George Lusk And The Letter From Hell.

Of all the letters from Jack the Ripper that were sent in the wake of the original "Dear Boss" missive, the one that many people believe has the greatest claim to having been sent by the murderer is the "From Hell" letter that was sent to Mr. George Lusk.

On the 10th of September, 1888, two days after the murder of Annie Chapman, a group of local businessmen and tradesmen had got together and formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, with the intention of supplementing the police presence on the streets of the East End of London. They met at the premises of their treasurer, Joseph Aarons, proprietor of the Crown pub on Mile End Road. At their inaugural meeting, they appointed local builder and decorator George Lusk to be their Chairman and President.

Over the next few weeks, George Lusk petitioned the Home Secretary, Sir Henry Matthews, urging him to sanction on official reward for information that might lead to the apprehension of the Whitechapel murder. His entreaties, however, consistently met with official rejections.

But, his battle with the Government was covered extensively by the newspapers, and, as a consequence, his name appeared in the papers on a daily basis throughout the first two weeks of October, 1888.

As a result, he attracted the attention of several unsavoury characters and by the 10th of October he was being stalked by some of these.

Once again, the newspapers gave maximum coverage to Mr Lusk's problems with these stalkers, and this brought him to the attention of a Jack the Ripper letters writer, and he too began to receive letters from Jack the Ripper.

Then, on the evening of Tuesday, 16th October, a small package was delivered to his house in Alderney Road, Mile End. Inside was a letter addressed "From Hell" and wrapped inside it was a portion of kidney, which, on being examined by several doctors, was declared to be a portion of human kidney,

The letter's author, claimed that the kidney was part of the kidney that had been removed from Catherine Eddowes, who had been murdered in Mitre Square in the early hours of the 30th of September, 1888.

In this video Richard Jones looks at the circumstances behind the receipt of the kidney by George Lusk, and presents the case both for and against its having been sent by the murderer.