Did Jack the Ripper end his days in Watford?

Jack the Ripper, the most infamous serial killer of all time, was never brought to justice. The police at the time were, apparently, completely baffled as to his identity.

But, in 1987, new evidence emerged. If that evidence is correct, the identity of Jack the Ripper was known to the police. Not only that, but Jack the Ripper ended his days in Watford.

London's East End in 1888 was an area of misery and poverty. Many women were forced into prostitution to pay for food and shelter.Many of those women drank heavily to forget the degrading life they led. One such woman was Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols. She lived a day-to-day existence, sleeping in a common lodging house where the price of a bed was 4d a night. But, on the night of August 31, Polly had no money; she had spent it all on drink.

No money meant no bed, so Polly was forced to walk the streets of Whitechapel, to find a client to pay for her night's lodging. Instead, she found Jack the Ripper.

Polly's body was discovered in Bucks Row, a dingy street behind Whitechapel station, in the early hours of the morning.

Her throat had been cut and her abdomen ripped open. Men working in the next street had seen nothing. People living in Bucks Row had heard nothing. A silent and sadistic killer was at large in the East End.

The police questioned other local prostitutes, who told them of a man who had been demanding money with menaces from them. His name was not known, only that he had a Jewish appearance and wore a leather apron. But there were hundreds of Jews in the East End in 1888, and many of them wore leather aprons. The police were still looking for "Leather Apron" a week later when the killer struck again.

Annie Chapman, like Polly Nichols before her, had no money to pay for her bed for the night. She, too, was forced to walk the streets. At 5.30am in the morning, she was seen talking to a man in Hanbury Street. Half an hour later, her body was found in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street. Her throat had been cut, her abdomen ripped open and her intestines pulled out. As an extra macabre act, the killer had taken her uterus away with him.

With this latest murder by "Leather Apron", a wave of anti-Semitism swept through the East End. Then the police announced they had found "Leather Apron", but he had an alibi for the murder of Polly Nichols. He was not the killer. After that, the police no longer said they were looking for a Jew for the murders. At least, not publicly.

By the end of September, the police were no nearer finding the killer, while the population of the East End waited for the next murder they felt would surely come soon.

In the event, they got two. At one o'clock in the morning on September 30, Louis Diemshutz drove his pony and cart into the dark passageway of Dutfields Yard in Berner Street.

His pony shied at something hidden in the shadows. That something was the body of Elizabeth Stride. Like the previous victims, her throat had been cut, but unlike the previous murders, her body had not been mutilated. The police believed the killer had been disturbed by Diemshutz's arrival before he could complete his foul work.

If so, he soon made up for the interruption.

Some hours before, Catherine Eddowes had been picked up by the police for being drunk in Aldgate High Street. She had been left in a cell in Bishopsgate police station to sober up. At 1am, the very time Elizabeth Stride's body was found, Catharine was allowed out of her cell and walked back towards Aldgate. At 1.35am, she was seen talking to a man at the entrance of Mitre Square.

Ten minutes later, the lantern of a policeman patrolling the darkness of the square illuminated her body.

As before, her throat had been cut, her abdomen ripped open, and her uterus and one of her kidneys taken away. And, as before, nothing had been seen or heard. But, that night, the killer may have left his only clue.

In nearby Goulston Street, part of Catherine's blood-stained apron was found. On the wall above were chalked the words "The Juws are the men that will not be blamed for nothing". Was this a cryptic clue from the murderer?

Fearing more anti-Jewish reaction, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had the message rubbed out before it could even be photographed. And, once again, the killer had evaded capture.

The public, eager to help the beleaguered police, sent hundreds of letters to Scotland Yard with suggestions on how to catch the fiend. One suggestion was that every street in the East End should have a pair of electrical wires running along the kerb, with push buttons across them every few yards. Then, if a woman was attacked, she had only to tread on one of the buttons to sound an alarm and summon the police. The suggestion was not taken up.

Another idea was to dress a tailor's dummy as a lady of the night, but with powerful springs in the arms that would close around an assailant and hold him until the police arrived. The suggestion was not taken up.

One of the more realistic suggestions was that the police should record any fingerprints found at a murder site so that they could be matched against those of any suspect, but this, too, was not taken up.

However, among all of the letters sent was one purporting to be from the killer himself. Whether or not it was genuine is still a question for debate, but the author gained immortality by signing the letter, Jack the Ripper. Now the fiend had a name.

Throughout October, London waited for the next move from Jack the Ripper, but nothing happened. October became November and still no more murders. Was the nightmare over?

Then, on November 9, the day of the Lord Mayor's Show, Jack struck again. Mary Kelly was much younger than the previous victims. She even had her own room in Millars Court off Dorset Street, but she was behind with the rent. On that fateful morning, the rent collector called. Not receiving an answer at the door, he peeped in through the window.

What he saw, haunted him for the rest of his life. Lying on the bed was the body of Mary Kelly, or rather what used to be Mary Kelly.

Her throat had been cut as with the previous victims, but her body had been completely mutilated. All her internal organs had been removed, and her face had been disfigured so much that she could only be identified by her hair and her eyes.

But this, the most sadistic of them all, was the last. Jack the Ripper committed no other murders after Mary Kelly. The killer disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared.

Since the murders of 1888, many people have been accused of being Jack the Ripper, including William Gladstone, Doctor Barnado, Lewis Carrol, Lord Randolph Churchill and even Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, heir to the throne, but no evidence has ever been forthcoming against any of them. But, did the police know more than they were prepared to tell?

Head of the CID at the time was Sir Robert Anderson. The man he put in charge of the Ripper case was Chief Inspector Donald Swanson. In 1910, Anderson published his memoirs. In them, he claimed the police knew the identity of Jack the Ripper. He had been identified by a witness, but the witness refused to give evidence against him, so the suspect was locked away in an asylum.

Swanson, not surprisingly, had a copy of his former boss's memoirs. In the 1980's, those memoirs passed down to his grandson, who discovered his grandfather had made notes in the book. In the section on Jack the Ripper, Swanson wrote that the suspect had been taken to Colney Heath asylum, where he died soon after. His name was Kosminski.

In 1987, these notes were made public. True crime writer Martin Fido discovered that there was only one Kosminski committed to Colney Heath asylum after the Jack the Ripper murders a Polish Jew called Aaron Kosminski. But he was not sent to the asylum until 1891, more than two years after the murders. When he was committed to Colney Heath, it was recorded he ate bread picked up from the gutter and that he refused to wash. He was not considered dangerous.

Neither did he die soon after his incarceration.

Instead, his condition slowly deteriorated over the years until, in 1894, he was declared demented and incoherent, and transferred to Leavesden Asylum for Imbeciles in Watford, where he stayed until his death from gangrene in 1919.

Was Aaron Kosminski Jack the Ripper? Could the pathetic, insane wretch of 1891 really have been the silent, sadistic killer of 1888, who evaded all attempts to capture him?

The two men who should have known the head of the CID and the officer in charge of the case believed he was.

To date, he is the number one suspect, so the possibility remains that the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper really did die in Watford.

Trevor Spinnage, 53, is a London Underground software engineer, from Regent Street, Watford. He is a member of the Cloak and Dagger Club, which devotes itself to solving the ripper murders.

For details of the Cloak and Dagger Club, telephone Mr Andy Aliffe 01494 527612 or email andy@aliffe.freeserve.co.uk

Jack the Ripper walks are conducted at 7.30pm every night from Tower Hill station in London by the Original London Walks company.

For a map of the Whitechapel murder scenes, click on the image below.