Saucy Jacky postcard

Text

Postmarked and received on 1 October 1888, the postcard mentions that the two victims murdered on 30 September, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, were both killed in the early morning of 30 September and that the author had insufficient time to sever his victim's ears to send to the police as promised in a previous letter received by the Central News Agency. The lobe and auricle of Eddowes' right ear was found detached at the crime scene as a result of facial mutilations that the killer had performed, although this was not public knowledge.

The text of the postcard reads: Jack the Ripper}}

Some authors have argued that the postcard was sent before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that any hoaxer would have such knowledge of the crime; however the correspondence was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings had occurred, and long after many details of the murders were known by journalists and residents of the area.

Later revelations

Police officials later claimed to have identified a specific journalist as the author of this postcard and the earlier "Dear Boss" letter. In 1931, journalist Fred Best of The Star claimed he and a colleague at the newspaper (apparently named Tom Bullen) had written all the letters signed "Jack the Ripper" in order to "keep the business alive".

In the years after the Ripper murders, the Saucy Jacky postcard disappeared from the police files. Although the "Dear Boss" letter was recovered in 1987, the "Saucy Jacky" postcard is still missing.

In 2018, a forensic linguistic analysis found strong linguistic evidence suggesting that this postcard and the "Dear Boss" letter were written by the same person.

Notes

References

Sources

References

1. Sugden, Philip. (2002). "The Complete History of Jack the Ripper". Carroll & Graf.
2. (2 April 2004). "Ripper Letters". casebook.org.
3. [http://www.casebook.org/ripper_letters/ Casebook: Jack the Ripper article on the Ripper letters]
4. Sugden p 269
5. (2 April 2010). "A Look at Some of the Known Letter Writers". jack-the-ripper.org.
6. Sugden, p.273
7. (September 2018). "An authorship analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters". Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.