For those who haven't heard about it, the decade old claim that a man buried in Toowong Cemetery is Jack the Ripper has resurfaced. Due to the 120th anniversary of Saucy Jack's first kill newspapers reported on the case.
In 1997 a man by the name of Steve Wilson proclaimed that his great-great-grandfather, buried under the assumed name 'Walter Thomas Porriott' was the legendary killer. Assumptions of 'Porriott's' guilt centered around the fact that he was in London during the murders and left just after the final killing. It was further bolstered by 'Porriott's' misogynistic views and reputation as a swindler.
Local councilor Paul Tully is presently writing a book on Australian connections to the Ripper case. According to Tully various markings that have 'recently' appeared on the grave depict a man holding up a dagger (a picture of which can be found on his blog). He was quoted in the articles and his blog contains the closest thing to an overview of these claims that can be found on the web:
http://ripper1888.blogspot.com/2008/08/mystery-image-of-jack-ripper-appears-in.html
What merit (if any) do these claims have? For the sake of this discussion the name Porriott will be used as this is what the cemetery records have him named as. Also, for argument's sake we will accept that this Porriott is the con artist relative of Steve Wilson.
Firstly, it's interesting to note that aside from this spate of articles and a mention in the Australian Ripper journal Ripperoo that Porriott seems to inspire no real conjecture. This may be because his life is so convoluted by his scamming, frauds, lies and aliases that little in the way of hard evidence can be procured to give an accurate account of his life. As it stands, the Porriott case is largely dismissable as will be explained here.
Going by what Wilson says, aside from the five murders in London and a case of manslaughter Porriott is not linked to any other murders. For someone who is supposed to have had such an enmity for women he married twenty of them and apparently managed not to kill anyone but the Whitechapel prostitutes.
Accepting that Porriott was in his 80s when he died (and not 59 as cemetery records say) then he would have been rather young at the time of the murders. While his youth does not discount him it is at odds with contemporary witness descriptions. These usually place the age at mid-twenties to late-thirties as do various modern profiles.
To have committed these crimes all in the space of seventy-one days and then never killed again raises its own questions. The concept of a traveling Ripper has been explored before so the idea that Porriott killed in a similar manner elsewhere in the world seems unlikely. A hatred of prostitutes and female immorality was not exactly an uncommon perspective for Victorian times and not everyone who spoke about these feelings went out to commit murder. No one knows exactly why the Ripper chose his victims but unless some non-abstract or generalized reason can be linked to Porriott it seems odd that he would stop so suddenly.
Simply being in the same city as a set of killings and departing there around the same time as they cease proves nothing. Porriott would not have been alone on the ship that left England and he certainly was not alone as a resident of London. Once again we see that his candidature is based on loose supposition rather than any hard evidence.
One final idea which is worth mentioning is the assertion that the Ripper was a Whitechapel native. By this I mean someone who was more than just a passing visitor from another city or even another country. The letter sent to George Lusk is used as supporting evidence for this. The fact that it was addressed to the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee has been cited as an indicator that the Ripper had local rather than national or international inclinations. This letter was accompanied by half a diseased kidney (possible from Katherine Eddows) which gives some credence to its authenticity.
Another interesting theory about the Ripper's local intentions pertained to his apparent attempts to implicate the Jewish population. An excellent article on this can be found at:
http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/jacob-the-ripper.html
I had heard about Porriott before I wrote my Crime & Punishment tour of the cemetery but decided to leave him out. The notion that he is Jack the Ripper is flawed at best and without relying on his links to that case I would only be talking about Porriott's own criminal history. Which is something that could not justify the exclusion of more important or interesting personalities.
I think that my tour more than proved that Toowong Cemetery contains enough criminal infamy of its own to not have to rely on such a big cliche as Saucy Jack. Undoubtedly, some people will boast and rave about the idea of Jack the Ripper being buried in Brisbane but I would suggest that they learn about some of our own unique history (some of which they might find more interesting than the Ripper's exploits).