List of proposed Jack the Ripper suspects

This is a list of proposed suspects in the Jack the Ripper murders that took place in London, England, during 1888. Many theories about the identity of the killer have been advanced. None is entirely persuasive, and some can hardly be taken seriously at all.

Contemporary police opinion

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

• Montague John Druitt (August 15, 1857–December 1?, 1888). Having received a degree as a lawyer, he occasionally practiced his occupation while he was more permanently employed as a private school teacher from 1881 until November 21, 1888. He was also known as a sportsman and was an amateur cricket player. Under unknown circumstances, he last attended the school in Blackheath on November 19, 1888, and was officially dismissed two days later. His body was found floating in the River Thames on December 31, 1888. The examination suggested his body was kept at the bottom of the river for several weeks by stones placed in his pockets. The police concluded that he committed suicide by drowning under a state of depression, although he was known as a good swimmer. His disappearance and death shortly after the fifth and last canonical murder led some of the investigators of the time to suggest he was the Ripper, putting an 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.
• Severin Antoniovich Klosowski (alias George Chapman — no relation to victim Annie Chapman, December 14, 1865–April 7, 1903), junior surgeon and later barber. Born in Nargornak, Poland, he acted as an assistant and later a junior surgeon from December 1880 till February 1887. Then he immigrated to England. When he settled in London is unknown, but there he found employment as an assistant hairdresser and later opened his own barbershop. Though he relocated his shop several times, he was believed to be in Whitechapel at the time of the murders. He is mentioned being present in London in April 1891, but he seems to have established his new residence in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA, shortly after that time. Already he had started a series of short-lived common law marriages. On December 25, 1897, Mary Spink, his wife at the time, died of poisoning. She was followed by Bessie Taylor (d. February 14, 1901) and Maud Marsh (d. October 22, 1902). The subsequent deaths of all three "wives" after sudden sicknesses with nearly identical symptoms finally drew attention to him. An examination of the bodies found them having ingested large doses of antimony mixed with the medicine their attentive "husband" was providing. He was arrested, put on trial and executed by hanging. His perceived misogyny, his surgical knowledge and his presence in Whitechapel during the canonical murders and the possibility that he was near New York at the time of Carrie Brown's murder immediately produced the theory that he was Jack the Ripper, although he is known as a poisoner and not a mutilator. Recent research suggests he did not reach the United States until after the Brown murder. He was at one time the favored suspect of Inspector Frederick Abberline.
• Aaron Kosminski (1864/1865–1919). Member of London's Jewish population. He was transferred to a mental hospital in February 1891. He was suggested as a suspect to fit with the presumption of the time that the killer was Jewish, though one police official swore in his autobiography that the Ripper had been positively identified by a witness before being locked in an asylum, and another specifically states that this person's name was "Kosminski." Though insane, Aaron is not known to have had violent tendencies. His inclusion in the list of suspects has been seen by a number of more recent scholars as more a result of Anti-Semitism at the time of the murders rather than a connection to the case. Others believe that police at the time confused Kosminski with another man whose name, Kaminsky (see David Cohen, below), was similar.
• 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.
• "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.

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 (1859–April 1889). Having recently relocated to Scotland from London, he murdered his wife Ellen Elliot, a former prostitute, on February 10, 1889. He first strangled his wife and then inflicted deep wounds to the abdomen of her deceased body. Some people believe these wounds were similar to ones inflicted upon Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols. Reporting the murder to the local police, Bury failed to convince them that he was innocent of the crime and had only found the body. He was hanged in Dundee, Scotland, for the murder of his wife.
• 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. On 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 Thomas 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 (July 30?, 1842–May 23, 1892), sailor. Living in Sydney, Australia, with his wife Marie and their four children, on December 15, 1887, he was brought to court on charges of bankruptcy. Sentenced to fourteen days of imprisonment, he was apparently released on December 29, 1887. To avoid those seeking payment for his debts, he escaped with his family to Cape Town, South Africa. 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 resurfaces in Kingston upon Hull, England, at the end of this period under the alias of Harry Lawson, one of many he would use till the end of his life. 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 with the murder of his wife and children on August 11, 1891, by cutting their throats while 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, the daughter of the house's owner, 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 an investigation and the finding of the other bodies in England. This led to his arrest on March 11, 1892, and his trial and 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.
• Dr. Robert D´Onston Stephenson (1841/1842–unknown). Known to be interested in the occult and black magic, he took an early and strong interest in the case. He is the author of many articles and letters concerning the case. His interest was enough at the time for him to be added to the list of suspects. Although he was examined as such, today he tends to be seen as the first amateur Ripperologist.

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 (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 (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 (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.
• 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.
• 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 (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 1888. The police searched for him unsuccessfully during the period of the murders, but he had apparently disappeared with no trace. He unexpectedly re-appeared in 1927, turning himself in. He died in 1929. His whereabouts and activities at the time of the murders remain unknown.
• 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 purportedly by Maybrick surfaced in which he confessed to the Ripper murders. The diary is widely considered a hoax. See James Maybrick.
• Dr. Alexander Pedachenko (c. 1857–1908). Supposedly an agent of 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. At least that is one account for this suspect found in 1928. There is no confirmed evidence that Pedachenko ever existed.
• Walter 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 for most of the murders. See the Jack the Ripper royal conspiracy theories and Portrait of a Killer articles for more information on these theories.
• Francis Thompson (December 18, 1859 – 1907), poet. Perceived as devoted to Catholicism and member of the Aesthetic movement. On 1889 he wrote the short story "Finis Coronat Opus" (Latin: "End Crowning 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. There seems to be no indication that he committed these acts in reality.
• 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, Duke of Clarence (known to friends and family as Eddy). He 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, 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 descendants, Tony Williams. The author claims to have records, including parts of a diary, showing that the victims all knew the doctor personally and were killed and mutilated in an attempt to research the causes of infertility. [1]

Further theories about the Ripper

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 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