Patricia Cornwell Ripper Letter

Patricia Cornwell in her 2002 book - Portrait Of A Killer.

Fuller's hypothesis that Sickert was the Ripper is based on the

claims made by Florence Pash, a friend of Sickert's, who told

Fuller's mother Violet Overton Fuller, who in turn told her

daughter, that Sickert knew the identity of the murderer and

painted clues into some of his pictures. Also that the murders

were connected to an illegitimate child of an unnamed

member of the royal family. Cornwell, in her book, makes the

claim that Sickert became a serial killer after Whistler, whom

he idolised, went on honeymoon with his new bride, and the

thought of Whistler been in love and enjoying sexual relations

with a woman, was the catalyst that finally sent him over the

edge. Cornwell also

believed he never stopped killing, and
may have claimed as many as 40 victims. She also claims to
have found mitochondria DNA evidence, shared by only 1%
of the population, linking Sickert to at least one Ripper letter.

If Sickert wrote any of the Ripper letters, it does not prove

that he was the Ripper, for there is no evidence that any of the

Jack the Ripper letters were actually sent by the murderer.

Cornwell errors in assuming that an operation in Sickert's

childhood left him with a malfunctioning penis. It is believed

it was rectal, and not penile surgery that he underwent, and his

sex life, by all accounts, remained unimpeded. Cornwell's

book, though sensationalist and highly speculative,

unfortunately suffers from the same oversights as Fuller's

book, and employs selective facts and poor scholarship to

support her case, and provides us with no real proof that

Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Cornwell it is said spent $4

million of her own money in an attempt to prove Sickert was

the Ripper. There is some evidence that Sickert may not even

have been in England at the time of the Whitechapel murders,

as during the whole of September he may have been on

holiday in France, a letter written by Ellen, Sickert's wife, to

her brother in-law Dick Fisher dated 21

September, suggests

that Walter had been in France for some weeks.

st
SICKERT'S VETERINARY STUDENT
Some years after the Whitechapel murders the artist Walter
Sickert took a room in a London suburb, believed to be 6
Mornington Crescent, Camden. The owners of the house, an
elderly couple, told him that the previous occupant of the
room was Jack the Ripper, who was a delicate-looking
veterinary student whom would stay out all night, then come
home in the early hours, before rushing out to buy the
morning newspaper. He also occasionally burnt the clothes he
had been wearing the night before. When his health began to
fail, his widowed mother took him home to Bournemouth,
where he died three months later. Sickert wrote the man's
name in the margin of a book (said to be Casanova's
Memoirs) which he gave to Albert Rutherstone. The book, it
is claimed, was lost in the blitz. Donald McCormck, the writer
and author, claims to have been told this story and remembers
the students name as Druitt, Drewett or Hewitt. If the room
mentioned in the story was Sickert's studio at 6 Mornington
Crescent, then the last occupant was an Egyptian medical
student named Waller.
JOSEPH SILVER
Proposed as a Ripper suspect by South African historian
Charles Van Onselen in the 2007 book – The Fox and the
Flies. Born Joseph Lis, (which means 'Fox' in Polish), in 1868
in Kielce Poland, one of nine children to tailor and petty
criminal Ansel Lis. He was more commonly known by the
alias Joseph Silver, but also used the names Joe Liss, Joe
Eligmann, James Smith, Joseph Schmidt, Charlie Silver,
Charles Greenbaum, Abraham Ramer and Ludwig.

He was

known in Johannesburg as the 'King of Pimps'. Lis started his

criminal career in London, committing further crimes in New

York, South Africa, and South America. Silver was a cruel

and sadistic pimp, racketeer, white slaver, burglar, rapist, and

police informant. Van Onselen makes the following points.

Silver was in Whitechapel at the time of the Ripper murders

for the birth of his daughter.

As a pimp and brothel keeper, he would have been familiar

with the prostitutes working in the local area.

Jack the Ripper was known to write brazen letters to the

papers. Silver was litigious, wrote bold letters to newspapers.

He also had bitter and violent relationships with women all

his life.

Van Onselen believed Lis's attempt to conceal his presence in

England in the latter half of 1888, made him a plausible

suspect. Unfortunately Van Onselen, offers us no real

evidence Lis was actually in Whitechapel London in 1888, it

is purely speculation. Joseph Lis, would have been 20 years of

age at the time of the Whitechapel murders. He was executed

as a spy in Poland in 1918.

CLAREN CE SIMM

In 1992 an article appeared in the publication Weekly World

News in which widow 103 year old Betty Simm, described

as
in failing health but mentally alert and vibrant, claimed that
her late husband Clarence, had made a death-bed confession
to her in 1951 that he had as a teenager killed 14 prostitutes,
to free them from a life of sin. Betty then aged 16 had met her
husband Clarence a 36 year old widower and prosperous
accountant in London in 1905. Within 2 years they had
married and moved to Yorkshire, they had a son Walter born
in 1909. It is claimed he stopped killing when he met and fell
in love with his first wife. He confessed his crimes because he
did not want to die with his horrible deeds still weighing on
his conscience. Betty, who lived in seclusion in Southern
Spain, said of her husband that he was 'Always a very quiet
man, extremely private who treated me like a queen'. She took
a lie detector test to substantiate her story and was told there
was less than half of one per cent chance she was lying. The
lie detector test however only proves Betty was telling the
truth it does not prove her husband was telling the truth.
Neither do we know which murders he referred to. If he
committed any murders at all, it is unlikely to have been the
Whithechapel murders. To arrive at his figure of fourteen
victims you would have to include not only the Torso
Murders, but the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith, who
before she died clearly stated that she was attacked by at least
three men. And also that of Rose Mylett, whom the police
believed was not even murdered, but in fact had choked to
death on her own collar while drunk. Not a single eyewitness
reported seeing a teenage Jack the Ripper.
GEORGE ROBERT SIMS
Sims was born 2 nd September 1847 in Kennington London,
the oldest of six children to George Sims a prosperous
merchant, and Louisa Amelia Ann (n'ee Stevenson) president
of the women's provident league. Educated in Eastbourne,
then Hanwell Military College, and Bonn University. Three
times married, twice widowed; none of his marriages
produced children. He took up journalism in 1874 and
enjoyed wide popularity as a novelist, playwright and poet.
He is perhaps best remembered as the author of the much
parodied ballad, It Is Christmas Day In The Workhouse. He
used his excellent police contacts to write about the Ripper
murders for the publication The Referee, under the
pseudonym Dragonet. A self-alleged Ripper suspect Sims
claimed that in 1888 a coffee stall holder in Whitechapel saw
a portrait of Sims advertising his latest book, and believed he
was the likeness of a suspicious man with blood-stained cuffs
who had come to his stall shortly after the double murder, and
announced to the stall holder that he would hear of two more
murders the following day. Sims would make frequent
references to this story, and appeared to believe the Ripper
looked exactly like himself. A successful playwright, his most
notable success was The Light of London, his autobiography
My Life - Sixty Years Recollections of Bohemian London,
was published in 1917. Sims later came to believe the rumors
that the Ripper was Montague John Druitt. In 1913 to counter
these rumors Inspector John Littlechild wrote to Sims naming
Dr Tumblety as a more likely suspect, this became known as
the Littlechild letter. Sims died at his home in Regent's Park
of liver cancer at the age of 75 in 1922.
HEN RY SKIN N ERTON
On 21 st October 1888 Henry Skinnerton, described as 50
years of age and a labourer, of High Street, Chingford, was
charged with assaulting Henry Corney, and with wilfully
breaking 25 panes of glass, the property of John Cricks, of
High Road, Woodford. The damage caused was estimated at
£1. The assault happened at about 20 minutes to eleven on
Sunday evening. Corney was returning home, accompanied
by a friend, when Skinnerton, for no apparent reason, seized
Corney by the throat and exclaimed, 'I am Jack the Ripper, I
killed the women in Whitechapel, and one in Hatton gardens'.
Skinnerton then ran away, but was chased by Corney and his
friend. After a long chase, Skinnerton got as far as the rear of
Mr Cricks house, it was hear that the panes of glass were
broken. Skinnerton had jumped upon a lean-to and smashed a
quantity of glass in the fan light. After a struggle, he was
removed to the police station. Skinnerton, it was said, had
previously been of good character. The magistrate ordered
him to pay a fine of 2s 6d and also the costs of the
proceedings, 20s, in all amounting to a total of 1.12s, or in
default go to prison for 14 days with hard labor.
THE SLAUGHTERMAN
In the 1965 book - Jack the Ripper-In Fact and Fiction, Robin
Odell makes the suggestion that Jack the Ripper was a Jewish
shocet or ritual slaughter man, who after the Miller's Court
murder was discovered by his own people, and dealt with in
accordance to their own brand of justice. The man's identity
was never made public. The police at the time considered the
possibility that the Ripper may have been a Jewish slaughter
man and made visits to Jewish abattoirs. The khalef, a
scochet's ceremonial knife, was examined by police surgeon
Dr. Gordon Brown to see if it was capable, in his judgement,
of inflicting the injuries on Catherine Eddowes body. Dr.
Brown said in his opinion such a knife, single-edged and
lacking a point, could not have been used. Dr. Bagster Philips
thought the murder weapon must have been a very sharp knife
with a thin narrow blade, at least six inches to eight inches
long. Questioned by the coroner, Philips thought that the
knives normally used by slaughtermen, which were well
ground down, might have been used. Major Smith claimed to
have checked on the movements of all the local butchers and
slaughterers in the area. Chief Inspector Swanson reported
that seventy six butchers and slaughterers had been visited,
and the character of the men employed had been enquired
into.
G WEN TWORTH BELL SMITH
Smith, a Canadian, had come to London in 1888 to work for
the Toronto Trust Society, which had offices in Goldman
Street, St Paul's. Smith took lodgings in April with Mr. and
Mrs. Callaghan, at 27 Sun Street, Finsbury Square, and came
under the suspicion of Mr Calllaghan, who noticed that he
kept three loaded revolvers hidden in a chest of drawers in his
room. He also stayed out late at night, changed his suite every
day and talked and moaned to himself. Smith, also according
to Mr. Callaghan, was a religious fanatic, who appeared
obsessed with prostitutes, saying that they should all be
drowned. He was also noted as coming home at 4.00 am. on
the 7 th August, the night Martha Tabram was murdered. The
next morning, when the maid went to make his bed, she found
a large bloodstain on the linen and a shirt hanging with the
cuffs having recently been washed. Convinced that Smith was
a lunatic, and therefore Jack the Ripper, Callaghan took his
suspicions to Dr. Forbes Winslow, a Ripper theorist and
expert on matters of sanity, having founded the British
hospital for mental disorders. Winslow was convinced that
Smith was the Ripper, and claimed that given the help of six