The police did however take notice of the evidence that stated that the murderer had anatomical and medical knowledge. The way that two of the victims had been cut, led to the arrest of three horse slaughterers (Who were later cleared as they had all been working at the time of the murders) and many more inquiries at abattoirs and slaughter houses.
This led to the suggestion that the murderer may have been a visitor to the area of Whitechapel, and not a local as previously thought. Therefore, they took the evidence from Elizabeth Long seriously, even though there was no proof of this.
Patrol numbers in the area of Whitechapel were increased, so that more officers were watching the streets at the same time, and there was less possibility that another murder would be committed. This showed that the murders on the 30th of September were very quick. After these murders, patrol increased further, with some officers dressing up as prostitutes to try to lure the killer into a trap. (All of the officers in the force were male, as women were not allowed in the police at the time.) This did not help, so they had to try something different. The police interviewed people who were staying in lodging houses in Whitechapel, including slaughterers and butchers, even though it had been decided that they were not suspects. Sailors were interviewed, bloodhounds were used but all of these were also failed attempts.
The police were desperate, so they issued handbills to over 80,000 houses. They did not want to, or they couldn’t give a description of the killer, they still thought that the murderer lived in the area, and they were still appealing for evidence. They were still using standard methods of detective work, even though there was a lot of evidence on Jack the Ripper and all of the victims.
There was, after the third and fourth murders, evidence that the Ripper was not from Whitechapel. First, all of the murders had been committed at the weekend. This suggested that the killer traveled into Whitechapel to kill his victims. Secondly, in a close community like Whitechapel, somebody was likely to have seen the murderer by now.
The description given by William Hutchinson was taken extremely seriously, and was spread around all police stations. It was believed that this description was almost too perfect, which raised suspicion that he could’ve been hiding something, or covering up in order to avoid suspicion. This was not investigated by the force.
The police also tried to get people to remember things that might’ve been valuable to them by publishing the letters that were believed to have been sent by the Ripper. All this did was gain more attention from the press, and create panic amongst the people in Whitechapel. The public were panicking, and this led to them wanting the police to catch this person as soon as they could, which led to violence amongst them.
What makes these killings even stranger is that 90% of murders are committed by somebody that knows the victim, but, as all of the killings seemed to be random, all of these victims were thought to be total strangers that the killer just happened to meet and decided to murder. He killed these women in cold blood, without any signs of remorse or regret, so naturally he was thought to be a sexual psychopath.
Queen Victoria became concerned with this situation. She told the Prime Minister that action had to be taken; detective work had to be improved if they were going to catch the killer as soon as possible. She has said what was being felt by the public. The police were not doing enough to catch this murderer. The Times stated that the murderer was clever; he worked quickly, did not leave any clues behind at the scene and that the police should hope that they would get some information that would help them reach a final conclusion.
