| Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide |
This text is from the E-book Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide by Christopher J. Morley (2005). Click here to return to the table of contents. The text is unedited, and any errors or omissions rest with the author. Our thanks go out to Christopher J. Morley for his permission to publish his E-book.
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On 19 September 1888 Sir Charles Warren wrote to the Home Secretary Henry Matthews, and informed him of a suspect named Oswald Puckridge, who had been released from an asylum on 4 August. Warren wrote, 'He was educated as a surgeon, and had threatened to rip people up with a long knife, he is being looked for, but cannot be found yet'.
Puckridge was born in Burpham near Arundel, Sussex, on 13 June 1838, he was the fourth of five children, his father John Puckridge was a farmer, his mother the daughter of a licensed victualler.
On 3 October 1868 he married Ellen Puddle at St Paul's Parish Church, Deptford, and gave his occupation as chemist. In 1870 they had a son Edward Buddle Puckridge. Oswald Puckridge was admitted to the Hoxton House private lunatic asylum 50-52 Hoxton Street, Shoreditch, on January 6 1888. On 9 August 1893 he was found wandering in Queen Victoria Street, London, and was admitted to Bow infirmary, he was discharged on 18 August only to be readmitted on 5 February 1896, he was discharged on the 14 February to the City of London lunatic asylum at Stone Buckinghamshire and was released on 9 July 1896, only to be readmitted on 19 August 1899. He was discharged once more on 18th October, before being admitted, on 28 May 1900 to the Holborn workhouse in City Road, where he gave his address as 34 St John's Lane, Clerkenwell, and his occupation as a general labourer. He died there on 1 June 1900 of bronchial pneumonia. There is no evidence to substantiate the claim by Warren that Puckridge had ever trained as a surgeon, on his marriage certificate he is described as a pharmacological chemist.
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