The unrest that followed the murder of Annie Chapman caused an increase in public criticism of the authorities. It was a widely held view in the neighbourhood that the authorities cared little about the fates of those who lived hereabouts. The inadequacy of local policing had long been a bone of contention, and the fact that the Home Office refused point blank to offer a reward for information that might lead to the killer’s apprehension rankled with the local residents. The foreman of the jurors at Mary Nichol’s inquest even went so far as to express the view that the murders of both Chapman and Nichols could have been prevented had the Government offered a reward in the wake of Martha Tabram’s murder.
WHY NO REWARD WAS OFFERED
It had in fact long been an official government policy that no rewards were offered for information that might lead to the apprehension of criminals. This was based upon the belief that offering money would simply encourage people to give false information in the hope of collecting the reward. However, several Jewish businessmen, including Samuel Montague the local Member for Parliament, did put up their own money in the hope of encouraging local residents to give up the killer.
THE MILE END VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
Local residents were also anxious to help the police investigation as much as possible and they began forming themselves into vigilance patrols in the hope that their own private endeavours might succeed in bringing the killer to justice. The most famous of these was the Mile End Vigilance committee, formed on 10th September 1888, whose president was Mr George Lusk.
But despite increased police activity in the area and the added activities of the vigilance patrols, the murder of Annie Chapman had caused genuine panic, and with the coming of darkness the anger and frustration of the daylight hours gave way to outright terror. After midnight the streets became deserted as people fled to the safety of their homes or lodgings. The only sound to be heard out of doors was the sound of policemen’s footsteps as they walked their beats through the thoroughfares and darker recesses of Whitechapel. People stayed in doors, and one of the results of the terror generated in the wake of Annie Chapaman’s murder was that the local locksmiths began to do a roaring trade.
It was at the inquest into the death of Annie Chapman that Dr George Bagster Philips, the police surgeon who had examined Annie Chapman’s body as it lay in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, raised a chilling possibility. The fact that the killer had removed and taken away her womb, he stated, suggested that the reason for her murder may well have been to secure that particular part of her anatomy, possibly for medical research. Furthermore, the speed with which he did it and the skill displayed suggested that her murderer may well have possessed some anatomical knowledge.
The question of whether or not Jack the Ripper possessed medical knowledge is a difficult one to answer. A distinction has to be made between anatomical knowledge, meaning knowing where the organs are and where to find them and surgical skill meaning the ability to actually extract them. Some of the doctors at the time thought that he had both. Some thought that he had the anatomical knowledge, the kind of knowledge that a horse slaughterer or a butcher or somebody like that would have had but not necessarily a surgical skill. Another doctor said that it would have taken him in those circumstances a lot longer to have committed the mutilations and so therefore there was surgical skill exhibited. Other people said no surgical skills, no anatomical knowledge he just did what he did and it was just lucky that he found whatever it was that he found.
With the police evidently unable to solve the crimes, rumours began to circulate as to the murderers identity and motives. Was he seeking revenge for some real or imagined injury he had suffered at the hands of a prostitute? Was he a member of a heathen sect that practiced barbaric rituals? Was he simply seeking notoriety? Or was he on a moral crusade to rid the streets of the sin of prostitution?
