Dew was clearly incompetent--he had no idea that Charles Lechmere was dismembering women in a cat's meat shed.

I shouldn't risk send the thread off topic, but someday I'm going to have to ask Trevor Marriott (and Ed Stow, for that matter) what credible information links M. J. Druitt to...

Further, there are plenty of examples in the annals of 'true crime,' where a policeman fitted-up the wrong guy (or failed to solve a case) and it later transpired that he had either entirely ignored valuable information that had been given to him by the public on a plate, or had failed to investigate...

An interesting suggestion, but I don't think the pronunciation of sjöman sounds anything like shoe.

The sj sound is like the noise one makes in the back of the throat just before spitting phlegm into the gutter.

The Swedish SJ sound or 7-sound (the most difficult sound?) -...

I don't think there is any particular meaning to be gleaned from it, but it is interesting to note that Inspector Frederick Abberline was born in Blandford Forum and lived there for many years.

His mother Hannah Abberline died there in December 1887, and when he was about to retire in 1892...

Here's another long shot. This time a Norwegian able-bodied seaman, deserted in Iquique in 1875, but back to sailing a few years later.
...

Yes, there were Feigenbaum's in Mile End Old Town. The 1891 census lists them as Austrian (they first came to London in the mid-1880s) whereas Trevor's suspect was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, which is a good distance from the Austrian border, so it is doubtful they were related....

It might be noted that the John Anderson in the hospital for secondary syphilis in March/April 1892 is listed as an 'MS' --which I take to mean midshipman but in the modern U.S. navy it means "Mess Specialist"---cook. I don't think this was ever the case in the UK.

I'm still...

Yes, that appears to be the case. It was a passenger ship and he is the steward for the steerage passengers. The John Anderson in the 1881 Census born in Sweden (around 1861) is a cook on a much smaller vessel.

He is on Line 5 below. John Anderson, 20 (ie.,1861) ship's cook, born Uppsala,...

I couldn't make your link work but I think I was looking at the same entry last night and agree that this is probably the same John Anderson, ship's cook, from Uppsala Sweden as listed in the 1881 census and elsewhere. In 1881 he was near Merseyside and the above has him in Liverpool, so it might well...

If you are inclined to give credence to the story, here is someone that might be worth looking at. He is Swedish, though, and not Danish.

There is a sailor named John Anderson, born Uppsala, Sweden in 1861, who is in the Dreadnought Hospital in March/April 1892 suffering from secondary...

It might be of interest that the Annie Speer made more than one voyage to Iquique, Chili. There is a long article in Lloyd's List on 14 October 1893 describing a court case where the master was successfully prosecuted and fined for grossly overloading the ship with nitrate of soda during a similar...

I went further own the Brame rabbit-hole last night. Interesting family. The father was a surgeon (evidently in the Army at one time) but seems to have died without too much of an estate. One of Brame's younger brothers ran off to America at the age of only 15 and ended up a heavy-drinking cook in,...

Ah, thanks for that.

It will be recalled that Brame's "John Anderson" story was making the rounds in August 1896.

Less than a month later, September 10, 1896, James Brame, 49, "cook," born Lowestoft, Suffolk, so obviously the same guy, is admitted to the...

In some of the longer renditions of the 'John Anderson' story, Anderson supposedly trained as a surgeon in the U.S. military (the Navy) and this is where he supposedly learned the medical skill that allowed him to commit the Ripper murders.

I find this detail interesting, because one can...

Myth or otherwise, this detail is particularly interesting. There are petroglyphs in the southwestern U.S.A. (Chaco Canyon) that show figures with six fingers and/or six toes.

The Mysterious Extra Fingers and Toes of the Pueblo People of Chaco Canyon | Ancient Origins (ancient-origi...