved. As for myself, I can only offer my completely fictional ending for Jack The Ripper, a figment of my over-enthusiastic imagination. Fortunately, it has proved popular if a little far-fetched.

   message 31: by Douglas Nov 06, 2018

   “Why he took to poisoning his women victims on his 2nd visit to this country can only be ascribed to his diabolical cunning, or some insane idea or urge to satisfy his inordinate vanity”

   – ex-Police Superintendent Arthur Neil, 1932

   Had Severin Klosowski not ever been caught murdering his “wives” by poison, he would almost surely have ended up, right now, being the number one favorite suspect for nearly every “ripperologist” who there is, due to the evidence alone: the fact that he arrived in the East End just before the murders began, that he had been trained in surgery, that he had been such a close match to so many witness descriptions, that the murders stopped right when he left for America, and that similar murders began in America right after he arrived there, etc etc etc. The evidence against Klosowski is just so much far greater than any ‘evidence’ that might exist against any of the other favorite ‘suspects’ (ie Druitt, Kosminski, Ostrog, etc.) It is only the fact that he would, ten years later, use another method, that he had also learned about while being trained as a ‘barber/surgeon in Poland, to kill his ‘wives’, that seems to eliminate him as a serious choice for suspect in their minds. It is only due to the fact that he, out of necessity and cunning (and a different motive for the murders), later changed his modus operandi. Can you imagine? Out of all the seriously considered popular ‘suspects’ in the ripper killings, he is the only one to be a proven killer of women, yet it is this same fact that precludes him from being a legitimate suspect in their opinions! How did they expect him to kill these ‘wives’ then? To butcher them also? Did they think that this cunning murderer who had never been caught would be so foolhardy as to butcher these three women that he had such close ties to? If the theory that the Whitechapel murders were done in order to procure uterus for the American who had offered money for them is correct (and I believe it is), if Klosowski had taken up the American on his offer, what reason would there be for him to kill his “wives”, nine years later, by the same means he had needed to use in killing women for their sexual organs? If Klosowski had not been the overachieving murderer that he was, he would have likely been accepted as being the Ripper long ago in the minds of most Ripperologists. Now isn’t that ironic?

   Klosowski, as well as being a serial killer of women, was also a devoted womanizer. It has long been the position of many in the field of psychiatry that many womanizers go from woman to woman only as a desperate attempt to prove their masculinity; often to prove to themselves that they are not bisexual. I have already stated that I believe that Klosowski and Tumblety might have been secretly in love with one-another. (what attracted Tumblety about Klosowski? Tumblety may have hated women, but he was an AMATEUR compared to ‘Chapman’. Klosowski could treat women like garbage. I feel certain this both amused and attracted Tumblety, while Klosowski was attracted to Tumblety’s being an American, highly successful, charismatic, etc) But I also believe that this ‘uterus motive’, that while it may have been the obvious motive for the five established Ripper murders, Klosowski had many other victims for whom this motive was not a factor. I believe that the biggest motive for those other murders was a deep seeded resentment towards women that he himself was not even fully aware of nor understood in himself, it was compulsive in him, arising unchecked from his subconscious. (this is also why he beat his ‘wives’) His sexuality was complex, and he had a lot of guilt and confusion over it, and shame, especially due to him having originated in such a male oriented ‘macho’ culture. (A violent culture also, ask any Bosniak) I know a few people from Slavic cultures, this fits. (As proud as he was that women found him desirable, at times he also hated them for finding him desirable.) When you add up the training as a ‘barber/surgeon’, being exposed to the cutting up of people at such a young age, and whatever unknown trauma he obviously suffered through at some point in his youth, it’s not difficult to believe that he might go on to do such things as we are suggesting that he did. The more you look into Severin Klosowski, the more it seems doubtful that anybody else could be more suited, or better qualified, to have been Jack-the-Ripper than he. This, at least, is my opinion.

   But let’s pretend for a minute that he was not the Ripper. What do you think the odds are, that just by coincidence, another serial killer, of such renown, who fit the profile so perfectly, just happened to be in the same exact places that the “real” ripper was, at the very same times? We know Klosowski was a serial killer, and we know he was there on those same East London streets in the autumn of 1888, we even know he was living in George Yard Road the night Martha Tabrum was butchered and mutilated there. And we are now going to believe that not only was serial killer Klosowski there, but also another serial killer; the Ripper, who would be killing women in Whitechapel for exactly as long as Klosowski would be living there, and would stop right when Klosowski would leave? Not even in the movies would they expect you to believe that something like that would happen I bet. Yet this is only a fraction of the evidence against him that we have already looked at!

   For many sober-thinking people, this adds up as “proof”.

   And while it may not have been enough proof to get him actually hanged, (for they did not know him back in 1888 as we now know him) his personality and character were such that his being hanged was going to get done no matter how cunning he might have been, no matter how good he might have been at pulling the wool over the police’s eyes. For as cunning as he was, he hadn’t accounted for the tenacity of officers Godley and Abberline! The ‘Ripperologists’ may not appreciate what those two men believed and did, but the murdered women of Whitechaple probably would have.

   message 32: by Douglas Nov 07, 2018

   One other thing I would like to clarify. At no time has it been my intention to suggest that anybody, wanting to write fictional accounts of these murders, shouldn’t be encouraged to do so. I would like to offer them my sincerest encouragement. I have enjoyed some of these stories myself, especially in the movies (‘Murder by Decree’ ‘Time after Time’ ‘The Lodger’ etc. I also liked the comic books ‘From Hell’ that were based largely on Stephen Knight’s work. I love this sort of thing- I even wondered if the Pole ‘Svengali’ (‘Trilby’) may have been a fictionalized account of the Pole Klosowski. Its author, George Du Maurier, had been the top illustrator at ‘Punch’ magazine during the Murders, and lived nearby. Maybe he had recieved one of Klosowski’s ‘Musical haircuts’ and had come up with the inspiration for a music teaching serial killer who had a strange control over women! I am half-joking)

   But I had felt absolutely driven to try to discover, even if only for myself alone, what had really happened in this case, and I was pleased with my essay. In my personal life, I had no one to share it with, I know nobody who is interested in this case.I had hoped that if I posted it here, that the intelligent readers of this website might like and appreciate it. I had first tried to post it on CASEBOOK.ORG, but was told that I did not have “permission” to post things on their website. I don’t know how to get permission, I tried to contact them but never received any reply.

   But I see no reason why, if it were proven that Klosowski was the Ripper, why that should deter anybody from writing anything they like. I really wished that my paper would please people who were writing things of their own, and most hopefully of all even inspire them in the future. This was my hope. The only thing that I had taken issue with was when certain writers, writers who had reached a position of certain world acclaim, seemed to ridicule the notion of Klosowski being the Ripper. There was no need for them to do so, in my opinion. It got my dander up, as they say. I even attempted to find the Email address for some of these writers to talk to them about it confidentially. I felt they had been in error, and I wanted the matter rectified.

   This emotion may have accounted for the weakest parts of my essay, but it also was the inspiration for me writing it in the first place. But I am looking foerward to reading the works of the people who I have shared my paper with on this webpage. Thank you

   I would add though, that I believe that the true story of Klosowski and Tumblety, re-told in motion picture form, told with all of the incidents I have put down here, could, if filmed by a competent director, make one of the most effective and blood chilling horror films of all time. As long as they kept it real; mysterious and dark, …not gratuitous, as seems the fashion nowadays

   message 33: by Leslie Nov 07, 2018

   It has been a pleasure to read your reports. You write in such an eloquent manner that I would suggest you insert greater details and extend the work into a full-length book. It is expensive to self-publish in hard copy but only costs around £150 to publish to Kindle. You will not make much money from it but for me, the pleasure I get from knowing people enjoy my work is payment enough. I have certainly enjoyed reading yours. Best wishes. L P Gibbs.

   message 34: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018

   “THERE was no more authorative voice on the Whitechapel murders than that of Abberline”…..

   “Recent writers, anxious to promote theories suggested in the writings of Macnaghten or Anderson, have sometimes found it necessary to disparage Abberline’s knowledge or contribution to the case”…

   -Phillip Sugden, ‘The Complete History of Jack the Ripper’ 1994. Chapter 22; ‘You’ve Got Jack the Ripper At Last! : George Chapman’

   This ‘disparaging’ of Abberline that Sugden points out is what most people refer to as a ‘hidden-agenda’. Highly subjective reporting, twisting the facts in order to ‘prove’ a pet theory of the authors, disregarding what is then being done to the reputation of one who had deserved to be treated so much better than this by us. Unfortunately, it is common practice in the history of ‘ripperology’, particularly in regards to Frederick Abberline.

   I find it incredible that nobody has yet written a biography of Frederick Abberline. Why is that? So many books have been written on the Ripper, purporting to be true, each more preposterous than the last in many cases. Abberline’s story is the one book that could do the world of Ripperology some actual good, and nobody writes it. The research that would need be done for such an account might provide some new information helpful in solving the Ripper case. Knowing something of Abberline myself, I also know that the fact that he was so intimately involved in the Ripper investigation would be only one of many interesting chapters in this remarkable policeman’s career. He had twenty-five years working the streets of East London under his belt when the first Ripper attack happened. It is said that if you ever visited East London and had something stolen from you, Abberline would know who had pilfered the merchandise and where to find it, such was his knowledge of the East London streets and underworld. He knew what was going on better than any police informant did. (This reminds me of the detective in the movie ‘Pickup on South Street’, and the little jewish woman in that same movie, who was saving up money so that when she died her body would not end up in the Potter’s field. They both had the same Abberline-like knowledge of the streets, but in 1950s New York instead of Victorian era London.) More than just about anybody else I can think of, the life story of Abberline, and the research that would go into it’s telling, could bring into focus what it was like living in the seamy side of foggy, gas lit, horse-drawn Victorian London better than anything since Dickens himself.

   This, I feel, is also why, when Abberline said to Inspector Godley, “congradulations, you just caught ‘Jack the Ripper’ “, that his remark to Godley should be given special consideration by us. Far more consideration than that we give to just about every ‘ripperologist’ with a new idea that he hopes will be successful in making his next book a bestseller, and far more too than we give to Macnaughtens 1894 report; Abberline had been ten times more involved in the case than Mcnaughten had ever been, Mcnaughten only got involved after it was all over. It blows my mind the lack of credence we give this extraordinarily talented police officer of Victorian era London, while at the same time we grant book authors who were nowhere around at the time expert status on these crimes that Abberline had so thoroughly investigated for so long, and was so certain that he had found the instigator of them finally. It is even harder to believe when you consider the good sense his theory of the crimes makes, and how every detail has been accounted for and fits so nicely in place. ( it is my feeling that the reason so many writers have been unconcerned about possibly being unfair to Abberline is because they believe he should have captured the Ripper in 1888, and he didn’t. This would haunt him for the remainder of his career, as it did the entire police force. But Abberline never wrote books later in an attempt to justify his lack of success, as just about all of the others did. He admitted his shortcoming openly when interviewed, and he had nothing to hide about it.)

   Only Phillip Sugden, only he seems equally believable, also without ulterior motive. Sugden stopped short in naming anybody as being the Ripper, he knew the backlash it could cause, and he was perfectly aware that Ripperologists would forever disparage him from then on if he did. But he certainly gave good reasons for eliminating every serious ‘ripper suspect’ that had previously been named up to the point of his book (Kosminski, Druitt, Ostrog, etc). The only one he could not eliminate is Klosowski. It was from Sugdens own book that I first became aware of ‘George Chapman’, even though he claimed he could not name Klosowski as the Ripper with any degree of certainty. But I sure got the feeling that he believed Klosowski was guilty, even though he couldn’t offer proof that would stand up to the Ripperologists protests that he knew were sure to follow if he did name him! (But in fact Sugden did point the finger of guilt directly at Klosowski, he pointed at Klosowski at least as strongly as Mcnaughten had pointed out Kosminski or Druitt in his 1894 report, and he devoted the entire closing chapter of his book to it. And Sugden also included reams of evidence against Klosowski, while Mcnaughten provided almost none, on anybody; only implication.)

   message 35: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018

   “The Chapman theory, while given additional credibility by being advanced by no less an authority than Abberline, suffers from one fundamental flaw: why would Jack-the-Ripper have SUDDENLY changed from throat cutting to poisoning?”

   – ‘Jack-the-Ripper; the Definitive Story’ 2011 TV documentary (a good one)

   It was nine years between the final ‘Ripper murder’ of Mary Kelly and the first ‘Borough poisoning’ of Mary Spink. Since when has nine years been defined as “suddenly”? This (above) is how Ripperologists continually try to confuse readers, and it has been working for them pretty well up to now (it will probably continue to work for them). Never have I seen it pointed out that the reason the Ripper stopped using a knife was because he only really needed the knife in the 1st place to cut out the uterus with, and that he did not need the uterus of his “wives”, (as Tumblety was out of the picture by that time) and thus there was no reason for him to kill by that method any longer. Klosowski had been trained in medicine and poisons, in addition to surgery. Poison better demonstrated the resourcefulness of this inadequate little egomaniac to himself; it better demonstrated how ‘clever’ he was. Besides, while these women were not, in fact, his “wives”, he lived with them, how could he get away with cutting them up like that? He is going to be the first person the police suspect, and he knows it. The only way for Klosowski to ‘outsmart’ the police in this instance is for it to be made to seem like natural causes, right?

   I mean, when you think about it, why do we even take these ‘ripperologists’ seriously at all? What breakthroughs in the Ripper-case have ever come via the ‘ripperologists”? These writers who tell us who and what to believe, and who have told us that Abberline probably didn’t know what he was talking about when he said Klosowski was the Ripper? Or who have lied to us and told us that Abberline actually changed his mind about Klosowski late in life? These writers who have come up with absurd suspect after even more absurd suspect?

   This is how inept they are: Francis Tumblety had been one of the main players at the close of the Ripper case in Nov 1888. Everybody who was following the case at all knew about him, he had been followed by detectives from England to America, and many newspapers in America had covered these facts. Not only that, but he is one of the few people actually arrested in connection with the case who is still today spoken seriously as a valid suspect. But during at least sixty years of books on the Ripper, from the late 1920s through the early 1990s, ‘Ripperologists’ didn’t even know who Tumblety was! What were they researching? How did they get information? When Stewart P Evans rediscovered Tumblety in the 1990s, (through a letter he had found in an auction written by officer Littlechild) he didn’t deserve the relative acclaim he was given for his discovery, but rather ‘ripperologists’ should have themselves been ridiculed for a change, for having been so neglectful for so long up to then. (Evans certainly did not deserve any acclaim for the attempt to market his discovery into being the latest Ripper suspect, especially when you read his theory for the murder of Liz Stride: [Tumblety, who is the Ripper, had just coincidentally passed by the location where somebody else was murdering Stride, one block from Tumblety’s lodgings, as he, Tumblety, was returning home from butchering Eddowes! And this other murderer of Stride, why, he was never caught either, in the middle of the largest police manhunt in history almost! The police refuse to catch anybody at ALL it seems!]. He had all the evidence he then needed to have known Tumblety’s actual role in the murders. It just seems he was too intent on naming his new discovery the actual Ripper. (I sometimes feel guilty about being critical of someone like Evans, who was working on this for so much longer, and so much harder, than I ever would have. But it is getting at the truth that matters to me, and if anybody can appreciate that, Evans can. My main problem with Evans is that he wants to believe that there were many killers at work in that very limited time frame, when the odds are that only one person would be responsible, and the odds against anyone else being involved are just too great, as is the common sense against it. It seems far more likely that the Ripper was not responsible for less than the popular five victims, but rather he did ALL of the bizarre murders that happened in London in 1888 (and probably even more). Evans wants to believe that there were two or three killers, all in that short timeframe, all of them cunning enough to evade the largest police manhunt in London’s history? He explains it by suggesting ‘copycat killers’ had been responsible for some of the murders. But it is difficult enough to believe that the Ripper himself was as lucky as he was, evading the largest police dragnet in the history of London. But now Evans wants us to believe that not only was the Ripper so lucky, but at least one other was cunning enough to get away with bloody serial-killing in this environment also, at the very same time as the Ripper was doing it, and that this other ‘copycat’ killer never got caught either?)

   And these ‘Ripperologists’ are the people we listen to before we listen to the greatest police officer to have worked the case? We are going to believe them before we believe Abberline himself? What is wrong with US then? Thats all we can be left asking ourselves! The answer to the ripper mystery has been right there in front of our very faces since 1903, yet we won’t look at it. Why? Because if we do, ‘ripperologists’ might not be able to sell any more books on the subject, that’s how it seems. ‘Ripperologists have carefully, and sometimes perhaps subconsciously, been leading people away from the true murderer since 1929; the date of the first real book on the subject, written by the first real ‘ripperologist’; Leonard Matters. (1929 had also been 26 years since Abberline had congradulated Godley for having captured the Ripper).

   And there had been people who were telling us Klosowski was probably the Ripper since 1903, and they have been pretty-well ridiculed by these same ripperologists since. (the standing-room-only audience that had packed the trial of ‘George Chapman’ had, for the most part, been sure they had been watching justice being handed down in the Jack-the-Ripper murders; and they almost certainly had been) ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’ was telling it, so had crime writer H.L. Adam, ex-police Superintendent Arthur Neil. These early writers had to be more diplomatic about it though, because the ‘Chapman theory’ did not make the London police look good; far from it. People like H.L. Adam had many friends on the police force: Mcnaughten and Robert Anderson being two of his closest friends. Suggesting that the police had let a man slip by them who had been living AND working at the very bulls-eye of the killing zone in the autumn of ’88 was not going to make Adam popular with those two men. He had to be careful about what he said while naming Klosowski, and he was.

   And there are currently at least two books (by less established publishers, to be sure, but well researched books just the same), by writers R. Michael Gordon and Helena Wojtczak, both about Klosowski’s being the Ripper. Yet so few people know about it, and even fewer believe it.

   But hundreds of thousands of people know about Ripper suspect William Gull, & his Freemasons; they also know ‘Prince Eddy’; painter Walter Sickert; the Maybrick “Diary”, ….etc etc! And lets not omit that Queen Victoria herself has had many people believe that she had been involved also, Oscar Wilde and Aleister Crowley too, even Lewis Carroll! It is names like these that keep books on ‘Ripperology’ selling in such big numbers, keeping it such a big business. No wonder ripperologists hate the name of the real murderer, the person who, if people believed he was the Ripper, could end it all.

   When you take a look at all of the books on Jack-the-Ripper that have been published by any of the major, established book-publishing firms, everybody has been named as being the Ripper EXCEPT Klosowski it seems! (when he has been mentioned by them, it is usually to ridicule the very idea of him being the Ripper)

   message 36: by Douglas Nov 11, 2018

   Isn’t it convenient how, when somebody begins the story of the Ripper Murders, they usually begin at George Yard Buildings, where the 1st two victims, Emma Smith and Martha Tabrum, were both attacked at the opening of the Whitechapel Murder spree, and where Severin Klosowski, too, was both residing and being employed in a barber shop in the basement under the ‘White Hart’ pub, at the very same instant that those two attacks took place? Even if the account of the murders does not mention Klosowski by name, it often begins by showing a photo of where he was living at the very time of the first murder in the series; the same place where Martha Tabrum’s murder occurred. The story begins with another million-to-one coincidence in a account that is positively riddled with unlikely, bizarre coincidence! [although all this unlikely coincidence is explained quite simply once we understand that Klosowski was the Ripper]

   And just consider the number of bizarre coincidence we have looked at. Remember ‘The Maltese Falcon’, when Sam Spade was going over the clues implicating Brigid O’Shaughnessy? “Maybe some of them are unimportant, I won’t argue that…..but look at the NUMBER of them!” Look at the number of them, consider they’re significance, and then consider the odds against them all being incorrect. (if only HALF of them were correct it would still be a devastating case against Klosowski.)

   (the Emma Smith attack seems to have been, by her own account, a gang-rape, done about four months before the real murder-spree began. I only mention it here because it has often been associated with the Whitechapel murders, and because I feel that its having happened so close to his home, it may have partly inspired Klosowski when he heard about it, or set him off somehow, maybe even in an attempt to top it)

   I feel that anybody, any fair-minded thinker, reading these past number of messages, from #15 on down, will come to the conclusion that Severin Klosowski has been proven guilty of being the Whitechapel Murderer, beyond any reasonable doubt. I may not have proven his guilt to the extant that most ‘Ripperologists’ would declare necessary, but I feel I have also proven that the ‘Ripperologists’ do not really want the case solved at all, which is the reason they have been, for so long now, set so specifically against even naming Klosowski as a suspect,(the single suspect who has had more circumstantial evidence discovered against him than any other, by far), going only so far as to name him an “alleged” suspect, while naming at least five others ‘SUSPECTS’ who have nowhere near the amount of evidence against them that Klosowski has. All these other “suspects” had, in fact, was that Macnaughten had pointed the finger of guilt at them in his 1894 report, a report, incidentally, that was written more than 10 years before Klosowski had come to public attention! Macnaughten couldn’t have named Klosowski in his precious report because he had never even heard of him yet at that time. The reason he had never heard of Klosowski goes back to Klosowski’s cunning, and we know how cunning the Ripper was, to have been able to cut up all those women whilst the entire police force was looking in each nook and cranny for him as he was doing it. It’s just one more thing, besides the surgery, besides being in the same locations at the same times, etc, that the Ripper and Klosowski have in common (besides sharing the same parents, and the same body): they both share the same identical degree of animal cunning. (yet as cunning as Klosowski might seem, he was also capable of making foolish mistakes. For example, when the police searched his residence after having arrested him in 1902, they discovered among his possessions evidence proving that ‘George Chapman’ was also Severin Klosowski, something they had been completely unaware of. Chapman would continue to vehemently deny that he was Klosowski. But he had kept records that would go on to implicate him in a number of crimes (for more detail, see ‘Trial of George Chapman’ by H.L. Adam) It amazed police that he would keep all this evidence. And among the few photographs that exist of Klosowski which had been among his possessions, in one of them he is wearing the same nautical ‘peaked’ cap that Jack-the-Ripper had been described by witnesses as having worn. It seemed he was so certain he would never be caught that he foolishly kept these things, almost as if he had planned on one day telling his life story to the world at large, and that he was certain they wanted to know every detail about him. He really had a huge Ego! As a criminal/killer it was his single fault it seems. This Ego made him very proud that he had been successful in ‘outsmarting’ police for so long, but it also convinced him he would never get caught. I believe he was completely aware that his crimes would be very famous, and they made him an important figure in his mind, and that this gave him an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction in himself. Both he and Tumblety were very caught-up in this type of thing, on being ‘important’. It was not the killing that made him feel important so much, but the fact that he had outsmarted so many police, and had been the focus of so much newspaper attention. It gave him the sense that he was far more important than the average person. This feeling was something that Tumblety thrived on also. Tumblety took great pride in having important world figures as his ‘personal friends’, and he even wrote about it. I wonder if, in his mind, Jack-the-Ripper was one of these World figures he was proud of being friendly with?)

   Abberline had pointed the finger of guilt at Klosowski, so why doesn’t that count as much as Macnaughten’s report to these ‘ripperologists’? It should count even more, shouldn’t it? Why does the opinion of Macnaughten , who was not even working the case at the time of the murders, carry so much more weight for most ‘ripperologists’ than the opinion of Abberline does, who was running the show during the time of the murders? Such is the threat they see Klosowski posing to their book-theories it seems. And it is also interesting to note that Macnaughten did not include Francis Tumblety in his 1894 report. For while Klosowski was unknown to the police at that time, and thusly could not have been known to Macnaughten at the time he wrote his report, Tumblety was well known to to police, and had been for five years. Officer Littlechild maintained that Tumblety was the police’s main suspect. Yet Macnaughten did not mention Tumblety at all. What’s up with that?

   THIS is why Tumblety had been forgotten all those years. It seems ‘Ripperologists’ had become blind to everything that was not included in that erroneous report of Macnaughten’s; a policeman who had not even been working on the case at the time of the murders! As Phillip Sugden said; ‘the contrasting writings of Macnaughten, Anderson, and Littlechild, and the fact that they agree on almost nothing, only prove that, in the end, the police were only grasping at straws concerning Jack-the-Ripper, and that the police investigation ended in abysmal failure; they were clueless about the Ripper in 1888, and would only continue to remain clueless about it’. Abberline had admitted pretty much the same thing himself, prior to 1903, when he first learned about Klosowski. (Learning of Klosowski’s movements in 1888 clearly answered 15 years of questions for Abberline in 1903.)

   And if police had really suspected the truth, the ‘ripperologists’ would probably have only cast doubt on them, like they did with Abberline, so that they themselves could continue selling books about their bizarre ‘Ripper-theories’. (Remember too, when Abberline was interviewed by the ‘Gazette’ in 1903, Macnaughtens report was by that time nine years old. Macnaughten may have not known about Klosowski when he wrote his report, but Abberline, when interviewed in 1903, knew more about the suspects named by Macnaughten in his report than Macnaughten ever did, and he obviously had never believed any of them were the Ripper. For it was Abberline who had interviewed all the suspects, including those named by Macnaughten.)

   See the appendix for Abberline’s complete ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ interview.

   Each day, in almost every nation on the planet, people are sent to serve life sentences in prison having been convicted of murder on less evidence than I have, in these comments above, compiled against our friend Klosowski here. This has been done now, I have no doubt about it. Read it again if you do not believe me, from the beginning on down, see for yourself. I hope you will. And if you believe that you see any “holes” in my argument against Klosowski, please take note, be specific about them, so that I can clarify the misunderstanding for you.

   Reply

4. Jon says

   July 14, 2023 at 3:44 am

   Hi there,

   Great post, thanks for writing. I wondered whether you have a source for the image of Burgho and Barnaby? I’m working on a book on the history of dogs, and we mention the case over a few pages. It would be great to get a high-res version of the image to use, if you know where I could track it down!

   Thanks very much,

   Jon

   Reply

5. Simon says

   August 3, 2024 at 7:23 am

   I have original signed letter by Edwin Brough (does not relate to Ripper) if of any interest to anyone.

   Reply