Shortly after the body of Elizabeth Stride was found, just a few streets away, a policeman made a startling discovery. A piece of what proved to be Catherine Eddowes apron, covered in blood and faeces. Above the apron was a message. The two murders on the same day became known as the “Double Event”.
Dr Brown’s evidence produced a significant shift in the police investigation. Instead of looking for medical men, they now began looking for someone local, who might might have known something of human anatomy.
Don Rumblelow “One version has it: The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing or the Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing”
But, the location of the message and the piece of apron, just a few streets from Mitre Square in the direction of Whitechapel, might also be a vital clue.
Double Event from Dorset Street
The discarded apron suggested that he was heading back home, to his hideout. Geographic profiling that we use of modern murder investigations has him living within 200 yards of Dorset Street and it suggests that this is his hideout.
What is clear, however, is that the police did not make the best of this information. The two murders, the double event, took place in different police areas.
Gareth Williams “Catherine Eddowes was murdered on Mitre Square, so she was murdered in the city of London. And, that brought the city of London police into the investigation.”
What caused the disagreement, was the message’s inflammatory racial content.
Gareth Williams “That is obviously anti-Semitic graffiti So, the Metropolitan police are remembering now, the leather-apron scare”
The police desperately needed a break in the investigation, something to assuage the public fears about the murderer.
The following day, they released two notorious letters allegedly penned by the killer, and signed Jack the Ripper.
Gareth Williams
Both letters were written in the same hand, and sent within just a few days of each other.
Gareth Williams “As a consequence, the murders are now, almost, turned into a street pantomime.
And, five sordid East-End murders became a national phenomenon and the unknown miscreant for those murders was elevated to the realm of legend.”
On October 3, the police began a house to house search that took over two weeks to complete.
The police arranged for the distribution of 100,000 handbills. But, no clues to the identity of the murderer were forthcoming.
Frederick Aberline
We don’t know the kind of man the police were looking for, but in later years, Scotland Yard’s man on the ground in Whitechapel, Frederick Aberline, advanced a theory of his own.
Severin Antoniovich Klosowski was a Pole who also went by the name of George Chapman. Frederick Aberline believed him to be the most likely killer.
The investigation gave serious consideration to the Chapman theory. Due of the authority held by Aberline. But, the theory suffered from one serious flaw.
Why would Jack the Ripper have suddenly changed from throat-cutting to poisoning.
The house-to-house investigation had produced no lasting suspects.
Neither did the publication of the famous letters. Hoax communications deluged the police. However, one of them stood out.
George Lust, a prominent local businessman, received a small package. It contained a kidney and a note claiming that it had come from Catherine Eddowes.
No one knows if the kidney really came from Catherine Eddowes or if the note was from her killer.
It was, nevertheless, chilling in the extreme.
However, Jack the Ripper had everyone on his trail. Including to London police forces and the country’s top detectives. His elusiveness was nothing short of miraculous.
The double-event murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes horrified the public and press alike.
But, October would pass without a murder and a slight sense of normality returned to Whitechapel.
External Links
Double Event - Whitechapel Jack
Howdunit Book of Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide For Writers
17th Suspect: (Women’s Murder Club 17)
Criminal Investigation: An Introduction to Principles and Practice
