The Ripper under your nose
It wasn’t long before suspicion for the killings fell on members of a ‘dangerous’ underclass
It’s impossible to separate the Jack the Ripper murders from the district in which they were committed. Whitechapel was remarkably small, densely populated, overcrowded and submerged in poverty. It was a magnet for prostitutes driven to their profession by destitution. And, in popular fears at least, it provided the perfect backdrop for diabolical crimes committed by the desperate and dangerous – an underclass who could strike anyone from frighteningly close proximity.
The theory that the killings were the work of a local man – a criminal with a good knowledge of the labyrinthine streets of Whitechapel – has long proved an attractive one. And modern crime mapping techniques suggest that the theory may have some merit.
Local men certainly feature prominently in the rollcall of suspects. One such was Joseph Barnett, born and raised in Whitechapel, and a Billingsgate fish porter. He was the erstwhile boyfriend of Ripper victim Mary-Jane Kelly (whose mutilated body was found in her bed on 9 November 1885) and was supposedly unhappy that Kelly was a prostitute. It’s been alleged that Barnett killed other prostitutes as a means of warning his girlfriend off that occupation and, when she failed to take the hint, murdered her too.
Charles Allen Lechmere was a local meat-cart driver who discovered the body of Polly Nichols in a street called Buck’s Row on 31 August. Recent research has shown that, in his statement to police, Lechmere gave a false name: Charles Cross. Lechmere’s working route passed several Ripper murder sites, and the other victims were killed near to where he or his mother lived. What’s more, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were both murdered on 30 September 1888 (in the so-called ‘double event’) – Lechmere’s first night off work for months.
Another Whitehall resident, David Cohen, has long aroused suspicion – not just for regular displays of violent tendencies towards women but also because his incarceration in Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum coincided with the cessation of the murders.