Chalk-written message scrawled at Dundee flat read ‘Jack the Ripper is at the back of the door’

At the time of William Henry Bury’s death, at 8am on April 24 1889, there was more than one person who considered they had hanged the feared ‘Jack the Ripper’.

His hangman, James Berry, always believed he had ended the life of the man responsible for slaying 11 women in London’s Whitechapel district in 1888.

Detectives who travelled from London to investigate the 30-year-old’s movements of that year confided that they believed it too.

Bury was born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire in May 1859, the son of a hardworking fishmonger and a troubled mother who was soon confined to a lunatic asylum.

He had a solid education and at 16 found work as a factor’s clerk in a local warehouse before moving briefly to Wolverhampton.

Bury arrived in London in 1887, finding work as a sawdust collector for James Martin – described as a general dealer but who in reality ran a brothel.

It was there that he met Ellen Elliot, a 32-year-old barmaid and prostitute of some wealth, thanks to a legacy and wise investment.

They married in April 1888, but happiness was short-lived as Bury’s true character as a violent drunk soon surfaced.

Just five days after they were married, the couple’s landlady heard screams and found Ellen on the floor, Bury kneeling on top of her and attempting to cut her throat with a table knife.

In the coming days and weeks, Ellen would often be seen sporting facial injuries from one drunken beating or another.

She told acquaintances that she was under constant threat and believed, prophetically, that her husband would eventually kill her.

The couple moved around before finally settling in Dundee in January 1889, staying briefly at a variety of lodgings before settling in Princes Street.

Neighbours saw the couple rarely but reported they were often drunk.

Then, at around 7am on Sunday February 10 1889, Bury walked into Bell Street police station and announced: “I’m Jack the Ripper and I want to give myself up.”

He told unconvinced officers: “If you go to my house in Princes Street, you’ll find the body of a woman packed in a box and cut up.”

A candlelight search revealed the truth of his statements.

Police officers also discovered two chalk-written messages, one behind a tenement door stating “Jack the Ripper is at the back of the door” and another on a stairwell wall leading down to the flat reading “Jack Ripper is in this seller (sic)”.

Despite his initial confession, Bury pled not guilty to murder and three surgeons subsequently gave three different accounts of what they believed took place.

Throughout his trial he was said to have “slept soundly each night”.

Some 5,000 people waited outside his place of execution for the hoisting of a black flag to announce his death.