Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman

efforts made by the police to discourage further attacks before the double murder, Dew expressed his amazement that “the Ripper, or any other human being, could have penetrated that area and got away again…. It seemed as though the fiend set out deliberately to prove that he could defeat every effort to capture him [my italics].” Recalling the search for the murderer, Dew said, “One of the  strongest inferences to be deduced from the crimes was that the man [my italics] we were hunting was probably a sexual maniac. This angle of the investigation was pursued relentlessly.”
    These were incredible beliefs for the police department to hold, assuming that they were the views of the police as a whole – although it seems likely that they were – bearing in mind that there was never any solid evidence to support the contention that the perpetrator of the crimes was a man. It also goes some way to explaining the ‘invisibility’ claims made by earlier writers; that the murderer simply and mysteriously vanished after committing each and every crime.
    As for the murderer being a sexual maniac, there was no medical evidence to prove that any of the victims was raped, had had recent intercourse, or even that any sexual interest was shown in them. In short, there was no evidence whatever to indicate that the crimes were sexually motivated.
    Writing in The Independent , on 18 May 2006, under the headline ‘Was Jack the Ripper a woman?’, Kathy Marks in Sydney, Australia reported that an Australian scientist, Ian Findlay, a professor of molecular and forensic diagnostics, had “developed a profiling technique enabling him to extract DNA from a single cell or strand of hair up to 160 years old”. He had taken swabs from the gum used to seal some of the envelopes that had contained the anonymous letters sent to Scotland Yard, and what were believed to be samples of blood spattered on the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, and had subjected them to his analysis. While the results were inconclusive, Findlay managed to construct a partial profile and concluded that “It’s possible the Ripper could be female” – in fact, all he had managed to achieve was the discovery that whoever had sealed the envelopes might have been a woman, and the blood might have been a woman’s blood.
    Stephen Knight ignored the possibility that the murderer might have been a woman in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution , almost certainly because it would have undermined his conspiracy theory. It was his contention that Sir William Gull and his co-conspirators, John Netley, who became Prince Albert Victor’s coach driver when travelling incognito, and the flamboyant artist Walter Sickert, whom Princess Alexandra had asked to act as mentor to Prince Albert, or Eddy as he was known to his family, her immature son and heir apparent to the throne, had enticed Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes – on different nights – into a carriage. There, Gull swiftly despatched them by cutting their throats, then mutilated their bodies. Netley, assisted by Sickert, had then dumped the bodies where they were found soon afterwards. Stride was murdered outside the coach, and then Netley had thrown her body into a yard through an open gateway in Berner Street as Sir Robert Anderson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, acted in the most unlikely guise of a look-out and fourth conspirator .
    Catherine Eddowes, the killer’s next victim within the hour, Knight claimed, had been murdered in the mistaken belief that she was Mary Kelly. Her body was deposited in Mitre Square, which, Knight maintained, held great significance for Freemasons. The mitre is an instrument used in architecture and consists of two straight pieces, usually made of wood, both bevelled at 45 degrees, where they are joined to form a right angle. It is also one of the two principal instruments of Freemasonry (the other being the compass) and is used in Masonic ceremonies.
    It was, Knight suggested, the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square that gave the Ripper a reputation for having supernatural powers, and he referred to the suggestion of an ‘invisible man’, which he said had been made by earlier writers. In other words, Knight suggested, “the sort of person whose presence on the streets would not have been noticed; like a policeman.” He could as easily have added ‘or a woman’, since such an obvious possibility must surely have presented itself to him.
     
    In the