Did Jack The Ripper Flee To Bermuda?

A London newspaper reported Victorian London’s notorious serial killer “Jack The Ripper” had escaped to Bermuda shortly after his 1888 killing spree of prostitutes came to an abrupt end.

“Jack the Ripper” is the best-known name given to the still unidentified killer was murdered at least five women in London’s impoverished Whitechapel district.

The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, which was subsequently published in British newspapers.

While the letter is now believed to have been a hoax, the suggestive name “Jack The Ripper” caught the imagination of a public gripped by accounts of the unprecedented killing rampage.

The gruesome knife murders occurred between August and November, 1888 — ending as suddenly as they began. During the course of their investigations of the murders, London’s Scotland Yard regarded several men as strong suspects, though none was ever formally charged.

While the police eventually concluded the unknown murderer had either committed suicide or been jailed for an unrelated crime, British newspapers feverishly speculated he had fled to the American West, Europe — or even boarded a Bermuda-bound ship.

“Nobody knows whether there is such a person as ‘Jack the Ripper’ — whether he is not as utterly fictitious [and] yet this possible invention of an anonymous writer fills the popular imagination like a nightmare,” reported London’s mass-circulation “Lloyds Weekly Newspaper” in July, 1889.

“A correspondent, one of our regular readers in Bermuda, Shakespeare’s ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes’, writes to contradict [an earlier] statement he had seen in ‘Lloyd’s’ with reference to the mysterious murderer. He is sure that ‘Jack the Ripper’ is not in Bermuda.

“Further, he observes, ‘I feel certain any Englishman that knows Bermuda will agree with me in this, that we have only one entrance to the island, and if ‘Jack the Ripper’ ever put his foot in this country it would be utterly impossible for him to escape.”

The “Lloyd’s” report concluded: “…The name has a weird suggestiveness about it, which adds to the impression of horror made on the world by the unutterably loathsome fiend of the Whitechapel murders [but] ‘Jack the Ripper’ may be a harmless lunatic. Till we know the real truth, the myth about the imaginary Jack will grow and have results sometimes painful and sometimes ludicrous.”

Bermuda Report From July, 1889 Edition Of “Lloyd’s Weekly”

The “ludicrous” myths about Jack The Ripper which “Lloyd’s” feared have only grown over the intervening 123 years, with the killer featured in hundreds of books, novels, short stories, poems, comic books, games, songs, plays, operas, television programmes and films.

To date more than 100 non-fiction accounts deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders, making it one of the most written-about true-crime subjects of all time.

The term “ripperology” was coined by British writer Colin Wilson in the 1970s to describe the study of the case by professionals and amateurs.  In recent years,  ”ripperologists” have named everyone from Queen Victoria’s grandson the Duke of Clarence to “Alice In Wonderland” author Lewis Carroll as suspects in the crimes.

Modern day forensic psychologists believe Jack The Ripper would have continued killing, adding credence to contemporary police theories he had either taken his own life or was taken into custody for other crimes. There were no comparable murders in Bermuda after the killer’s Whitechapel reign of terror ended.

Psychological Profilers Discuss Jack The Ripper And His Motives

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Category: All, Crime, History