List of proposed Jack the Ripper suspects

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This is a list of proposed suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders that took place in London, England, during 1888 (and perhaps other years, depending upon which victims were killed by the same hand). Many theories about the identity of the killer (or killers) have been advanced. None are found to be widely persuasive by experts, and some can hardly be taken seriously at all.

Cartoon criticising the police for their inability to find the Whitechapel murderer. From Punch, 22nd September 1888.

Contents

Contemporary police opinion

The following suspects were named by one or more police officials as possibly being Jack the Ripper:

Montague John Druitt

Montague John Druitt (August 15, 1857–December 1?, 1888). Druitt was born in the town of Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England, the son of a prominent local physician. Having received his B.A. from the University of Oxford in 1880, he was admitted to the bar in 1885. From this time he practised as a barrister and a special pleader until his death. He was also employed as an assistant schoolmaster at George Valentine's boarding school, 9 Eliot Place, Blackheath from 1881 until he was dismissed shortly before his death in 1888. He was an avid sportsman and was an amateur cricket player. His body was found floating in the River Thames at Chiswick on December 31, 1888. Medical examination suggested that his body was kept at the bottom of the river for several weeks by stones placed in his pockets. The coroner's jury concluded that he committed suicide by drowning "whilst of unsound mind." His mother suffered from depression and would die in an asylum in 1890. His disappearance and death shortly after the fifth and last canonical murder (which took place on 9 November 1888) and alleged "private information" led some of the investigators of the time to suggest he was the Ripper, thus explaining the end to the series of murders. More recently some have expressed doubts if he committed suicide or was himself murdered. Recent research shows that between the Kelly murder and his death he had been involved as legal representation in a court case and, according to the judge, argued his side well. Some people suggest that this counters the notion that Druitt had broken down mentally after the Kelly murder. In Sir Melville Macnaghten's famous memorandum, from which modern suspicion about Druitt originated, the barrister is incorrectly described as a doctor and his age is incorrectly given as 41 (he was 31 at the time of his death). Furthermore, Inspector Frederick Abberline doubted Druitt as a serious suspect.

George Chapman

Severin Antonowicz Klosowski (alias George Chapman -- no relation to victim Annie Chapman). He was born Klosowski in Poland, but came to Britain and assumed the name Chapman. He was undoubtedly guilty of poisoning three women, for which he was hanged. He was a violent man who lived in London at the time and probably did have some medical knowledge. He was at one time the favored suspect of Inspector Frederick Abberline.

Aaron Kosminski

Aaron Kosminski (1865–1919). Member of London's Jewish population. He was transferred to a mental hospital in February 1891. He was named as a suspect in Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten's memoranda, which stated that there were strong reasons for suspecting him, and that he strongly resembled "the man seen by a City PC" near Mitre Square. (This is the only mention of any such sighting, and it has been suggested by some authors that Macnaghten really meant the City Police witness Joseph Lawende, though others suggest alternative explanations.). Written comments by former Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson and former Chief Inspector Donald Swanson claimed that the Ripper had been identified by the "only person who had a good view of the murderer" (a possible reference to witness Israel Schwartz, although many other possibilities have been suggested). However, they further stated that no prosecution was possible because the witness was not willing to offer testimony against a fellow Jew. In marginalia in his copy of the memoirs, Swanson said that this man was Kosminski, adding that he had been watched at his brother's home in Whitechapel by the City police, that he was taken to the asylum with his hands tied behind his back, and that he died shortly after. These last two details are quite untrue of Kosminski, who lived until 1919. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people, and a refusal to wash or bathe. He was described as harmless in the asylum, although he had once brandished a chair at asylum attendants. He was previously reputed to have threatened his sister with a knife. These two incidents are the only known indications of violent behavior. The copy of Anderson's The Lighter Side Of My Official Life containing the handwritten notes by Swanson was donated to Scotland Yard's Crime Museum in 2006.

Michael Ostrog

Michael Ostrog (1833– 1904?), professional con man. Used numerous aliases and disguises. He was mentioned as a suspect by an official who joined the case in 1889, the year after the "canonical five" victims were killed. Researchers have failed to find evidence that he committed crimes any more serious than fraud and theft. In fact, records show he was jailed for these offenses in France during the Ripper murders, which would seem to be an iron-clad alibi. He is last mentioned alive in 1904.

John Pizer

John Pizer (1850-1897). Pizer was a Polish Jew who worked as a bootmaker in Whitechapel. After the first two Ripper murders, Police Sergeant William Thick brought Pizer in for questioning. Thick apparently believed that Pizer was a man known as "Leather Apron", a local man who was notorious for committing minor assaults on prostitutes. In the early days of the Whitechapel murders many locals suspected that "Leather Apron" was the killer. He was cleared of any suspicion when it turned out that at the time of one of the murders he had been talking with a police officer as they watched a spectacular fire on the London docks. Pizer claimed that Thick had known him for years, and implied that his arrest was based on animus and not evidence.

Francis Tumblety

"Dr." Francis Tumblety (c. 1833–1903). Seemingly uneducated or self-educated American, he earned a small fortune posing as an expert doctor throughout the USA and Canada and occasionally traveling across Europe as well. Perceived as a misogynist, he was connected to the deaths of some of his patients, though it is uncertain if this was deliberate or not. Francis was in England in 1888. He was arrested on November 7, 1888, "on charges of gross indecency", apparently for engaging in homosexual practices. He was released on bail on November 16, 1888. Awaiting trial, he instead fled the country for France on November 24, 1888. It has been suggested that he could have been released in time for the murder of Mary Jane Kelly (on November 9) and be arrested again after it. Notorious in the United States for his scams, news of his arrest led some to suggest he was the Ripper. Whether he was a killer or an eccentric regarded with unjust suspicion is a matter of debate. Tumblety was mentioned as having been a Ripper suspect by a member of the Metropolitan Police in a letter to a journalist many years after the murders, but this official was not known to have been directly connected to the Ripper investigation. Claims that Scotland Yard sent an officer to the United States in 1888 to try to bring Tumblety back in connection with the crimes have been disputed by recent research.

Other contemporary suspects

Various other people were named at the time as potentially being guilty of the Whitechapel murders by journalists and others. Some of the most notable are:

William Henry Bury

William Henry Bury (1859–April 1889). Having recently relocated to Scotland from London, he strangled his wife Ellen Elliot, a former prostitute, on February 10, 1889, and later inflicted deep wounds to her abdomen after she was dead. Some people believe these wounds were similar to ones inflicted upon Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols. Bury came under suspicion regarding the crime when he reported the murder to the local police, although he claimed he was innocent of any involvement. He was hanged soon afterwards in Dundee, Scotland. Prior to being hung Bury made a full confession to his wife's murder.

Thomas Neill Cream

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (May 1850–November 15, 1892), doctor secretly specialising in abortions. Born in Scotland, educated in London, active in Canada and later in Chicago, Illinois, USA. In 1881 he was found to be responsible for the death by poisoning of several of his patients of both sexes. Originally there was no suspicion of murder in these cases, but Cream himself demanded an examination of the bodies. This was apparently an attempt to draw attention to himself. Imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary, located in Joliet, Illinois, he was released on July 31, 1891, on good behavior. Relocating to London, he resumed his murderous activities and was arrested. He was hanged on November 15, 1892. According to some sources, his last words were reported as being "I am Jack...", interpreted to mean Jack the Ripper, but the words were muffled by a hood. Experts note that this whole incident may be nothing more than a story invented at a later date, as police officials who attended the execution made no mention of this alleged interrupted confession. He was reportedly still imprisoned at the time of the murders, but some authors have suggested that he could have bribed officials and left the prison before his official release, or that he left a look-alike to serve the prison term in his place. Neither notion is seen as very likely by most authorities. See Thomas Neill Cream for further information.

Frederick Bailey Deeming

Frederick Bailey Deeming (July 30?, 1842–May 23, 1892), sailor living at the time in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and four children. A British citizen, Deeming was brought to court in England on December 15, 1887, on charges of bankruptcy. Sentenced to fourteen days of imprisonment, he was apparently released on December 29, 1887, and promptly fled with his family to Cape Town, South Africa to escape his debt collectors. Soon upon arrival he was brought to the attention of the local police on charges of fraud. He sent his family to England and headed to recently founded Johannesburg. From there he seems to disappear. There is no reliable account of his activities or his whereabouts between March 1888 and October 1889 covering the period of the murders. He resurfaced in Kingston upon Hull, England, where he was known by the name of Harry Lawson, one of his many aliases. Well into a career as a professional con man, he apparently attempted to reconcile with his estranged wife. They moved together with their children to a rented house in Rainhill in July 1891. The reconciliation ended on August 11, 1891, when he cut his wife and children's throats as they slept. Having introduced himself to the locals as a bachelor and his family as his visiting sister and nephews, it proved easy to explain their absence. He wooed Emily Mathers, his landlord's daughter, and they married on September 22, 1891. The newlyweds left by ship from Southampton, England, on November 2, 1891, and arrived in Victoria (Australia) on December 15, 1891. He murdered Emily on December 24, 1891, buried her under their rented house, and left. Her body was soon found, resulting in a local investigation and the discovery of the other bodies in England. This led to his arrest on March 11, 1892, and his trial and subsequent execution by hanging. The public of Australia was convinced he was the Ripper. He is said to have been an acquaintance of victim Catherine Eddowes and to have maintained correspondence with her, but this allegation remains unproven.

Robert Donston Stephenson

Robert Donston Stephenson (aka Roslyn D'Onston) (April 20, 1841–October 9, 1916). A journalist / writer known to be interested in the occult and black magic. He arrived as a patient at the Whitechapel Hospital shortly before the murders started, and left shortly after they ceased. He is the author of a newspaper article and letter to the police concerning the case. His strange manner and interest in the crimes resulted in an amateur detective reporting him to Scotland Yard. Two days later he visited them himself to report his own suspect, a Dr Morgan Davies. Subsequently he fell under the suspicion of newspaper editor William Thomas Stead, the writer Mabel Collins and her friend Baroness Vittoria Cremers.

Suspects named by later authors

Several other names have been mentioned as possibly being the killer in the years after the murders. They include:

Joseph Barnett

Joseph Barnett (1858–1926), a one-time fish porter. He was victim Mary Jane Kelly's lover from April 8, 1887, to October 30, 1888, when they quarreled and broke up. He visited her daily afterwards, reportedly trying to reconcile. There are suspicions that he was denied. He was proposed as a suspect for her murder as a scorned lover, although some people attribute the other murders to him as well. His accounts about what Kelly is said to have told him about her life constitute most of what is known of her. The validity of both her statements and his reports have been questioned.

David Cohen

David Cohen (1865–1889). A Polish Jew whose incarceration at Colney Hatch asylum roughly coincided with the end of the murders. Described as violently antisocial, the poor East End local has been suggested as a suspect by author and Ripperologist Martin Fido in his book The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper (1987). Fido claims that the name 'David Cohen' was used at the time to refer to immigrant Jews who either could not be positively identified or whose names were too difficult for police to spell, in the same fashion that 'John Doe' is used today. This has been disputed by other authors. Fido speculated that Cohen's true identity was Nathan Kaminsky, a bootmaker living in Whitechapel who had been treated at one time for syphilis and who allegedly vanished at the same time that Cohen was admitted. Fido and others believe that police officials confused the name Kaminsky with Kosminski, resulting in the wrong man coming under suspicion (see Aaron Kosminski above). While at the asylum, Cohen exhibited violent, destructive tendencies that would today likely be linked to schizophrenia, and had to be restrained. He died at the asylum in October of 1889. Former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, in his book The Cases That Haunt Us (2000), has asserted that behavioral clues gathered from the murders as well as linguistic hints from the "From Hell" letter (the only one he considers authentic) all point to Cohen, "or someone very much like him."

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, January 27, 1832–January 14, 1898); Named as a suspect based upon anagrams author Richard Wallace devised for his book Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend, which is not generally taken seriously by other scholars. See the entry on Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend for further information.

William Withey Gull

Sir William Withey Gull (December 31, 1816 - January 29, 1890), physician-in-extraordinary to Queen Victoria. He was named as the Ripper as part of the evolution of the widely disputed Royal Conspiracy theory. See Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories for further information. Thanks to the popularity of this theory among fiction writers for its dramatic nature, Gull shows up as the Ripper in a number of books and movies (including From Hell ).

George Hutchinson

George Hutchinson, labourer. On November 12, 1888, he reached the London police to make a statement claiming that he spent a long amount of time on November 9, 1888, watching the room that Mary Jane Kelly lived in after seeing her with a man of conspicuous appearance. He gave a very detailed description of a suspect despite the darkness of that night. Apparently, his statement was eventually suspected by the police to be dubious, based upon the fact that one police official later claimed that the only witness who got a good look at the killer was Jewish, while Hutchinson was not. Some modern scholars have suggested he was the Ripper himself trying to confuse the police.

James Kelly

James Kelly (no known relation to the Ripper victim). Having murdered his wife in 1883 by stabbing her in the neck, he was convicted of the crime. Considered insane, he was transferred to a mental asylum, from which he escaped in early 1888. The police searched for him unsuccessfully during the period of the murders, but he had apparently disappeared with no trace. He unexpectedly turned himself back in to the officials in 1927, and died two years later, presumably of natural causes. His whereabouts and activities at the time of the murders remain unknown.

James Maybrick

James Maybrick, (October 24, 1838–May 11, 1889) was a Liverpool cotton merchant. His wife, Florence, was convicted of poisoning him in a trial that was, in its time, quite sensational. Due to controversy over the case, her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and she was eventually released from prison after several years. A diary, published in the 1990s, purportedly by Maybrick surfaced in which he confessed to the Ripper murders. The diary is widely considered a hoax.

Alexander Pedachenko

Dr. Alexander Pedachenko (c. 1857–1908). Supposedly an agent of the Okhrana (the Secret Police of Imperial Russia), he was sent to commit the murders in order to discredit the English authorities. Later unable to stop himself from committing further murders, he was arrested and ended his days in a mental asylum. Evidence of his connection to the Ripper case was then uncovered. There is no confirmed evidence that Pedachenko ever existed.

Frank Miles

Frank Miles Miles was a well-known painter in London. He would use streetwalkers as models for his paintings. Supposedly, the artist had died before the Whitechapel Murders, but it was discovered that he died in an asylum in 1891. A theory showed a link to Melville MacNaghten because Miles and his roommate, Oscar Wilde, lived on Tite Street near MacNaghten. Miles's cousin was an equerry to the Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. The brother of Montague Druitt, another suspect, was in the same regiment that Miles had been in. The theory had been produced by Thomas Toughill, but it never seems to have caught on, possibly because it was too weak. It resurfaced in the 1970s and was mentioned in Donald Rumbelow's original Complete Jack the Ripper.

Walter Sickert

Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942). Sickert, a German-born artist of Dutch and Danish ancestry, studied under Whistler and was much influenced by Degas. He was first mentioned as part of one of the many royal conspiracy theories and then named as the sole Ripper by author Jean Overton Fuller. The crime novelist Patricia Cornwell later claimed in her book Portrait of a Killer that Sickert was the Ripper based largely on what she sees as misogyny in his art and her belief that the taunting letters claiming to be from the killer were written by him. Sickert is not considered a serious suspect by most who study the case, and strong evidence shows he was in France at the time of most of the Ripper murders. See the Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories and Portrait of a Killer articles for more information on these theories.

Francis Thompson

Francis Thompson (December 18, 1859–1907), poet. Perceived as devoted to Catholicism, he was a member of the Aesthetic movement. On 1889 he wrote the short story "Finis Coronat Opus" (Latin: "The End Crowns the Work"). It features a young poet sacrificing women to the pagan gods, seeking hell's inspiration for his poetry in order to gain the fame he desires. He is alternatively seen as a religious fanatic or a madman committing the actions described in his story. In 1877 Thompson failed the priesthood. In the Autumn of 1878 Thompson entered his name on the Manchester Royal Infirmary register. The infirmary, in which he studied for the next six years as a surgeon, required that its students have a strong physique for the grueling workload. The study of anatomy, with dissection classes, was a major part of study from the first semester. Between 1885 to 1888 Francis Thompson spent the majority of his time as a homeless vagrant living in the Docklands south of Whitechapel. Thompson tried his hands at a number of occupations. As well as a surgeon and a priest, Thompson tried being a soldier, but was dismissed for failing in drill. He also worked in a medical factory. This may have been where, apart from his years as a surgeon, Thompson procured the dissecting scalpel which he claimed to have possessed when he wrote to the editor of the ‘Merry England’ in January of 1889 of his need to swap to a razor for shaving.

James Kenneth Stephen

James Kenneth Stephen (February 25, 1859–February 3, 1892), poet and tutor to Prince Albert Victor ("Eddy"), Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Perceived as a misogynist, he suffered from serious physical and mental problems after an accident occurring during the winter of 1886/1887. His poems are seen as having a sense of morbidity in them, but there is nothing to indicate that this came from personal experience as a murderer. He was brought to the attention of Ripperologists mainly through his connection to Prince Eddy.

Prince Albert Victor

Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence has been named in a number of books as either the killer or the person whom others killed for as part of a cover up for his alleged misdeeds. These theories are considered preposterous by reputable historians and discounted by most Ripperologists. See Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories for further information.

Sir John Williams

Sir John Williams, a friend of Queen Victoria and obstetrician to her daughter Princess Beatrice, was accused of the Ripper crimes in a 2005 book, Uncle Jack, written by one of the surgeon's relatives, Tony Williams. The author claims to have records showing that the victims all knew the doctor personally and were killed and mutilated in an attempt to research the causes of infertility. [link]

Further theories about the Ripper

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Stewart advanced theories involving a female murderer dubbed Jill the Ripper. Supporters of this theory believe that the female murderer worked or posed as a midwife. She could be seen with bloody clothes without attracting unwanted attention and suspicion and would be more easily trusted by the victims than a man. A suspect suggested as fitting this profile is Mary Pearcey, who in October 1890, killed her lover's wife and child, though there is no indication she was ever a midwife.

References

[Casebook: Jack the Ripper]
Jack the Ripper: The Facts by Paul Begg, 2004, ISBN 1861056877
[The Metropolitan Police history of Jack the Ripper]
The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook by Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner, ISBN 0786707682
Jack The Ripper: A New Theory by William Stewart, 1939
[Notes of Chief Inspector Donald Swanson] donated to Scotland Yard's Crime Museum

[Times Online] report on donation of Swanson notes to Scotland Yard.

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