| 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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Dr Lyttleton Forbes Winslow was born on 31 January 1844 and educated at Rugby and Downing college, Cambridge, he grew up in the private asylums owned by his father Forbes Benignus Winslow. He would later join his father in practice, and upon his father's death, took over the running of the asylums. Though after a family feud this responsibility was removed from him. He therefore turned his attention to the solving of crime by Sherlock Holmesian methods, and with a little manipulation of the evidence, came to believe he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper, and believed if given a team of six Constables could catch the murderer.
His suspect was G. Wentworth Smith, a Canadian, who had come to London to work for the Toronto Trust Society, and who lodged with Mr and Mrs Callaghan at 27 Sun Street, Finsbury Square. Smith came under suspicion from Mr Callaghan when he was heard saying that all prostitutes should be drowned. He also talked and moaned to himself, and kept three loaded revolvers hidden in a chest of drawers. Callaghan took his suspicions to Winslow, who in turn contacted the police. His theory was fully investigated by the police and shown to be without foundation. This did not stop Winslow, who for many years trumpeted his theory at every opportunity, and claimed credit that his efforts had forced the Ripper into abandoning murder and fleeing the country. Winslow himself tells us how he spent, day after day, night after night, in the Whitechapel slums, 'The detectives knew me, the lodging house keepers knew me, and at last the poor creatures of the streets came to know me. In terror they rushed to me with every scrap of information which might, to my mind, be of value to me. The frightened women looked for hope in my presence. They felt reassured and welcomed me to their dens and obeyed my commands eagerly, and I found the bits of information I wanted'.
Winslow, through his persistence and his constant projection of himself into the Ripper story, caused the police to briefly suspect him, and to check on his movements at the time of the Ripper murders.
Winslow, an expert on matters of legal sanity, wrote the Handbook For Attendants On The Insane, and also founded the British hospital for mental disorders in London. In his memoirs he states, 'I have breathed the atmosphere of lunacy for a period extending over sixty years. He died on 8 June 1913.
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