I began my quest to identify the Jack the Ripper victim known as Mary Jane Kelly with over a thousand possibilities. Slowly and painstakingly that list has halved by tracing those who could not have been murdered in 1888. In 1997 genealogist Peter Birchwood identified a Kelly family in Carnarvon at the time of the […]
The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper studies will be published on 27 November 2025. This is an extensive multi examination of the 1888 Whitechapel murders across multiple disciplines with forty chapters written by experts in each field. My contribution covers copycat and legacy killings. More information is available here, https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Jack-the-Ripper-Studies/Kilday-Nash-Watson/p/book/9781032203348
One of the fascinating things about researching Jack the Ripper is the characters that are connected, however indirectly, to the case. In my latest Ripperologist article, I talk about Lizzie Halliday and her interview with Nellie Bly. At that time Bly was at the peak of her fame, after breaking the record for travelling around […]
I have an article in Issue 173 of Ripperologist, out this month, looking at the life and crimes of Lizzie Halliday, a woman accused of being Jack the Ripper. I first wrote about Halliday in my book about the Jack the Ripper suspects, published in 2018 which, coincidentally, is the last time I contributed to […]
During campaigning for the 1880 General Election a man was jailed for six months for painting his dog in political colours. The unfortunate animal died after licking the paint. Oswald Puckridge was described as a retired publican. The magistrate didn’t know that he had previously been in court for opening his pub early on a […]
My research into the Jack the Ripper suspects involves reading books that seek to connect individuals to other crimes with no evidence other than his presence in the same area. Contemporaries also made unwarranted connections. An American newspaper in October 1888 thought that the Ripper was identical with the Austin Axe murderer of 1884-85, a […]
The foreman at the inquest into the death of Mary Ann Nichols wanted the government to offer a reward and said he would donate twenty-five pounds himself. At the inquest into Jack the Ripper’s next victim, the coroner stated that the Government would not be giving a reward. Despite this a juryman asked if the […]
Charles Stuart Parnell was leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which held the balance of power in the British Parliament in 1885. Three years earlier he was in jail for supporting Irish tenants who opposed paying rent to English landlords. On 12 April 1887, the day that Parliament debated an act proposing tougher action against […]
Currently I am looking at the political impact of the Jack the Ripper murders or lack of it. The crimes in Whitechapel in 1888 made global headlines but were largely ignored by politicians, sitting a few miles away in Westminster. To understand why we need to appreciate the difference between the electoral system then and […]
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