Jack the Ripper Now Caught

JACK THE RIPPER CAUGHT IN LONDON.
The Mysterious Author of the Famous Whitechapel Murders Now in an English Insane Asylum.

DR. FORBES WINSLOW, THE GREAT INSANITY EXPERT, GAVE THE CLUE.
The Distinguished London Specialist Tells The World the History of His Studies and Theories Which Led Up to the Identification of the Murderer.

Jack the Ripper has been caught, and is now securely locked up in the English Insane Asylum at Broadmoor, just out of London. This most extraordinary murderer is a hopeless maniac.
Dr. Forbes Winslow, of London, the foremost insanity expert of the world, declared to a World reporter:
"You may positively state that Jack the Ripper has been caught. You may quote me as authority for the statement that the perpetrator of the shocking Whitechapel murders has been identified and is now out of harm's way in an insane asylum. Upon this I stake my reputation as an insanity expert, but professional reasons make it impossible for me to reveal to the world the name or identity of the murderer."
Dr. Forbes Winslow stands at the head of British medical specialists. He is in the medical world what Edison is in the realm of electricity, or Herreshoff among yachting experts.

AN END TO THE MYSTERY.

These positive and unqualified statements from the foremost insanity specialist of Europe at last put an end to the mystery of the Whitechapel horrors. Dr. Forbes Winslow is now in New York City attending the International Medico-Legal Congress. By special appointment he gave his entire evening last Wednesday to a representative of The World, and at his apartments in the Westminster Hotel detailed the history of his long and patient study of the murder mysteries.
The distinguished specialist was called upon to advise as to the manner of man who was so cunningly outwitting the police day after day, and he at once determined that the Whitechapel butcheries were the work of a madman - not a wild-eyed maniac, but a monster of shrewdness, caution and intelligence. But the murders were, as Dr. Winslow clearly pointed out, the work of an insane mind. He analyzed the methods, the motives and the attending circumstances, and finally presented to the London police a carefully and scientifically constructed mental picture of the man they must search for.

A DETECTIVE-DOCTOR.

Becoming intensely interested in the field of research before him, the doctor gave his whole heart and soul to the study of the mystery, and as each fresh victim was discovered he strengthened and completed his theories as to the diseased mind which had perpetrated the butcheries. But the great specialist became more than a builder of scientific theories - he found himself pursuing clues and searching for facts to prove his scientific deductions. He was at once a medical theorist and a practical detective.
Day after day and night after night the doctor spent in the Whitechapel slums. The detectives knew him, the lodging-house keepers welcomed him and at last the poor creatures of the streets came to know him. In terror they rushed to him with every scrap of information which might to his mind be of value. To him the frightened women looked for hope. In the presence of this great specialist they felt reassured and they welcomed him to their dens and eagerly obeyed his commands and found for him the bits of information he wanted.
It is not, therefore, surprising that it was Dr. Forbes Winslow and not the detectives of Scotland Yard who reasoned out an accurate scientific mental picture of the Whitechapel murderer and then stamped beyond a doubt the personal identification of the monster himself.

REVIEW OF THE RIPPER'S CRIMES.

To recall the history of the famous the Ripper murders in the London it should be remembered that ware in all eight victims. This list began in April, 1888, and laid down his knife in July, 1889, after the eighth victim. There is good reason to believe that the hand of the murderer was stayed by the revelations of Dr. Winslow before he had finished his contemplated crusade.
The first murder was committed on April 3, 1888, when Emma Elizabeth Smith, forty-five years of age, was found dead with an iron stake thrust through her body. This was near Osborn street, Whitechapel. No particular attention was attached to this murder except for the unspeakable mutilation committed after the victim's death.
On Aug. 7, of the same year, Martha Tabram was murdered in George Yard buildings, Commercial street, Spitalfields. Her body was stabbed and cut in thirty-nine places, the method of killing being the same as in the first murder.
This butchery was followed in quick succession by the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, who was found in a court in Bucks Row, Whitechapel, with her throat cut and her body partly mutilated.
In all the succeeding murders the throat of the victim was cut and the body mutilated in the same horrible manner.
The next victim of the fiendish murderer was Annie Chapman, who was killed and mutilated in Hanbury street, Spitalfields, on Sept. 8. Three weeks later Elizabeth Stride was killed in Berner street, Whitechapel. The throat was cut, but the body not mutilated, the slayer having evidently been disturbed in his horrible work. On the same night, in Mitre Square, Aldgate, Catherine Eddowes was killed and mutilated.
The next murder on the ghastly record was on Nov. 9, when Mary Jane Kelly was found dead in Miller's Court, Dorset street, with her throat cut and body horribly mutilated.

THE POLICE DAZED.

No more murders were committed for some months, and the community was hoping that the murderer's hand had been stayed for good, when London was again convulsed by the slaughter and subsequent mutilation of Alice McKenzie, in Castle Alley, Whitechapel.
The police were completely dazed, and despite the precautions taken and traps laid, the murderer escaped them all.
After the second murder Dr. Forbes Winslow formed the theory that the two murders had been committed by an epileptic maniac. He still held to his theory until the fourth murder, basing his conclusions upon the fact that in this disease the paroxysms only occur at intervals, and that they leave the person subject to them in full possession of his faculties. He would thus be able to control his diabolical impulse until a safe opportunity presented itself. Moreover, epileptic seizures of this description are frequently accompanied by a form of erotic frenzy, and this would account for the particular class of women which the murderer selected for his victims.
After the fourth murder public opinion became intensely excited over the Whitechapel murders, and little else was talked about for days after each murder.

SCORES OF FUTILE ARRESTS.

Dr. Winslow determined to throw himself heart and soul into the matter, and wrote a letter to the press in which he set forth his theory that a dangerous homicidal lunatic was prowling about London.
Arrests were made by the score, principally of people of a low class who inhabited the locality where the murders were committed. Dr. Winslow, however, refused to believe that the murders were committed by one of the lower classes.
He gave it as his opinion that the murderer was in all probability a man of good position and perhaps living in the West End of London. When paroxysm which prompted him to his fearful deeds had passed he most likely returned to the bosom of his family.
After the fifth and sixth murders, however, he changed his views. The exact similarity in the method of murder and the horrible evisceration of the body showed too much of a methodical nature ever to belong to a man who committed the deeds in a fit of epileptic furor. Considerable anatomical knowledge was displayed by the murderer, which would seem to indicate that his occupation was that of a butcher or a surgeon.
Taking all these things into consideration the insanity expert concluded that the perpetrator was a homicidal lunatic goaded on to his dreadful work by a sense of duty. Religious mania was evidently closely allied with his homicidal instincts, because his efforts were solely directed against fallen women, whose extermination he probably considered was his mission. Many homicidal lunatics consider murder to be their duty. "Jack the Ripper" possibly imagined that he received his commands from God.
Dr. Forbes Winslow communicated his ideas to the authorities at Scotland Yard, and expressed his opinion that he would run down the murderer with the co-operation of the police. He explained that lunatics can frequently be caught in their own trap by humoring their ideas. If opposed, however, they bring a devilish cunning to bear, which effectually frustrates all efforts to thwart their designs. The expert proposed to insert an advertisement in a prominent position in all the papers, reading something like this:
"A gentleman who is strongly opposed to the presence of fallen women in the streets of London would like to cooperate with some one with a view to their suppression."
The doctor proposed to have a half-dozen detectives at the place of appointment, and seize and rigidly examine every one that replied to the advertisement. Scotland Yard, however, refused to entertain the idea, and as it was quite impossible for the doctor, as a private citizen, to seize and detain possibly innocent persons, the idea was abandoned.

CITIZENS HUNT FOR CLUES.

Dr. Winslow held that a simple expedient like this would be more likely to entrap the murderer than anything else, for the diabolical cunning of a homicidal lunatic, who conceives he has a mission, renders his capture red-handed extremely problematical. Dr. Winslow claimed that a man of this nature would be sure to read the newspapers carefully and gloat over the results of his crime. The savage hacking and cutting of some of his victims showed that he was under the influence of religious frenzy, and every horrible detail he probably considered redounded to his credit and proved that he was performing his mission faithfully.
About this time rumors grew into loud complaints against the inefficiency of the London police, and scores of private citizens disguised themselves and patrolled all night the streets of Whitechapel, hoping to catch the murderer. Among them was no less a personage than a director of the Bank of England, who was so possessed by a special theory of his own that he disguised himself as an ordinary day laborer and started exploring the common lodging-houses on the East Side, clad in navvy boots, a fustian jacket with a red handkerchief around his neck and a pick-axe.
During the month of August, 1888, a man was seen whose description as then given corresponds with the murderer now in an asylum, writing on the wall under an archway. The inscription read: "Jack the Ripper will never commit another murder."
On Oct. 4 Dr. Winslow received a letter purporting to come from Jack the Ripper and expressing an insane glee over the hideous work he was carrying out. This letter was in the same handwriting as the writing found under the archway. Another letter was received by the doctor on Oct. 19, also in the same handwriting, which informed him that the next murder would be committed on Nov. 9.

MORE MURDERS TAKE PLACE.

In London, Nov. 9, is Lord Mayor's Day, when the incoming Mayor gives a procession, or, as it is called, the Lord Mayor's show. The day is pretty generally kept as a holiday, and thousands throng the streets to look at the entertainment which the new Lord Mayor has provided. While the throng was at its thickest the yells of the newsboys were suddenly heard: "Another Whitechapel murder; horrible mutilation," &c. The murder had been foretold in the letter, but no clue could be obtained as to the writer.
The police worked night and day, found theories, acted upon all sorts of suggestions, but all without avail.
The thought of the fiend silently carving up his victim in the midst of a crowded neighbourhood, reflecting with joy upon the righteousness of his work, when the whole city was engaged in feastings and processions of the day, caused almost a panic in the city. The mutilation of the corpse surpassed in brutality and presented a more sickening spectacle than any of the rest. The murder this time was committed in a room on the ground floor with a window in front by which a passer-by might have seen the mangled body lying upon the bed.
No more murders occurring, the excitement gradually died away until on July 17, 1889, a woman named Alice McKenzie was found mutilated in the usual manner in a dark Whitechapel alley.

THE RIPPER ELUDES THE POLICE.

The body when found showed that the fiend had been disturbed in his work and the policeman who discovered it blew his whistle and every constable on duty in the neighbourhood blocked up every opening, thus forming a cordon through which no one was allowed to pass. All contained in the cordon were examined and house-to-house search conducted. It was all in vain. The murderer had disappeared as completely as though he had vanished from the earth. Letters had been received by the police in the early part of the year warning them that the murderous work would be resumed in July.
No clues, however, were obtainable from them and the murder remained shrouded in mystery, as were the others.
The long interval between the murder of Nov. 9, 1888, and July 17, 1889, Dr. Winslow accounted for by saying that the lunatic had undoubtedly had a lucid interval, during which he was quite unconscious of the horrible crimes he had previously committed. After each murder had been carried out and the lust for blood appeased, the lunatic changed at once from a homicidal religious maniac into a quiet man with a perfect knowledge of what he was doing.
This is what rendered his capture so difficult. A man who was afflicted with permanent homicidal mania and always in the same frame of mind as the murderer was when he so wildly and savagely slashed the bodies of his victims, would have been soon found out. Jack the Ripper, however, in his lucid intervals, was a man whom no one would suspect of the fearful crimes he committed.
Dr. Winslow says that this is very common among lunatics of this description and the fiendish Jack the Ripper probably read the accounts of the murders in the morning papers and was as much horrified as anybody.
The doctor still held firmly to his theory that the assassin was a well-to-do man suffering from religious mania. Many theories had been started and met with more or less favor. The general opinion was that the murderer was a cattle butcher visiting the slums of Whitechapel and committing a murder every time his ship came in. On the body of Mary Jane Kelly, who was murdered Nov. 9, 1888, a woman's hat was found in addition to her own. Everybody then said that the "Ripper" was a woman.
Nothing was proved, however, and the police were still at fault, though working most assiduously.

To be continued...........

THE FIRST DEFINITE CLUE.

The first definite clue was obtained on Aug. 30, 1889, when a woman with whom Dr. Forbes Winslow was in communication (for he had never stopped working on the murders) came to him and said that a man had spoken to her in Worship street, Finsbury, who wanted her to go down a court with him. She refused to do so and together with some of the neighbours whom she told, followed him, walking at a little distance behind. They saw him go into a house out of which she had seen him coming some days before.
On the morning after the murder on July 17 she saw him washing his hands at the pump in the yard of the house referred to. He was in his shirt-sleeves. She particularly remembered the occurrence because of the very peculiar look on his face.
When the house was searched the man had gone, nothing being known about him except that the description of him given by the other tenants tallied with that given by a lodging-house keeper with whom he lived a year before. This lodging-house keeper, whose name was Callahan, called on Dr. Winslow several days afterwards and gave him some most important information.

A QUEER LODGER.

He said that in April, 1888, a gentlemanly looking man called in answer to an advertisement. He took a large bed and sitting-room and said that he was over there on business, and might stay a few months or perhaps a year. Before he came there he told them that he had occupied rooms in the neighborhood of St. Paul's Cathedral.
The proprietor and his wife noticed that whenever he went out of doors he wore a different suit of clothes to what he did the day before, and would often change them three or four times a day. He had eight or nine suits of clothes, and the same number of hats. He kept very late hours, and whenever he returned home his entry was quite noiseless. In his room were three pairs of rubbers coming high over the ankles, one pair of which he always used when going out at night.
On Aug. 7, the date of the second murder, the lodging-house keeper was sitting up late with his sister, waiting for his wife to return from the country. She was expected about 4 A.M., and the two sat up till then. A little before 4 o'clock the lodger came in, looking as though he had been having a rather rough time. When questioned he said that his watch had been stolen in Bishopsgate, and gave the name of a police station at which he had lodged a complaint.

MARKS OF BLOOD.

On investigation this proved to be false, as no complaint had been lodged with the police. The next morning when the maid went to fix his room she called the attention of the proprietress to a large bloodstain on the bed. His shirt was found hanging up in his room with the cuffs recently washed, he having washed them himself. A few days later he left, saying that he was going to Canada, but he evidently did not go, because he was seen getting into a horse car in London in September, 1888.
While he was in the lodging-house he was regarded by all as a person of unsound mind, and he frequently would break out into remarks expressing his disgust at the number of fallen women in the streets. He would sometimes talk for hours to the proprietor of the lodging-house, giving his views upon the subject of immoral women in the streets. During his leisure time he would sometimes fill up fifty or sixty sheets of foolscap, writing upon religious matters connected with morality. These he would sometimes read to the proprietor, who says that they were very violent in tone and expressed bitter hatred of dissolute women.

"THAT'S THE MAN."

At 8 o'clock every morning he attended service at St. Paul's Cathedral.
All this information Dr. Forbes Winslow gathered privately, and added to the clues he had already obtained. As soon as he heard the description of the habits of the man who had lived at Callahan's, he said instantly:
"That's the man."
If he had constructed an imaginary man out of his experience of insane people suffering from homicidal religious mania, his habits would have corresponded almost exactly with those told him by the lodging-house keeper.
The conception that the doctor had formed of the way the entire series of murders had been committed was corroborated almost exactly by the evident propensities of the mysterious lodger. Dr. Winslow had said that the murderer is one and the same person; that he has committed the crime suffering from homicidal mania of a religious description, and laboring under the morbid belief that the delusion entertained by him has direct reference to the part of the bodies removed. That under that delusion and desiring to directly influence the morality of the world, and imagining that he has a certain destiny to fulfill, he has chosen the immoral class of society to vent his vengeance upon.
Just as soon as his clue became certain Dr. Winslow told the police all he knew and suggested a plan whereby the lunatic could be captured upon the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral.

THE POLICE REFUSE TO CO-OPERATE.

To his great surprise the police refused to co-operate. The rubber shoes, which he took possession of, were covered with dried human blood. They had been left behind by the murderer in his rapid departure from the lodging-house. In addition to the rubbers three pairs of lace shoes were left behind and a quantity of bows, feathers and flowers such as are usually worn by women of the lower class. Some of the latter were stained with blood.
Dr. Winslow was severely criticised for informing some of the London newspapers of his clues. The publication of the doctor's information, showing how closely hemmed in the murderer was and how dangerous if not impossible any more murders would be, evidently frightened "Jack the Ripper."
No more murders were committed after the news of the doctor's researches. The specialist says that the maniac most probably left the country for a time.

THE QUEER LODGER INSANE.

The murderer was described as being of slight build, active, with a rather small head, delicate features and a wealth of light brown hair. He frequently boasted of his knowledge of anatomy, and said that he had achieved considerable distinction at college. Several months after the publication of Dr. Winslow's discoveries a young man was arrested for attempted suicide, and when examined by the police surgeon was proved to be hopelessly insane. He was committed to a Government asylum, where he yet remains. The terrible Whitechapel murders were still fresh in people's minds, and the asylum authorities noticed that his description tallied with that given as "Jack the Ripper" in Dr. Winslow's published statements. His complaint was a despondent madness breaking out at times into violent homicidal mania.
Investigations were at once set on foot, resulting in the discovery that the mysterious lodger, "Jack the Ripper" and the unfortunate inmate in the asylum were one and the same man. He was found to come of a well-to-do and respectable family and evinced considerable ability in his college career. His specialty was anatomy, and he studied so hard that his mind, never very strong, gave way under the strain. Always of a religious turn of mind, he became afflicted with religious mania.

THE LUNATIC IS JACK THE RIPPER.

Dr. Winslow says that lunatics often act up to the Scriptural maxim, "If thine eye offend thee pluck it out." This was the murderer's idea and he imagined that it was his destiny to wipe a social blot from the face of the earth. His name or the asylum in which he is confined the doctor refuses to divulge, as already stated. The London police, however, admit that the lunatic now in the asylum is "Jack the Ripper."
Now that the facts concerning his methods are known, much of the speculation concerning the marvelous way in which he escaped arrest is set at rest. He was a young man of quiet appearance and not likely to attract any undue attention, while his constant change of clothing would prevent the remote contingencies of any one becoming familiar with his appearance in Whitechapel. He was extremely active, and when shod with the noiseless rubbers could make his escape where another man less adapted for the work would have failed.

THE LUNATIC'S CUNNING.

Dr. Winslow says that a sane man, however active, would have been caught very soon. Constant experience has convinced him that the lunatic's cunning and quickness of action cannot be equalled by a man in the full possession of his mental faculties.
After the authorities had convinced themselves that the man they had was the actual perpetrator of the terrible deeds of the preceding year, they decided to make no public statement. The man was violently insane and could not be punished, therefore it was considered best to quietly confine him in the asylum and not reopen the harrowing details of the murders.
He is still living in the asylum and is subject to occasional outbreaks of homicidal mania. Neither the police nor Dr. Winslow can be said to have actually run the maniac to earth, but he was undoubtedly frightened away by the publication of the doctor's clues showing what his habits were, where he had been and where he was likely to be.
The identity of the man's disease, for it was really nothing else, with the diagnosis formed after the early murders by Dr. Forbes Winslow is indeed a remarkable tribute to modern science of criminology and the scientific study of the insane.

Source: The World, New York, Sunday September 8, 1895