Scientific analysis of a scratched, 18-carat-gold pocket watch was presented as evidence yesterday that one of the most controversial theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper might actually be true.
The notion that James Maybrick, an outwardly respectable Liverpool cotton merchant who frequented brothels and was addicted to arsenic
and strychnine, might be the Victorian serial killer is based on a 64-page diary confession produced in the mid-1990s by a former Liverpool scrap merchant.
With rather good timing, the watch was discovered in Liverpool soon after the diary. It carries the scratched initials of five Ripper victims as well as the words "I am Jack" and "J. Maybrick" across its centre.
Though sceptics have dismissed the lettering as a late 20th century inscription, the watch's owner has now had it analysed by the University of Manchester, whose results appear to offer some encouragement.
With the aid of electron microscopy, Dr Stephen Turgoose found minuscule brass particles embedded deep within the engraved initials. The brass would have been deposited by the tool used to engrave the words and the corrosion on the particles suggests the work was not carried out in modern times.
Turgoose's work follows analysis of the watch by Bristol University's Interface Analysis Centre. The centre's Dr Robert Wild, who has now retired, concluded that the markings were "tens of years old". But the fact that the watch had been polished 10 years before his analysis was undertaken made it difficult to date the scratches.
The most fundamental criticism of the Maybrick theory was that the handwriting in the diary did not match that on the marriage certificate and will signed by Maybrick, who died just six months after the final Ripper victim, Mary Kelly. The writer's use of 20th century expressions such as "top myself" did not help the case, either.
The Manchester findings have delighted the watch's owner, Albert Johnson, a college caretaker, who spotted the piece, dated 1846, in a Liverpool jeweller's window and paid £225 for it in 1992.
"In my own mind," he said, "I have no doubt who the Ripper was."
- INDEPENDENT
