Has the Jack the Ripper letter mystery been solved? Expert finds that two key texts linked to the gruesome case were written by the SAME person
Hundreds of letters claiming to have been written by 'Jack the Ripper' were sent to the media and the London Police following the brutal Whitechapel murders of 1888.
These letters have long been a mystery, with many suspecting they were written by journalists to sell more newspapers.
Now, a scientist has provided some new evidence that suggests the letters were, in fact, fakes.
The study focused on the 'Dear Boss' letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper appears for the first time, and the 'Saucy Jacky' postcard.
It found similar linguistic constructions in both letters, such as the phrasal verb 'to keep back', as well as similarities in the handwriting.
Both letters also have a likeness to a third text long thought to be a hoax, known as the 'Moab and Midian' letter.
Two famous examples of letters supposedly written by Jack the Ripper were penned by the same person, new research has found. The use of the phrasal verb 'to keep back' to mean 'to withhold' (circled in red) appears in Ripper's 'Dear Boss' (left) and 'Saucy Jack' (right) letters
Jack the Ripper is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, east London, over the course of three months, but was never caught.
The police started to publish letters allegedly from Jack the Ripper after receiving the first four, which encouraged hoaxers to send copycat letters claiming to be written by the killer.
Dr Andrea Nini, from the University of Manchester, undertook a 'cluster analysis' of 209 letters linked to the Ripper, studying similarities in the documents' text.
The 'Dear Boss' letter and 'Saucy Jacky' postcard stood out due to the striking similarities.
Similarities between the two texts include the use of the phrasal verb 'to keep back' mean 'to withhold'.
The Dear Boss letter, scrawled in red ink, was received by the Central News Agency in London on September 27, 1888, and forwarded to Scotland Yard.
'Saucy Jacky' was used as a reference to the killer in a postcard received by the Central News Agency on October 1, 1888.
The murderer is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, east London , over the course of three months, but was never caught. Pictured is an 1889 artist's impression of a fictitious scene in which the Ripper is caught grasping the hair of one of his victims
Using modern linguistic techniques to analyse the letters, Dr Nini uncovered certain shared distinctive linguistic constructions in the two early texts.
'My conclusion is that there is very strong linguistic evidence that these two texts were written by the same person,' he said.
'People in the past had already expressed this tentative conclusion, on the basis of similarity of handwriting, but this had not been established with certainty.'
Dr Nini also found evidence that a link exists between these letters and another of the key texts in the case, the 'Moab and Midian' letter.
Many people believe the text was a hoax created by the Central News Agency.
Dr Nini said: 'In addition to the historical value of my findings, they could help forensic linguists to better understand the important issue of individuality in linguistic production.
'Since all the hoaxers tried to mimic the style of the original 'Jack the Ripper', we can use the database of the letters to understand how people fake writing style - and how successful they are at imitation.
'The results indicate that it is very difficult to do so.'
This study doesn't identify the killer, or the author of the two letters, but it does seem to back up the journalist theory.
'There's historical evidence that points to the journalist theory for the earliest ones ('Dear Boss' and 'Saucy Jacky') and, since this 'Moab and Midian' letter might have been entirely fabricated at the Central News Agency—the original [document] was never found or sent to the police—if the linguistic evidence supports that this was the same author as the Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky then we could argue that the linguistic evidence does support to the journalist theory,' Nini told Gizmodo.
'However, this is a conclusion that should be reached by the historians, not the linguists.'
More than 200 letters were sent to media and officials during the spree, but the police started to publish them after the first four were received. This encouraged hoaxers to send copycat letters claiming to be written by the killer. Pictured is the Dear Boss letter published by police
WHO WAS JACK THE RIPPER?
Jack the Ripper is thought to have killed at least five young women in Whitechapel, East London, between September and November 1888, but was never caught.
Numerous individuals have been accused of being the serial killer.
At the time, police suspected the Ripper must have been a butcher, due to the way his victims were killed and the fact they were discovered near to the dockyards, where meat was brought into the city.
There are several alleged links between the killer and royals. First is Sir William Gull, the royal physician. Many have accused him of helping get rid of the prostitutes' bodies, while others claim he was the Ripper himself.
A book has named Queen Victoria's surgeon Sir John Williams as the infamous killer. He had a surgery in Whitechapel at the time.
Another theory links the murders with Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence.
At one point, cotton merchant James Maybrick was the number one suspect, following the publication of some of his diary which appeared to suggest he was the killer.
Some believe the diary to be a forgery, although no one has been able to suggest who forged it.
Other suspects include Montague John Druitt, a Dorset-born barrister. He killed himself in the Thames seven weeks after the last murder.
George Chapman, otherwise known as Severyn Kłosowski, is also a suspect after he poisoned three of his wives and was hanged in 1903.
Another suspected by police was Aaron Kosminski. He was admitted to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum and died there.
Dr Thomas Neill Cream poisoned four London prostitutes with strychnine and was hanged in 1892.
Some of the more bizarre links include Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice in Wonderland books, who taught at Christ Church until 1881 - which was at the forefront of the Ripper murder scenery.
Winston Churchill's father - Lord Randolph Churchill - has also been named as a potential suspect.
Crime writer Patricia Cornwell believes she has 'cracked' the case by unearthing evidence that confirms Walter Sickert, an influential artist, as the prime suspect. Her theories have not been generally accepted.
Author William J Perring raised the possibility that Jack the Ripper might actually be 'Julia' - a Salvation Army soldier.
In The Seduction Of Mary Kelly, his novel about the life and times of the final victim, he suggests Jack the Ripper was in fact a woman.
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