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By Root 164 0

have been confused by Macnaghten with Kosminski. There was the religious maniac, G Wentworth Bell Smith who terrified his landlord with his nightly excursions and his fulminations on drowning prostitutes. Contemporary Ripper theorist Dr L Forbes Winslow was convinced of his guilt and continually raised this with police. There was also borderline psychotic butcher, Jacob Levy, who may have been recognised talking to Catharine Eddowes by fellow butcher Joseph Levy near the Church Passage entrance to Mitre Square. And perhaps that explains Joseph’s apparent reluctance to come forward at the inquest.

Thomas Cutbush (suspected by The Sun in 1894) was arrested after escaping from an asylum and stabbing two women in the bottom. Neither his knife, nor his method match the Ripper’s, but he had contracted syphilis from a prostitute early in 1888 and suffered from religious mania and nightly wanderings. Although police were reasonably convinced. Macnaghten wrote his memorandum partly to rubbish the Cutbush theory. But then, he would, suggests AP Wolf (in Jack The Myth [1993]) because he was covering up for Cutbush’s uncle, a senior police officer.The uncle would later shoot himself...

Michael Ostrog (1833?-?)

While the police were certainly actively seeking Michael Ostrog during the murders, it seems more likely that they sought to eliminate him from enquiries rather than seriously considered him the Ripper. Ostrog was a Russian conman who adopted a host of identities, all with hard-luck stories of exile and poverty attached. With these he continually duped society figures into providing him with cash and lodgings. He often stole their possessions. His crimes in Britain began in Oxford in 1863 and he continued, with breaks at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, until at least 1888 (movements have been traced to 1904 by researcher Derryl Goffee). Ostrog’s confidence tricks appear to be the trigger for police interest. At a time when much expert opinion suggested the killer was a lunatic who possessed anatomical knowledge, Ostrog’s lies put him in both categories. He frequently told his marks that he was a former surgeon, and often feigned insanity to avoid being sent to prison. Beyond one incident when he threatened an arresting officer with a loaded revolver, a propensity to violence appears non-existent. His height of 5 feet 11 inches, notably tall for the period, seems to put him out of the range of the Ripper sightings. His ability to charm several society women would suggest that he was a ladykiller of another kind entirely.

Other suspected ‘foreign-looking’ (or sounding) men include a lethal tag-team triumvirate of Portuguese sailors proposed by contemporary theorist and police-irritant, EK Larkins. You didn’t have to be Portuguese, however. Sausage maker and self-described surgeon Alios Szmeredy committed suicide in Vienna while under arrest for murder. Rumours in Austria that he had been the Ripper resulted in Carl Muusmann’s Hvem Var Jack the Ripper? (1908), arguably the first book-length attempt to identify Jack. Itinerant Swede Nikolaus Benelius was arrested after unlawfully entering an East End house and grinning at the female occupant.‘Fogelma’ was described as being a Norwegian sailor prone to madness in Empire News (23 October 1923). Committed to the Morris Plains Lunatic Asylum, New Jersey in 1899 (although no records of his incarceration exist), he would mutter about events that ‘connected him clearly with the atrocious crimes of 1888’. A pity he doesn’t seem to have actually existed.

The Argentinean businessman, Alonzo Maduro, had his identity divulged in 1952 by a Mr Salway who had met him in Whitechapel just before Emma Smith’s death. Maduro had told him that all prostitutes should be killed. After Mary Kelly’s death, Salway claimed he had found knives in Maduro’s possession.

Severin Klosowski/George Chapman (1865–1903)

Fingered in R Michael Gordon’s Alias Jack the Ripper (2001). Abberline’s suspect. Considered strongly by Philip Sugden in The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (1994)

One thing is certain about Klosowski