William Henry Bury - Jack The Ripper Suspect

Jack The Ripper Suspect

Traditionally, five murders (known as the "canonical five") are attributed to the notorious serial killer "Jack the Ripper", who terrorised Whitechapel in the East End of London between August and November 1888. Authorities are not agreed on the exact number of the Ripper's victims and at least eleven Whitechapel murders until 1891 were included in the same extensive police investigation. All the crimes remain unsolved.

The claims that Bury could have been the Ripper began to appear in newspapers shortly after Bury's arrest. Like Bury, the Ripper had inflicted post-mortem abdominal wounds on his victims, and Bury lived in Bow, near Whitechapel, from October 1887 to January 1889, which placed him fairly near the Whitechapel murders at the appropriate time. The Dundee Advertiser of 12 February claimed that the Burys' "neighbours were startled and alarmed at the idea that one whom in their terror they associated with the Whitechapel tragedies had been living in their midst." The New York Times of the same day connected Bury directly to the atrocities, and reported the theory that William had murdered Ellen to prevent her from revealing his guilt, a story picked up and repeated by The Dundee Courier the following day. The Courier alleged that Bury admitted to Lt. Parr in the police station that he was Jack the Ripper, but Parr's version of the story says only that Bury said he was afraid he would be arrested as Jack the Ripper. Bury denied any connection, despite making a full confession to his wife's homicide. Nevertheless, the hangman James Berry promoted the idea that Bury was the Ripper.

In the 1920s, Norman Hastings built on Berry's hypothesis proposing Bury as the Ripper, and more recently William Beadle and Dundee librarian Euan Macpherson have published books and articles popularising Bury as a Ripper suspect. They highlighted that the canonical five Whitechapel murders ended in November 1888, which roughly coincided with Bury's departure from Whitechapel. There was graffiti at Bury's Dundee flat that implied that Jack the Ripper lived there, and Macpherson supposed this was written by Bury as a form of confession. Willliam took Ellen's rings, and the Ripper is believed to have taken rings from victim Annie Chapman. Bury was persistently violent to his wife, threatened her with a knife, and cut open her abdomen after death in a manner not dissimilar to the Whitechapel murderer. In a conversation with her neighbours, Marjory Smith who ran the shop above the Burys' Princes Street flat in Dundee, asked them "What sort of work was this you Whitechapel folk have been about, letting Jack the Ripper kill so many people?" Bury went silent, but Ellen replied "Jack the Ripper is quiet now." She reportedly told another neighbour, "Jack the Ripper is taking a rest." Beadle and Macpherson argued that Ellen's comments might indicate that she had knowledge of the Rippers whereabouts.

Others contend that Bury only imitated the Ripper because there are differences between their crimes. Ellen Bury was strangled with a rope and sustained comparatively few knife wounds compared to the Ripper's victims, whose throats were cut prior to sustaining lengthy abdominal wounds. Ellen Bury's throat was not cut, and only relatively shallow cuts were made to her abdomen. The identity of the Whitechapel murderer is unknown, and over one hundred suspects, in addition to Bury, have been proposed.