Jack The Ripper – Mystery Solved? Er...and RIP Max Bygraves

Two experts claim to have solved the mystery of the identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious murderer of five prostitutes in London in the 1890s. This kind of rings a bell or two as we have heard these claims once or twice before. The murders took place largely in the Spitalfields district just a stone’s throw away from the City of London, although one took place in an alleyway a couple of miles away in Whitechapel. Ever since the world has been fascinated by the Ripper. Was he a Prince of England, a Liverpool Doctor, a loony Jew, a freemason or just an ordinary bloke with a penchant for killing hookers? The truth is that we will never know.

The latest name in the frame is Charles Cross, a cartman whose walk from his home in Doveton Street on the borders of Bethnal Green and Stepney to his work in Broad Street took him past the scenes of all the murders*. Okay, that bit is circumstantial. But he was the person who found the first body (that of Polly Nicholls). Indeed as the Old Bill arrived he was actually crouching over it. He claimed he was seeing if she was okay (given how victims were disembowelled this should not have required detailed examination), the authors of the latest book on the Ripper reckon that he was interrupted disembowelling the young lady.

Oh did I mention that there is a book being published? Yes, of course. It does seem an easy way to make a few quid. Find a new suspect and publish a book claiming to have identified the Ripper. No-one can show that you are wrong and ching ching. The latest effort is by Christer Holmgren and Edward Stow.

The 1890s was a decade when, perhaps in pre- century end fashion we were as a society fascinated by death, the afterlife and the super natural. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published in 1886, Dracula was a child of the 1890s and the Ripper mythology fits into the same milieu. Indeed one might say that the way that most of those outed as Jack the Ripper were respectable, almost urbane, men who were accused of being sadistic murderers on the side fits in very well with the Jekyll and Hyde storyline. The Cross theory is at least different in that he seems like a very ordinary bloke. The 1890s was also the decade in which almost all of the great Sherlock Homes stories were set and published by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( although Homes was resurrected for financial reasons by Doyle later on. Hollywood has happily brought Holmes into Ripper mythology.

There is a Jack the Ripper walking tour which takes in four of the five murder scenes and ends at the Ten Bells on Commercial Street, aka the Jack The Ripper Pub, which is next to Christ Church Spitalfields, the most Western of the Hawksmoor churches. The pub has become a bit more twee in recent years. It used to be a dive with a lunchtime stripper but those days are gone. Anyhow, there are worse ways to spend an evening.

On the subject of dead cockneys, I see that Max Bygraves has passed away today. Okay, he was from South of the River (for non London readers, the area I have described above is all North of the River) and so Bygraves was not technically a cockney and there is no suggestion that he was Jack the Ripper (not that old). but he was a legend. “ I wanna tell you a story.” That was his catchphrase. The poor chap had severe Alzheimer’s at the end and was living in Australia – which must have been a double blow. Bygraves was a great entertainer. A man of another age. Rest in Peace Max.

*On reflection that is not true. Plausibly Cross would have walked along the Whitechapel Road and up to Broad Street or perhaps along the back streets of Bethnal Green towards Brick Lane. However the Whitechapel murder was in an alley on the South side of Commercial Road (three quarters of a mile south of the Whitechapel Rd). That would have been a bit of a detour for Cross. I am even more sceptical about this theory.