Shawl Was Not Ripper-Proof

A shawl with a grisly history is going on the auction block. It was worn by Jack the Ripper's fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, the night of her death.

The owner is a descendant of Police Sergeant Amos Simpson, who was the first on the crime scene when Catherine was butchered in Mitre Square near Aldgate.

Forensic testing last year for a TV documentary were unable to prove conclusively that the shawl belonged to her. But it has already been on display at the Police Crime museum, before being put up for sale by the Lacy Scott and Knight Auction centre in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. [Link]

The Ripper's Kin?

Laura Richards of Scotland Yard assembled a team to apply 21st-century profiling methods to the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders.

Ms Richards said the 118-year-old evidence shows the Ripper was between the ages of 25 and 35, between 5ft 5ins and 5ft 7ins tall. He was also of stocky build.

Investigators have even been able to pinpoint his address.

Ms Richards said: "For the first time, we are able to understand the kind of person Jack the Ripper was.

"We can name the street where he probably lived; and we can see what he looked like; and we can explain, finally, why this killer eluded justice." [Link, via Family Research]

I ran Jack's composite sketch through the facial-recognition software at MyHeritage.com to determine which celebrities are most likely descendants of the murderer. The leading candidate: David Schwimmer, a 66% match who suspiciously dropped out of sight following the final episode of Friends.

Elective Surgery in Victorian England

From Reuters:

New Jack the Ripper theories put sleuths in a spin
Sun Jun 26, 2005

By Elizabeth Fullerton

LONDON (Reuters) - A mental patient, a butcher, the artist Walter Sickert, a serial wife poisoner and even Queen Victoria's grandson have all been touted as Jack the Ripper suspects in one of the greatest whodunits in history.

[snip]

A . . . new book, "Uncle Jack" by Tony Williams, proposes the killer was the author's ancestor, Sir John Williams -- a gynaecologist to Queen Victoria's children and the founder of the National Library of Wales.

Williams had set out to explore his family history when he stumbled upon a box of Sir John's personal effects, including a knife, three medical slides and diaries with the 1888 entries ripped out.

He discovered that besides his posh Harley Street surgery, Sir John had a clinic in Whitechapel, giving him access to the prostitutes who thronged the area.

[snip]

Williams believes Sir John was enraged by the prostitutes he saw getting pregnant while his own wife was unable to have children and killed them either out of vengeance or to use their organs for researching a cure for infertility.

"These women were having children left, right and center and he wanted this cure," said Williams.

However, shortly after the killings stopped, Sir John had something akin to a nervous breakdown, gave up medicine and returned to Wales for good.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Is it appropriate to include the occupation "serial killer" in a GEDCOM file? (By the way, an uncle, however "great", is not generally considered an ancestor.)