A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper (7 page)

I concluded that tiredness must be a major contributing factor to my current malaise. I'd not had much rest since Dad's death, and, today in particular had been a tense and fraught affair, beginning with the visit to the solicitors office, followed by my almost obsessive fascination with the journal. Allied to that were the disturbing words it contained, and the veiled threat of some long-hidden family involvement in one of the great crime mysteries in history. I'd fallen asleep in a chair, after all, something I'd never normally do, and, of course, I'd drunk a few small whiskies along the way.

I decided to put the journal away for the night, to get some sleep, and begin again in the morning, when I'd be refreshed, have a clear head, and yet, I knew I couldn't. I just couldn't do that! I needed to know more, and the thirst for that knowledge just couldn't wait until the morning in order to be quenched.

Feeling as though I was being driven by some unseen force, a power that wouldn't let me go, I rose from the comfort of the fireside chair, and let myself be drawn once again into the study, drawn deeper, ever deeper, into the dark and blood-stained world of Jack the Ripper!

As I settled myself down once more in my chair, I decided to forego reading any more of the journal for the time being. I wanted more factual information, more background to the case. I accessed the internet once more, and found and printed another collection of facts on the case. Although the case is over a hundred years old, there exists a vast network of websites devoted to the crimes of The Ripper, and there is no shortage of information to be gleaned if one wants it. I say I was searching for facts, though of course many of the so-called facts attached to the Ripper murders were themselves open to conjecture. It seemed to me as I read much of the information before me that what had been accepted by the police and public as the truth one day, had, on many occasions been condemned to the realms of fantasy the next! Wading through the mixture of truth, half-truth, and downright falsehood was like trying to wade through a sea of mud whilst hampered by wearing a full deep-sea diver's suit.

I'd never realized there were so many suspects, or at least alleged suspects, many of whom hadn't even been considered at the time of the murders. It seemed that, even today, new names were being added to the list with unerring regularity. Rather than the case drawing nearer to a conclusion as time went on, it appeared to me that a solution grew less likely with every passing day. There had been murders before, and there continued to be murders after the five canonical murders attributed to The Ripper. Martha Tabram, of course, had not been one of these, though the journal now placed her firmly within the list of Ripper killings. I'd read the alleged Ripper's account of Tabram's murder, followed by his short chilling description of the death of Polly Nichols. Still to come, if the journal listed them all, were the murders of Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, her murder taking place on the 9
^th
November. Further murders over the next three months were at one time or another attributed to The Ripper, but were soon discounted as being the work of others.

I looked again at the list of alleged suspects. From what little knowledge I'd gleaned so far, even I found some of them to be too fanciful for words. I'd already discounted the Prince of the Realm from my thoughts, and looked at those I thought to be the main suspects
at the time of the murders.

There was 'Leather Apron' a name attributed to the Ripper before his later appendage, thought by many at the time to be a Polish cobbler by the name of John Pizer. A resident of Mulberry Street, Pizer, like some of the other suspects, was Jewish, (strange how many times the Jews have been the scapegoats for heinous crimes). Pizer was cleared of involvement by the police.

Another Pole, a Jewish hairdresser, also fell under suspicion. Aaron Kosminski was to be revealed in later papers as having come under suspicion at the time, and was at one time incarcerated in the Colney Hatch Asylum, where my great-grandfather attended patients from time to time. (A connection?)

The boyfriend and one time live-in lover of Mary Jane Kelly was Joseph Barnett. Barnett was interviewed at length by the police, and later released. It is thought Barnett may have committed the murders as a means of trying to get Mary Kelly to give up the world of prostitution, hoping the murders would scare her off the streets. When this failed, he killed her in a most brutal and sustained attack, only to retire from his murderous deeds thereafter. I admitted to myself that he would be a reasonable possibility.

Michael Ostrog, a man of many aliases, and of uncertain nationality, possibly Russian, maybe Polish, and surprise surprise, described as Jewish, had a long criminal record by the time of the murders, and a history of mental illness. Said by police at the time to be 'a dangerous man', he was one of the three chief suspects of Sir Melville Macnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable, Scotland Yard, from 1889-1890, later becoming Chief Constable.

Together with Ostrog and Kosminski, Macnaghten's third chief suspect appeared to be a respectable, but slightly unstable barrister by the name of Montague John Druitt. A first class sportsman and one time schoolmaster at Mr. Valentine's school, Blackheath, Druitt appeared to have been regularly though not lucratively employed as a barrister while having at some time taken to teaching either to supplement his meagre legal earnings, or for some other, unknown reason. That side of his life seems shrouded in mystery, as is much to do with all of those suspected of being the notorious killer.

There were others, many others, too many to warrant including them here. That is not after all the purpose of my words. I thought as I read and re-read those notes that perhaps in a few hours I would have the answer that had eluded the police of Victorian London, and all the scholars and historians since who had tried to put a name to The Ripper. I still believed it was as simple as that. Turn to the back page, and it'll be there, I told myself, see for yourself, if not in his own hand, then surely great-grandfather would reveal the truth, if he really knew him, and if the journal were genuine. I didn't do it of course, I couldn't, I've already explained that, haven't I? Whatever was waiting for me at the end of my strange journey into the past that was being generated by the journal would have to wait until I'd read every word along the way, felt the pain of the victims as the writer described his horrendous and heinous descent into what I now saw as inevitable madness, finally to discover, I hoped, the fate of Jack the Ripper.

It was now pitch dark outside, and the wind had become a howling gale, so much stronger than before. The dark shadow fingers of the tree continued to dance their dance across the window panes, and occasionally one would brush against the glass, sounding as though someone were gently rapping on the window, pleading to be allowed in, to escape the wind, the dark, the raging storm gathering momentum by the minute.

Knowing I couldn't put it off any longer, I reached out once more to take up the journal, and, making a great effort to steady my hands, and my nerves, I turned the last page I'd read, and watched the words of the next page float up to meet my eyes, as I left behind the raging storm outside the window, and found myself once more caught up in a storm of a very different kind!

Metamorphosis?

My first reaction on turning to the next page of the journal was one of shock. It took less than a second for me to realize the handwriting had changed. Whereas the previous pages had been written in a firm hand, almost displaying the rage in the words with the obvious pressure applied to the nib of the pen, and the expansive strokes displayed in certain letters, now suddenly, the writing appeared smaller, upright, and very ordered in its application to the page. Was this a different hand at work? I looked closely at the page, and attempted a comparison with the one I'd recently finished reading.

Close examination revealed that many of the letters, although smaller and seemingly more ordered in construction, displayed the same characteristics. The construction of the letter 'f' for example, and also the flourish applied to the 'y' were quite distinct in their commonality. There were other matches present, all of which confirmed to me that the writer of the two pages was one and the same individual. Of course, it would take a handwriting expert to confirm such a conclusion, but I had no doubts at all.

What had changed? Why had the Ripper's (I know; alleged Ripper's), handwriting suddenly undergone this strange metamorphosis? I guessed I might discover the answer to my question in the words I was about to read.

5
^th
September 1888

The silence of the world sits heavy upon my weary shoulders. It's so quiet in here, so very quiet. I'm not sure where I am any more, or indeed who I am. This place is dark and cold, life is bright and warm, but I am not. The loneliness that steals me from the comfort of the day lies as a pall upon my heart. I am entombed in sadness. There's hopelessness in every breath I take, I want to be alive, I hate this place, I need to breathe fresh air, to taste just once the breath of goodness. These things are not me!

He was different, that was certain, at least for now. The rage displayed in every previous page was absent from this melancholy extract. These were the words of an unhappy, extremely depressed individual, who appeared to fear loneliness above all else. He saw himself as cut off from the world, as though living in it, but not really being a part of it. At the time of writing these words, I doubt he even knew or realized what he'd done in the last few weeks. There was a lucid calm, though his thoughts were still distorted by anxieties and repression. In addition to those other psychoses I suspected he suffered from, this individual could have also been afflicted by what today would be referred to as a multiple personality disorder. The change in handwriting, the alteration to his sentence construction, and the sudden switch from rage to depression could have been symptomatic of this; though I couldn't be sure of course.

Had no-one noticed this man's problems, I wondered? Surely, he must have had some day to day contact with friends, family or colleagues. From what I'd read so far, he was a deeply disturbed individual who must have had some difficulty in masking all of his symptoms from those around him. Had no-one suspected his dark secret, or had someone tried and failed to get help for this man, maybe attempted to obtain treatment for him? Perhaps though, if one analyzed his words a little further, he was indeed a lonely man and therefore in all probability a loner, living, working, and killing alone. I'd read that there'd been theories about the murders being some sort of conspiracy, two or more killers involved, but, if the journal were the real thing, then there had been just one man, but that one man may have had many different faces, as of now, I'd just met number two! He'd mentioned a cold and dark place. Was that his mind, or had he sought help as a voluntary patient in some respectable institution? Such places did exist, though only the wealthy could afford the luxury of such a retreat. I concluded that no, he wouldn't have placed himself within the reach of anyone who might have discovered his secret. The place he referred to had to be his own mind, the place where his thoughts and his 'voices' had entrapped and entombed him a web of evil beyond rational belief.

I paused to make a referral to my printed fact sheets. I'd heard in the past, and it was now confirmed for me, that throughout the course of the Ripper investigations a number of letters had been sent to the police and other agencies concerned with the case purporting to be from The Ripper. Many, if not all of these had at some time been dismissed as hoaxes, in no small part due to the differences in handwriting between them. It had been concluded that no one man could have been responsible for so many varying styles of handwriting, and therefore they couldn't all be the work of the murderer. Could it have been, I wondered, that one or more of those letters
could
have been from the killer, written whilst in the form of one of a number of distinctly different personalities? As I hadn't even got to the point in the case where the first of those letters had appeared, I decided to reserve judgment for the time being.

6
^th
September 1888

Where is peace? It eludes me so. Death would be such a release from this torment of perpetual agony. I have such a headache, throbbing in my skull. There's laudanum in the house. Took some. Better, much better. Saw no-one today, watched the world passing through the window, pretty girl selling flowers on the corner, clean girl, young, innocent as the blooms in her basket. Coaches and carts and barrows and life. All life, but not for me. A cacophony in my head, a kaleidoscope in my mind, why so tired, why? I turned my head from the bitter glass, and poured the laudanum into my throat.

So the laudanum was taking hold of him! I couldn't know how much he'd taken since his first purchase of the drug, but it was clear to me that he'd been far exceeding the safe dose of the stuff. It was clouding his thoughts, numbing his senses, and, though undoubtedly helping to alleviate the pain of his headaches, it was also helping to fuel his depression and his sense of isolation by its mind altering and hallucinogenic effects. I couldn't help but note his reference to the 'clean and innocent' flower seller in the street. What a complete contrast to his previous references towards the other women in his life, 'the whores'. This was a minor eye-opener to me; here was the man who may have been one of the most notorious killers in the history of British crime revealing not a wicked bloodlust, but a desire for peace, almost inviting death. This wasn't the picture of Jack the Ripper as envisaged by history, or by the so-called informed public, or the venerated historians who had given so many varied opinions on the murders over the years.

How soon could one become addicted to laudanum? I wasn't sure, as a drug it had barely been used for years, but I was well aware that the more one took, the faster would be the addictive process, and I'd no doubt in my mind that he had become addicted. It must also be borne in mind that at the time of the Ripper murders, there was no National Health Service in the UK, no Community Psychiatric Programme as exists today. Many people in Victorian London would have lived their entire lives without having access to qualified medical care. People moved around from address to address with far greater frequency than would be expected today. I had found the answer to one of my questions. If the writer had so chosen, he could indeed have lived his life in splendid isolation, with little or no contact with his fellow citizens. If he worked alone, or with little regular contact with colleagues and family, it would have been quite possible for his symptoms to remain unnoticed by those around him, particularly if he was able, (as I expected he could), to display a veneer of respectability and normality during his working days. The man would have developed the ability to become a consummate actor when faced with everyday life, displaying a public face far removed from the persona that took over when darkness fell, and when his 'voices' would awaken in his mind, leading him down the blood-soaked paths of murder and mutilation.