Complete History of Jack the Ripper (47 page)

Although it seems likely that the graffito was written by the murderer it yields little clue to his identity. Warren, writing to Lushington on 10 October, could not make much of it: ‘The idiom does not appear to me to be either English, French or German, but it might possibly be that of an Irishman speaking a foreign language. It seems to be the idiom of Spain or Italy.’ The spelling ‘Juwes’, however, may simply reflect local dialect. According to A. G. B. Atkinson’s study of the parish of St Botolph Aldgate, published a decade after the murders, Jewry Street was long known in the area as Poor Jewry or ‘Pouere Juwery’.
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Advocates of the Masonic conspiracy theory cite ‘Juwes’ as proof that the murderer was a Freemason. This assertion is based upon an erroneous belief, promulgated by Stephen Knight, Melvyn Fairclough and others, that ‘Juwes’ was a Masonic term by which Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum were collectively known. In fact this was simply not the case. By 1888 the three murderers of Hiram Abiff had not been part of British Masonic ritual for more than seventy years, and although they had survived in American ritual in neither country had they ever been called, officially or colloquially, the ‘Juwes’. ‘It is a mystery,’ wrote Paul Begg, one of the most dependable modern students of the case, ‘why anyone ever thought that “Juwes” was a Masonic word.’
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Few of those who have pondered the events of 30 September have doubted that both murders were the work of the same killer. As we have noted in a previous chapter, some doubt about the relationship of the Stride killing to the rest of the series will always remain but there are at least two compelling arguments in favour of linking her death with that of Kate Eddowes. First, the technique by which the victims’ throats were cut was virtually identical. The throat of each victim was severed from left to right while she was lying on the ground. And in both cases the left carotid artery suffered far more damage than the right. The cut in Elizabeth’s throat partially severed the left carotid but left the vessels on the right side of the neck untouched. In Kate’s case the left carotid was completely severed and the right sustained only a ‘fine hole opening’. Second, a comparison
of the description furnished by Lawende with those provided by Marshall, Smith and Schwartz of men seen with Liz Stride reveals several points of similarity. The likeness between Lawende’s man and Schwartz’s man is especially marked. Admittedly Lawende’s man was of medium build and appeared rather ‘rough and shabby’ whereas Schwartz’s was broad shouldered and respectably dressed. But both men looked about thirty. Both were of fair complexion and medium height. Both sported small moustaches. And both wore jackets and caps with peaks. It is perhaps needless to add that the most important difference between the Stride and Eddowes murders – the absence of abdominal and facial mutilations in the former – is plausibly explained by Diemschutz’s disturbance of Stride’s killer. Dr Blackwell, Inspector McWilliam and Major Smith all declared that the same man claimed both victims. The only known dissentient was Dr Phillips.
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If, as seems probable, the same man did commit both crimes he must have been possessed of reckless daring. For, having nearly been trapped in a cul-de-sac with the body of his first victim, he walked into the City to claim a second within the hour, and then, knowing full well that the Metropolitan Police must have been alerted by the first murder, returned to Whitechapel carrying knife and gruesome mementoes of Mitre Square with him. If this scenario is correct – and it probably is – Martin Friedland’s suggestion that the murders were carefully contrived ‘to throw as much suspicion as possible on the Jewish community’ deserves better than it has received from later commentators.
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The murder of Elizabeth Stride next to the International Working Men’s Educational Club, the apparent hailing of an accomplice by the name ‘Lipski’, the murder of Kate Eddowes close to another club (the Imperial) frequented by Jews, and the message ‘The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing’ chalked in the entry of a house of Jewish tenements – these signify little by themselves but, taken together, begin to make a persuasive case.

There is no credible evidence from Mitre Square that the murderer was assisted by an accomplice. This does not prove that there was no accomplice, only that one was not noticed, for the role of such a man might plausibly have been to loiter at a distance from the actual killer, watching for signs of danger and ready to intervene only if the murderer looked as though he might be caught red-handed. I say no
credible
evidence because there is James Blenkingsop:

This newspaper tale is not corroborated in any of the official documentation now extant. Even if it is not a complete fiction there is no proof that the man Blenkingsop claimed to have seen had any connection with the murderer. Indeed, given the possibility that the estimated time was wrong, it is conceivable that he was a plain-clothes detective, investigating the crime soon after it had occurred.

A day after the double event Londoners opened their morning papers to read of yet more horrors. They were told that several days before the latest atrocities the Central News had received a letter from someone who claimed to be the Whitechapel murderer. The writer declared himself to be ‘down on whores’, promised further killings and signed his letter with a name that would live in history and become a synonym for sexual serial murder the world over – Jack the Ripper.

N
EWSMEN RECOGNIZED THE EXISTENCE
of a multiple murderer in Whitechapel soon after the Nichols murder of 31 August, but it was not until after the double killing a month later that the assassin because generally known as ‘Jack the Ripper’. In the interval people spoke of him only as ‘the Whitechapel murderer’ or ‘Leather Apron’.

It is now well known that the name ‘Jack the Ripper’ was coined by the author of a pseudonymous letter received by the Central News Agency on 27 September. The sources of this scribe’s inspiration, however, still invite speculation.

‘Jack’ is as obvious a name as anyone could have chosen and we need really seek no explanation of it. Nevertheless, William Stewart’s suggestion that this particular use of ‘Jack’ may have been inspired by the frequency of the name amongst criminal celebrities of the past
¹
has found favour with students who believe the author of the original Jack the Ripper letter to have been a young man steeped in penny dreadful literature. Stewart may just have a point because the most celebrated criminal in the 19th century was the burglar and prisonbreaker Jack Sheppard. Sheppard died at Tyburn in 1724 but his reputation was revived in 1839 in a best-selling romance by William Harrison Ainsworth and for the rest of the century his short but spectacular career continued to inspire romances, chapbooks and plays. Indeed, such was the vogue for Jack Sheppard on the stage that for many years anxious Lord Chamberlains, fearful of the alleged pernicious influences of such dramas upon public morals, refused to license plays under that name. This did nothing to check the legend, however, and
as late as 1885 Nellie Farren enjoyed rapturous applause at the Gaiety impersonating Jack in Yardley and Stephens’ hit burlesque
Little Jack Sheppard
. Another penny dreadful hero of the period was the 18th century highwayman John Rann, better known as ‘Sixteen String Jack’ from his habit of decorating the knees of his breeches with silk strings. A little of Rann’s fame still persisted in the Ripper’s day and devotees of
Peter Pan
, J. M. Barrie’s ‘terrible masterpiece’, will probably know that Barrie, growing up in the 1870s, was dubbed ‘Sixteen String Jack’ by one of his schoolmates because of his taste for blood and thunder literature. Closer in spirit to the Ripper than these engaging rogues was ‘Spring Heeled Jack’. This was the popular name of a miscreant who, in a variety of bizarre disguises, assaulted and terrified women and children in the environs of London in 1837–38. Spring Heeled Jack was neither identified nor caught but he entered folklore as a bogy man and his name was used by exasperated mothers well into the Ripper’s time to scare fractious offspring into better behaviour.

It is thus possible that the name Jack would have subconsciously suggested itself to a man well versed in cheap crime literature. The word ‘Ripper’ was, of course, derived from the murderer’s technique of laying open the abdomens of his victims. It was a term that had been used in connection with these crimes ever since the death of Polly Nichols, the first victim to sustain this particular injury. Polly was at first thought to have been the victim of a ‘High Rip’ gang that levied blackmail upon street-walkers. The early newspaper gossip about Leather Apron credited him with threatening to ‘rip up’ Widow Annie. And Warren, commenting on the suspect Puckridge for the Home Office on 19 September, related how he had threatened to ‘rip people up’ with a long knife.

The letter to the Central News was not the first purporting to come from the murderer and it was far from being the last. But as the first signed Jack the Ripper and the one that inspired almost all the others it was perhaps the most important. The Central News Ltd of 5 New Bridge Street received it on 27 September. It was written in red ink and read as follows:

The envelope was addressed to ‘The Boss, Central News Office,
London City.’ It bore a London East Central postmark dated 27 September. The editor’s instinct was to treat the whole matter as a hoax and he delayed two days before transmitting the letter to Chief Constable Williamson at the Yard. ‘The enclosed was sent the Central News two days ago,’ he explained, ‘& was treated as a joke.’

‘You will soon hear of me with my funny little games.’ Remembering that line, the police must have looked hard at the letter again when, the night after it reached them, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were cruelly murdered in the East End. Then, by the first post on Monday morning, a day after the killings, the Central News received a second communication. It was a postcard, apparently bloodstained. There was no date but there was a ‘LONDON. E.’ postmark dated 1 October. Couched in the same mocking tones and written in the same hand as the letter, it read: