Here I am going to start documenting many of the unusual and strange things that have happened to me over the years during Jack the Ripper walks and believe you me there have been some oddities!
Well there hasn’t really been anything to blog about in the past four months but as I am starting tours again no doubt there will be some new and exciting happen on the way so I will soon be adding other details of these events!
Was Aaron Kosminski really Jack the Ripper?
According to David Adam writing on Science.org 2019 he points out that microcrondial DNA from Catherine Eddowes and semen from Aaron Kosminski (according to DNA provided by a descendant of his sister from Poland) were both found on a piece of material apparently removed from her death site in Mitre Sq by a policeman Amos Simpson, he took it home to his wife who apparently did not like the fact it was blood stained and put it away in a cupboard. The material originally measuring 8ft x 2ft, an amazing length for a shawl, as most are only on average 64ins, less than 5 and a half feet long! We are then asked to believe that this remained in a cupboard never washed, never worn, for intervening years. You would have thought that if the wife did not like the blood stains, she could have tried to remove them especially as she worked as a cleaner so must have had some experience in stain removal. She could then use this rather fine piece of material, partly silk and embroidered with Michaelmas daisies and lilles on these sections at each end, or pawn/sell it especially as policemen were not particullary well paid at that time. When in its entirity I would guess it was probably a table runner because of the design anfd length. It was then passed down through generations of the family in the same condition before being sold first by David Melville-Hayes, the great nephew of Amos Simpson, however by this time the middle bood-stained mid- section had been removed and the embroidered sections both framed separately.
The question that comes to my mind immediately is how a woman who was an alcholic could be in possesion of this piece of material like this especially as when the morning before she was killed, along with her partner John Kelly they had been so hard up, that he pawned his boots so they could have a meal? Surely if she had that piece of material considering at least the two borders were silk, she could have pawned that instead? Especially as afterwards she left John saying that she was going to go to her daughter to get money to redeem his boots, showing that they were not something he could do without! In fact Catherine and her daughter were not on speaking terms by this stage, as her daughter was fed up with her mother borrowing money and never paying it back, so fed up she had moved away and not given her mother her address!
The second question I have is on the report into the testing on Science.org, an accredited scientific journal and peer review. They say “What Jari Louhelainen a biochemist at Liverpool’s John Moores University and his colleague David Miller, a reproduction and sperm expert at the University of Leeds claim is, “the most systematic and most advanced genetic analysis to date regarding the Jack the Ripper murders,” they describe extracting and amplifying the DNA from the shawl. The tests compared fragments of mitochondrial DNA—the portion of DNA inherited only from one’s mother—retrieved from the shawl, with samples taken from living descendants of Eddowes and Kosminski. The DNA matches that of a living relative of Kosminki, a descendant of his sister, they conclude in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. The results are unlikely to satisfy critics as key details on the specific genetic variants identified and compared between DNA samples are not included in the paper. Instead, the authors represent them in a graphic with a series of coloured boxes. Where the boxes overlap, they say, the shawl and modern DNA sequences matched. Walther Parson, a forensic scientist at the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University in Austria, says mitochondrial DNA sequences pose no risk to privacy and the authors should have included them in the paper. “Otherwise the reader cannot judge the result accurately.” But and of course, there is always a but in theories about our Jack, on the same report on Science.org Hansi Weissensteiner, an expert in mitochondrial DNA at Innsbruck, also takes issue with the mitochondrial DNA analysis, which he says can only reliably show that people—or two DNA samples—are not related. “Based on mitochondrial DNA one can only exclude a suspect.” In other words, the mitochondrial DNA from the shawl could be from Kosminski, but it could probably also have come from thousands who lived in London at the time. This theory has been doing the rounds since the book ‘Naming Jack the Ripper written by Russell Edwards was published in 2014 and every now and again come to light. It may well be Catherine Eddowes blood on the shawl but as far as the semen belonging to Aaron Kosminski even if it was, does it proves he was her murderer? No, it would only prove that he had a sexual encounter with her on the night she was killed or even before that! So Jack the Ripper has not been found, he remins as elusive as ever, a dark mysterious figure wreathed in the mists of time. However, if you walk certain streets where the murders took place, at night when all is still, you can still feel an evil eerie presence lurking in the shadows. Come and find out for yourself!
A Nice Compliment
Last week something happened that has never happened on the tour but has happened often when I am making my way to the start or after on my way home. In the same place opposite the Frying Pan Pub this is why it took me by suprise as nothing good has ever happen here before only the opposite! A man passed behind me while I was talking, touched my arm and said in a loud voice so all the group could hear.”You look wonderful!” Well I was so taken back expecting the usual abuse that I just managed to squeek “Thank You.” and carry on talking.
A Strange Woman
A couple of weeks ago in Brick Lane I was standing opposite the Frying Pan Pub (Oodles Noodles) with a group pointing out the sign of the pub still visible on the top of the building, when all of a sudden a young woman detatched herself from a group on the opposite side of the road. She rushed across the road at full pelt( I only saw her out of the corner of my eye thankfully, as I keep my eye out at this spot as it is one of the places which over the years strange people have seemed to appear out of nowhere) She shouted in a very aggresive manner “What did you say about England?” Well to be honest I was dumbfounded as that word had never passed my lips in the preceeding scentances. ” This is a tour and I was just speking about the Frying Pan Pub pointing it out to my group.” I replied. Before she could answer I continued “This is a tour now if you don’t mind I would like to go on with my work.” At this moment her boyfriend had come across the road and said “Come on lets go!” “Yes,I said please take her away.” And with that they were thankfully gone. Oh the life of a Jack the Ripper Guide is eventfull to say the least!
