Named the identity of “Jack the Ripper”: a cripple-alcoholic and a wandering lunatic

Former British police volunteer Sarah Bax Horton claims to have uncovered the identity of the infamous murderer who murdered at least five women in Whitechapel in the East End of London in 1888. According to her findings, Jack the Ripper was an alcoholic cripple and a frequent inmate of psychiatric hospitals.

Investigative Sarah Bucks Horton claims to have unmasked the infamous 1888 assassin.

She told The Sunday Telegraph that she thought Jack the Ripper’s real name was Hyam Hyams, an alcoholic who lived in the area where the murders took place, and he was detained by police as a “trampling lunatic” after his alleged murder.

Sarah Bax Horton, whose great-great-grandfather was a police officer who played a central role in the investigation, found eyewitness descriptions of a man believed to be Jack the Ripper and matched them to Hyam’s physical characteristics.

These characteristics described a man in his thirties with a stiff arm and a staggering gait with bent knees. According to his medical records, Hyams, who was 35 in 1888, was unable to “flex or extend” his arm after the injury, nor could he straighten his knees.

Sarah Bucks Horton told The Sunday Telegraph: “The dossier said what eyewitnesses said was that he had an unusual walk. He was weak at the knees and could not fully straighten his legs. When he walked, he had a kind of shuffling gait, which was probably a side effect of some kind of brain damage as a result of his epilepsy. He was especially violent after his severe epileptic seizures, which explains the frequency of the killings.

Hyams’ medical records were taken from various hospitals and asylums, highlighting his physical and mental decline, which coincided with the time of the Jack the Ripper massacres between August 31 and November 9, 1888.

According to Sarah Bax Horton, Hyams broke his left arm in February 1888 and was committed to Colney Hatch insane asylum in north London in September 1889.

She added that Hyams was arrested by the police as a “trampling lunatic” in late 1888, explaining why the killings suddenly stopped.

This is not the first time someone has claimed to know the identity of Jack the Ripper, and many people have been accused over the years.

Recall that in 1888 London was shocked by a series of murders committed in poor areas in and around Whitechapel County. The victims were prostitutes who worked in the London slums – their throats were cut, and some women had their internal organs cut out, which suggested that the killer had knowledge of anatomy or surgery. Five women (Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Mary Jane Kelly and Katherine Eddowes) were killed between August 31 and November 9, 1888.

The list of candidates for the role of a brutal London murder includes hundreds of characters. Even the grandson of Queen Victoria, the Duke of Clarence, was suspected of killing several women. And in 2014, British businessman, author, and amateur detective Russell Edwards and molecular biologist Jari Louhelainen claimed they knew exactly who Jack the Ripper really was. According to them, the mentally ill hairdresser Aaron Kosminsky became the Whitechapel killer. He moved to London from the Kingdom of Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire, and worked in the Whitechapel area, where many poor immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe lived. Kosminsky was from the very beginning one of the suspects in the murders of women, but the London police could not find convincing evidence of his guilt, and there was no evidence in police documents that 23-year-old Aaron was detained in this case. Kosminsky at that time lived with two brothers and a sister on Greenfield Street, a few hundred meters from the place where Elizabeth Stride was killed. Mentally unhealthy Kosminsky ended up in a lunatic asylum and died in 1919 from gangrene in his leg.

The main piece of evidence in the research of Edwards and Louhelainen was a handkerchief found at the site of the death of one of the victims of the Ripper. In 2007, Russell Edwards, who read in the newspaper about a blood-stained silk shawl found at the murder site of Kate Eddowes and put up for auction in Suffolk, bought it. He decided that the expensive shawl could not have been the property of the poor woman who, the day before the murder, had been forced to pawn her shoes. But he suggested that a maniac could have planted it – as a kind of clue. Dr. Louhelainen tried to find out if the blood on the shawl belonged to the Ripper victim. Kate’s great-great-great-granddaughter named Karen Miller was found and agreed to provide her DNA sample for comparison. The DNA samples from Miller and the blood found on the handkerchief matched. Then Russell began to look for Kosminsky’s relatives – his relative was found, who agreed to provide the necessary materials, which gave researchers reason to believe that the immigrant hairdresser was the Whitechapel killer. However, this version did not convince skeptics – and in the history of Jack the Ripper, the point has not been put.