Complete History Of Jack The Ripper Part 15

A trained if relatively inexperienced surgeon, he possessed the medical expertise necessary to have perpetrated the Whitechapel murders.

Abberline said that Chapman lodged in George Yard. The White Hart, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of which Chapman had a shop, was on the corner of George Yard and Whitechapel High Street. But Chapman did not move there until 1890. At the time of the murders he was ensconced at 126 Cable Street. This was within walking distance of all the murder sites. And Goulston Street, where the b.l.o.o.d.y remnant of Kate Eddowes' ap.r.o.n was discovered, could easily have been traversed by a murderer escaping to Cable Street from Mitre Square.

Chapman's personal circ.u.mstances mirrored those we have already deduced for the Ripper. He was in regular work. So, too, if the dates of the murders be any guide, was the Ripper. He was single. In other words, again probably like the Ripper, he was free of family entanglements. And Lucy Baderski, who met Chapman in 1889, tells us that he was in the habit of staying out late into the early hours of the morning. We have no certain knowledge of it but, ardent womanizer as he was, Chapman may well have been a regular patron of prost.i.tutes.

There are remarkable affinities between the descriptions witnesses gave of the Whitechapel murderer and the known appearance of Chapman. As we have noted, the murderer seems to have been a white male in his twenties or thirties, of medium height, respectably dressed and possibly of foreign origin. Chapman fits this profile. At the time of the murders he was twenty-three. He was of medium height. And even in his working clothes, as a hairdresser, he would have been expected to dress respectably. Furthermore, three of the witnesses who may have seen the Ripper (Marshall, Schwartz and Lawende) describe a man who wore a round cap with a peak, like that of a sailor, and there is no doubt that Chapman's wardrobe once held just such a cap. In a photograph of Chapman and Bessie Taylor, taken about 18981900, he is clearly to be seen wearing it. If Chapman really was the Ripper he may even help to explain the inconsistency among the witnesses as to whether the murderer was a foreigner or not. Chapman was, of course, a foreigner, but one who might easily have pa.s.sed for an Englishman. This was a point noted by the newspapers in 1903. 'Although born and bred near Warsaw,' commented one, 'Klosowski is not in appearance a typical Russian Pole. He is an undersized man, with small, sharp features, and in repose his face does not suggest a foreigner.'16 The resemblance between George Hutchinson's suspect and Chapman is particularly striking. Hutchinson described a foreigner of medium height, dark, very well dressed and sporting a dark moustache curled up at the ends. Any one of these details might accurately be applied to Chapman. Levisohn, it will be remembered, credited Chapman with a penchant for flashy dressing even in the early years of their acquaintanceship, testimony which suggests that the barber's a.s.sistant was not the impoverished immigrant that many of his compatriots were.

There are some difficulties in matching Chapman with the Ripper evidence. One is age. Hutchinson thought that the man he saw was about thirty-four or thirty-five. Chapman was then twenty-three. Certainly Hutchinson may have been mistaken. The estimation of age in strangers can be exceedingly difficult at the best of times, as those of my readers who care to experiment for themselves will readily discover, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that in a dimly-lit street a man with a heavy moustache could have pa.s.sed for one older than his years. But no other witness made the Ripper as young as Chapman. PC Smith's estimate of age was twenty-eight, Schwartz's and Lawende's both thirty. The fact that almost all of our Chapman material comes from 19023 does not help either. It is true that Levisohn, Stanislaus Baderski (Lucy's brother) and Mrs Rauch (her sister) all testified that Chapman's general appearance changed little during the period of his residence in England, but the fourteen-year gap between the murders and the Chapman evidence inevitably introduces uncertainties into the case against him. Did Chapman own his peaked cap in 1888, for example, or was it a relic of his nautical expeditions out of Hastings during 18967?

Notwithstanding such caveats, it has to be conceded that, as a whole, Chapman matches up with the Ripper evidence on appearance very well.

Some students of the Whitechapel crimes have dismissed Chapman as a serious suspect because of an alleged dissimilarity in character between him and the Ripper. In fact, as Abberline pointed out, there were also many affinities of character between the two.

Chapman, like the Ripper, had a powerful s.e.x drive, and he was regularly violent to women. A moral oaf, indifferent to the sufferings of others, the Pole physically beat at least two of his 'wives', threatened one with a knife, another with a revolver, and ultimately condemned three to agonizing deaths by poison. Alone among the major Ripper suspects he was a known homicide. There must have been few men, even in late Victorian London, capable of multiple murder. The Ripper was one. Chapman was another.

In normal circ.u.mstances the Whitechapel killer's appearance and behaviour must have been disarming and rea.s.suring. This, according to the Solicitor-General, Sir Edward (later Lord) Carson, who led for the prosecution at Chapman's trial, could scarcely be said of Chapman. 'I have never seen such a villain,' he recalled afterwards. 'He looked like some evil wild beast. I almost expected him to leap over the dock and attack me.'17 Carson's reminiscence is much quoted but that does not make it accurate. Had Chapman typically presented such an appearance he would never have ensnared a succession of doting mistresses and the truth, as contemporary records amply demonstrate, is that he was possessed of a remarkable capacity for ingratiating himself with those around him.

His employers found him quiet, steady and industrious. The families of his victims were completely deceived. Having visited her son-in-law at the Monument, Bessie Taylor's mother, for example, averred that she had 'never seen a better husband'. Chapman's ability to allay suspicion is well ill.u.s.trated in the case of Robert Marsh, father of Maud Marsh, the last victim.

On the day before Maud died, the worried father visited the Chapmans at the Crown.

'I think my daughter will pull through now, George,' he ventured hopefully.

Chapman prepared him for the worst: 'She will never get up no more.'

Marsh had heard rumours about Bessie Taylor, the previous wife, and understandably they troubled him. He probed Chapman on the matter. 'Have you seen anyone else like it?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Chapman.

'Was your other wife like it?'

Chapman realized that any attempt to conceal the fact would simply undermine his credibility. Without batting an eyelid he replied: 'Just about in the same way.'

All in all Marsh was impressed by his son-in-law. At the trial he testified that Chapman 'always answered my inquiries about my daughter perfectly frankly. He used to come down sometimes to see me with Maud, and, as far as I could see, she was very happy with him. I thought he treated her very well.'18 There were moments during the fatal illnesses of his wives when Chapman's mask slipped and witnesses like Martha Doubleday and Elizabeth Waymark glimpsed the callous indifference beneath. But their testimony was greatly overborne by those who could only see in him the solicitous husband. He ministered to his victims' needs, monitored their pulse and heart rates, prepared and administered their medicines and shed tears for their pa.s.sing. Even Dr Stoker, who treated Bessie Taylor and Maud Marsh for the same symptoms, entertained no suspicion of foul play until after Grapel had alerted him to the possibility of poison.

Most remarkable of all Chapman retained the affection and trust of his victims. We have seen this in the case of Mary Spink and it is equally evident in that of Maud Marsh. At the trial Maud's mother was asked if Maud had uttered one word to suggest that she had ever doubted her husband. 'No,' she replied, 'she appeared perfectly happy and contented to the last.'19 'The tiger's heart was masked by the most insinuating and snaky refinement.' Such was de Quincey's description of John Williams, the supposed Ratcliff Highway murderer.20 Recent research has tended to exonerate Williams of those crimes but the quality noticed by de Quincey might realistically be surmised of the Ripper and it was undoubtedly true of Chapman.

There was one other respect in which Chapman's personality may have replicated that of Jack the Ripper. If, as Mrs Long and George Hutchinson indicated, the Ripper was a foreigner, the chalk message 'The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing' was a gesture of overweening arrogance. And self-incriminating braggadocio was not uncharacteristic of Chapman. On one occasion Louisa Morris, Maud Marsh's sister, told him that it seemed strange that the doctor could not find out what was ailing Maud. 'I could give her a bit like that,' said Chapman snapping his fingers, 'and fifty doctors could not find out.'21 Why Abberline found Chapman such a compelling suspect should now be apparent. Here was a much more likely suspect than Macnaghten's depressed Blackheath barrister or Anderson's inoffensive scavenger of the streets. Here was a man who had the medical qualifications, the opportunity, the appearance, the cunning and the cruelty to have been Jack the Ripper.

At this point it would give me immense satisfaction to announce that we had unmasked the killer. Unfortunately I can't. Because although Chapman is undoubtedly the best suspect on offer the case against him still contains serious flaws.

The absence of any direct evidence linking Chapman with the killings is the major weakness. Lucy Baderski's statement that he was often out at night at the time of the murders will not bear scrutiny. Chapman met Lucy in a Polish club in St John's Square, Clerkenwell, and they were married on 29 October 1889. Now, according to the later testimony of Stanislaus Baderski, Lucy's brother, their courtship was a rapid affair: 'She met the accused at the Polish club, and they kept company together for four or five weeks, after which they got married.'22 Stanislaus was vague on chronology and dates. In his Central Criminal Court testimony, for example, he erroneously dated the marriage August Bank Holiday 1889. Nevertheless, the import of his statement is clear. Lucy cannot have met Chapman before the summer of 1889 and thus knew nothing about his movements during the previous autumn. The only Ripper-type murders upon which she might conceivably have been questioned were those of Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles in July 1889 and February 1891.

There are other difficulties in identifying Chapman with the Ripper. Would an immigrant, unfamiliar with the locality as well as the English language, have been capable of the crimes? We do not know the extent of the Ripper's command of English but some of our best witnesses Long, Cadosch, Lawende and Hutchinson attest to some ability to converse with English-speaking victims.

This is a difficult question to answer. Much depends upon how long Chapman had been resident in Britain. Arthur Neil, in the autobiography already referred to, tells us that he first came to this country in June 1887 but I have been unable to discover any corroboration of this statement. Papers in Russian and Polish, found in Chapman's possession when he was arrested in 1902, closely doc.u.ment his early life in Poland. Their abrupt termination, in February 1887, suggests to me that he emigrated soon after that date. At the height of the Ripper scare, then, he may have been resident the best part of eighteen months in the East End, long enough one would think to acquire some local knowledge and sufficient conversational English to pick up a Whitechapel wh.o.r.e. Wolff Levisohn's testimony on this point is inconclusive. He said that Chapman could only speak Polish and a little Yiddish when he met him in 1890. It should be remembered, however, that since Levisohn was himself a Russian Pole it would have been unnatural and unnecessary for Chapman to have attempted to communicate with him in English.

A much more serious objection to Chapman as a Whitechapel murder suspect is the dissimilarity in character between the Ripper-type slayer and the poisoner. For if Chapman was the Ripper we would have to accept that he abandoned the knife for fear of detection and adopted poison as a safer method of killing. Is this a credible scenario?

John Douglas of the FBI tells us: 'Some criminologists and behavioural scientists have written that perpetrators maintain their modus operandi, and that this is what links so-called signature crimes. This conclusion is incorrect. Subjects will change their modus operandi as they gain experience. This is learned behaviour.'23 Point taken. It is also possible, as noted in an earlier chapter, to find examples of serial killers who lay dormant for extended periods or baffled police by changing their methods. But to exchange knife for hammer, gun or rope, weapons of violence all, is one thing. To forsake violence in favour of subterfuge, as is alleged of Chapman, quite another. I can think of only one possible parallel California's still uncaught Zodiac killer.

In four horrific incidents in 19689 Zodiac shot or stabbed seven victims, five of them fatally. The attacks then ceased. But the murderer continued to taunt the police and press with letters until as late as 1978. He even boasted in his macabre correspondence of fresh killings. These later victims may have been figments of a perverted imagination. Yet it is also possible that they were real and that they had not been officially attributed to Zodiac because of differences of locale or technique. Indeed, in a letter of November 1969, Zodiac warned of just such an impending change in his modus operandi: 'I shall no longer announce to anyone when I commit my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, and a few fake accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.' Robert Graysmith, who studied the case, took Zodiac at his word and presented evidence to link him with various unsolved murders of hitchhikers in California, Washington and Oregon between 1969 and 1981. The victims were stabbed, poisoned, strangled, drowned or smothered. 'The truly horrifying part to me,' he wrote, 'was that it seemed that someone was experimenting in different ways of killing people.'24 Whether Chapman was capable of such versatility in murder it is impossible now to say. 'You don't know what he is.' Maud Marsh's rejoinder to her sister might well serve as a caution to those eager to pontificate about what the Pole was or was not capable of doing. The fact is that he still remains very much an enigma. We do not even know why he poisoned three women. Apart from Mary Spink, with her 500 legacy, there were no substantial economic advantages in any of his 'marriages'. Bessie Taylor was the favourite daughter of comparatively affluent parents but Chapman killed her before she could inherit. And Maud Marsh was the daughter of a labourer. Since Chapman did not legally marry any of his victims, moreover, he had no need to resort to murder in order to free himself of one so that he might live with another. George Elliott, defending Chapman at the Central Criminal Court, made an effective point out of this lack of tangible motive, a point to which Carson could but protest Chapman's record of 'unbridled, heartless and cruel l.u.s.t'.

A restless adventurer, never staying long in one place, Chapman slipped easily into fantasy worlds of his own creation. He posed as an American, displaying the stars and stripes prominently in his public houses, and boasted of his exploits at sea and in hunting big game. An American revolver, fully loaded, was found at the Crown after his arrest, but the most ferocious quarry he is known to have pursued with it were the rats he was accustomed to shoot in his cellar. Perhaps the lies served to mask a deep-rooted sense of inferiority. Whatever, despite his macho image and undoubted success with women, Chapman seems to have made no close male friends at all. Asked in the death cell whether he wanted to see any friends, he replied bitterly, 'I have none!'

Poison was an obvious weapon for Chapman given his knowledge of medicine and his desire to murder his 'wives'. And the fact that he was a poisoner in one set of circ.u.mstances does not, as Abberline intimated, preclude the possibility of his perpetrating different types of slayings in another. The Pole has a demonstrable record of physical violence against women and he is the only serious Ripper suspect who has. But perhaps it is stretching credibility too far to believe that the man who committed six horrific, often frenzied, knife murders in just three months in 1888 could have quietly gone into retirement and then re-emerged a decade later in the covert guise of domestic poisoner.

The case against Chapman would unquestionably look stronger if it could be shown that his movements correlated with other recorded s.e.x murders or a.s.saults. In this context the slayings of Alice McKenzie and Frances Coles and the alleged American attacks of 189092 are interesting.

The incident which inspired police references to American crimes was the murder of an aged prost.i.tute in a room of the East River Hotel on the Manhattan waterfront of New York during the night of 2324 April 1891.

The victim was Carrie Brown, known to locals as 'Old Shakespeare' because of her fondness for quoting the bard when she was tipsy. She checked into the hotel, a squalid lodging house on the southeast corner of Catherine Slip and Water Streets, between 10.30 and 11.00 at night with a man. Only Mary Miniter, the a.s.sistant housekeeper, saw her companion. She described him as 'apparently about thirty-two years old, five feet eight inches in height, of slim build, with a long, sharp nose and a heavy moustache of light colour. He was clad in a dark-brown cutaway coat and black trousers, and wore an old black derby hat, the crown of which was much dented. He was evidently a foreigner, and the woman's impression was that he was a German.' The next morning the night clerk found Carrie lying dead on the bed in her room. She was naked from the armpits down and had been strangled and mutilated. The man had vanished.

Press notices of the autopsy suppressed the details of the injuries to the lower part of Carrie's trunk but noted that there were cuts and stab wounds 'all over it'. Dr Jenkins, who performed the autopsy, was reported as believing that the murderer had tried entirely to cut out his victim's abdomen but that his fury and her struggles had prevented him. At the later trial of Ameer Ben Ali, an Algerian Arab, for the crime, however, Jenkins said that the woman had been strangled first and mutilated after death. A black-handled table-knife, the blade ground or broken to a sharp point, was found on the floor of the room. It was stained with blood.

Inevitably newspaper headlines raised the spectre of Jack the Ripper. Those in the New York Times proclaimed: CHOKED, THEN MUTILATED.

A MURDER LIKE ONE OF JACK THE RIPPER'S DEEDS.

WHITECHAPEL'S HORRORS REPEATED IN AN EAST SIDE LODGING HOUSE.

The police refused to comment but the press made the most of the possibility that the Ripper had come to New York. 'There has not been a case in years that has called forth so much detective talent,' piped the New York Times again. 'Inspector Byrnes has said that it would be impossible for crimes such as Jack the Ripper committed in London to occur in New York and the murderer not be found. He has not forgotten his words on the subject. He also remembers that he has a photographed letter, sent by a person who signed himself Jack the Ripper, dated 'h.e.l.l', and received eighteen months ago.'

The man who brought Carrie Brown to the East River Hotel was never traced. However, in July 1891 the New York City police secured a conviction against Ameer Ben Ali, alias 'Frenchy', for the murder. Frenchy had occupied a room across the hall from Carrie's on the fatal night and it was their contention that when the first man left Frenchy crept to Carrie's room, robbed and killed her, and then slipped back to his own room. Their case was supported by the discovery of bloodstains in the hallway between the two rooms, on both sides of Frenchy's door and in his room. Frenchy protested his innocence to the last. 'They say that the man who was with the woman had large and lovely moustaches,' he wailed. 'Just look at my moustaches. They are neither long nor thick.' He was found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Eleven years later, after fresh evidence suggested that the incriminating bloodstains may only have appeared after the coroner, police and reporters had been over the premises, Governor Benjamin Odell ordered his release.

The conviction of Frenchy was unquestionably unsafe. So who did kill Carrie Brown? We just don't know. In 1901 new evidence emerged to accuse a Danish farmhand working in Cranford, New Jersey, at the period of the murder. Absent on the fatal night, he returned home the next morning and left without notice a few days later. His employer allegedly discovered a key like those used at the East River Hotel and a bloodstained shirt in his room after he had gone. Had this information real substance one would have expected it to have been made public at the time. As it is the employer said nothing until approached by the press ten years later and that has to make his tale suspect.25 Mary Miniter did not get a good look at Old Shakespeare's companion on the fatal night. When the couple booked into the hotel he stayed in the background and appeared 'anxious to avoid observation'. Nevertheless, some of the details she remembered about him recall Chapman. The Pole is a possible suspect but only just. For on 5 April 1891, when the English census was taken, he was still living in Tewkesbury Buildings, Whitechapel. We don't know when Chapman took pa.s.sage for New York. If his decision to emigrate owed anything to the illness and death of his son in March it might have been in April. And that could place him in New York in time for the Carrie Brown killing. It is undoubtedly food for thought that the American press began to speculate that Jack the Ripper had appeared on the New York waterfront at about the time Chapman, who would become Abberline's chief suspect in the Ripper case, disembarked there. But clearly it will take nothing short of proof that Chapman was in the city when Carrie died to invest the American connection with real credibility.

The matter must rest there for the present.

George Chapman could have been Jack the Ripper. We have uncovered nothing to eliminate him from our inquiry. And he fits the evidence better than any other police suspect. But that does not make him a strong suspect. It is obvious that neither Abberline nor his colleagues were able to establish any tangible link between Chapman and the murders, and coincidences in opportunity, medical qualifications, appearance, social circ.u.mstances and character, however intriguing, inevitably fail to persuade by themselves. In his recent comments on the Ripper case Jonathan Goodman, doyen of true crime writers, hit the nail squarely on the head: 'Of those [suspects] named, I think the least unlikely is George Chapman.'26 I have little hesitation in declaring Druitt, Kosminski and Ostrog 'Not Guilty'. In the case of Chapman I prefer recourse to a verdict long recognized only in Scottish law 'Not Proven'.

Last Thoughts 'WE ARE INUNDATED with suggestions and names of suspects!' Thus wrote Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to Sir James Fraser, his counterpart in the City, on 9 October 1888.1 It is a complaint that is as true today as it was a century ago. Year by year we are presented with a fresh crop of improbable ident.i.ty theories. In the twelve months before this book went to press we have had William Westcott (surgeon and occultist), Thomas Cutbush, James K. Stephen and Montague Druitt (again, and this time in tandem!), Dr William Thomas (the Welsh Ripper) and James Maybrick. And next year? Who knows?

When I began my own search for Jack the Ripper I decided to concentrate upon the contemporary police suspects because I felt that it would be amongst these, if anywhere, that I would find him. Sadly, by the end of my study two things had become painfully apparent.

First, there was no single police view on the subject. Different officers espoused different theories. Indeed, just about every detective in the CID, even those who took no part in the Whitechapel investigation, seems at one time or another to have had a pet theory on the ident.i.ty of Jack the Ripper.

Benjamin Leeson did not join the force until 1891. Nevertheless, we find him hinting in his memoirs that a 'certain doctor' known to him, who was never far away when the crimes were committed, could have 'thrown quite a lot of light' on the mystery. Detective Inspector Sewell of Brixton, retiring in 1898, put out a different theory: 'Although the exact ident.i.ty of the man was never discovered, most of us believe that he was a Lascar sailor, who came to London at pretty frequent intervals. When the crimes ceased in London they commenced after a short interval abroad, and generally they were either in or near a port. In the police force today the belief is that the murderer is either dead or is confined in some criminal lunatic asylum.' Yet another suspect is referred to by John Littlechild, ex-head of the Special Branch, in a letter of 1913 to the journalist George R. Sims.2 The second conclusion suggested by a study of police records is that, with the exception of Lawende's dubious identification of Kosminski, none of their theories seem to have been based upon tangible evidence linking a suspect to the crimes. Rather, men were suspected because one detective or another thought them the type of person the police should be looking for. We hear a lot about insanity, medical knowledge, cruelty to women and the like, precious little about real evidence.

Chapman is the most likely of the known suspects to have been Jack the Ripper. But in all honesty I cannot find a convincing case against any of them. And there is every possibility that the man the Victorians called 'the master murderer of the age' was in reality a complete n.o.body whose name never found its way into the police file . . . some sad social cripple who lived out his days in obscurity, his true ident.i.ty a secret now known only to the dead.

Fortunately, it is not quite the end of the search.

Our study of the historical facts has already enabled us to deduce a certain amount about the killer. We are pretty safe in thinking of him as a local man, white but possibly of continental origin, in his twenties or thirties. He dressed respectably and was of average or slightly less than average height. A single man in regular employment, he was right-handed and possessed some degree of anatomical knowledge and surgical skill.

History cannot take us further. But perhaps psychology can.

Anyone who has read or seen The Silence of the Lambs will know that criminal psychological profiling has become a useful instrument in the detection of serial murderers and rapists. Essentially it is the task of the profiler to help police prioritize suspects. In order to do this he carefully examines the scene of crime information and then, drawing upon his knowledge of similar offenders and behavioural science, attempts to provide an outline of the likely behavioural and personality traits of the unknown perpetrator.

Fiction claims too much for the technique. It cannot be expected to produce a word portrait of the criminal that is accurate in every detail because human behaviour is so very complex and unpredictable. And there are obvious problems inherent in applying it to historical cases. Few profilers are also historians. Yet any profile is only as good as the data upon which it is based. Which means that for past cases the historical evidence must first be competently researched and evaluated. Few historic cases, too, can be recovered in the wealth of detail ideally required by the profiler. A good profiler, for instance, will wish to see scene of crime photographs that depict the scene from every angle. Such photographs were taken in only one of the nine Whitechapel killings. However, I quibble. Psychological profiling can help to catch murderers.

The modern use of psychological profiling in criminal investigation was pioneered by the famous Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. In 1988, a century after the Whitechapel murders, Supervisory Special Agent John E. Douglas of the FBI attempted a reconstruction of the killer's personality.3 Douglas opines that the Ripper was raised in a family with a domineering mother, probably fond of drink and the company of different men, and a weak and/or absent father. The boy thus grew up without consistent care or contact with stable adult role models. He became socially detached and developed 'a diminished emotional response toward people in general'. His anger was internalized. But, in his younger years, his pent-up destructive emotions were expressed by lighting fires and torturing animals. He developed a fantasy life which, as he grew older, included the domination, abuse and mutilation of women. As an adult the Ripper was an asocial loner. At work he was seen as quiet, shy and obedient, and his dress was neat and orderly. He would look for employment in positions in which he could work alone and experience vicariously his destructive fantasies, perhaps as a butcher or hospital or mortuary attendant. He was not adept at meeting people socially and his s.e.xual relationships were mostly with prost.i.tutes. He may have contracted venereal disease. If so it would have fuelled his hatred and disgust of women. He is unlikely to have been married. He carried a knife in order to protect himself against possible attack. 'This paranoid type of thinking would in part be justified by his poor self-image.' He lived or worked in the Whitechapel area and his first homicide would have been close to his home or place of work.

The FBI distinguish two main types of serial murderer. The disorganized offender does not plan his crimes or stalk his victims. He attacks on impulse. The crime scene will betray confusion, the body left there unhidden, weapons and other clues thoughtlessly abandoned for investigating officers to find. By contrast the organized offender thinks his crime through in advance. Victims are selected and stalked with care. The crime scene is neat and orderly. It reflects control. And the murderer takes care to escape detection. He is unlikely to leave obvious clues at the scene and may transport and hide bodies elsewhere. The differences in method displayed by these two types of murderer are believed to reflect differences in personality. The disorganized offender will likely prove a loner, socially inept, single and employed, if at all, in positions demanding little skill or communication with the public. The organized offender, on the other hand, will be intelligent and articulate, the type of man who may have considerable educational achievements, who usually lives with a female partner and holds down steady skilled work. In the organized offender situational stress, like marital problems, may precipitate murder. In the disorganized offender no external trigger is needed. The impetus to kill, a prevailing sense of rage and hostility, lurks deep within his personality.4 To judge from John Douglas' profile of Jack the Ripper, he would place him in the disorganized category. But caution is necessary here. However useful the FBI typology is as a starting point for discussion it is a simplistic a.n.a.lysis. Many offenders will exhibit characteristics of both types. The Ripper is clearly one. In some ways (the probability that he was single, the local nature of his crimes and his disposition to leave bodies unhidden at the murder scene) he undoubtedly does fit into the disorganized group. But in others (his ability to engage victims in conversation, the disciplined character of his mature modus operandi and his care to remove weapons and clues from the scene) he sounds much more like an organized offender.

Perhaps the best known exponent of offender profiling in Britain is David Canter, Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey. Professor Canter believes that Jack the Ripper felt himself at odds with society, venting his anger and resentment on those he saw as easy victims. There was probably some history of psychological disturbance in his background of which those who had dealings with him would have been aware. Friends may have found him a loner, withdrawn and difficult to relate to. He may have been married but if so the degree of relationship between his wife and himself would not have been the norm. At some time in his life the Ripper probably held down a position requiring some skill. He was able to initiate contact with potential victims so his work may have involved limited social contact with people. Canter is convinced that the Ripper lived or had some sort of base within the Whitechapel area and that the first murder attributed to him was not the first crime he committed.5 As our experience with offender profiling grows the technique will undoubtedly be honed to a greater degree of refinement. We may, of course, also get lucky and uncover fresh doc.u.mentary evidence on the Ripper case itself. But any new evidence is unlikely to change the general picture of the case presented in these pages. The development of offender profiling, though, should enable us to look at our facts in new ways, to suggest fresh avenues of research. For example, both John Douglas and David Canter advise us that the Ripper probably committed other offences in the same area before the first murder attributed to him. Is it not possible, then, that a search of local magistrates' court records for the five years preceding the murders may turn up a new suspect, regularly accused perhaps of indecent a.s.sault, rape or street robbery, a suspect who fits the facts and the profiles we have noticed? If so it will have uncovered a better suspect than any we have inherited from the police file.

In 1903 Inspector Abberline, that most celebrated of Ripper hunters, bemoaned the fact that Scotland Yard was 'really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago'. Today the case is still unsolved. But these are exciting times for those who would seek out Jack the Ripper. We cannot put a name to him. Not yet. But a combination of sound historical scholarship and the latest profiling techniques is beginning to tell us more about him than Abberline would have dreamed possible.

Sources A great many books, newspapers and journals have been consulted during the preparation of this book. Printed sources, primary and secondary, are relatively well-known. Where they have proved of value they are acknowledged in the notes. For a full listing, see Alexander Kelly, Jack the Ripper: A Bibliography and Review of the Literature (London, 1973; third edition, 1995) and Alexander Kelly, 'A Hundred Years of Ripperature,' in Colin Wilson & Robin Odell, Jack the Ripper: Summing-up and Verdict (London, 1987), pp. 280314.

The following archival sources have been searched.

Public Record Office, Kew (a) Metropolitan Police: MEPO 1/48. Commissioner's letters, confidential & private, 186791.

MEPO 1/54. Out letters, 18901919.

MEPO 1/55. Letters to Home Office etc., 18831904.

MEPO 1/65. Letters from Receiver to Home Office etc., 186891.

MEPO 2/227. Police reinforcements for Whitechapel after Pinchin Street murder, 1889.

MEPO 3/140. Files on each of the Whitechapel Murders.

MEPO 3/141. Whitechapel Murders, miscellaneous correspondence and suspects.

MEPO 3/142. 'Jack the Ripper' letters.

MEPO 3/3153. Doc.u.ments on Whitechapel Murders returned to Yard in November 1987.

MEPO 3/3155. Photographs of Whitechapel Murder victims.

MEPO 6/15. Habitual Criminals Register, 1904.

(b) Home Office: HO 8/1946, 2017. Quarterly returns of prisoners, Chatham (18723) and Portland (18746).

HO 27/140, 143, 167. Registers of persons charged at a.s.sizes and Quarter Sessions, 1865, 1866 and 1874.

HO 45/9744/A56376. Police repudiate press interviews, 1894.

HO 140/25, 98. After-trial calendars of prisoners tried at a.s.sizes and Quarter Sessions, 1874, 1887.

HO 144/220/A49301. Whitechapel Murders: suspects.

HO 144/220/A49301B. Whitechapel Murders: rewards.

HO 144/221/A49301C. Whitechapel Murders: steps taken to apprehend the murderer.

HO 144/221/A49301D. Whitechapel Murders: suspects.

HO 144/221/A49301E. Whitechapel Murders: use of dogs.

HO 144/221/A49301F. Miller's Court Murder, 1888.

HO 144/221/A49301G. Whitechapel Murders: police allowances.

HO 144/221/A49301H. Poplar Murder, 1888.

HO 144/221/A49301I. Castle Alley Murder, 1889.

HO 144/221/A49301K. Pinchin Street Murder, 1889.

HO 144/680/101992. George Chapman.

HO 145/5. Criminal Lunacy Warrant Book, 18847.

HO 151/45. Confidential Entry Books, 188795.

(c) Miscellaneous: a.s.sI 2/39. Oxfordshire a.s.size, Lent 1863, crown minute book.

a.s.sI 5/183/12. Oxfordshire a.s.size, Lent 1863, indictments.

a.s.sI 31/37. Kent a.s.size, Summer 1866, agenda book.

a.s.sI 35/306, Part 2. Kent a.s.size, Summer 1866, indictments.

BT 27/668. Board of Trade pa.s.senger lists, outwards, January-July 1891.

MH 94/6, 11, and 85. Registers of patient admissions to lunatic asylums.

PCOM 2/4. Chatham Prison register, 187181.

PCOM 2/55. Millbank Prison register, 18735.

PCOM 2/75. Pentonville Prison register, 18735.

PCOM 2/364. Portland Prison, governor's journal, 18725.

PCOM 3/342, 60529. Licenses for release of prisoners, 1873, 18823.

PCOM 6/21. Register of Licenses, 19028.

WO 97/1450, 2083, 3274, 5324. Soldiers: attestation & discharge papers.

Public Record Office, Chancery Lane CRIM 1/84. Central Criminal Court, George Chapman case, 1903, depositions.

CRIM 4/1215. Central Criminal Court, George Chapman case, indictments.