Henry James
James was briefly suspected after been spotted behaving suspiciously by Thomas Ede, a railway signalman, close to the Foresters Arms public house on Cambridge Heath Road, on the day Annie Chapman was murdered, 8 September 1888. Ede stated, 'James was moving oddly and one of his arms appeared to be wooden'. He also claimed to have seen a knife protruding from James pocket. James was questioned but soon cleared of any suspicion of being Jack the Ripper because according to the press reports, he was a well known local lunatic. Exactly how a lunatic wandering Whitechapel armed with a knife, when there was a knife wielding killer on the loose, could be considered harmless is hard to understand. James was described as wearing a two peaked cap similar to one worn by the suspect Leather Apron.
