But one man who was executed for unrelated crimes is the focus of a new book which re-examines disturbing clues which point to him being the Ripper.
Dr Thomas Neill Cream was hanged for the murders of four London prostitutes at Newgate Prison in November 1892.
His executioner James Billington, swore to his dying day that Cream’s last words were: “I am Jack the…”
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A (fanciful) engraving of Jack the Ripper being apprehended by police
Glasgow-born Cream was in an American prison at the time of the Ripper murders but rumours abound that he bribed a doppleganger into serving his time for him as he roamed London murdering women.
Another theory posits that Cream was simply released from prison after bribing officials, leaving him free to commit murders while his jailers insisted he was still inside.
Author Amanda Griffiths-Jones has scrutinised Cream’s association with the case in her new book Prisoner 4374.
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A contemporary illustration of the discovery of one of the Ripper's victims
Cream, an abortionist, was sentenced to life imprisonment at Illinois State Penitentiary for the murder of his mistress’ husband – using poison.
He was released in 1891 and boarded a ship bound for London where “he was soon prowling the city’s slums hunting for victims”, the Scotsman writes.
In her research, Griffiths-Jones was given access to the Illinois prison’s file on Cream – a hefty document almost 200 pages long.
The letters supposedly from the murderer, which gave us the name "Jack the Ripper," were almost certainly written by journalists.(01 of08)
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Some were sent to Scotland Yard, but many were sent to the Central News Agency. A few newspapers of the time said outright that they were fraudulent, and one magazine even produced a parody of Macbeth to indicate who they thought was responsible for them, and why: "Enter three Editors…" they wrote: "Round about the cauldron go, In it slips of ‘copy’ throw. / Headlines of the largest size -- / Murderer’s letters – all faked lies…Bubble, Bubble! Crime and Trouble / Make our circulation double." (credit:AP)
The Ripper learns from Sherlock Holmes (02 of08)
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Sherlock Holmes’s first outing was in 1887, the year before the Ripper appeared, in A Study in Scarlet. When Catherine Eddowes was found dead, there was an inscription on a nearby wall which may have said "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing." The police had it erased immediately, fearing it would lead to anti-Semitic riots. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes had found the mysterious world "Rache" written in blood on the wall of the room in which a dead man lay.The foolish police thought the dying man had tried to write "Rachel," but Holmes (ta-da!) recognized it as German for "revenge." It is hard to see this inscription near Mrs. Eddowes as anything other than another journalistic confection, by a reporter who had read his Conan Doyle.
…and Holmes learns from the Ripper(03 of08)
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In October 1888, the Times newspaper agitated for bloodhounds to be brought in to attempt to track the scent of the murderer, and the police acquiesced, running trials in Regent’s Park – literally running for Sir Charles Warren, the police commissioner, who agreed to be the "fox" for the hounds to chase. (It is, apparently, not true that one of the dogs bit him.) But a mere 10 days later, the hounds had been returned to their owners – the smells of London were discovered to be too complex for them to follow a single trail. Conan Doyle must have read these reports, for when Holmes wants to use a dog to track a suspect in London, Watson has doubts "when I reflected upon the great traffic which had passed along the London road." Holmes’s dog only succeeds because the suspect steps in creosote before fleeing, something the Ripper was not considerate enough to do. (credit:Getty)
Robert Louis Stevenson gets caught up too(04 of08)
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Stevenson’s novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published two years before the murders, and by 1887 had already been turned into a popular stage play. Once the murders began, the idea of a respectable man who turned into a murdering beast seemed too close to home, and the play closed. Even so, its star, Richard Mansfield, could not escape the taint of a connection. An anonymous letter to Scotland Yard pointed out that, while "I should be the Last to think because A man take A dretfull Part he is therefore Bad," the actor was nevertheless "the Man Wanted:" no one else was "So well able to disguise Himself in A moment…So well able to Baffel the Police," making himself "Short…or Tall in A five Seconds if he carried a fine Faulse Wiskers in A Bag." (credit:Getty)
Entertainment for all(05 of08)
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While the murders were still occurring, entertainment venues joined the newspapers in exploiting the crimes. Jack the Ripper waxwork shows were popular. Mme Tussaud’s, the most respectable of the waxworks, didn’t show the murderer, since it had made a point of always modeling from life, but others were not so troubled. One ad, selling heads to waxwork-proprietors, promised that its head of the Ripper was "carefully Modelled from Sketches published in the 'Daily Telegraph,' Furnished by witnesses who had actually seen him." (It was followed by an advertisement which offered for sale "Eighty Serpents, for Charming.") Another waxworks opened in the Whitechapel Road, only yards from the location of the murders. The illustration displayed outside as advertising was "too strong," declared the local magistrates, and had to be removed, but the exhibition itself continued.
Foreign fiction(06 of08)
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The Ripper is known across the world – Jacques l’eventreur, Jack o Estripador, and Jack el Destripador, not to mention Johann der Ausschlitzer and Giovanni il Squattatore. Novels and plays about him abound, but the (unintentionally) funniest may be an American dime-store novel, Lord Jacquelin Burkney by "Rodissi," the pseudonym of Jacob Ringgold. Burkney is an aristocrat, disinherited by his father for his love of a poor but honest shopgirl. When his father dies, he leaves his work as "the most adroit dissector in all Paris" to return home, where his servants address him with remarkable impartiality as "Your highness" and "Your lordship." To the reader’s astonishment, the poor but honest girl has become a streetwalker, and the crazed aristo murders her amid "peals of demoniacal laughter."
Literature (07 of08)
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Sixteen months after the final murder, the actor Henry Irving’s business-manager made his first note for a novel on the "ghouls." The manager’s name was Bram Stoker, and the novel was Dracula. The Whitechapel crimes weave throughout his novel: the vampire’s five female victims match the Ripper’s five, one character is a doctor, as the Ripper was said to have been, the characters in the novel create a "vigilante committee," as Whitechapel’s residents did. And a person who is both respectable and evil is paramount, as it also was in the second great work that owed itself, in part, to these crimes: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Ripper also makes an appearance in Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays, one of which was the basis for Pabst’s silent film, Pandora’s Box, and Alban Berg’s opera.
Merchandising (08 of08)
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Art was only for some. Others were happy to make the most of the situation more prosaically. A suburban jeweler advertised "The Great SURPRISE WATCH:" show your friends your new watch and, as they bend over to look, press a "secret spring" and up jumps a tiny Jack, presumably waving a knife, "to the horror and great astonishment of all beholders." Or families could buy a board game centering around Jack the Ripper, where the winner is the player who can help him escape a dozen policemen and another dozen journalists. Even as the murders were continuing, helping the murderer escape was fun for all the family.
“He was hanged at Newgate for murdering prostitutes, but his modus operandi was poison – strychnine. He had a very wild career in Canada and the US. He was sent to prison for murdering his lover’s husband. After 10 years he was released.
“I thought I needed evidence to prove exactly where he was, and whether he was in prison or not. I contacted the archives in Illinois and they granted access to the file.
“Nobody had asked for the file in 126 years. I sat for weeks reading and re-reading it – it’s 181 pages long. I found out some amazing facts.”
But while Cream's sadistic tendencies and tastes would make him an ideal candidate for the Ripper, as Griffiths-Jones points out, he favoured poison, not mutilation. Others refuse to believe he was able to bribe a doppleganger to serve his sentence.
“Those who support this theory believe this is evident early on in Cream's criminal career, when brought into court on charges of bigamy.
“He was advised to plead guilty, but refused to do so, claiming he was serving a prison sentence in Sydney at the time. Sure enough, the prison was asked if someone fitting his description was indeed there and they replied in the affirmative. In his biography, Marshall Hall (who defended Cream) is said to have believed that Neill Cream had a double in the underworld and they went by the same name and used each other's terms of imprisonment as alibis for each other.
“Therefore, while Cream was in Joilet prison, his double would have been able to commit the Whitechapel crimes -- on the day of his execution, Cream knew he had no chance for survival and decided to free his double by confessing to his crimes.”
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The murder of Catherine Eddowes by Jack the Ripper. A sketch by Dr F Gordon Brown made on the spot to show the postition of the body and significant details. (credit:PA)
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The hand written note in the back of the book by Donald Swanson naming Life to the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard.Picture Date: Thursday 13 July 2006. After Jack the Ripper's suspected true identity has revealed, more than 100 years after his gruesome series of murders. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson never caught the killer, who stalked Whitechapel, east London, in 1888. The Ripper claimed the lives of at least five women, all prostitutes, during his reign of terror. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper An 1880 map of the East End of London where the murders occured. (credit:PA)
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Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel, the scene of the rippers third murder, that of Swedish-born prostitute Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper A knife found at the scene of one of the murders. (credit:PA)
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13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, London Spitalfields, the site of the last and most terrible of Jack theRipper's murders, that of Mary Jane Kelly (credit:PA)
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The unrecognisable remains of the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. (credit:PA)
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Jack the Ripper Victim (Elizabeth Stride) From a sketch taken at the mortuary by Mr F W Foster 3:45 AM Sunday 30th September 1888 (credit:PA)
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ack the Ripper A Metropoliotan Police sign in an attempt for information including a letter and postcard supposedly written by the murderer. 3rd October 1888 (credit:PA)
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Mary Ann Nicholls, murdered in Bucks Row on 31st August 1888, seen in this mortuary photograph. (credit:PA)
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The back yard of the house at 29 Hanbury Street where the mutilated body of Annie Chapman was found on the morning of 8th September 1888. (credit:PA)
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A letter with the signature of an individual calling themselves 'Jack the Ripper' is seen during a press preview for the exhibition "Jack the Ripper and the East End" at the Museum in Docklands, London, Wednesday, May 14, 2008. (credit:AP)
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A person holds a knife allegedly used by Jack the Ripper during his East End London murders, which forms part of the Jack the Ripper exhibition in the Museum in Docklands opening tomorrow.Picture date: Wednesday May 14, 2008. (credit:PA)