Jack the Ripper Identified? Discovery Channel

Robert Mann, Mortuary Attendant, Could Fit Modern Profiles

Oct 22, 2009

Documentary by historian Mei Trow places local man at the heart of London's notorious Whitechapel murders.

Jack the Ripper committed his horror murders in the very last years before the scientific breakthroughs in fingerprinting and blood-typing that might have exposed him – and stopped him becoming a modern-day gloat for the prurient.

And the Victorian Bobbies on patrol were very unlucky not to catch him in the act, nearly all of his lengthy mutilations, some lasting 15 minutes, taking place out in the street.

Was Robert Mann the Ripper?

But get away he did, leading to the deluge of plays, films, TV dramas, books and convoluted Ripper theories – it was Lewis Carroll! the Duke of Clarence! Walter Sickert! – culminating in such an industry that even the victims’ sad death photos ended up decorating tourist attractions such as the London Dungeon.

A new Discovery Channel documentary, while not nailing the mystery once and for all, does pose an intriguing new possibility about Jack’s identity.

Criminal Psychologist and Forensic Expert

Based on modern methods of psychological and geographical profiling, it suggests that lowly mortuary assistant Robert Mann may have got away with the murders, partly because he was easily overlooked as someone who was born, lived and worked right in the middle of Whitechapel’s killing streets.

Author Mei Trow assembles an impressive bunch of experts, including a criminal psychologist, forensic expert and local historian, to test his conclusion that Mann was the Ripper.

FBI Profile

He is eager to get away from the legend of the top-hatted, caped figure emerging from the fog, and Mann breaks that preconception, being a local working man from a poor background who had spent time in the Workhouse.

It was a 1988 FBI profile of the potential psychological make-up of the murderer that sparked Trow’s focus on Robert Mann. This suggested the possible occupation of Jack was as a mortician or morgue attendant.

First Victim, Mary Ann Nichols

Trow remembered a morgue attendant cropping up somewhere in the case and he finally found a newspaper account of mortuary attendant Robert Mann testifying at the inquest into what is thought to have been the first victim, Mary Ann Nichols. This reveals that Mann and another attendant undressed her corpse despite specific orders from a police inspector not to touch the body.

Peter Sutcliffe and Jeffrey Dahmer

Mann was dismissed as an ‘inadequate witness’ by the coroner and forgotten by the police, leading the programme to speculate on how other serial killers, such as Peter Sutcliffe and Jeffrey Dahmer, repeatedly eluded detectives despite their proximity to their crimes.

At the time of the murders in late summer/autumn 1888, Mann would have been in his early 50s, had access to mortuary knives, seen many dissections and lived and worked within minutes of each crime scene.

Sexual Dysfunction

Three of the victims even ended up in his mortuary in Eagle Place. Dr Peter Dean, forensic examiner and today the coroner for the Whitechapel area, says that the killer asphyxiated his victims in order to then mutilate them. Serial killers often have some sexual dysfunction and murder becomes a substitute for normal release.

Did Mann have a sexual fascination with corpses? Beyond recounting that he undressed Nichols’ body without permission, the documentary can’t say. Whether Mann is a decent fit to the sexual profile suggested by modern experts is also not clear. Unsurprisingly, the programme can offer no clue to Mann’s sexual habits.

Elsewhere, the documentary is fascinating, particularly in its demonstration of geographical profiling. East End historian John Bennett overlays maps and uses minutely detailed insurance maps to relocate the courtyards and nooks of Whitechapel that have been built over. In this way he pinpoints Eagle Place, which was three minutes from the first murder and five from the second (Annie Chapman).

One chilling piece of speculation concerns the notorious ‘From hell’ letter, sent to George Lusk, president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and which contained a piece of kidney, similar to one removed form Catherine Eddowes. The kidney, apparently preserved in spirit, was dismissed as a likely medical student prank, but Mann, of course, would have had access to medical spirits.

Mann's Death in 1896

Five victims are generally accepted as being the Ripper’s owing to similarities in their deaths – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly. But as every Ripperologist knows, these were committed in the midst of 11 Whitechapel murders between 1888 and 1891, for which no one was caught.

Trow attributes two more of these atrocities to Mann. Martha Tabram preceded Nichols, and was, Trow suggests, Mann’s first mutilation, and Alice McKenzie in 1889, whose ‘superficial’ wounds Trow attributes to Mann’s weakness owing to his having contracted tuberculosis, from which he died in 1896.

Killer Revealed?

So was Mann the man? The programme cannot live up to its title, Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed. Speculations and circumstantial musings cannot definitively pin it on the mortuary attendant.

To a large degree the Discovery Channel programme, with its unconvincing dramatic reconstructions, is pandering to viewers’ morbid curiosity. And Mei Trow, author of non-fiction crime books such as Let Him Have It, Chris, and detective novels, clearly relishes a good story.

But the sad fact is, having eluded capture, Jack the Ripper will go on teasing everyone from the fog of history and the theories will never stop. Having said that, Robert Mann, the ‘inadequate witness’ and local working man, makes a stronger candidate than most, and may just have been the type to slip by police scrutiny.

The copyright of the article Jack the Ripper Identified? Discovery Channel in Biographical Documentaries is owned by Robin Jarossi. Permission to republish Jack the Ripper Identified? Discovery Channel in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.