The lack of policemen did not help either. They had a very small force. In 1878 the old department was abolished and the CID was created which helped considerably. (The table below shows the statistics for the police force)
The police did not offer a reward for catching the Ripper because it would have attracted too much attention. They believed this would create several false leads and would waste police time. The ‘from hell’ letter was a example of a possible false lead. It was very gruesome, but police couldn’t be sure if it was a hoax or not, so this wasted police time the study of this letter would have taken up too much of police time.
Scrubbing the writing off the wall would have wasted precious evidence as they could have taken pictures so they could compare other people’s handwriting to it. The reason the writing was scrubbed off so quickly was because it blamed the Jew’s for the murders and the police did not want to spark of racist attacks.
The quickness of the killings and the accuracy lead the police to believe that the Ripper may have been in some way a man with a medical background. Also the brutality of the murders, for instance the first murder (Polly Nicholls) wasn’t terribly gory. She had only one cut which was from ear to ear. The second murder (Annie Chapman) was slightly worse as this time organs had been placed above the body such as the small intestines but they were still attached. There was a large quantity of blood and part of the stomach was placed above the left shoulder. The throat was severed deeply and the incision of the skin was jagged and reached right around the neck. These murders kept getting increasingly worse until the fifth and final murder (Mary Kelly) in which the whole surface of the abdomen and thighs were cut off, the breasts were cut off, and the internal organs removed. The tissues of the neck were slashed through to the bone. The uterus, kidneys and one breast were found under the head, the other breast by her right foot, the liver between her feet, the intestines by her right side and the spleen by her left. Her heart was cut out and could not be found, but in this last murder Dr Bond didn’t believe the murderer had any medical knowledge. (Dr Bond was the pathologist)
Many people thought the royal family was in someway connected to this case because the Queen’s grandson has been rumoured to have visited several whore houses. If this was the case, some of these prostitutes may have his children. This would need to be covered up, in which case, the royal family would have hired assassins to kill the prostitutes in question. Another rumour was that it was the Queen’s surgeon. If it had have been the Queens surgeon it would have been difficult to prove as probing into royal affairs would have been very difficult. This could have been classed as conspiring against the Queen, and trying to frame her for a part in the murders.
The Ripper always acted at night, so it would have been difficult for witnesses to give detailed descriptions of him. The police couldn’t really know who to keep close eyes on. One problem, which the police had, was that one of the murders was committed in a part of London, which was policed by another force. The two forces would not co-operate by sharing information so both forces may have missed out on vital evidence which could have helped solve the case faster and have more men power in the needed place.
