Michael
Ostrog (b. 1833)
a.k.a. Bertrand Ashley, Claude Clayton (Cayton), Dr. Grant, Max
Grief Gosslar, Ashley Nabokoff, Orloff, Count Sobieski, Max Sobiekski,
et alia.
Born: 1833
1863: While using the alias Max Grief (Kaife) Gosslar,
Ostrog committed theft at Oxford college, and was soon after sentenced
to ten months in prison.
1864: Convicted at Cambridge, sentenced to three months
in prison. In July, appeared in Tunbridge Wells under the name Count Sobieski.
Imprisoned in December of 1864, sentenced to eight months.
1866: Acquitted on charges of fraud, January 1866. On March 19th,
stole a gold watch and other articles from a woman in Maidstone. Committed
similar thefts in April. Arrested in August, sentenced to seven years in
prison.
1873: Released from prison in May. Committed numerous other
thefts, and subsequently arrested by Superintendent Oswell in Burton-on-Trent.
Produced a revolver at the police station and nearly shot his captors.
1874: Convicted in January of 1874, sentenced to ten years
in prison.
1883: Released from prison in August, 1883.
1887: Arrested for theft of a metal tankard in July. Sentenced
to six months hard labor in September 1887. Listed as suffering from "mania" on
September 30th, 1887.
1888: Released, March 10 1888, as "cured." Mentioned
in Police Gazette, October 1888, as a "dangerous man"
who failed to report. Sentenced to two years imprisonment in Paris for
theft, November 18th, 1888.
1891: Committed to the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum.
1894: Charged for an 1889 theft at Eton.
1898: Charged in Woolwich for theft of books.
1900: Imprisoned for theft of a microscope at London Hospital,
Whitechapel. Known to be partially paralyzed by this time.
1904: Released from prison and entered St. Giles Christian
Mission, Holborn. Nothing further is known of Ostrog after this time.
History of Ostrog as a Suspect
Mentioned for the first time as a suspect in the Macnaghten Memoranda,
which said the following of him in 1894:
Michael Ostrog, a mad Russian doctor and a convict and
unquestionably a homicidal maniac. This man was said to have been habitually
cruel to women, and for a long time was known to have carried about with
him surgical knives and other instruments; his antecedents were of the
very worst and his whereabouts at the time of the Whitechapel murders could
never be satisfactorily accounted for. He is still alive.
This account does not seem to tally very well with the pathetic petty
criminal we see in the historical record.
Ostrog was first introduced to the public in Donald McCormick's The
Identity of Jack the Ripper (1962). From that time very little was
known until recent research by D.S. Goffee revealed a wealth of information
on his criminal career. This information was published in the October 1994
issue of Ripperana, "The Search for Michael Ostrog." Phil
Sugden also covers him as a suspect in The Complete History of Jack
the Ripper (1995).
Physical
Description
- Five foot, eleven inches in height.
- Dark brown hair.
- Grey eyes.
- Often dressed in a "semi-clerical" suit.
- Had a scar on right thumb and right shin
- Had numerous flogging marks
on his back.
- Two large moles on right shoulder, one on the back of his neck.
- Described as a Russian, Russian Pole, and a Polish Jew at various times.
Photographs
Our thanks to John Winn Oswell for the following photographs
