6. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee both helped and hampered the police
On September 10, 1888, a group of tradesmen and shopkeepers in Whitechapel and Spitalfields met to form the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. They announced their existence to the press and their leader, George Lusk, a builder, hired unemployed workers to conduct nightly patrols of the area. The committee paid the patrols, armed them with a police whistle and a cudgel, and met with them each night at a pub named The Crown. Patrols began when the pub closed shortly after midnight. Thus, Whitechapel found itself patrolled by the police as well as the vigilantes, many of the latter being in various states of intoxication. As committee chairman, Lusk communicated with the press via the Central News Agency, which in turn publicized the vigilantes and Lusk’s role in their operation.
Lusk received scores of letters, many of them claiming to be from Jack the Ripper, and many threatening his life. Among them appeared the famous From Hell letter, probably the most famous of all of the Ripper correspondence. Its handwriting did not match the Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky missives, and the portion of a kidney which accompanied it may or may not have come from one of the victims. Investigators were initially dubious regarding the letter’s authenticity, and many Ripperologists agree with them. Others claim the From Hell letter to be genuine, which if correct, would render the Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky letters hoaxes. The handwriting of the latter two match. The handwriting of the From Hell letter does not match either, or any other of the correspondence alleged to have been written by Jack the Ripper.