The Trial of Jack the Ripper: The Case of William Bury 1859-89

by Euan Macpherson

In February 1889, a shocking and savage murder took place in Dundee, Scotland. Written in chalk at the scene of the crime were the words “Jack the Ripper is at the back door.” When he was arrested, William Bury admitted that he was “afraid he would be arrested as Jack the Ripper.” The police investigation uncovered some disturbing details: Bury, a man known to have been violent towards women, had moved to London just before the start of the Ripper murders and had left the city at the time the murders ceased. And could it have been a coincidence that the slaying in Dundee had all the hallmarks of a Ripper murder? This sensational account presents intriguing evidence that the law really did catch up with Jack the Ripper in a dingy basement flat in Dundee in the cold winter of 1889.

Genres: True Crime, History

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting theory which I think deserves attention. The author brings out quite a variety of facts that may indeed point to his suspect. He keeps shooting himself in the foot, though, with statements to the effect of (for instance) "everyone agrees that Jack the Ripper was a strangler." Wait, what? He also fails to deliver the goods in not telling us why he chooses the victims he does in compiling his list of true Ripper victims, and above all in not telling us exactly what was done to the woman he describes as the last victim -- there is a vast difference between "abdomen cut open" and "abdomen cut open and this and that removed, never to be found."

[Rob Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor history and clunky reasoning. No footnotes and sources minimal. I think we learn that Burt murdered his wife after a period of living in East London in late 1888 (a fact that seems open to dispute, although I think he was).

Not enough was done in London the vast majority of the book focussing on a much less relevant period in 1889 in Dundee. I left the book more interested in the story of the hangman.

[Ted]

Just another Jack the Ripper guessing book, different suspect. Nothing spectacular.