Charles Allen Lechmere

Charles Allen Lechmere
Lechmere in 1912
Born	Charles Allen Lechmere (1849-10-05)5 October 1849 Strand, London, England
Died	23 December 1920(1920-12-23) (aged 71) Bow, London
Known for	Jack the Ripper suspect
Spouse	Elizabeth Bostock ​ (m. 1870)​
Children	12

Charles Allen Lechmere (5 October 1849 – 23 December 1920), also known as Charles Cross, was a carman (cart driver) from the east side of London who apparently worked for the Pickfords company for more than 20 years. He is suspected by some as having been the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper.

'Charles Cross' was long regarded as merely the innocent witness who discovered the body of Mary Ann Nichols, the first of the Ripper's five canonical victims, while on his way to work. The suggestion that he might actually be the Whitechapel Murderer was first raised by Derek Osborne in 2000 in an issue of the magazine Ripperana. The following year saw the possibility further explored in an article by John Carey, while Osborne went on to examine a set of remarkable coincidences which suggested that 'Cross' was in fact a man legally known as Lechmere. The carman's possible guilt was further discussed by John Carey in 2002; by Osborne in 2007, and by Michael Connor in four issues of The Ripperologist between 2006 and 2008.

Mainstream awareness of Lechmere grew in 2014 when journalist Christer Holmgren and criminologist Gareth Norris explored the case against him in the 2014 Channel Five documentary Jack the Ripper: The Missing Evidence. In 2021, Holmgren produced a book in which Lechmere is linked not only to the Whitechapel Murders, but also to the longer series of killings known as the Thames Torso Murders.

Biography

Charles Lechmere was born on 5 October 1849, in the Strand, London, England, the son of John Allen Lechmere and Maria Louisa Roulson. Charles Lechmere had a "broken home" growing up, having had two stepfathers and never knowing his real father. Lechmere's childhood was also characterized by instability of residence, as he was raised in a series of different homes. Lechmere married Elizabeth Bostock in 1870 and had eleven children, two of whom died young. Lechmere died in December 1920 at the age of seventy-one.

Jack the Ripper suspect

In Lechmere's testimony to the Nichols inquest, he claimed that he was walking to work down Buck's Row when he discovered the body of Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols lying next to a gateway. Robert Paul, who was walking some distance behind, first noticed him standing 'where the woman was'; after he saw Paul, Lechmere brought him over to look at the woman. No blood was described by either man, but by the time a constable found Nichols shortly afterwards, blood had pooled around her neck, suggesting to some that the cut to her throat was very fresh when Lechmere and Paul were present. In addition, neither man reported seeing or hearing anyone else at Buck's Row, which had no side exits.

It is therefore speculated that Lechmere may have murdered Nichols and begun mutilating her body when he suddenly heard the sound of Paul's footsteps; he then rapidly pulled down her clothing to cover up her wounds and portrayed himself as the discoverer of the body. The 2014 TV documentary also points out that Lechmere did not appear at the inquest until after Paul had been quoted in the press to the effect that another man had been present. At the inquest, Lechmere gave his name as Cross, which was the surname of a long-dead stepfather; later investigators found that no-one named Cross was listed in the census records for the address he supplied, meaning that his true identity was a mystery for well over a century.

The locations of Lechmere's home, family and place of work put him in the vicinity of several 'Ripper' murders and other, extra-canonical killings besides. Holmgren notes that geographic profiling, developed decades after the Ripper murders, can help narrow down likely suspects by analyzing their established movements and habitual locations in comparison to crime scenes. Criminals tend to strike in areas that are not too close to home, yet with which they are somewhat familiar and comfortable. Given this data, Holmgren argues Lechmere is the most plausible suspect for the Ripper murders. Lechmere's logical shortest routes to work—one passing down Hanbury Street, the other down Old Montague Street—would have Lechmere pass nearby streets around the same times as Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, and arguably Annie Chapman were murdered. The murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes on the same night (the so-called "Double Event") took place further south—and in the small hours of a Sunday, likely the only day Lechmere would not have been travelling from home to work. Stride was killed in proximity to his mother's house and in the area he grew up in; the locality in which Eddowes was murdered would have been well known to him, as it was on the logical route to Broad Street from at least one of his earlier addresses.

Mary Jane Kelly was murdered near the northernmost route to his work, and the time frame in which she is estimated to have been killed is reconcilable with his presumed journey, although the day she was killed was a holiday and he may have had the day off work.