The Secret Prisoner 1167 was This Man Jack the Ripper by
James Tully
pbk out April 98
(Robinson)
at £8.99
The title on the cover of the paperback edition of this book is intriguing.
The question it poses is a fair one, but it betrays less confidence than
the title on the title page itself, which reads: "Prisoner 1167: The Madman
Who Was Jack The Ripper?" Of course, for any author boldly to claim to have
solved the Ripper mystery once and for all is to invite derision: there
have been so many false solutions. All that one can say is that James Tully
has put together a reasonable prima facie case for identifying James Kelly
as the legendary killer.
Kelly is a rather more credible suspect that many of the other candidates
put forward by previous writers on the subject. He grew up in Liverpool
and trained as an upholsterer before moving to London and marrying. In a
fit of psychotic rage he stabbed his wife to death, believing that she was
a prostitute. His death sentence was commuted and he was sent to Broadmoor,
from where he escaped in 1888. The Whitechapel murders occurred shortly
thereafter. Kelly left Britain for Europe and America, but in his old age
he returned to his home country. He gave himself up in 1927 and died in
Broadmoor two years later.
One of the intriguing snippets Tully has unearthed is that upholsterers
were colloquially known as "rippers", but he has firmer evidence pointing
to Kelly's possible guilt. The police evidently regarded him as a suspect
and it seems clear that he was the only convicted insane woman killer at
large in the East End during the period of the murders. He fits the likely
"offender profile" and hated prostitutes.
There are gaps in the case against Kelly. Several notable authorities
disagree with Tully as to which murders were the work of the Ripper. Very
little is known about what Kelly got up to during his many years on the run
from justice and the book is - although perhaps not unjustifiably - padded
out with lengthy accounts of the crimes which Tully identifies as the work
of the Ripper. Kelly hardly features at all in this section. All in all,
though, this is a competent addition to the long list of books about the
Ripper and Tully's detective work is to be commended.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
The Secret Prisoner 1167 was This Man Jack the Ripper by
James Tully