Jack the Ripper was the ‘wandering maniac’: alcoholic cripple and frequent resident of a mental asylum was West London’s notorious serial killer, investigators claim
Sarah Bax Horton has claimed to unmask the infamous killer since 1888
Jack the Ripper was an alcoholic cripple who, according to one investigator, was a frequent resident of a mental asylum.
Former police volunteer Sarah Bax Horton claims to have uncovered the identity of the notorious killer who murdered at least five women in Whitechapel, London’s east end, in 1888.
He told the Sunday Telegraph that he believed Jack the Ripper’s real name was Hyam Hyams, an alcoholic who lived in the area at the center of the murders and was taken in by police as ‘a raving lunatic’.
Mrs Bax Horton, whose great-grandfather was a policeman at the center of the investigation, uncovered witness descriptions of the man she believed to be Jack the Ripper, and they matched Hyams’ physical characteristics.
They described a man in his mid-thirties with a stiff arm and an erratic gait with bent knees. According to his medical notes, Hyams, aged 35 in 1888, was unable to ‘bend or extend’ his arms after the injury and was also unable to straighten his knees.
One expert believes Jack the Ripper was Hyam Hyams, an alcoholic who was in and out of mental asylums
A first page of the 1888 massacre report
Sarah Bax Horton used witness statements and medical records from 1888
Mrs Bax Horton told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘In the files, the witnesses said what they said – that he had a strange gait. He was weak in the knees and did not fully extend his legs.
‘When he walked, he had a sort of erratic gait, which was probably a side effect of some of the brain damage from his epilepsy.’
‘He was particularly violent after his severe epileptic fits, which explains the frequency of the killings.’
Hyams’ medical notes, taken from various infirmaries and asylums, document his physical and mental decline, which coincides with the time of the Ripper’s murders between August 31 and November 9, 1888.
Mrs. Bax Horton said Hyams broke his left arm in February 1888 and was committed to the Colony Hatch Lunatic Asylum in North London in September 1889.
He added that Hyams was picked up by the police in late 1888 as ‘a raving lunatic’, explaining why the killings suddenly stopped.
This is not the first time someone has come forward claiming to know the identity of Jack the Ripper, and numerous people have been accused over the years.