Mary Pearcey - Jill The Ripper?

From History Channel:

It’s true that while many theories about the killer’s identity have emerged over the years, some of them more implausible than others (Lewis Carroll of “Alice in Wonderland” fame?), the police only had four actual suspects—all male. But after a witness said she saw the fifth Ripper victim, Mary Kelly, hours after she was murdered, the chief inspector in the case suggested it might have been the female killer escaping in Kelly’s clothing. Later proponents of this “Jill the Ripper” theory suggest that a midwife (possibly an abortionist) would have had the anatomical knowledge usually attributed to the Ripper, and would have had easy access to her female victims. 

As the theory goes, the most likely suspect may be Mary Pearcey, who was convicted and hanged in 1890 for the murder of her lover’s wife and child—and who had used a method similar to the Ripper’s to commit the crime.

Killer Revealed

Further on from my post: Ripper's Victims, comes this article from the Telegraph:

Mei Trow used modern police forensic techniques, including psychological and geographical profiling, to identify Robert Mann, a morgue attendant, as the killer.

His theory, the result of two years intensive research, is explored in a Discovery Channel documentary, Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed.

Trow makes another startling conjecture, that the Ripper killed another two women.

He believes Martha Tabram, found with 39 stab wounds to her body in Gunthorpe Street, was the first of Jack's victims, and Alice Mackenzie, brutally murdered eight months after the confirmed five killings, was his last.

JACK THE RIPPER: KILLER REVEALED will be aired on the Discovery Channel on Sunday October 11 at 9pm. The accompanying book, Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer, is published by Pen & Sword.

Ripper's Victims

I must admit that when it comes to Jack the Ripper, I am a bit of a ghoul. I have a fascination with the whole case and the mystery surrounding these brutal crimes.

So I was particularly interested by this article from the Mail Online about the earlier lives of the victims of the Ripper: How Jack the Ripper's five victims turned to prostitution after their marriages failed.

Over the last century they have passed into gruesome folklore, but Victorian census records on Jack the Ripper's victims cast new light on the lives of some of the murdered prostitutes.

An online genealogy website which trawled the 1881 census - taken seven years before their deaths - has pulled together information on the women that 'provides a small window onto the past' and dispels the myth that they had been teenage street walkers.

The five - Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly - were all brutally murdered in London's East End between August 31 and December 20, 1888. Their bodies were left horribly mutilated on the streets of Whitechapel. Their murderer was never caught.

Although prostitutes at the time of their violent murders, three of the five had previously been married, according to records taken on April 3, 1881.

And for those of you like myself, the Casebook Forum may be of interest.