Casebook Suspects: Hyam Hyams

Many names have been offered up as the identity of Jack the Ripper since those infamous weeks in 1888, and those names have been attached to a variety of personalities from royalty to fish porters.

However, in 1888, there was a strong body of opinion that the identity of what would go on to become the world’s most famous serial killer was to be found amidst the East End’s Jewish community.

This wasn’t just driven by prejudice and antisemitism – although both factors were in play at the time and affected the conduct of the press coverage and the official investigation. Based on information gathered from Whitechapel in the weeks, months and years after the infamous crimes, senior figures from the Metropolitan Police reached a consensus that the Ripper was a mentally ill working-class Jew from the East End. In 1910, Sir Robert Anderson (former Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police CID and in overall charge of the 1888 investigation) wrote a magazine article in which he not only stated that this was the working theory at the time but that ongoing investigations in the years after the murders had proved them correct. Anderson also claimed that the crime spree had ended after the suspect had been detained in a psychiatric hospital.

Anderson’s successor, Sir Melville Macnaghten, wrote a memo in 1894 summarising official Met documents and theories and named three prime suspects, one of which was named “Kosminski, a Polish Jew”- a name also suggested by Donald Swanson, the senior detective assigned to the Whitechapel murder investigations.

However, there was one name that no one contemporary with the Ripper murders mentioned and wouldn’t surface until a century later – Hyam Hyams.

Although he apparently went entirely unnoticed by investigators and theorists in the 19th century (and for many decades following), Hyam Hyams certainly matched what many at that time were certain were characteristics of Jack the Ripper – he lived in the East End, he had a mental illness, and he was Jewish.

The Life of a Potential Jack the Ripper – Hyam Hyams

Born on February 8th, 1855, in Aldgate, Hyams was one of six children, their father being a cigar marker – a typical occupation for the Jewish immigrants to the area at the time. The 1881 census records him living at an address in Mitre Street, Aldgate.

In late December 1888, a few weeks after Mary Jane Kelly had become the last of the ‘canonical five’ Ripper victims, Hyams was detained by a policeman in Leman Street, Whitechapel, as he was in a state of delirium tremens (mental impairment commonly associated with terrifying hallucinations and typically encountered in late stages of severe alcoholism). Hyams was sent to the Whitechapel Infirmary (attached to the district workhouse). The details recorded include that his address at the time was 217 Jubilee Street in Mile End, just over a mile from Leman Street, and that he was married with two children.

After thirteen days, Hyam Hyams was discharged, but he reappeared at the Infirmary in April 1889. He was then assessed as having a ‘weak mind’ (a general term of the time encompassing many sorts of mental and developmental disorders) and was immediately transferred to Colney Hatch, the infamous London County Lunatic Asylum in Barnet.

The patient notes for Hyam Hyams’ time at Colney Hatch survive and record that he arrived under restraint. He was described as “violent and dangerous (especially to [his] wife).” The notes also record that he injured his mother in the course of attacking his wife with a kitchen knife. He had alcoholism and also suffered epileptic fits.

At Colney Hatch, his state appeared to improve, and Hyams was discharged in August. However, just ten days later, his name appears on the records of the City of London Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Dartford, Kent, after attacking and stabbing his wife. These notes include statements by Hyams’ wife, mentioning his increasingly unstable and dangerous behaviour – over the past nine years, he had suffered from increasingly frequent epileptic fits, after which he suffered spells of violence. He was also prone to bouts of paranoia centred around his wife and a belief that she was cheating on him. Mrs Hyams stated that her husband’s behaviour had caused her to suffer four miscarriages.

The case notes from Dartford note Hyams’ erratic and periodic behaviour – at times, he was “kind, civil and industrious, and most attentive to his personal appearance and grooming,” but in the weeks following an epileptic attack, he became violent, deranged, and destructive and prone to self-abuse (the 19th-century term for masturbation) and defecating in his room.

In January 1890, Hyam Hyams was transferred back to Colney Hatch, where the second batch of notes state that he was prone to “very frequent epileptic fits”, after which he became “violent and filthy. Otherwise, quiet, but bitter against [his] wife.” His calm spells generally lasted about a month, and after an epileptic fit, he would follow about two weeks of violent mania. The doctors at Colney Hatch classed him as “crafty and dangerous.”

The notes record that Hyams attacked staff and other patients on several occasions, once inflicting non-serious injury on the neck of one of the medical staff with a sharp piece of steel he managed to acquire. His paranoia about his wife continued and grew to include the staff of the hospital; Hyams came to believe they were having affairs with her while keeping him at Colney Hatch.

Hyam Hyams never left Colney Hatch after his second arrival and died there in March 1913 at the age of 58.

Was Hyam Hyams Jack the Ripper?

There is certainly a lot to promote Hyam Hyams as a suspect, and you can see why Martin Fido and Mark King promoted him as a possible identity for Jack the Ripper after combing hospital records for cases matching the description and timings hinted at by Anderson.

Hyams was certainly a dangerous man when in fits of his mania – it is recorded that he attacked at least two people with a knife or similar implements. He was deemed “crafty and dangerous” by medical professionals who observed him for many years. His violent tendencies combine with general paranoia and specific resentment of his wife. The characteristically violent murders of women in Whitechapel that created the infamy of Jack the Ripper stopped when Hyam Hyams was confined to an asylum. He fits the description given by eyewitnesses who believed they had seen Jack the Ripper. He was a long-term resident of the area, and one of his known addresses was only a few yards from where the body of Catherine Eddowes (the fourth of the canonical five victims and the second on the night of the ‘double event’) was found in September 1888.

Hyams’ case fits the twice-made claim by Sir Robert Anderson that the identity of Jack the Ripper had been determined in the years after the murders by the Metropolitan Police, that he was Jewish, and he was “safely caged in an asylum.” He even matches the broad sweep of the details laid out by Sir Melville Macnaghten’s memorandum of 1894, which names the suspect as “Kosminski, a Polish Jew”, but in other respects matches Hyams.

There is even the tantalising note in Hyam’s patient notes from the asylum at Dartford that note that his violent and disorderly behaviour was well known to the City of London Police – does the fact that Hyams lived and worked in the ancient City of London, which wasn’t under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police, explain why he was not considered at the time?

However, against this, the fact that this evidence is entirely circumstantial must be weighed. No firm evidence ties him to any of the Whitechapel murders or even their locations at the required time. Although he unquestionably became more violent as his condition deteriorated, and he directed this violence against his unfortunate wife, there is nothing in his records to suggest that he harboured violent hatred of women in general that would drive him to murder strangers on the streets of Whitechapel – his delusions were directed at other men who he believed were having affairs with his wife. Even in his worst periods, he showed no evidence of the extreme violence and anatomical fascination that characterised the Ripper killings. The timescale of the Ripper murders does not fit the general pattern of Hyam Hyams’ condition (two weeks of derangement between longer lucid periods).

Much of the evidence that seems intriguing does not bear up under scrutiny – while he may have lived on Mitre Street, that was over seven years before Catherine Eddowes was murdered in Mitre Square. At the time of the murders, his address was one and a half miles to the east, which not only weakens his connection to the area but also goes against the accepted criminal profiles of modern times that the Ripper lived to the west. Those profiles also suggest that Jack the Ripper was unmarried and ‘sexually inadequate,’ whereas Hyam Hyams was married and had two children.

Hyam Hyams or Aaron Kosminski?

The detailed search of hospital records that brought Hyam Hyams to light also showed at least three other individuals matching the basic criteria – working-class Jewish men from the East End with mental conditions making them violent who were admitted to asylums in 1889 or 1890. These include Aaron Kosminski (the surname provided in Macnaghten’s memo) and David Cohen (possibly an alias for Nathan Kaminsky or a generic name given by asylum staff).

Kosminski was admitted to Colney Hatch just one month after Hyam Hyams’ second admittance there, possibly leading to Hyams being misidentified or overlooked in the later remembrances of Anderson and Macnaghten and Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who wrote ‘Kosminski’ in the margin of his copy of Anderson’s memoirs where he suggests that Jack the Ripper was a mentally ill Jew from the East End.

The exact nature or cause of Aaron Kosminski’s mental illness is unknown, unlike Hyam Hyams and his increasingly severe epilepsy. However, for both men, their troubles were expressed in similar ways – erratic behaviour and periods of violent paranoia. Like Hyams, Kosminski is known to have attacked people with a knife. Both men were recorded as indulging in ‘solitary vices’ and ‘self-abuse.’

However, only Hyams continued to display violent behaviour while at Colney Hatch – despite his previous outbursts, Kosminski was described as quiet and harmless while at the asylum. And he was not detained at Colney Hatch until early 1890 – well over a year after the canonical five murders. Hyams was nearly continually incarcerated from December 1888, just a few weeks after the last of the famous crimes.

What Do You Think?

Hyam Hyams is just one of the many suspects who have been suggested as being Jack the Ripper over the years. His history and behaviour certainly seem to fit many peoples’ idea of the sort of out-of-control, violent personality needed to be Jack the Ripper, as well as being intimately familiar with the streets of Whitechapel. However, there is no direct evidence tying him to the case, and other suspects fit the profile just as well.

With evidence and new theories still emerging today, over 130 years since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of Whitechapel, it remains likely that we will stay in the dark about the Ripper’s identity for many more years yet to come.

If you would like further information about Hyam Hyams and the other Ripper suspects, why not join us on our Jack the Ripper walking tour? Immerse yourself in the world of Victorian London as you walk the streets of Whitechapel, learning all about the case, the murders, the victims, and, of course, the suspects! Book your place on an upcoming tour with us today and prepare to delve deep into the mind of one of the most notorious serial killers that history has ever seen.