Jack the Ripper: His Australian Murders

Jack the Ripper, a seaman on a cattle boat transporting live cargo into London, murdered possibly nine females, if not more, during 1888 and 1889 in the Whitechapel district of London, England. An illegitimate child, his mother an Australian by birth, Jack resided in a boarding house at Aldgate where he received £1 a week from his father, a Chief Justice of England and Wales, later Privy Councillor to Queen Victoria, and an allowance from his half-brother, who was a doctor. After botching the last murder, Jack was hidden at Hatfield House by Lord Salisbury. Discovering that Jack was connected to the House of Lords, the Home Secretary instructed the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London, to discontinue all further inquiries into the atrocities, resulting in Jack being banished to Australia where two of his uncles had properties in the Western districts of New South Wales. Same as what happened in England, Jack was protected from arrest for murders he committed in New South Wales, two men proclaiming their innocence on the gallows, one saying that he was dying for the sins of another. Escaping from New South Wales into Queensland, Jack ran off with a young woman from Lower Tent Hill in the Gatton district, west from Brisbane. Chased thereafter from one end of Sydney to the other in New South Wales, the 18-year-old female was located by police and returned to Queensland. Later that year, which was seven years after the last Whitechapel murder, a "Dear Boss" letter was received from Jack at the Commercial Street Police Station, London, announcing he had been abroad, that he was back in London, and that the murders would start again. Before the threat was carried out, the young woman died at Lower Tent Hill, apparently from injuries suffered during an illegal abortion, forcing Jack to abandon his activities in London and return to Australia to avenge the death of his one good friend. In 1898, on the Eve of the 2nd anniversary of the young woman's death, Jack and his accomplices lured a brother and two sisters, one of whom was the intended victim, into a paddock at Gatton where the brother was forcefully masturbated and the sisters viciously raped, the heads of all victims being pulverised with a hardwood stick as they laid dead or dying on the ground. Jack was the prime suspect until the Home Secretary instructed the Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, same as what happened in England, that Jack was not to be arrested. The attention of police then focused on an accomplice, who would have been the third hung for Jack's sins in Australia if he had not come up with an alibi. Soon after, Jack deserted from the Queensland Permanent Artillery. Instead of being arrested for desertion, the Commissioner of Police requested police in other colonies not to approach and alarm the fugitive but to observe and report Jack's whereabouts to him at Brisbane. In 1900, which was the year his parents married, Jack died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and is buried under an alias at Sydney, the authorities denying that it was Jack, saying that the deceased was a lunatic with a similar name. Two years later, advice from the Criminal Investigation Branch, Brisbane, that the serial killer had been sighted with a young woman at Landsborough, north from Brisbane, metaphorically described Jack riding off into the sunset with his sweetheart, bringing the curtain down on Jack's life.