Your chance to serve on the jury at retrial of 19th Century killer.

Dame Sue Black invites Dundonians to take part in restaging of Bury trial to be broadcast on TV Chalk-written message scrawled at Dundee flat read ‘Jack the Ripper is at the back of the door’

Fifteen members of the Dundee public are being offered the unique opportunity to form a jury for the trial of one of the city’s most notorious murderers.

William Henry Bury was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal 1889 slaying of his wife, Ellen, in their flat at 112 Princes Street.

The verdict of jurors saw a noose placed around his neck as the 30-yearold – described as a drink-soaked and violent chancer – achieved immortality as the last man to be hanged in Dundee.

Were that not enough to seal his place in history, Bury also has a place in “Ripper” lore, having in his initial confession claimed to be “Jack”.

In death, his bones hang in the office of Dame Sue Black, celebrated forensic anthropologist and director of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at Dundee University.

Now, as it celebrates the 130th anniversary of the Cox Chair of Anatomy, established in 1888 as part of a major public campaign to establish a medical school in the city, the professor intends to re-enact part of the trial.

Professor Black and her team have been given permission to reconvene the High Court of 1889 in court 1 of Dundee Sheriff Court on the afternoon of Saturday February 3.

A volunteer panel of jurors will be joined by some of Scotland’s brightest young trainee lawyers, with a Dundee University legal team prosecuting and Aberdeen counterparts defending the accused.

They will do so under the guidance of two of the country’s top legal minds, in Alex Prentice QC and Dorothy Bain QC respectively.

The trial will take place over a number of hours, with Lord Hugh Matthews, a Senator of the College of Justice and a judge of Scotland’s Supreme Courts, presiding.

Top forensic experts will be among the witnesses, a narrator will describe what is happening, actors will assume key roles and the entire trial will be filmed by broadcaster Dan Snow.

The Courier will be on the press benches to report on proceedings, providing live updates as if it were covering a real trial.

Professor Black said: “The William Bury trial and his subsequent execution is a fascinating story in so many respects, from the reaction of the Dundee public, who were very much against the death sentence at the time, to the claims linking him to the Jack the Ripper case, and the circumstances of the death of his wife.

“We have excellent records of the original case, through documents held in the National Records of Scotland and press reports of the time.

“When the jury returned the first time, they found Bury guilty but asked for mercy as they found the medical evidence to be conflicting.

“However, they could only return with one of three verdicts – guilty, not guilty or not proven – and so were returned to the courtroom.

“This time they found him guilty and he was sentenced to death by hanging.

“We will now look at this evidence again in the light of modern thinking and see what the jury decides.”

During the original trial, the Crown alleged that Bury strangled his wife Ellen with a piece of rope, then cut her abdomen open and disembowelled her, possibly while she was still alive.

The court was told he had then crammed her mutilated body into a wooden trunk, breaking bones in her legs in the process. The defence alleged that it was suicide.

While awaiting trial, Bury told police his wife had “self-strangulated”.

He claimed that on the morning of Monday February 4, 1889, he and his wife had been out having a good time – such a good time in fact that he could not remember going to bed.

The following morning, he said he had wakened to find his wife dead on the floor and, fearing he would be apprehended as “Jack the Ripper”, picked-up a large knife and plunged it into her abdomen before attempting to conceal her body in a trunk.

By the time she was found, Ellen Bury had been dead for several days.

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.

William Henry Bury’s death notice after he was found guilty of murdering his wife, Ellen.

A handout document from Bury’s original trial.

Picture: Dominic Younger. The body of William Henry Bury, above, was transported to Dundee University for anatomisation following his death and the bones from his neck remain in the office of Dame Sue Black, left. He had been hanged and his neck snapped at his second cervical vertebra – the classical hangman’s fracture.