Here’s my précis & review of this material:
Robert Paul, a carman, was interviewed the day after Polly Nichols’s murder was reported to say to cops he’d found the body before the constable and had seen another man standing over her.
Scared, he hoofed it.
Charles Allen Cross came forward the day after the interview appeared. Said he was a carman working for Messers. Pickford. He’d found the body alone after walking up Buck’s Row, as it lay at the corner. He admitted being the first to find her.
Gave his address as 22 Doveton Street in Whitechapel. No such person was ever listed as having lived there.
Paul came upon Cross and both men went in search of a cop, finding PC George Mizen on his beat. Cross approached him. “There’s a woman lying in Buck’s Row. There’s a policeman with her who requested assistance.” He played it low-key and …
What policeman? It’s a lie.
By the time Mizen got there, a PC Neil was there, who sent Mizen for an ambulance, which was a wheelbarrow-like cart on which to transport bodies. Didn’t mean then what it does now.
Had Cross gotten lucky? Or did he know the beat and the timing? Did he know Neil would likely be there?
Then he appears at the Coroner’s inquest, and gives a false address. All of this is hinky and indicative. He’d be a person of interest and a half. His deceptions weren’t uncovered until 2005, by amateurs, when they found that 22 Doveton Street was occupied by head-of-household Charles Allen Lechmere. This was Cross’s real identity, it seems.
His stepfather was Thomas Cross.
A journalist, Christer Holmgren, a man, began digging and tracking. His breakthrough came in tracing Cross’s route to work, which took him past and walked in tandem to Paul’s route. They’d have seen each other if not have walked together.
Here’s a problem: If Lechmere left at 03:30 AM it should have taken him only 7 minutes to reach the site. 03:45 is when Paul came, admitting to have been late to work. Lechmere was with Polly Nichols for nearly 40 minutes. Time enough to kill her.
As few as 2 minutes sufficed. She was strangled, then her throat was slashed, then stabbed 11 times. If she was dead, no spurting. Through clothes, even less blood. In fact, it was remarked no blood showed on her clothes at all. He’d hiked up her skirt to stab her.
Being interrupted by Paul coming along, the killer had no time to mutilate her or excavate for goodies. He pulled down her skirt and acted as if he’d come upon a woman down.
Paul knelt and saw no blood but detects breathing. He proposes propping her up. Lechmere refused to allow her to be moved. It would’ve revealed the cut throat. Paul said he’d go get a cop and Lechmere went with him.
PC Neil came along after they’d gone, noticing a pool of blood around the neck. This means she was just then bleeding out, already dead. His immediate advent means no one else had a chance to kill her. No one else was there. Lechmere seems inevitably to have been the killer.
Lechmere came from a broken home. Born in the East End. Never knew his father. Had several step-fathers. Moved often. By 1888, he was 39, married, and had 12 children. Always lived with or near his mother. She’d married a few times and was domineering. Two months before the killings, Lechmere moved away from mother, leaving his eldest daughter to live with her. Some upheaval caused this. A trigger?
His route to work took him through the murder sites. He lived in Dalton Street, 20-30 minutes from all the murder sites. He worked in the Broad Street Goods Depot for 20 years. As a church service business, as he as a carman delivering goods, he knew the killing field intimately. His shift began at 4AM, working Monday to Saturday. His walk to work took 40 minutes and he’d often leave early.
Marha Tabram was killed along his route at a time he would’ve been walking past or near. 39 stab wounds. His recent split from his mother could well have triggered this rage attack. Did Tabram resemble mumsy?
Polly Nichols was, as we’ve seen, on his route.
Annie Chapman, in Hanbury Street, also along one of his routes to work, was found gutted, organs over her shoulder. He’d elaborated and hadn’t been interrupted. This was in Dutfield’s yard, dark and protected. He would’ve been passing by en route to work.
What are the chances of him being available for all these? Too coincidental.
Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, the Double Event, happened farther south. Ah, but Holloway Street and Sion Square were streets he’d grown up in. It was familiar ground, just north of Whitechaple Road, the central artery and a kind of psychological barrier.
Also, it was on a Saturday night, the Double Event; his only night off. His mother and eldest daughter lived on Cable Street, nearby, and he might have visited them, then prowled.
Stride’s throat was cut around midnight, just around the corner from Lechmere’s mother’s house. Interrupted, he then followed the exact route he’d taken to work for 20 years, where he came to Eddowes. Within 40 minutes he’d done for her in Mitre Square.
Then comes Mary Kelly, killed between 3 and 4AM and once again on the route to and from his work and home. It was in a cut-through to Broad Street Goods Depot, his employer.
How’d he deal with being covered in blood? Turns out he worked for Pickford’s delivering meat to butchers in East London. Huge chunks of meat were handled. He wore blood-stained overalls routinely.
Amazing, n’est-ce pas? What’s a little blood?
Broad Street Station was third largest in London. Its stable held 300 horses and their carts. He could easily have vanished into that mess, unremarkable among his fellow deliverers of meat. Even better, showers were provided, for carmen to keep themselves reasonably clean.
Home, Family, and Work. Those form a triangle in which the murders all took place. He links up eerily well, and managed to stay off radar despite having testified at an inquest.
Christer Holmgren points out: If Lechmere wasn’t Jack the Ripper, then he was the unluckiest man ever, to have developed the habit of passing by just when someone was being unconscionably butchered.
He survived into the 1920s and was even photographed in 1912, posed for one, had the money. Lived to 71, was a grandfather, and relatively wealthy.
James Scobie, a Queen’s Counsel, a barrister, assessed the case, declared it prima facie, and certainly enough to bring to court.
New favorite suspect? Certainly difficult to explain away the many coincidences. Yes, it’s a circumstantial case but it would hold up in court and a jury would find it far too coincidental. They’d see the pattern.
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