Jack the Ripper

Sir Melville Macnaghten succeeded Sir Charles Warren as the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in June of 1889 after the Ripper murders had officially ended. However, the investigation was ongoing and Macnaghten had complete access to police files. His final report addresses his thoughts on why the murders came to an end with the monstrous destruction of Mary Kelly and the identity of the three key suspects he believed could be Jack the Ripper:

A much more rational theory is that the murderer's brain gave way altogether after his awful glut in Miller's Court, and that he immediately committed suicide, or, as a possible alternative, was found to be so hopelessly mad by his relations, that he was by them confined in some asylum.

No one ever saw the Whitechapel murderer: many homicidal maniacs were suspected, but no shadow of proof could be thrown on any one. I may mention the cases of 3 men, any one of whom would have been...(likely) to have committed this series of murders:

(1) A Mr. M. J. Druitt, said to be a doctor & of good family, who disappeared at the time of the Miller's Court murder, & whose body was found in the Thames on 31st December -- or about seven weeks after that murder. He was sexually insane and from private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer.

(2) Kosminski, a Polish Jew, & resident in Whitechapel. This man became insane owing to many years' indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies; he was removed to a lunatic asylum about March 1889. There were many circumstances connected with this man which made him a strong 'suspect.'

(3) Michael Ostrog, a Russian doctor, and a convict, who was subsequently detained in a lunatic asylum as a homicidal maniac. This man's antecedents were of the worst possible type, and his whereabouts at the time of the murders could never be ascertained.

Each one of these three major suspects that Macnaghten identified is addressed in subsequent chapters, as are several other major theories. A few of the many suspects held up by authors over the years is addressed in the chapter entitled "Other Suspects."

The most important detective in the murder series was Chief Inspector Frederick George Abberline. He did not agree with Sir Melville Macnaghten on the viability of the three suspects listed above. In 1903, he said: "You can state most emphatically that Scotland Yard is really no wiser on the subject than it was fifteen years ago."

However, Chief Inspector Abberline did eventually have a favorite suspect of his own, one George Chapman, who was hanged in 1903 for poisoning his wife.