Lesson 2: The Investigation, Evidence and Original Suspects
Now, let's go back in time and take a look at the original investigation. This lesson will be devoted to the principal investigators and the three initial Jack the Ripper suspects singled out by Constable Macnaghten: Aaron Kosiminski, Montage J. Druitt, and Michael Ostrag. Sources used in this lesson will be The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper by Jakubowski, Maxim and Nathan Braud and the website Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
The Primary Investigators
The Metropolitan Police (also known as Scotland Yard) worked closely with the City of London police to investigate the Ripper case. During the course of the investigation, over 160 men were brought in as suspects.
A failure between the two departments to cooperate is sometimes blamed for their inability to capture Jack the Ripper. Though the police have been criticized for not finding the Ripper, we must remember that they were working at a time when modern scientific techniques were far in the future. Victorian ideas about identifying criminals included anthropometry, which was a theory that criminals could be identified by certain facial characteristics such as the thickness of the brow or the shape of the jaw or cheekbones as well as head width and a series of other body measurements.
Though fingerprints were vaguely known about, the value of fingerprinting as a method of detection was not yet understood, and, of course, there would have been no computers or national databases to compare prints with, anyway. The police had to rely on eyewitness reports and clues gathered from the crime scene. And even today, in this time of computers, forensics and DNA, serial killers often go unapprehended.
The most well-known detectives on the Ripper case were Metropolitan Police officers Chief Constable Macnaghten and Inspector Frederick Abberline. Macnaghten set forth his opinion that the three top suspects on the case were Kosiminski, Druitt, and Ostag. His strongest suspect was Montage J. Druitt, but his choice was not supported by other investigators.
Inspector Abberline was in charge of the local investigations and is probably the one most associated with the case today. He was described as of medium height with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. He served on the Metropolitan Police Force for 29 years and was later promoted to Chief Inspector. Abberline believed that George Chapman may have been the Ripper.
Other investigators involved in the case include Sir Charles Warren, who gained notoriety when he ordered the "writing on the wall" erased at one of the crime scenes.
Another officer working on the case, Robert Anderson, put forth the opinion that the police knew the identity of Jack the Ripper and that he was a Polish Jew who had been put away in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Yet another officer, Chief Inspector Littlechild, named American Francis Tumblety as a Ripper suspect. So the police themselves were at a disagreement as to the identity of Jack the Ripper. All of them had a prime suspect or two, but none had enough evidence to convict any of the suspects.
