Matha Tabaum like Jack’s other victims was middle-aged. Heavy drinking had broken her marriage and she supported herself with prostitution. Three weeks before the attack on Polly Nichols, Martha and her friend were entertaining clients – two guardsmen. Late that night Martha’s friend paired with one soldier, and Martha took the other into George Yard. The next morning Martha’s body was found on a landing in George Yard buildings. Her throat was not cut; the doctor at post-mortem said the fatal wound through her appeared to be have been inflicted by a dagger or a bayonet. ibid.
A last seventh victim: clay-pipe Alice McKenzie was murdered in July 1889. Like earlier victims was killed and mutilated in the street. ibid.
Robert Mann’s entry in the Whitechapel Registry of Deaths: it is he died on the 2nd January 1896. Cause of death ... tuberculosis. ibid.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I had this idea that there is a mortuary attendant in the Ripper story: his name is Robert Mann and he appeared at the Inquest of Polly Nichols. Mei Trow, Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed, Discovery 2009
I believe that Robert Mann is out on the town that night as well. And he turns down George Yard buildings and he comes across the body of Martha Tabram. He can see that she is dead but this is his opportunity ... What we are seeing in that attack is the first tentative steps in the signature of a serial killer. ibid.
I believe Robert Mann would have taken his last victim clay-pipe Alice McKenzie along this alleyway. And here is where he killed her. But we are talking about a shadow of his former self. ibid.
For the second time the Ripper removes the deceased woman’s uterus. Jack has vanished by the time Eddowes is found by the police. But he leaves two more clues. A piece of Eddowes’ apron is discovered in a neighbouring street. And on the wall above it are words scrawled in chalk: The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. Mystery Files: Jack the Ripper, National Geographic 2010
The police reports from the earlier murders speculate that the way the bodies are cut up indicates the Ripper could be a butcher: whereas Kelly’s autopsy report records that the perpetrator has no anatomical knowledge, throwing police off the possible killer’s scent. Following this line of inquiry there is a suspect who has been missed by the investigators. A man the police at the time were aware of but chose to ignore. Jacob [Levy] matches Pat Brown’s profile of the Ripper’s race and profession [Jewish and a Butcher]. But he also fits with another theory the police use to solve modern crimes: geo-profiling techniques predict that the killer lives within the circle of murders. Jacob Levy lived on Fieldgate Street, then moved to a butcher’s premises on Middlesex Street. Both are in the Ripper’s killing grounds. An analysis of a statement given by his wife suggests his mind is in a disturbed state ... Jacob’s death certificate confirms that he dies from syphilis. Which he could have contracted on the streets of Whitechapel. Syphilis takes his life in 1991 just two years after the Ripper killings. In his final medical report he claims to hear strange noises and says he is compelled to do immoral deeds. ibid.
The cut on Annie Chapman’s neck was so deep that it almost severed her head. Part of her uterus was missing. Her intestines had been drawn out and thrown up over her left shoulder. Jack the Ripper: First Serial Killer, History 2006
Her [Liz Stride] body lay in Berners Street. When it was discovered at 12:45 it was still warm. The cut to the throat which killed her was still bleeding. She had died less than five minutes before. Beyond this single wound there was nothing else. No mutilation. ibid.
We know he went West to Mitre Square. He can have arrived there at no later than 1:30 because when the body of Catherine Eddowes was found at 1:45 it was obvious he had spent some time with it. Catherine Eddowes suffered worse degradation than any of the previous victims. ibid.
It’s possible to place the Ripper in a third location that night. At 2:55 PC Alfred Long was conducting a search in Goulston Street. His eye was drawn to some graffiti. Directly beneath it a piece of blooded cloth. It had been cut from an apron Eddowes had been wearing. ibid.
Is it all about the kill, or is it about other behaviours that he wants to carry out on the victim? ... I believe that what we are looking at with Jack the Ripper is a sexual homicide ... He’s interested in people’s reaction and the impact of what he’s done. Laura Richards, Violent Crime Directorate New Scotland Yard
In Ripper Law the generally accepted number of victims is five: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. Martha Tabram is sometimes listed as the first Ripper victim, but not always. Her body had been found in Whitechapel three weeks earlier, dead from multiple stab wounds. The Victorian press linked her death and another murder that spring with the brutal slaying of Polly Nichols. Jack The Ripper: Is it Real? 2006
Dr Robert d’Onston Stevenson ... was a medical doctor with a shady past. He’d studied black magic in west Africa and India, contracted VD from prostitutes in England, and his wife had mysteriously disappeared in the year before the Ripper murders took place ... d’Onston was on the police radar at the time of the murders. ibid.
Although Sickert was known for his landscapes he also painted pictures with titles like Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom, and the Camden Town Murder. ibid.
The Royal Conspiracy ... Prince Edward, Queen Victoria’s grandson, had an affair with a prostitute and got her pregnant. She let five fellow prostitutes in on the secret. All had to be silenced. Dr William Gull, surgeon to the Queen and a Freemason, wielded the knife that kept the secret safe. Once all five of them were dead there was no need to kill anyone else. ibid.
Sickert was known to read up to ten newspapers a day ... I looked at some of his artwork and immediately my hair sort of stood on end. One thing that struck me that a lot of the artwork the women in it were all grotesque – they looked dead. Patricia Cornwell, author Portrait of a Killer
What your Ripper theorists tends to ignore, and the public ignored and the police ignored during the same period, is that torsos began to turn up, and these were not attributed to Jack the Ripper; but if you look at these particular cases I don’t know how you cannot think that Jack the Ripper might have been responsible. Patricia Cornwell
This is the Whitechapel Road and we’re just walking over to the London Hospital. And this is where d’Onston admitted himself as a patient just prior to the beginning of the Whitechapel murders ... Stevenson [d’Onston] who studied black magic: we know in ritual murder, mutilation of the dead is a practice that is performed. Now when d’Onston planned the murders it’s my belief he planned them on a map ... The distance from victim number one to victim number two is nine hundred and thirty yards using the scale on the map. The distance between victim two and victim four is exactly nine hundred and thirty yards. They were sacrifices, and it is now known sacrifices can be committed at the four points of the cross. Ivor Edwards, author Jack the Ripper’s Black Magic Rituals
Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria, was known to frequent the run-down area where the killings occurred. Rumour had it Albert fathered a child with a local girl, and the Queen ordered all of the women who knew the child silenced. But the latest theory is that Jack the Ripper wasn’t even a man. Mysteryquest: Jack the Ripper, History 2009
The new suspect – Mary Pearcey – was put to death in 1890 for the murder of the wife and baby of her lover – the killing of the other woman was especially brutal. While on trial Pearcey wrote letters to her family providing insight into her psyche. ibid.
The victim Mary Ann Nichols was discovered at 3:45 a.m. In a residential street then called Bucks Row. She was found with two deep slashes on the side of her neck, and her abdomen had been cut open with a long-bladed knife. The alley was dark and isolated with little traffic in the early hours of the morning. ibid.
The use of a medical knife could offer clues to identifying the killer. ibid.
Tumblety was known to don elaborate military garb. But there is no record he achieved any significant military rank. He appears to have been a con-artist from a young age. He grew up in Rochester, New York, and as a teenager began passing himself off as a doctor. He became notorious for selling fake medicines and remedies in America and Canada. But when trouble arose he’d simply move on. The evidence suggests he came to England in June of 1988. At the time of the killings he was staying in London. ibid.
American doctor Francis Tumblety was arrested in London on the 7th of November 1888. Just before the last killing. But not for murder. The charge was gross indecency. ibid.
Not only did Tumblety not associate with women, he seemed to harbour a hatred for them ... He kept a collection of women’s uteruses. ibid.
Tumblety was arrested a second time immediately after the final murder on the same charge as before. But brand new information puts a whole new spin on the arrest. It’s a long forgotten interview with Tumblety himself ... Tumblety made bail on the 16th of November, and immediately fled London for America under the alias Frank Townsend. There is little evidence of his whereabouts after he fled until 1903 when a newspaper reported his death in St Louis from a heart condition. ibid.
But that changed in 2006 when a DNA test on the seal of one of the Ripper letters suggested it had been written by a woman. ibid.
The authorities received hundreds of letters claiming to be from the killer himself. Most have been dismissed as hoaxes. Except the letter to the community leader which came with a human kidney. ibid.
The police had two witness accounts. Pearly Poll a fellow prostitute said that she and Martha had been entertaining a couple of Grenadier Guards earlier on that evening. A local PC said he’d seen a Grenadier Guard near the scene of the crime. So the police ordered all Grenadier Guards who had been in London that night to attend an ID parade. Bloody Britain: Jack the Ripper, Discovery 2004
It’s the start of a trail that leads straight to the forgotten prime suspect of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. Secret History: The Whitechapel Murders, Channel 4 1996
The Lancet estimated that one in sixteen women was prepared to sell herself. ibid.
Mrs Elizabeth Long saw a middle-aged man wearing a brown dear-stalker talking to a woman called Annie Chapman. Long thought the man was a foreigner. ibid.
The sub-curator of London’s Pathological Museum had recently been approached by a man asking to buy a number of uteruses; he’d offered twenty pounds a piece but the curator had turned him down. The man was an American doctor. ibid.
Why did the Yard have Tumblety in their sights? ibid.