Did Jack the Ripper Possess Medical Knowledge?

There is a great deal of debate over whether or not Jack the Ripper possessed any medical knowledge.

The question of whether he did or not was raised several times during the inquests into the deaths of the victims, and, although several of the doctors who gave expert testimony were of the opinion that he demonstrated a certain degree of anatomical knowledge, they differed in their opinions of how much anatomical knowledge the murderer had exhibited.

Dr Llewellyn, the doctor who was called to the scene of Mary Nichols murder on the 31st August 1888, for example, opined that the murderer had shown signs of possessing “some rough anatomical knowledge,”  on the grounds that he “seemed to have attacked all the vital parts.”

Wynne Baxter, the Coroner who presided over the inquest into the deaths of Mary Nichols and Annie Chapman, even went so far as state that the mutilations sustained by both victims suggested that the injuries had “in each case been performed with anatomical knowledge.”

Dr George Bagster Phillips, the divisional police surgeon who had examined Annie Chapman’s body as it lay in the backyard of29 Hanbury Street, suggested that the mutilations could have been done by “such an instrument as a medical man used for post-mortem purposes…”  But he also conceded that “those used by slaughter-men, well ground down,” might just as easily have been used.

When recalled to give further medical and surgical evidence by the coroner, Phillips expanded on his earlier testimony and declared that that “the mode in which the knife had been used seemed to indicate great anatomical knowledge.”

Summing up at Annie’s inquest, Coroner Baxter was adamant that her injuries had been made by someone who “had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge.”

So, certainly in the early days of the investigation and inquests into the first two victims of jack the Ripper there was a consensus that, whoever was responsible for the two murders had demonstrated a degree of medical knowledge.

The Man Who Let Jack the Ripper Escape

At 1am on 30th September 1888 Louis Deimshutz , who along with his wife, ran the International Polish and Jewish Working Men’s Socialist Club in Berner Street, came back from a day spent hawking cheap jewellery in South London.

As he turned his pony and cart into the yard of the club the pony suddenly shied and pulled to the left. Leaning forward Deimshutz was able to discern a dark shape on the ground in front of him, and so he leant over and tried to lift it wiht his whip. he couldn’t so he jumped down to investigate further and found that it was a woman lying on the ground.

For some reason he presumed that it was, in fact, his wife and that she was drunk. So he went into the club to check on his wife and found her in the kitchen. He therefore went to enlist the assistance of other club members telling them “there’s a woman on the ground outside and she’s either dead or she’s drunk, I’m not sure which.”

The other members followed Deimshutz into the yard bringing candles with them and were able to see what the steward hadn’t noticed in the darkness. The woman’s throat had been cut. They had discovered the body of Elizabeth Stride, Jack the Ripper’s third victim.

The fact that the killer had only cut the victim’s throat this time led to the police to the conclusion that he had been interrupted by Deimshutz as he turned into the yard. Indeed, it might have been the killer stepping quickly from view that startled the pony as it came into the yard.

This suggests that, Deimshutz acted differently when he first found the woman lying on the ground, there is a good chance that the murderer would have been caught, because there is a good chance that, when Deimshutz was first inspecting the body, the killer was standing close by him in the darkness. Had he raised the alarm there and then people would have come running to the scene.

But Deimshutz’s actions in believing it was his drunken wife, and that he had then left the scene to go into the club, meant that the killer had vital minutes to make his escape from the yard before the club steward and its members returned to the scene to discover that the woman had, in fact, been murdered.

But there is a much more intriguing and, historically speaking, far-reaching consequence of Deimshutz’s actions. Had he not done what he did and left the scene. Had he stayed put and raised the alarm, the killer’s escape from the yard may well have been rendered impossible and the killer would have been caught there and then.

This means that he wouldn’t have been at liberty to murder Catherine Eddowes thirty minutes later.

But it also means that the police wouldn’t have deemed it necessary to release the, now famous, letter, which had been passed to them twenty four hours earlier by a London News agency and which had been signed Jack the Ripper.

Which, in turn, means that the name Jack the Ripper would never have entered the public consciousness and would have remained known to just a handful of senior police officers and journalists.

In other words nobody today would know the name Jack the Ripper.

Funny how the belief that a woman lying on the ground is your drunken wife can, literally, help create a legend!

Green Day On My Jack the Ripper Tour

Over the years I’ve met with thousands of people from all over the world who are absolutely fascinated by the story of Jack the Ripper. It really is a subject that arouses interest in all nationalities and in all walks of life.

I’ve taken cardiologists on Jack the Ripper Walks and I’ve taken school parties around the murder sites. A question i often get asked when I do television or radio interviews about the tour is “what is the typical type of person who takes a jack the Ripper Tour?”

The honest answer to that question is that there is no typical sort of person. The Jack the Ripper murders have the ability to tweak the interest of men and women alike as well as all generations and nationalities.

I’ve been joined on the tour by people who know nothing about the subject but are eager to learn about it. And I’ve been joined on the walk by people who have studied the murders for years and have a fantastic and in depth knowledge about the Jack the Ripper killings.

But one of the strangest request was when I was called up by Green Day’s record company who asked if I’d be able to take the band on a private Jack the Ripper Tour that night.

Now, I have to confess, up until that point Green Day had managed to somehow evade me. In short, I’d never heard of them. But I agreed to do the tour and to have the tour filmed and so duly appeared at the Truman Brewery on Hanbury Street where I met the film grew and awaited the arrival of Green Day.

By this time I’d mentioned who my client for that night was to my sons and had learned from them that I was about to take one of the world’s major rock bands on a Jack the Ripper walk. 

Time was fairly limited so, when the band arrived we were only to do the Jack the Ripper sites around the brewery. But it most certainly caused quite a stir in the area as we walked past other Jack the Ripper tour groups whose participants couldn’t get their cameras out quick enough.

The band themselves were genuinely charming and asked some really great questions and made some truly pertinent observations. I am also pleased to report that I have since become very familiar with their work and so, if you’ll pardon the pun, I can honestly say that I’m no longer a British Idiot as far as their music is concerned.

Jack the Ripper Murder Site – Buck’s Row

Our Jack the Ripper TV channel enables you to watch short clips of the numerous films and documentaries we have, over the years, shot on the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields.

Yesterday I listed the various changes that have taken place in the vicinity of Buck’s Row (which is now called Durward Street) where Mary Nichols, the first victim of Jack the Ripper was murdered on August 31st 1888.

Today I thought I’d present a short film of the murder site and let you seen for yourself what the murder site looks like today.

This clip is taken from the drama/documentary Unmasking Jack the Ripper, which you can, if you wish, purchase from our on-line shop.

The clip begins with a view of the Board School that I spoke of in yesterday’s blog and it shows you the exact site where the body of Mary Nichols was discovered by a carter named Charles Cross who was on his way to work along Buck’s Row at around 3.40am when he stumbled upon the body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim lying in a gateway.

Interestingly Buck’s Row itself also became a victim of Jack the Ripper in that its residents became ashamed of the sudden notoriety that the murder of Mary Nichols had thrust upon them and were also annoyed by the antics of their postman who used to take a ghoulish delight in knocking on their doors and shouting things like “number 5 Killer Row I believe” that they petitioned the local council to change the name. 

The local council duly obliged and today Buck’s Row, where the first jack the Ripper murder occurred is now called Durward Street.

Jack the Ripper’s London Then and Now

When I say Jack the Ripper’s London then and now I am talking about when I started the Jack the Ripper Tours in 1982 and the present day 2012.

Next month, June 2012, will be the 30th anniversary of the start of my Jack the Ripper Tour and the area has changed a whole lot since then. In a previous post, I looked how the area from Tower Hill to Brick Lane has changed.

In this post I want to discuss how the area around Whitechapel Station has changed in the last 30 years.

The walks I did in 1982 actually ended at Whitechapel Station in a delightful pub called the Grave Maurice. Looking back on it I’m amazed at the amount of ground I was able to cover in the time allocated for the walking tour.

The last stop that we used to visit on the tour back then was Durward Street, which is where the body of Mary Nichols, the first definite victim of Jack the Ripper, was discovered in the early hours of August 31st 1888.

In 1982 this location looked totally different. Nowadays there is a gym close to where my Jack the Ripper Walk used to finish, and the immediate vicinity  around the murder site itself is currently one huge building site as the Crossrail station is being built opposite where the Mary Nichols murder site used to stand.

Opposite the murder site in 1982 there was a derelict house that was most certainly there in 1888 but which has now been demolished. It really was very creepy and used to add a truly menacing ambiance to the end of the tour.

The one building that has survived is the old Board School that still looms over the murder site, just as it did in 1888 and in 1982.

Durward Street and the Old Board School.

It has no been converted to flats, but in 1982 it was a derelict building that homeless people, who couldn’t get into the nearby Salvation Army Hostel, often used to sleep in. It was forever catching fire, but somehow the structure managed to survive and you can still stand on the murder site, look up at it and picture what it must have been like around here on August 31st 1888 when the body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim was found  close to it.

One intriguing feature of the Board School to have survived is the railing that runs around the roof of the building. This encircled the roof top play ground and was intended to prevent any of the pupils falling from the roof.

Have You Ever Wondered?

Have you ever wondered who Jack the Ripper was?

It might seem an odd question as everybody at some stage or another, or at least anyone with the remotest interest in the crimes must have, at some stage or another, pondered the identity of the world’s most famous murderer.

Having spent the past thirty years researching the Jack the Ripper crimes and leading Jack the Ripper Walks around the area where the murders occurred,  I have pondered this question many times. I have seen suspects come and suspects go and have read almost every book on the Whitechapel Murders that has ever been published.

And, the more I read about the crimes, the more I realise that we will probably never know who Jack the Ripper was.

When people on the Jack the Ripper Tour ask me who I think it was I always give a shrug of the shoulders and reply with words to the effect that I haven’t got the foggiest idea!

We know that some of the police officers who investigated the case had their own favoured suspects, and some of them went on record to name their favoured suspect. But, the problem from the point of view of a Ripperologist, is that, whenever particular police officer named a particular suspect he invariably named different suspects, and we known for a fact that some of those “favoured” suspects emphatically weren’t Jack the Ripper.

So over the last few years I’ve long since given up hunting the ripper and have, instead, focussed on the history of the crimes and what they can teach us about the era and the area in which they occurred.

To me this provides a far more interesting perspective on Jack the Ripper’s age than thousands of books that devote page upon page to convince their readers that their hot new suspect is the holy grail of Ripperology, the one and only Jack the Ripper.

Jack The Ripper’s London Today

The Old 1886 Building In George Yard

You’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing of Jack the Ripper’s London has survived. fter all the march of time, the London Blitz of the Second World War, and property devlopers have all played a hand in chnging the East London landscape a great deal in the last 120 years.

Yet there are large parts of Spitalfields and Whitechapel that would still be recognisable to a 19th century resident were they to return today and take a walk around the area.

Around Aldgate East, where our Jack the Ripper Tour begins, you have a whole swathe of streets and buildings that have survived. Just across the road from our starting point, for example, there is the White Hart Pub, which is still quenching the thirst of Londonners just as it did in 1888.

Next to the White hart is the sinister  arch through which Martha Tabram, who some believe was the first victim of Jack the Ripper, probably stepped with her killer in the early hours of the 8th August 1888.

Having walked through the arch you enter the wonderfully atmospheric Gunthorpe Street, which in 1888 was called George Yard. On the right is an old building on the upper levels of which is emablaxoned the year of its construction - 1886.

It looks down on the cobblestones of George yard, just as it did in 1888. Martha Tabram would probably have gone past this building with her killer in the early ours of the 8th August 1888, as her body was discovered on a landing of George Yard Buildings, whhich used to stand on the left at the top of George Yard, but which was demolished in the early 1980′s. Not to worry though because we have a great photograph of it and we passit around on our Jack the Ripper Tours so that our clients can see exactly what it looked like.

So, as you can see, within a few short minutes of the start of our tour, we have shown our clients several buildings that have survived from Jack the Ripper’s day and the night is still young.

Murder Most Fowl

Pardon the dreadful pun on today’s Jack the Ripper news update, but I just couldn’t resist it! The reason for this dreadful title is because today I wanted to look briefly at what the area where the murders took place, Spitalfields and Whitechapel, was like in 1888.

At the time there were numerous slaughterhouses and butchers in the area where chcikens and other animals were slaughtered in the early hours of the morning so that it could be in the shops later that day. There was no refrigeration then, at least not in the area, so animals were slaughtered  so that it could be sold as quickly as possible before it went off.

In October 1888, in a desperate bid to catch Jack the Ripper the Metropolitan Police began a series of searches in the area that involved detectives visiting 0ver 80 butchers and slaughterhouses in the area. The sights, smells and sounds that they encountered during these visits were truly gruesome and, as one officer later recalled, the smell that he encountered in these places would stay with him till his dying day.

Although these searches yieled little useful information they do give us an insight into why a bloodstained Jack the Ripper (we certainly know that he was covered in Catherine Eddowes blood when he fled from Mitre Square) could slip away from the scenes of his crimes without arousing any suspicion. Since there were so many butchers and slaughterhouses in the area it was quite common to see people in bloodstained clothing, as the slaughtermen would regularly walk the streets still wearing their work clothes.

One of the changes that has taken place in the area since I started doing my Jack the Ripper Tour in 1982 is that the last of the areas slaughterhouses has now gone. In the mid 1980′s as we made our way from Goulston Street, where the Jack the Ripper clue was discovered, to Dorset Street, where Mary kelly was murdered, we’d pass a corner building that looked like nothing more than a garage.

But as we rounded the corner, the smell would really hit the group and then we’d hear the sound of the chickens inside. The next night when we passed the scene all was quiet. I won’t go into the reason as you might be eating breakfast or lunch, but suffice it to say I was able to glean a genuine of the effect the searches of the butchers and slaughterhouses must have had on those police officers in 1888.

The slaughterhouse isn’t there anymore, its just one of the many things to have gone since I started conducting Jack the Ripper Walks and, I have to say, the area is probably better for it.

Was Thomas Cutbush Jack the Ripper

Paul Begg, one of the world’s leading maes in Jack the Ripper studies and Richard Jones were the first people to view the files on Thomas Cutbush when they were opened to the public in November 2008.

In this video they discuss some of the information that was contained on his Broadmoor Asylum files.

Cutbush is not one of th better known Jack the Ripper Suspects. He is of interest to Jack the Ripper historians for several reason. Firstly, his uncle, Thomas Cutbush, was in fact a high ranking police officer in the Metropolitan Police. Secondly, because of various newspaper articles and official police reports we know that there were most certainly suspicions in the early 1890′s that Thomas Hayne Cutbush was Jack the Ripper.

Richard and Paul discuss his viability as a suspect and ponder the facts about Thomas Cutbush that were not known until these files were opened in 2008.

The files do show that he was an extremely violent person and was frequently threatening to knife people, rip up the wardens and also to hang people. There is, for example, of him walking up to another patient and punching him hard in the face without ny provocation at all. One of the last references tells how, when his mother and aunt came to visit him on one occasion, his mother leant forward to kiss him goodbye and Thomas Cutbush proceeded to bite her face.

The files also show that Cutbush died in 1903 of a kidney ailment. Up until this point we had known that Cutbush went to the asylum, but nobody really knew what became of him after that.

Cutbush is one of the suspects who we cover on our Jack the Ripper Tour along with several other contemporary suspects whose names were circulating at the time of the murders and who were thought to be likely contenders for the mantle of the world’s most famous serial killer.

A Jack The Ripper Quick Walk

On our jack the Ripper Walks we don’t actually go to Durward Street, which in 1888 was known as Buck’s Row, and was the place where the body of Mary Nichols, the first of Jack the Ripper’s victims, was found in the early hours of 31st August 1888. We don’t go there because it is quite a distance to go there and then come back and so, instead, we take you to the street, Thrawl Street, where Mary Nichols was living at the time of her murder and we also show you the Frying Pan Pub, where she drank away her doss money a few hours before she met Jack the Ripper.

However,  in keeping with our ethos of making as much information available as possible, we though we’d give you the opportunity to discover Durward Street for yourself if you so desire. You can watch our film of the Buck’s Row Murder and then, if you wish, visit the site for yourself.

JACK THE RIPPER MURDER SITE – BUCK’S ROW

So here is a brief  DIY Jack the Ripper Tour that will enable you to visit the site of Jack the Ripper’s first murder under your own steam.

YOUR DIY WALK BEGINS OUTSIDE
WHITECHAPEL UNDERGROUND STATION.

Turn left out of Whitechapel Underground Station onto Whitechapel Road. The tall lofty building that you pass immediately on the left is the former Whitechapel Working Lads Institute. It was here that the inquests into the deaths of several of Jack the Ripper’s victims were held.

Continue along Whitechapel Road and go first left along Brady Street.

You are walking from the direction that a carter named Charles Cross was walking from on his way to work at around 3.40am on August 31st 1888.

The left side of the  street was lined by two-storey cottages, and Bucks Row itself, had minimal street lighting.

As Cross approached the board school that still looms over the west end of this section of Bucks Row he noticed a bundle lying in a gateway on its left side, the site occupied by the parking area after the modern line of housing that now stands on the left side. His first thought was that it was a tarpaulin that might make a useful cover for his cart or wagon, so he went over to inspect it closer. But, as he got nearer, he discovered that the bundle was in fact the prone form of a woman lying on the ground with her skirts pulled up above her waist. Unsure whether she was drunk, injured or dead, Cross stood rooted to the spot pondering what to do do next. It was then that he heard footsteps sounding from the direction he he had come from, and turning round he saw another carter, Robert Paul, heading towards him.

Paul was at first startled by the sight of Charles Cross stepping from the shadows towards him,  and, thinking that Cross was about to attack him, he tried to swerve round him.

Cross, however, blocked his path. “Come and look over here,” he told him, “there is a woman lying on the pavement.” They both crossed over to the body, and Cross took hold of the woman’s hands, which he found to be cold and limp. “I believe she is dead,” he whispered to Paul. He then placed a hand against her face, which was warm. Robert Paul meanwhile had put his hand on her heart, and as he did so he fancied he felt her chest move slightly. “I think she is breathing,” he told Cross “but very little if she is.”

Cross suggested that they should sit her up, but  Paul declined to touch her any further. At this point they decided that they were already late for work and, perhaps a little callously, agreed not to waste any more time at the scene. They opted, therefore, to tell the first policeman they met of their find,  re-arranged her skirt over her knees to cover her decency, and then headed off along Bucks Row passing the Board School as they went.

It was so dark in Bucks Row that, despite the fact they had got close enough to the woman  to feel her face and chest, both men had failed to notice that her throat had been slashed so violently that her head had almost been cut from her body.

For the people of the East End their Autumn of terror was underway.