Is this Jack the Ripper's ripper?

Multimedia Archive 02044 Kn 2044535C

Above left is Welsh surgeon Sir John Williams who has long been suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Above right is a knife that Sir John's great-great-great-great nephew, Tony Williams, found that he claims is the Ripper's weapon. The story is in his book, Uncle Jack - A Victorian Mystery. From The Telegraph:

He found the blade among a stash of possessions left by the Welshman, including three glass slides which contains smears of a uterus.
Mr Williams said: ''Why would he leave this behind? I am convinced that this is the knife used by Sir John Williams to murder those women.
''It is widely know that the person who carried out the killings would have had significant medical knowledge. ''Sir John Williams was an accomplished surgeon and routinely performed abortions on women. He held surgeries all over London at the time of the murders."
He added: ''Dr Thomas Bond, a pathologist who examined the body of Mary Kelly, said the ripper had used the same six inch knife in all the murders.

"Jack the Ripper: Is this six-inch knife used by Victorian serial killer?"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://homebiss.blogspot.com/ Saidul A Shaari

Whoa… That blade gives me the shivers!
- http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
  
  agreed! that is one scary ass, creepy looking blade.
awjt

Knife aficionados: what kind of knife IS that? (Reading article now…)

nota bene, post-article: What the hell is a “surgeon’s knife”? Same as a scalpel? This technology is lost on me.
- Lobster
  
  I think that scalpels are defined by their size. Specifically: small. Smaller than six inches.
  
  From what I gather, at that time period there wasn’t necessarily a strict adherence to “kinds” of knives. Sure you’d usually make a knife with a purpose in mind, but you might also just attach a handly-lookin’ thing to a bladey-lookin’ thing.
  - http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
    
    If Jack the Ripper was a surgeon he probably killed more people by not washing his hands between patients, which was standard practice in those days. Personally, I would rather be stabbed than slowly die of infection as so many did.
    - Lobster
      
      Or maybe he stabbed people to death with his gigantic crow mask!
      - http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
        
        you lost me.
http://danielgibson.org Daniel Gibson

I thought the idea of Jack The Ripper having surgical knowledge had been discredited and put down to one initial pathologist’s incorrect assumptions.
Rider

Yes he is correct there is no other reason that a surgeon would ever have a scalpel or knife in his possession.
Lord_Haw_Haw

Whoa, that clinches it for me. Why else would a surgeon own a knife? Case closed.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/OKEONAMLFIOS5WI7MPQY6SXBCQ IRMO

So, is there a way to retrieve any DNA from the victims? This could get interesting.
William Bagilliam

These allegations are pretty old and have been roundly dismissed by many researchers. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, of course, but I’d look it up anyway.

I also thought the claim that the Ripper was skilled with a blade and deeply familiar with anatomy wasn’t necessarily true either.
Romeo Vitelli

I’ve lost track of all the different theories about who Jack was and how many times the mystery has been “solved”. We’ll never know for sure. It’s as simple as that.
- Lobster
  
  Well we know for sure that it wasn’t Maxwell Murder. He’s your ordinary crook.
Brainspore

I love that all the competing theories about the true identity of Jack the Ripper seem to assume that he was someone rich and/or famous enough to have left behind an estate to scour for clues, despite the fact that most known serial killers were obscure nobodies prior to being caught.

“Highly disturbed working-class schmuck who has been utterly forgotten by history” seems the most likely to me but probably wouldn’t sell many books.
- Lobster
  
  They say that Jack the Ripper really knew how to handle that knife. Most working-class schmucks from that time period didn’t know how to perform surgery.
  - Brainspore
    
    Who am I to challenge the forensic expertise of “They”?
    - Lobster
      
      Hey, good point!
      
      And how dramatic is it to have a legendary president assassinated in a THEATER by an ACTOR? There’s no WAY that happened! If it did, show me the proof!
      
      I want to see Abraham Lincoln’s birth certificate!
  - http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
    
    you have to know how to handle a knife (like a surgeon) to gut someone like a fish or a deer? nah, I think that skill would be fairly common considering the times.
  - Spriggan_Prime
    
    Butchers. Not much different from ‘surgeon’ of the day. Plenty of anatomical knowledge and access to plenty of blades of varying types. Why does everyone have such a hard on about it being a doctor? Just a flashier story?
    - http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
      
      could have easily been a butcher or anyone else for that matter. If you have ever “cleaned” a deer or even a fish, you know how to slit something open and gut it. Not too complicated. It’s not like anything complicated was done, right?
      - http://www.facebook.com/mollyclendon Margaret Louise Clarke
        
        Very Urban England. Not hunters – if they weren’t landowners, that would be poaching.
      - http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
        
        True, but folks weren’t going to the supermarket and buying cold cuts and deboned chicken breasts. Buying meat involved some home butchery for most people, even in the city. There were butchers at that time but I doubt that most poor people could afford fancily cut meat from the butcher. People were buying their chickens and pigs whole or nearly so. It seems that many people would have at least simple butchering skills. Even many working class people from my Grandmother’s generation possessed those skills.
- http://www.facebook.com/mollyclendon Margaret Louise Clarke
  
  I think the assumption of upper class is made on the basis of his ability to vanish. Someone from the neighbourhood would have been detectable – by those he was in very close and moment to moment contact.
  I think there was also the issue of the distance between events?
  - Brainspore
    
    I think the assumption of upper class is made on the basis of his ability to vanish. Someone from the neighbourhood would have been detectable…
    
    “Not getting caught” doesn’t mean having a ninja-like ability to vanish. If you’re going to be a serial killer prostitutes are relatively easy pickings- that’s why they’re such a popular target for psychotic murderers to this day. And why on earth would someone from outside the neighborhood be less detectable than a local? If anything an upper-class socialite trying to pick up prostitutes in Whitechapel would attract more attention than a local, not less.
    
    As for the supposed surgical expertise of the killer, the police surgeon at the time (Thomas Bond) disagreed with that assessment pretty strongly. He didn’t even think the condition of the bodies necessarily suggested the technical expertise of a butcher, let alone that of a surgeon. Taking people apart is easy. You only need surgical expertise if you plan on putting them back together.
subhan

I thought Jack The Ripper was Redjac the alien from that one Star Trek episode (Wolf in the Fold)
- Brainspore
  
  He was also Sebastian from that one episode of “Babylon 5″ (Comes the Inquisitor). For a 19th century guy he seems to pop up pretty often in the 23rd.
  - Landa LaMotta
    
    anything’s possible in the time/space continuum… ;D
- Mina Estevez
  
  Can not “heart” this response enough.
TooGoodToCheck

Am I misjudging the relative scale of the fingertips on the edge of the shot, or does that knife have a handle the size a baseball bat?
- http://www.facebook.com/mollyclendon Margaret Louise Clarke
  
  Yes, but maybe look at the history of the development of the scalpel? What did a surgeon’s toolkit look like at that time? They were using regular saws to amputate in the Civil War.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

“Some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a Kaiser blade.”
Bunie

are you guys retarded? Srsly look at that. if thats not enough, compare it to the size of the fingers seen in the image. its clearly a plastic knife from McDonalds.
Neil Austin

The book was published in 2005. Why is this news now?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IH3CQ7VQW6OVWD2OW367WYETXU William

BS or not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iGysRAZg4A
http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

That’s nothing like the knife I used.
- Lobster
  
  That’s not a knife, that’s a spoon.
  
  (Because it’ll HURT MORE.)
jarmstrong

“Jack the Ripper” was John Leslie Stevenson who was both a surgeon and an acquaintance of H.G. Wells, who pursued Stevenson into the future via a time machine. Wells found Stevenson in San Francisco, California in November 1979, at which point he managed to send the killer forever hurtling through time and space without ever stopping. Wells then returned to his own time–London, 1893.

There. Glad I could clear that up for you.
- gijoel
  
  I loved that movie. David Warner at his best.
  - jarmstrong
    
    Either that or Time Bandits. Just great stuff.
Ceronomus

Personally, I prefer the James Kelly theory.
Jem Sweeney

What, no Tank Girl references? BoingBoing, you disappoint me.
h4x0r

One of the more intriguing of the theories that I came across, was that of Jack The Ripper actually being an American. Forget where I read/saw this but, apparently some of the murders coincided with his schedule. And the eventual end of the killings, with his return to America.

Good stuff.
hyljelyhje

“The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one.” And the simplest explanation to this newsbit is that Ripper’s knife would be worth a million or two.

Also; “‘Why would he leave this behind? I am convinced that this is the knife used by Sir John Williams to murder those women.”
Yes, why would a surgeon leave behind knives and other knick-knack related to his profession? Surely he should have cleaned up his trash after dying.
et50

“smears of a uterus”? Can anyone explain?
- http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden
  
  Usually a “smear” refers to a sample of cells taken and placed on a slide for magnification, etc.. Not sure if that is what they are referring to.
- http://www.facebook.com/mollyclendon Margaret Louise Clarke
  
  Uterine tissue cells?
- MadRat
  
  I think he mean microscope slides. If you ask me it’s very suspicious that a obstetric surgeon like Sir John Willimas would have pieces of uterus and surgical knives laying around.
rtresco

What’s with murderous London surgeons – there’s also that Sweeney Todd. “Say, who’s the barber here”.
zzzing

SILLY. everyone knows jack the ripper was a malay cook named maurice. LOOK IT UP PEOPLE.
http://twitter.com/glamaFez glamaFez

There must have been days when Dr. Thomas Bond said “This job totally sucks”.
http://twitter.com/Medusa_Rantz The One True Medusa©

I have no knowledge of surgical equipment of that period, so cannot comment. But the picture of the doctor, do his eyes not have that 20 foot stare so common among killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Perry Smith and Charles Starkweather? HE creeps me out.