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Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 338
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 02, 2003 - 5:27 pm: |       |
I found this account of Szemeredy (spelt here Szemardy) and his suicide. This was in the Olean Democrat (New York) of 30 September 1892
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 109
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 03, 2003 - 9:34 am: | |
This website is becoming such a mine of important background information that anyone who crassly attempts to write on the Rippe again without sifting it should be compelled to live the rest of their lives in the perpetual company of Patricia Cornwell.
All the best,
Martin F |
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 339
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 03, 2003 - 1:18 pm: | |
Hi Martin
Many thanks for the comment which coming from a source such as yourself is highly appreciated and makes research all the more worthwhile!!!
All the best
Chris |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 111
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 04, 2003 - 6:56 am: | |
Your more than welcome, Chris. But never forget that sources who haven't had the good luck (and, for my part in 1987, desperate financial need!) to have their work published, may well find mrre important new facts and hold opinions as good as or better than mine (or any other published author's).
All the best,
Martin F |
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 343
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 04, 2003 - 8:27 am: | |
Hi Martin
I do take your point that the fact that one is a published author does not make a person the fount of all knowledge:-)
Let's just say in the present case that there are some published authors whose opinion I respect and value more highly than others... mentioning no other names!
Regards
Chris
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Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 513
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - 1:47 pm: | |
I have recently found another brief account of Szemeredy. This is from a US paper called the New Oxford Item dated 7 October 1892
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Eduardo Zinna
Police Constable
Username: Eduardo
Post Number: 9
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 20, 2003 - 7:23 am: | |
Hello everybody,
Thank you, Chris, for searching for valuable information and posting it on the boards.
For everybody, two points of clarification:
First, Szemeredy's first name was not Alios but Alois (yes, the mighty A to Z is wrong in this respect).
Secondly, Pressburg was in Austria-Hungary. It is now Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
Best,
Eduardo |
Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 664
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - 2:06 pm: | |
Here is another account of Szemeredy dating from 9 November 1892 (Port Philip Herald, an Australian paper)
Chris
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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 154
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - 10:11 pm: | |
Hi Chris,
Again, nice research work. From the latest, the story seems to go back to the Evening Standard's
correspondent in Vienna sometime in the late summer or early fall of 1892. Have you been able to locate such an article yet?
Best wishes,
Jeff |
Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 667
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2003 - 8:50 pm: | |
I am unsure whether the account in question appeared in the Evening Standard or in a German language paper called Der Standard published in Vienna. Any progress I will post.
Chris
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Robert W. House
Sergeant
Username: Robhouse
Post Number: 22
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 5:20 pm: | |
Chris - re your post #664 on October 29. I am having a hard time reading the newspaper article. Do you have a version that is slightly larger and clearer? I have never heard of this suspect before; is there any other background on him?
Martin: I am just finishing your book on JTR. It is very interesting and enjoyable.
Rob House |
Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 670
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 6:08 pm: | |
Robert
I have already transcribed this - here it is below:
Port Philip Herald (Australia)
9 November 1892
HAS JACK THE RIPPER KILLED HIMSELF?
A STRANGE STORY FROM VIENNA
It seems that the veritable Whitechapel murderer has been discovered again. Unfortunately, or fortunately, however, the man is dead. The Standard's Vienna correspondent writes:-
"With every precaution warranted by the circumstances, I take note of the fact that in police circles in Vienna and Pesth it is considered very probable that Alois Szemeredy, the Vienna murderer, who committed suicide two days ago in Pressburg, is likely to be regarded in England as likewise the perpetrator of all the Whitechapel murders. In July, 1876, at a house of ill fame at Buenos Ayres, Szemeredy
MURDERED A GIRL
named Carolina Matz by stabbing her. It was worth noting that even at that time he posed as a military surgeon. That he had some surgical experience seems to be undoubted. It is said by those who knew him at the time that he despatched many an uncle whose nephews were impatient to succeed to their heritage. In one description of him, it is said that 'a series of tombstones marked his path through Southern America.' To return to the murder in Buenos Ayres, there is a significant detail about that case yet to be mentioned. He managed to get away to Rio de Janeiro, and from this city he wrote anonymous letters to the authorities of Buenos Ayres which remind the reader of the alleged letters of the Whitechapel murderer to Scotland yard. Szemeredy, moreover, owned to having committed murders, but he called himslef an insane man. He was
SENTENCED TO DEATH.
Not only was the Austrian Legation moved to intervene on his behalf, but public opinion was excited, and denounced the execution of 'an insane man.' For five years the Argentine courts were occupied with him, until at length, in 1881, he was finally acquitted of the charge of murder, but sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment for theft previous to the murder. On his return to Hungary he was imprisoned as a deserter, and sent first to the Military Asylum, and finally to State Asylum near Pesth. He was released from the latter as cured in 1886. Between this date and March, 1890, when he made the acquaintance of a widow who afterwards lived with him in Pesth, he is only known to have been away in North America.
Early in 1889, prior to leaving Hungary, he offered his memoirs to a Pesth newpaper, the "Egystertes." A sub editor of that journal who received him, describes him as a 'tall, thin man, about forty five, with bronzed complexion, brown smooth hair, bushy moustache of peculiar form, which covered his whole mouth, sensual
UNSTEADY, SMALL EYES,
large muscular hands, and a habit of wearing his coat buttoned up to the chin in military fashion.' About six months ago, that is during the first series of the Vienna murder, and the second, the Pesth police and newspapers received letters signed 'Jack the Ripper', which at the time were considered a hoax.
Szemeredy, like the Whitechapel murderer, came to Vienna to commit a crime and suddenly disappeared, coming again when the interest in the former case had died out. The disappearance of Szemeredy between 1886 and 1890 covers the time of the Whitechapel murders.
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Eduardo Zinna
Sergeant
Username: Eduardo
Post Number: 22
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, November 07, 2003 - 6:55 pm: | |
Chris,
Thank you again for your many valuable postings.
I just wanted to mention that Caroline Metz - not Matz - Szemeredy's victim in Buenos Aires, may not have been called Metz at all; there is a possibility that she took that name from her place of origin, the city of Metz in Alsatia. Contemporary Austrian newspapers gave her nationality as German, since Alsatia had been annexed by the German Empire following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
Cheers,
Eduardo |
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