Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)Griffiths, Arthur
History
Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Griffiths, Arthur
Crime; Police
The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant,
"Jack the Ripper," was never revealed. So far as absolute knowledge
goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder,
had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting
several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against
three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of
suspicion. Concerning two of them the case was weak, although it was
based on certain suggestive facts. One was a Polish Jew, a known
lunatic, who was at large in the district of Whitechapel at the time of
the murder, and who, having developed homicidal tendencies, was
afterwards confined in an asylum. This man was said to resemble the
murderer by the one person who got a glimpse of him--the
police-constable in Mitre Court. The second possible criminal was a
Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict in both England and
Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and
instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and
at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least,
his whereabouts was never exactly known. The third person was of the
same type, but the suspicion in his case was stronger, and there was
every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts
about him. He also was a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be
insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately
after the last murder, that in Miller's Court, on the 9th of November,
1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was
found floating in the Thames, and was said to have been in the water a
month. The theory in this case was that after his last exploit, which
was the most fiendish of all, his brain entirely gave way, and he became
furiously insane and committed suicide. It is at least a strong
presumption that "Jack the Ripper" died or was put under restraint after
the Miller's Court affair, which ended this series of crimes. It would
be interesting to know whether in this third case the man was
left-handed or ambidextrous, both suggestions having been advanced by
medical experts after viewing the victims. It is true that other doctors
disagreed on this point, which may be said to add another to the many
instances in which medical evidence has been conflicting, not to say
confusing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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