Donald Rumbelow - The Complete Jack the Ripper

PENGUIN BOOKS

Donald Rumbelow lectures on crime and London history, and is a former Chairman of the Crime Writers Association. He is a London Tourist Board Blue Badge Guide. He is married and has two children. Among his interests are travel, theatre, collecting first editions and Napoleonica.

I should like to thank the following: Bill Tidy, Hammer Films (Fox-Rank Distributors); British Film Institute; Robin Odell; Philip Loftus, Tom Cullen and Dan Farson; ABC Television; Hammer Films (ANGLO EMI Film Distributors Ltd); Twentieth Century Fox Co. Ltd; Compton Cameo Films Ltd; Half Moon Theatre; Donald Cooper; Dominic Photography; Players Theatre; Avco Embassy Pictures Corp.; Warner Bros./Orion Pictures; Press Association; Powell Jones and Rodney Archer; Daily Mirror; Anthony M. Berry, ARPS, London Borough of Islington, Libraries Department, and Neil Shelden.

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First published by W. H. Allen 1975
Revised edition published by W. H. Allen 1987
Published, with an addendum, 1988
Fully revised and updated edition 2004

Copyright Donald Rumbelow, 1975, 1987, 1988, 2004

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-141-91436-7

To Molly

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This is 1888 isnt it? I knew I was Jack. Hats off. I said Jack. Im Jack, cunning Jack, quiet Jack. Jacks my name. Jack whose sword never sleeps. Hats off Im Jack, not the Good Shepherd, not the Prince of Peace. Im Red Jack, Springheeled Jack, Saucy Jack, Jack from Hell, trade-name Jack the Ripper!

Peter Barnes, The Ruling Class

A more apt title for these preliminary words would be Notes for the Curious. Where else can you put details of a Charlottesville club in Virginia, calling itself the Minories, which not only had a dcor based on the 1888 murders but served such bizarre dishes as the Elizabeth Stride sandwich of mixed meats, Poor Old Jacks roast beef, Annie Chapman tuna fish sandwiches and Mary Kelly cheesecake?

From the same state a correspondent writes to tell of a friend who had just added to his Peter Krten collection the murderers guillotined head though all my letters asking for the How? When? and Where? have so far gone unanswered.

Equally bizarre is to be sent a businessmans reading list for exporters going to Nigeria and to find this book among the seven recommended. A note explains why: This book has a description entitled Outcast London picturing the East End of London in the late nineteenth century. This description could apply to parts of present-day African towns and cities and this description will prepare the European who has not visited Africa before for sights which may possibly distress him (or her).

Since the publication of the first edition of this book in 1975, a few more original papers have surfaced into the public domain. Among them is the coroners inquest records on Catharine Eddowes and all surviving public letters to the City of London Police. Both can be found in the Record Office of the Corporation of the City of London, Guildhall. These are in addition to the surviving Scotland Yard papers in the National Archives at Kew. These are now open to the public although they were officially closed until 1992.

Why the file should have been closed until that particular year is anyones guess. Some see it as proof that the Yard had solved the case and knew the killers identity but were concealing the name to protect the highest in the land. My own guess would be that the case papers were filed away but not closed in 1892 at the same time as the leading Ripper investigator Detective Inspector Abberline retired, and that the hundred-year embargo was purely arbitrary. As the investigating officer there would have been a general tidying-up and, without new evidence, little point in passing on the papers to his successor. Filed away with the Yards other papers they could always be got out if any fresh evidence came to hand. Of course, nobody could have foreseen either just how little would survive of the original files a century later or the sinister motives that would be attributed to the police to account for their disappearance. Which is why it was so interesting to read two or three years back that the records of the controversial EnglandAustralia bodyline Test series of 19323 are missing from the MCC archives and that little exists beyond some rather unrevealing committee minutes. The explanation for their loss, particularly of the reports by the leading figures, has been variously attributed to wartime conditions, the national need for paper and the lack of a proper archivist which are precisely the explanations given by the Yard to explain away the missing Ripper papers, though few seem as willing to believe them. One of the things that I have learned about playing the game of Hunt the Ripper with correspondents from all over the world is that every fact is capable of being wrenched into the weirdest of interpretations. Let me introduce a few factors into the game. The house that Abberline retired to in Bournemouth was called Estcourt. Now, to a Ripperologist, this has got to have some hidden meaning. Could it mean escort? Was he hinting that he had been HRH the Duke of Clarences personal detective at some stage? Better still, give the word another twist. Estcourt = Established court. Thats better. That gives a second link with the Palace. What about Estcourt = East Court? No, far too mundane. Got it: Abberline, being a policeman, might have acquired some schoolboy French. Perhaps it was a piece of Franglais? Estcourt = Is caught. In other words, he did solve the case. And as three out of the four explanations point to Royalty it must mean that calling the house Estcourt was Abberlines novel way of identifying the Duke of Clarence as Jack the Ripper!