Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Evans Stewart P & Rumbelow Donald

Author:Evans, Stewart P & Rumbelow, Donald [Evans, Stewart P & Rumbelow, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752499253
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

‘The Nemesis of Neglect’, Punch, 29 September 1888.

The same day Mary Heard of North London wrote to the City Police headquarters with the comment that the murderer was ‘the Lunatic who escaped some time ago from Leavesden’. She added that the police might find him with the aid of the keeper who had been in charge of him at the asylum.

Another female correspondent wrote the same day to the Mayoress, Lady de Keyser, with an idea which she asked to be placed before the lord mayor. She was Mrs S. Luckett of 10 Somerford Grove and she had been scanning the letters pages of the newspapers. She suggested that A. Eberle Evans of Hillcote, Ilkeston, writing that day in the Standard, should be interviewed, as should C.H. Presgrave of the Conservative Club, Manchester. She further proposed that board schools and other educational establishments receive surprise visits from detectives. The children, she said, should be questioned class by class about where they lived, how many others lived there too and whether these people were relations or strangers to them. They should also be asked whether those who shared their house were of the same sex and what their habits were. Inquiries should be made as to the position of single-person households and the habits of their occupants. These homes should be particularly watched, Mrs Luckett thought. She then asked, ‘Who is the author of ‘Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde? Is he a capable & likely individual to be the perpetrator of dire offences?’ – surely a first in suggesting Robert Louis Stevenson as the Ripper! She rounded off by stating that eight trained bloodhounds should be placed in pairs at police stations at the four points of the compass ‘instead of only at Whitechapel for doubtless the ruffian will take hints & vacate other quarters’.

In the batch of suggestions sent on 4 October was a letter from ‘Scotus’ of Southampton to Sir James Fraser. It said that ‘a clue for the perpetrator of the recent crimes’ might be obtained if inquiries were made at the various London hospitals and of ‘medical men about the East of London’ as to whether any very bad case of ‘phogdoena’ was under treatment: ‘My theory of the crimes is that the criminal has been badly disfigured by disease – possibly had his privy member destroyed – & he is now revenging himself on the sex by these atrocities. He has no doubt made up his mind also either to hang or to commit suicide if my conjecture is right.’

The idea that a police officer was the murderer was popular and on 2 October S.A. Ashby of 43 Acacia Road, Regent’s Park, wrote to the City commissioner suggesting that the murders ‘may have been committed by some human fiend in the disguise of a policeman’ in order to evade detection. Then on 5 October an ex-patriot, John Hoyer, ‘Artist Tailor’ of 315 Broome Street, near Forsyth, New York, wrote to the lord mayor of the City

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