Ripper’s diary was a hoax. He dismissed all the other theories, then claimed to be the first to finger George Hutchinson as the Ripper. Maybe Hinton’s book had not crossed the Atlantic when Wright was at work, but Wright makes no more convincing a case than Hinton does. The most recent theory is that Walter, the pseudonymous author of the Victorian pornographic classic
In 2002, Patricia Cornwell published
However, new books are being written about Jack the Ripper all the time. Each develops a theory more off the wall than the last. It is a wonder that no one has yet suggested that Jack the Ripper was an alien who abducted East End prostitutes to perform bizarre anatomical experiments on them. Perhaps it is coming.
England—Jack the Stripper
As in the case of Jack the Ripper, the file on Jack the Stripper has never been closed. He killed six women in 1964 and left their naked bodies in the River Thames or along its banks.
The first body was found under a pontoon at Hammersmith on 2 February 1964. The victim had been strangled and the remnants of her underwear had been shoved down her throat. She was small, five foot two, and apart from her stockings she was naked.
The body was identified as that of Hannah Tailford. She was 30 years old and lived with her boyfriend in West Norwood. She had a three-year-old daughter, an 18-month-old son and was pregnant at the time of death.
By day, she worked as a waitress or a cleaner. At night she supplemented her meagre wages by working as a prostitute on the streets of Bayswater. Her record showed four convictions for soliciting.
She had disappeared from her flat ten days before her body was found, though a man and his wife said they saw her on Charing Cross Road, just two days before. She was depressed and suicidal. They tried to cheer her up.
Forensic experts concluded that she had been dead for just 24 hours when she was found, and they believed that she may have been drowned in a bath or pond before she was dumped in the river. Tide tables showed that she must have entered the Thames at Duke’s Meadow in Chiswick, a popular spot for courting couples as well as for prostitutes and their clients.
By interviewing over 700 people in London’s underworld of vice, the police discovered that Hannah had been a star turn at sex parties and that she often attended kinky orgies in Mayfair and Kensington. A foreign diplomat known for his perverted tastes had been one of her clients, but he had been out of the country at the time of her disappearance.
This left the police with little to go on. They believed that Hannah had been attacked and sexually assaulted. Her knickers had been shoved in her mouth to stop her screaming as she was killed. But they could not even prove that she had been murdered and the inquest recorded an open verdict.
Hannah Tailford’s passing would have been mourned by those who knew her—and dismissed as one of the professional risks of being a prostitute by those who did not—and then forgotten about if a death with eerie similarities had not occurred two months later. On 8 April 1964, the body of 26-year-old Irene Lockwood was found among the tangled weeds and branches on the river bank at Duke’s Meadow. She was naked.
The pretty young redhead also worked the streets of Bayswater and Notting Hill. She, too, was small like Hannah and had attended kinky parties. She also performed in blue movies. Both girls solicited cab drivers late at night. And both were pregnant when they died.
In both cases, it was impossible to determine how they had died. Marks on the back of Irene’s head showed that she could have been attacked from behind and the police believed that she had been killed elsewhere, then brought to Duke’s Field.
The police also suspected that both girls were mixed up in a blackmail racket. In Hannah’s flat, they found an address book and photographic equipment. Irene’s flatmate Vicki Pender, who had been found battered to death a year earlier, had once been beaten up after trying to blackmail a client who had been photographed with her without his knowledge or consent.
But the most striking similarity between the two killings was that the victims were found naked. There was no sign of their clothes, which were never found.
On 24 April, another naked female body was found—this time in an alley off Swyncombe Avenue in Brentford. The victim, 22-year-old Helen Barthelemy, had been strangled, probably from behind.
Three of her front teeth had been extracted after death. It was also established that her body had been stripped of its clothing after her death and fresh tyre marks in the alley way indicated that she had been killed elsewhere and dumped there.
Helen was also a prostitute. Educated in a convent, she had become a stripper in Blackpool. In Liverpool, she had served a prison sentence for luring a man into an ambush where he had been robbed. When she was released she came to London and went on the game. She was known to cater for any sort of perversions, though she would often entertain local black men for free because they were more sympathetic than her kinky clientele. One Jamaican man admitted being with her on the night she disappeared, but he had a strong alibi and was quickly ruled out as a suspect.
With three similar killings, the papers caught on to the story. The victims’ nudity was obviously the most sensational aspect and the Sundays quickly dubbed the mysterious murderer “Jack the Stripper”.
Looking back in their records, Scotland Yard found another case that fitted Jack the Stripper’s modus operandi. On 8 November 1963, three months before Hannah Tailford’s murder, the body of 22-year-old Gwynneth Rees had been found buried in a shallow grave in an ash tip near Chiswick Bridge. She was naked except for one stocking. At first, the police thought that she had been the victim of an abortion racket. Then it was discovered that she had been the target of a sexual attack. The body had lain there since May or June and it was thought that she may have been sunbathing when she was attacked. Now, though, it looked like she was another victim of Jack the Stripper.
Kenneth Archibald, a 54-year-old caretaker, walked into Notting Hill police station and confessed to the murder of Irene Lockwood. He was already a suspect. His card had been found in Irene’s flat. He said that he had met her in a pub on the night of the murder. On open land near Barnes Bridge they had quarrelled over money. He had lost his temper and put his hands around her throat so she could not scream. He had strangled her accidentally. When she was dead, he had taken her clothes off and rolled her into the river. Then he took her clothes home and burned them.
Archibald, however, said he knew nothing about the murders of Hannah Tailford, Helen Barthelemy or Gwynneth Rees. He was charged with the murder of Irene Lockwood. But when he appeared in the Old Bailey, he retracted his confession. As there was no other evidence against him the jury acquitted him.
The forensic scientists paid special attention to Helen Barthelemy’s body. It had not been buried like Gwynneth Rees’s, nor had it been in contact with water. However, it was filthy, as if it had been stored somewhere dirty before it had been dumped.
A minute examination of her skin showed that she was covered from head to toe in tiny flecks of paint. Home Office scientists concluded that her naked body had been kept somewhere near a spray-painting shop.
It was clear that the man who had killed Helen Barthelemy and the other victims sought the company of prostitutes in the Bays-water area. The police organized an amnesty for girls working the streets in that area and appealed for anyone to come forward who had worried about odd or eccentric clients, especially those who made them strip naked. The girls’ response was overwhelming.
Policewomen went out on the streets, posing as prostitutes. They carried tape recorders in their handbags. The experiences they recorded were often unpleasant, but they failed to move the enquiry forward.
