Jack the Ripper – Meat Cart Driver Charles Allen Lechmere?

Was Charles Allen Lechmere – the meat cart driver Jack The Ripper? Criminologist Dr Gareth Norris from Aberystwyth University thinks that Lechmere, whose early route to work coincided with locations of Ripper killings, should be considered a suspect.

Daily Mail reports:

Lechmere was found leaning over victim Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols’ body on Buck’s Row in Whitechapel on August 31, 1888 and told police he had only been there a few minutes.

But research has revealed that he lied to police about his name, calling himself Cross, and it was likely that he was with her body for about nine minutes.

He also passed Hanbury Street, Dorset Street and Mitre Square at roughly the same times as the Ripper killings – while another happened in Berners Street, where his mother lived.

It is a theory that joins many others in relation to the string of murders during a three-month period in 1888 when six women were killed on the streets of London’s Whitechapel.

Jack the Ripper is the best known name given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter written by someone claiming to be the murderer that was widely disseminated in the media.

Lechmere died in 1920 and was survived by his wife who eventually passed away on September 12, 1940 in Stratford, east London.

For more revealing stories, find and watch the documentary “Missing Evidence: Jack The Ripper”, which was produced by David McNab and Swedish journalist Christer Holmgren.