JACOB LEVY AS CANDIDATE FOR BEING JACK THE RIPPER

Who was Jack the Ripper.  He was never brought to justice and legally speaking nobody knows who he was.  But that does not mean the police didn't know.

The mentally ill Jewish butcher Jacob Levy resided in 36 Middlesex Street Aldgate. He has been named by researchers as the mad butcher watched by the police who they called a good suspect.  Some think even today that he was the Ripper. The reason he is accused is that though there is no evidence of violence is that he died soon after the murders of syphilis which fits reports the murderer didn’t last long after the Kelly butchery. The evidence for Levy is weak and his biggest fault in asylum records was that he couldn’t handle money. Here is the so-called evidence.

The Ripper knew Goulston Street well. Levy used to work there at 58 Goulston Street in a butchers.

Jacob Levy had a conviction for theft. During his time at 58 Goulston Street he stole meat from his employer. The killer was a thief for he stole back the money he gave the prostitutes and took Annie Chapman’s rings. He could have stolen clothes and jewellery to make himself look like a gentleman.

Ripper suspect Jacob Levy lived in Middlesex Street where he worked at number 111, which was a butcher’s shop.

There is more, Detective Constable Robert Sagar stated, 'We [the City Police] had good reason to suspect a man who worked in Butcher's Row, Aldgate. We watched him carefully, there is no doubt that this man was insane, and after a time his friends thought it advisable to have him removed to a private asylum. After he was removed, there were no more Ripper atrocities'.

But Levy had a family looking after him!

The man mentioned need not be Levy. The fact that the man was watched at work might explain why no crimes happened during the surveillance.

Levy wasn’t committed until several months had passed since the final Ripper murder so he might have been unable to kill for the police were keeping a close eye on him.

THE ENVELOPE

When Annie Chapman was found dead, a piece of envelope was discovered by her head nearby. It carried a Sussex Regiment seal in blue.

It looked like a piece was torn off leaving only part of the address.

On the front the letter M was written by hand where the address started and lower down Sp which must be Spitalfields. The postmark read London August 23 1888. There was a J. There was what seemed to be the beginning of a 2 (page 47, The Lodger). So it appeared to be a 2. What if it was a 3? More about that later.

William Stevens saw Chapman drop her box of pills in Dorset Street, and then she picked up paper from the floor to put two pills in it. He thought this was the same piece of envelope that was found. Chapman had pieces of muslin and cloth in her pocket so why would she need the envelope? Would she really pick a dirty envelope off the floor? Not when she was clean enough to take pieces of cleaning cloth around with her.

You can suggest the piece of envelope was the Ripper's. The writing on it has posed a puzzle. Here is a suggested solution. The Ripper found a piece of envelope in her pocket. He took his pen and wrote his name and address further over to the left. At this stage it overlapped with what was really on the envelope. So he tore a piece of the envelope to ensure that only the J for the name the M for the address and the Sp for Spitalfields would be left. The only person who is a perfect match for this clue was Joseph Barnett of Millers Court Spitalfields the lover of Mary Kelly. He was not the Ripper mainly because he lived a normal life after the murders. But why would it not read 13 Millers Court? Some think the room number couldn’t have been left out for people came and went all the time but people do leave numbers out. It depends and Joe had been living there for a while. What the Ripper may have written was Jacob Levy, Middlesex Street Spitalfields. Middlesex Street is not in Spitalfields but in Whitechapel but Spitalfields would still have got to him and he would have received letters in the past addressed to him using Spitalfields not Whitechapel. It wasn’t important. Maybe he put in Spitalfields to avoid giving too much of a scent.

If it was her’s you might surmise that the Ripper tore something off it. If so he did so on purpose for it couldn't catch on anything to tear.

Annie Chapman had no place to stay and she would have taken all her pills with her. She needed more than a piece of envelope for holding her pills. Therefore the piece of envelope found was not hers. She carried plenty of cloths with her to use instead. They were found. The Ripper left it as a clue. The man who testified that the piece may have been what she took to wrap pills in had to have been wrong. Nobody pays much attention to little things like that. The Ripper took the paper the pills were in and he took her rings.

Two pills were dropped which led to the story that she only took two pills out with her. Inspector Chandler wrote, “Enquiries were made amongst the men [of the Sussex Regiment] but none could be found who corresponded with anyone living at Spitalfields or any person whose address commencing [sic] with ‘J’. The pay books were examined and no signature resembled the initials on the envelope.” He also wrote, “enquiries were made amongst the men but none could be found who are in the habit of writing to anyone at Spitalfields, or whose signatures corresponded with the letters on the envelope.”

The envelope when it was treated this way was regarded as a clue. It shows that the police didn’t believe the solution to the mystery given by the man who said he saw her lift a piece of paper to put her pills in. Perhaps she did lift the piece of envelope. If so then the Ripper found it in her pocket which he ripped open. It is said that the Ripper intended to make her murder look like a robbery which was why he did this. Not likely. No robber goes to the trouble of cutting the victim up and mutilating them.

The police seemingly found the writing on the envelope to have been unusual for you would expect people to write much the same way. The schools did not produce the variety of handwriting you would see today.

Did she use the pills? Maybe. If she had all her pills with her, did the Ripper take them thinking or hoping they might have been syphilis medications? We think our suspect had syphilis or he may have thought he had!

Some say there was a mark that was guessed to be a 2 on the envelope as well (page 47, The Lodger). What if it was a 3 for both numbers have an open circle at the top? Jacob Levy lived at 36 Middlesex Street. Why was no Mr or Mrs written on the envelope? Professionals would put in one of these words where applicable. They are missing because the Ripper wrote a clue on the envelope. The Ripper due to his insanity and the euphoria he experienced when he glutted his urge to gut prostitutes felt that nothing could hurt him. That was why he was so daring and confident.

If the envelope was a clue pointing to 36 Middlesex Street, Spitalfields, then Jacob Levy was indeed the Ripper.

The best suggestion though is that it could have been anybody's envelope. It is not important.

LEVY'S MAP

Here is a far-fetched but interesting scenario.

Number 36 was the residence of Jacob Levy in 1888.

Number 36 Middlesex Street, is what you find along the line if you draw it from where Catherine Eddowes was killed and where her apron piece and the chalked message were found in Goulston Street.

We know the killer was trying to tell us something by killing according to a pattern on a map.

Had this pattern been discerned in time, the murder of Catherine Eddowes could have been averted. By then, the killer had struck at three places and by working it out on a map one could see where the fourth murder was going to happen. The killer laughing that nobody had seen the pattern and taunting the police would have told us where his home was.

The line starts with Eddowes who had symbols that make an M – M for Middlesex Street? – carved into her face and ends with her apron and a clue left by the killer about who he was. The apron piece was purposely cut from the apron and discarded with the intention of dumping it at Goulston Street. Why take the time to cut a piece of apron in the darkest part of Mitre Square when the whole apron could have been taken which would have been easier?

Why would you dump the apron piece in a public place where a policeman could find you easily?

Why dump it at all? The Ripper was trying to leave a false trial and to say something as well.

The apron in Mitre Square and its missing piece in Goulston Street were meant to make a line. In that way, Eddowes is the beginning and the end of the line.

The Ripper left a message in chalk at Goulston Street just above where he dumped the piece that the Jews are not to be blamed for nothing where it is found so that it can be a clue that he wants to point to what kind of man he is. He left the apron piece to tell the police, “Yes, I want to want to tell you where I live or what direction my lair is in. And I will but I will not make it too obvious for you have to work it out yourselves. I have made two bars of a cross, two lines, and I am making a third that will show where I really live if you can solve the puzzle.” He admitted to being a Jew.

The fact that the street map we have was not meant to be accurate matters not. The killer had this map and treated it as if it were accurate.

If this argument is bizarre then remember that it is not and is an attempt to get into a mind that worked in bizarre ways.

The circumstantial evidence is that the line through Jacob Levy's residence is not a coincidence.

THE FM OR THE M ON KELLY'S WALL

There is an alleged FM scrawled in blood plainly to be seen in the photo of Kelly’s murder. The F doesn’t show up clearly in the oldest photos and may not exist. But the M is a different story.

The M was clearly written on the wall in Kelly’s blood. Is this confirmation for the M on Eddowes face?

Or is it telling us what street the Ripper lived on? Jacob Levy lived in Middlesex Street.

If there was an FM written on Kelly’s wall, did it stand for From Middlesex meaning From Middlesex Street? When three places, the Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly sites, where we know the Ripper was at work are so close together chances are he’s living close to all three.

The man who saw the suspect with Mary Kelly shortly before she was murdered, George Hutchinson, believed he saw the same man on Middlesex Street. And Jacob Levy lived in Middlesex Street. He lived there with a man called Isaac Barnett. Mary Kelly plied her trade as a prostitute at Aldgate (page 70, The Complete Jack the Ripper).

Catherine Eddowes had an ^ shaped incision cut on both sides of her face below her eyes. This shows the killer though he was rushing went to the trouble of making these marks. It was dark and he needed to be in the shadows for there were police about. He must have struggled to see what he was doing. So why did he make the marks when it was so difficult? They were made to say something. Were they arrows pointing in the direction where the killer lived? No – they don’t look like arrows. He was in the mood for being arrogant that night as we know from the message he left later at Goulston Street as a clue. Those who favour the Jew Aaron Kosminski as the Ripper might see the ^ as a hint of the A for his first initial. It would have been too bold to actually put in the missing stroke to make a proper A. But this like the arrows would also be a pointless clue.

The marks look like an M that isn’t put together in case it's too obvious that it's an M. The M is most likely to refer to the street where the Ripper lived than his initial. There are fewer streets that start with m than men with an initial m. The M interpretation is the most likely. Our suspect lived in Middlesex Street. Were the two marks making up an M for Middlesex?

It is tempting to believe that Mary Kelly who walked the Aldgate streets was slashed so much about the face for the Ripper had often seen her there. There was something about her face that he hated. He also knew Catherine Eddowes who haunted the area too and cut up her face but not to the extent that he did Kelly’s.

COMMENTS: The evidence is too fanciful. The reality is that the Ripper had not the time or the desire to create puzzles for those who have over-active imaginations who pore over the evidence after the event. Though there is a Middlesex Street link with the Ripper it is clear that the suspect there did not match Aaron Kosminski in terms of plausibility. He was not even given a name.   When Ostrog and Druitt were terrible suspects and still put down in the police records the mad butcher must have been a worse one! Why does Sagar not call the man a butcher but merely say he worked there? He was not Jacob Levy. We don't know for sure if Kosminksi had a link with that street.  Homeless Kosminski who possibily was taken in by friends here and there and who may have done casual work for he was good in public a lot of the time is a better fit.

APPENDIX: MADMAN HYAM HYAMS

A name for a possible mad butcher being the Ripper has come up.

Matches - violent, went to Colney Hatch.

New Ripper suspect Hyam Hyams, is thought to be this mystery man who was sent to Colney Hatch.

Hyam Hyams was taken there under restraint but he never went to Stepney workhouse like the best reports say the Ripper did.

We can be sure that those who named the Ripper was possibly being Kosminksi were not using a fake name or a wrong name.  Confusion did happen but surely not to that extent!

Hyams was related to Joseph Levy’s wife.  We can be sure that Levy identified the Ripper and this caused problems which could be explained by a family connection.  Levy refused to testify.

Jacob Levy did not go to Colney Hatch which makes him a worse candidate than Hyams.

Hyams could not have been the Ripper because he didn’t hide his violence towards women, his wife and his mother and was an uncontrollable maniac.

Some say, "But he lived too long after ending up in Colney Hatch to have been the Ripper. While Swanson and Anderson could err about where the Ripper ended up they couldn’t err too much about the time of his death. Both stated that the Ripper passed to his reward in Hell soon after the crimes. That is the one thing that mustn’t be ignored."  The fact remains that Kosminski was thought to have died soon after being committed just because he was transferred and nobody looked to see where he went so that is inconclusive.