Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [26]
A Study in Terror
‘...I try and frighten them and speak of the danger they run (they just) laugh and say, “Oh, I know what you mean. I ain’t afraid of him. It’s the Ripper or the bridge with me. What’s the odds?”
Chief Inspector Henry Moore
The day after the two murders, the Central News Agency heard from their correspondent again. This time it was a postcard, undated but seemingly bloodstained and in the same handwriting. It was postmarked the day of its delivery, October 1st, from London E. Written in red crayon, Jack was in fine gloating form:
I wasnt codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. youll hear about saucy Jackys work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldnt finish straight off. had not time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.
Jack the Ripper
In attempts to draw fresh information from the public, the police distributed the letters to the press and posted facsimiles outside every police station. As a result, they were deluged, not merely with information but with floods of crank letters, many claiming to be from Jack himself. The decline of ‘Leather Apron’ following Pizer’s acquittal no longer mattered; the police, the press, businesses and even private individuals received letters that claimed to be from Jack. The police, fearing that passing up any one of them could cost them the lead they desperately needed, attempted to check the veracity of each letter and trace the writers, wasting many valuable man hours.
The provenance of the original letter and postcard is another area of the Ripper case that has provoked much discussion. It is likely that they are both hoaxes coming from the same source since the second apparently picks up the conversational threads of the first. Long after the Ripper scare was over both Robert Anderson and Donald Swanson wrote that the letters were the work of a journalist whom they knew.
Suggested authors include Thomas Bulling (although his handwriting differs considerably) and the unidentified Best. In 1931, Best admitted to a journalist that he was responsible for writing all the Ripper letters to ‘keep the business alive’. Maybe, but he was probably unaware of the hundreds of letters that were received. Of the first two, the second appears to display too much knowledge not to be from the Ripper, especially as the letter was postmarked the day that the press reported the story. However, several late editions on the Sunday (30 September) carried reports of the ‘double event.’ Plus, the letter was posted in East London, where the writer would, in all likelihood, have had easy access to information on the victims’ deaths because the press were already swarming around both murder sites for details from police and public alike.
From Hell
The one letter that may deserve more attention is the one received by George Lusk of the Mile End Vigilance Committee. It arrived in a small package bearing two penny stamps and an illegible postmark. Along with the letter was half a rotting kidney. The letter read:
From Hell
Mr Lusk
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer
signed Catch me when
you can
Mishter Lusk
The kidney was taken to Dr Frederick Wiles. He was not there, but his assistant, Mr Reed, was. His opinion was that it was a human kidney, preserved in spirits of wine. He took it to Dr Thomas Openshaw at London Hospital.
Openshaw’s examination, according to Reed, revealed that it was part of a female’s left kidney. Also, it was a ‘ginny’ kidney belonging to someone suffering from Bright’s disease and that the person had died about the same time as the victim of the Mitre Square murder.The next day, Openshaw denied these claims. Dr Sedgwick Saunders pointed out that the age and sex of a kidney could only be determined if the body was present and