The Top Ten Jack the Ripper Suspects

Jack The Ripper Suspects – Top 5 

1. Aaron Kosminski

Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police CID at the time of the Ripper killings, Sir Robert Anderson, stated in his memoirs that since the autumn of 1888, the murderer had been positively identified as a “low-class Polish Jew”. Anderson also stated that the murders had stopped because this suspect was committed to an asylum. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson wrote the name ‘Kosminski’ in the margin of the relevant passage in his copy of Anderson’s memoirs. The Met’s Assistant Chief Constable, Sir Melville Magnaghten, wrote a memo in 1894 summarising the official findings and suspects of the investigations into the Ripper and named a ‘Kosminski’ as one of the three principal suspects.

Later investigations cross-checking asylum records found Aaron Kosminski as the only person who could fit this name, description, and timeframe, having been admitted to Colney Hatch asylum in 1891. As someone identified by multiple senior police officials as a prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper case, Kosminski has been subject to considerable interest. Recent DNA analysis conducted on a shawl said to have been found with Catherine Eddowes’ body proclaimed a match with samples from Kosminski’s known descendants. However, both the provenance of the shawl and the quality of the DNA analysis have been criticised, and no positive evidence yet connects Aaron Kosminski to any of the Ripper murders.

2. Montague Druitt

The son of a doctor from a well-off Dorset family, Montague John Druitt studied at Winchester College and the University of Oxford, where he excelled at sports – especially cricket. He qualified as a barrister and, to earn extra income after the death of his father took a position as a schoolmaster at a distinguished London boarding school in Blackheath.

On 30 November 1888, three weeks after the last of the canonical five Ripper murders, Druitt was dismissed from his teaching post. The reason for this dismissal is unknown. On New Year’s Eve, 1888, Druitt’s body was recovered from the River Thames at Chiswick. Stones in the pockets had weighed it down. Druitt’s death was ruled a suicide while in an unsound state of mind.

Montague Druitt was one of the three suspects named in Sir Melville Macnaghten’s memo of 1894 and was the Chief Constable’s prime suspect. He even states that Druitt’s own family suspected he was Jack the Ripper. This suspicion echoes common rumours in gossip and newspapers in 1889/1890 that the killer was ‘the son of a surgeon’.

But there is no firm evidence tying Druitt to any of the Whitechapel murders, and his movements in the period in question include several watertight alibis that he was out of London either playing cricket matches or attending legal cases on days before or immediately after the murders – he would have had to travel to and from London by night to commit his attacks between verified sightings in the country. Inspector Frederick Abberline specifically ruled out Druitt as a suspect, saying that only the coincidence of the time of his death with the end of the murders brought him to attention.

3. George Chapman

Inspector Abberline favoured George Chapman – real name Seweryn Antonowicz Klosowski – as the identity of Jack the Ripper. Chapman was born in Poland and arrived in Britain sometime in late 1887/early 1888 to set himself up as a barber and hairdresser in the East End. Despite having married in Poland, he married a second woman in London and, in 1891, moved his family to America to avoid attention from his first wife. He returned to the UK in 1893 after the breakup of his second marriage.

In addition to two overlapping common-law marriages, Chapman had at least four mistresses during the 1890s and 1900s. In October 1902, Chapman was arrested after his latest mistress died from emetic tartar poisoning. When police noted that two of his previous partners had also died in similar circumstances, their bodies were exhumed and were found to have also been poisoned. Chapman was convicted of murder and executed by hanging in April 1903.

Chapman was certainly a proven murderer and is very likely to have killed at least three women. He was known to be a violent misogynist, with a long history of physical and verbal abuse to his wives and partners over the years, as well as incidences of other violent behaviour. He was reported to have attempted to strangle his first wife (interrupted only by the arrival of a customer at their shop). His physical description matches that of the man seen with several of the victims (particularly the one seen by George Hutchinson with Mary Jane Kelly), and the start and end of the murder spree align with his arrival and departure from Whitechapel.

Going against Chapman is that it is very unusual for serial killers to change their methods and means of killing – Chapman was convicted as a poisoner, not a mutilator. His victims were acquaintances and intimate partners, not strangers encountered on the street.

4. Joseph Barnett

Barnett is the only prominent suspect with a known connection to any of the victims, as the roommate and partner of Mary Jane Kelly, the last of the ‘canonical five.’ A born-and-bred native of Whitechapel, Barnett was a porter at Billingsgate fish market.

Barnett met Kelly for the first time in April 1887, and they quickly agreed to move in together. Barnett paid for lodgings for both of them. They moved rooms frequently due to failure to pay rent and, in March 1888, began renting the room at Miller’s Court, where Mary would meet her end. In the summer of 1888, Barnett lost his porter’s license and, with it, his income.

This led Mary Jane Kelly to return to her previous work of prostitution to bring in money.

It has been theorised that Barnett began killing prostitutes on the streets of Whitechapel in this period, either to try and scare Kelly out of continuing her involvement in sex work or out of violent resentment at the women and their trade that kept Kelly from being his partner. This violent resentment culminated in the grisly murder and dismemberment of Kelly after she either refused to give up sex work or refused to accept a steady relationship with Barnett.

As with all Ripper suspects, there is no firm evidence tying Barnett to the murder of Kelly or any of the other victims. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that continues to bring the spotlight back to Barnett. And if he did kill Mary Jane Kelly in a violent rage, he would have no reason to continue his killing spree, thus explaining why the murders ended.

5. Hyam Hyams

A name that went unknown for nearly a century, Hyam Hyams was ‘discovered’ by Martin Fido during his search for the ‘insane lower-class Jew’ who was the Metropolitan Police’s chief suspect, and possibly even a specific named individual, in the 19th century. Living in the East End (albeit not in Whitechapel), in 1888, Hyams was in an unfortunate state – a severe alcoholic, mentally ill and suffering increasingly frequent and severe epileptic seizures. First detained by the police in December 1888, he was in and out of various workhouse infirmaries and asylums almost continuously from April 1889 to his death in the Colney Hatch asylum in 1913.

In the summer of 1889, he was committed after attacking and stabbing his wife, who had been subject to increasingly erratic and violent behaviour from her husband over the past nine years. Hyams also displayed ongoing paranoia that his wife was cheating on him – a belief that later grew to include the doctors at Colney Hatch, who Hyams was convinced were holding him in the hospital so they could pursue his wife. Although he had spells of quiet sobriety, Hyams’ behaviour in the aftermath of one of his fits was “violent and filthy”, and in this state, he was described as “crafty and dangerous.”

Hyams fits the profile police in the 1880s considered to be that of the killer – an insane working-class Jew who lived in the East End and was prevented from committing further murders after being incarcerated. However, it has to be reckoned that Hyams delusions and violence were always directed to his wife and other men, not strange prostitutes from the streets.

Five More Jack the Ripper Suspects

6. David Cohen

A Polish Jew living in Whitechapel who was confined to a lunatic asylum shortly after the last of the canonical murders. Author Martin Fido concluded that Cohen was a pseudonym for Nathan Kaminsky – possibly a generic name assigned by asylum staff since Kaminsky could only speak Yiddish. Kaminsky was a bootmaker from Whitechapel suffering from syphilis and committed to Colney Hatch asylum for being ‘violently antisocial’ in December 1888. He could have been the ‘Leather Apron’ who locals in Whitechapel blamed several attacks on in the weeks before the Jack the Ripper killings began. Local gossip maintained that ‘Leather Apron’ was a Jewish bootmaker. Did the Ripper’s murderous spree end because Cohen was no longer free to stalk the streets of the East End?

7.?Albert Bachert

Albert Bachert was a resident of the Whitechapel area and a man who injected himself into the murder enquiry. His mannerisms and characteristics aroused much suspicion and made him a person of interest in the case. It has since been suggested that his background and actions are similar to the profile of some serial killers…

8. William Bury

William Bury was a resident of the East End during the Canonical Five murders and a proven killer whose later crimes bore a striking similarity to the Whitechapel murders. He was hanged for the murder of his wife in 1889 and remains the last man to be hanged in the city of Dundee in Scotland.

9. George Hutchinson

George Hutchinson’s first appearance was after the inquest of Mary Kelly when he went to the police with a statement about meeting the victim on the morning of her death. It was the very detailed nature of this statement which led later researchers to look at him more closely, and he was first named as the killer in 1998.

10. Charles Lechmere (Cross)

This man was originally brought to the attention of the police as a witness who claimed to have discovered the body of the woman murdered in Bucks Row. There is evidence to suggest that this man not only lied about his true identity but may also have lied about whether he discovered the body. His time alone with the victim also raises much suspicion.