| 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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Smith, a Canadian, had come to London in 1888 to work for the Toronto Trust Society, which had offices in Goldman Street, St Paul's. Smith took lodgings in April with Mr and Mrs Callaghan, at 27 Sun Street, Finsbury Square, and came under the suspicion of Mr Calllaghan, who noticed that he kept three loaded revolvers hidden in a chest of drawers in his room. He also stayed out late at night, and talked and moaned to himself. Smith, also according to Mr Callaghan, was a religious fanatic, who appeared obsessed with prostitutes, saying that they should all be drowned. He was also noted as coming home at 4.00am on the 7 August, the night Martha Tabram was murdered. The next morning, when the maid went to make his bed, she found a large bloodstain on the linen and a shirt hanging with the cuffs having recently been washed. Convinced that Smith was a lunatic, and therefore Jack the Ripper, Callaghan took his suspicions to Dr Forbes Winslow, a Ripper theorist and expert on matters of sanity, having founded the British hospital for mental disorders. Winslow was convinced that Smith was the Ripper, and claimed that given the help of six Constables could catch him. The police investigated the claim and came to the conclusion that there was nothing in it, and that Smith was not Jack the Ripper. On the statement Callaghan gave to Winslow to show to the police, the date in which Smith had returned to his lodgings late had been altered from the 9 to the 7 August, to make it appear that it was the night Martha Tabram was murdered, and make Smith a more plausible suspect. Smith was described as 5ft 10" tall, with dark hair a full beard and moustache, a dark complexion, foreign in appearance, multilingual. It was also claimed that he was knock need and walked with his feet wide apart and probably wore false teeth.
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