Jack the Ripper: The Casebook

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We are pleased to bring to you Michael Barrett in conversation with Keith Skinner at the Cloak and Dagger Club on 10 April, 1999. Whitechapel Society 1888 presents John Malcolm: 25 Years of Adventure, Introspection & Exasperation Police officials later stated categorically that this letter – termed the “Dear Boss” letter – was a hoax perpetrated by an overzealous newspaper reporter, and most researchers tend to agree with that analysis. The letter was, however, published in every major newspaper in the early days of October 1888, and it began a veritable storm of hoax letters. In all, over six hundred letters were received by the press and police from people claiming to be “The Ripper.” Several individuals, including two women, were arrested and charged for hoaxing Ripper letters.

Halliday gave an interview in the 'World' on 5 November, in which she revealed that she was 28 years old, had been married six times and had been drugged by a gang of people she knew, but could not identify in fear for her life. Also, that they had forced her to witness the killings of her husband and the McQuillan women. The reporter was able to confirm all six of Halliday's marriages. Several of her husbands had died in suspicious circumstances, most, like Mr Paul Halliday, were much older men, with some sort of pension. While in prison, she began to fail in health and refused to take solid food. Convicted of first degree murder, her sentence to death by electrocution appears never to have been carried out. While Halliday was clearly insane and had mutilated two of her victims, and judging from the newspaper picture of her, was quite masculine in appearance, there is no evidence to connect her to the Whitechapel murders. Dr. Thomas Bond, a distinguished police surgeon from A-Division, was called in on the Mary Kelly murder. His report is as follows: According to Joseph Barnett, on arriving in London, Kelly went to work in a high class brothel in the West End. She says that during this time she frequently rode in a carriage and accompanied one gentleman to Paris, which she didn't like and she returned.

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This talk was presented as a portion of the official launch of Adam's eagerly anticipated book 'Swanson: The Life and Times of a Victorian Detective'. There is no evidence to suggest that she and Conway were ever married. As a couple they had three children. Annie, born 1865 (later Annie Phillips), George, born around 1868 and another son born around 1873. Neil Watson is interviewed by Wycombe Sounds' Andy Aliffe and Steve Colgan for their 'Off the Rails' radio show, and talks about the horrific murder of seven members of the Marshall family in the sleepy village of Denham in 1870.Kelly moves to Cardiff and lives with a cousin and works as a prostitute. The Cardiff police have no record of her. She says she was ill and spent the best part of the time in an infirmary.

http://www.swlondoner.co.uk/the-challenges-of-being-a-ripperologist-and-how-they-fighting-to-improve-their-reputation/ In the course of their travels they returned to Wolverhampton where Catherine gave birth to a child. They return to London but Kate tries to return to her aunt's house after "running away from the pensioner." Her aunt refused her admittance and Kate took refuge in a lodging house on Bison Street. On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away. The left lung was intact. It was adherent at the apex and there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung there were several nodules of consolidation. Donald Rumbelow: The Houndsditch Murders & The Siege of Sidney Street-Cloak & Dagger Club, October, 1999 I believe the wound in the throat was first inflicted. I believe she must have been lying on the ground.

We are pleased to welcome to the show Richard Jones and Adam Wood, the authors of the excellent series of self-guided tour books 'Edgar's Walking Guides' The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen. The original envelope in which the "Dear Boss" letter was sent. All photos courtesy S.P. Evans / M.E.P.O. Jonathan Menges, Tom Wescott and Jon Rees welcome author Mark Russell to the show to discuss his book We are pleased to bring to you talks from the 2018 East End Conference held on the 3rd and 4th of November, 2018.

Good Friday, April 8, 1887: Joseph Barnett meets Mary Jane Kelly for the first time in Commercial Street. He takes her for a drink and arranges to meet her the following day. At their second meeting they arrange to live together. Mrs. Phoenix says that "She was Welsh and that her parents, who had discarded her, still lived in Cardiff, from which place she came. But on occasions she declared that she was Irish." She added that Mary Jane was very abusive and quarrelsome when she was drunk but "one of the most decent and nice girls you could meet when sober." Some theorists have suggested that the victims knew one another, though there is no evidence to support this idea. Although many of the victims did have lodgings, at various times, in the same small area of Whitechapel, it must be remembered that this district was wildly overcrowded with common lodgers – literally hundreds would huddle together in a single house, two, three or four to a bed. The possibility of course exists that two or more of the victims knew each other, but we have no reason to suspect they did. The idea that the Ripper may have had some level of medical knowledge is derived from the fact that, in some cases, certain organs were removed from the bodies of his victims. Some doctors believed they detected medical precision in his cuts – others claimed he had no training whatsoever, not even that of a butcher. A story appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette dated 7 May 1895, which reported that Grainger had been unhesitatingly identified by the one person whom the police believe saw the murderer with a woman a few moments before her mutilated body was found. If the witness was Joseph Lawende, he told the police in his original statement that he had only noticed the man's height, and did not think he would recognise him again. It is therefore curious as to why he was expected to identify him several years later.The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features. The tip of the nose was quite detached by an oblique cut from the bottom of the nasal bone to where the wings of the nose join on to the face. A cut from this divided the upper lip and extended through the substance of the gum over the right upper lateral incisor tooth. She may have stayed with the nuns at the Providence Row Night Refuge on Crispin Street. According to one tradition she scrubbed floors and charred here and was eventually placed into domestic service in a shop in Cleveland Street.