The Man Who Would Be Jack

In 1893, Detective Inspector William Race of the Metropolitan Police met with two journalists working for the Sun newspaper and told them that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Less than three weeks after the last Whitechapel murder, Race had arrested 25-year-old Thomas Hayne Cutbush for attacking two young girls with a knife. Having worked on the Ripper case, Race noted a number of startling facts that convinced him he had in fact arrested Jack the Ripper.

Race’s superiors, perhaps embarrassed by the fact that one of them, Superintendant Charles Henry Cutbush, was Thomas’ uncle, ignored the inspector’s suspicions, so he eventually decided to got to the press.

The Sun newspaper set about investigating Cutbush, gathering startling new evidence and compelling eyewitness testimony. When they published their results they caused a sensation, leading to the once secret and now infamous, deeply flawed Macnaghten Report (1894) in which the Chief Constable of the CID dismissed Cutbush as a suspect. As a result, Cutbush has been ignored as a serious Jack the Ripper contender ever since.

In The Man Who Would Be Jack, the author re-examines Inspector Race’s and the journalists’ findings and tells their truly incredible story. This fresh and exciting detective whodunnit whips along at a cracking piece, culminating at the moment where the two journalists finally gain access to Broadmoor and stand face-to-face with The Man Who Would Be Jack.

The book then concludes with the amazing discovery by the author of Cutbush’s Broadmoor files and other documents that shed new light on this most extraordinary case.

The author does not make the mistake of simply claiming that Cutbush was Jack, only that when the stories of the Ripper and Cutbush are told side-by-side, they steadily merge into a tantalisingly logical conclusion: Thomas Cutbush is the most likely of all the suspects to be the Man Who Would be Jack.

Book Author

David Bullock (35) was born and raised in Northampton. An actor for more than a decade, he has been cast in a number of roles including a BBC production of Friends and Crocodiles (2005), directed by Stephen Poliakoff. David has also acted in a number of plays, including productions at The Royal Theatre, Northampton. Since 2007 he has been working as a Police Community Support Officer and is currently based in Windsor, where he works for Thames Valley Police. David is a keen writer and historian and in 2011 was a finalist in Readings Festival of Crime Writing, in which bestselling author ...
more about David Bullock...

Book Reviews

Sorry, no book reviews are available.