Patricia Cornwell - Portrait Of A Killer - Jack The Ripper - Case Closed

Certainly, I wouldn't dare claim that these letters were written by Sickert or even Jack the Ripper, but the anonymous communications fit the profile of a violent psychopath who taunts police and tries to insert him-or herself into the investigation. Watermarks and language aside, the problem of handwriting remains. The amazing variety found in the Ripper letters has been a source of hot debate. Many people, including forensic documents examiners, have argued that it is not possible for one person to write in so many hands.

This is not necessarily true, says paper historian and forensic paper analyst Peter Bower, one of the most respected paper experts in the world, and perhaps best known for his work on the papers used by artists as various as Michelangelo, J.M.W. Turner, Constable, and others - as well as for determining that the notorious Jack the Ripper diary was a fraud. Bower has assisted in our examination of the Ripper/Sickert letters. He says he has seen "good calligraphers" who can write in an incredible number of different hands, but "it takes extraordinary skill." His wife, Sally Bower, is a much respected letterer, or person who designs and draws lettering. Although she is not a handwriting expert, she has a different perspective because she is an expert in how a person forms the letters strung together in words. When she looked through Ripper letters with her husband, she immediately connected a number of letters through quirks and how the hand made the writing. I have no doubt that Sickert had an amazing ability to write in many different hands, but his disguised writings are becoming less concealing as the investigation progresses.

Peter Bower's vast knowledge of paper obviously includes watermarks; his opinion of those we have found is that A Pirie 8t Sons and Joynson Superfine "would not have been the commonest paper." But the watermarks were not necessarily uncommon in the late nineteenth century. Monckton's Superfine was a rarer watermark and Monckton's also manufactured artists' drawing and watercolor paper.

Matching watermarks do not necessarily mean the paper was from the same batch, and almost none of the Sickert letters or Sickert/Ripper letters are from the same batch, says Peter Bower, who spent days going through Sickert and Ripper archives and measuring the paper using a 3 Ox lens to study the measurements, fiber content, and distances between chain lines. When paper is manufactured by machine, as A Pirie and Joynson and Monckton's were, the paper comes from one batch, meaning it is from the same roll. Another batch with the same watermark and a fiber content that is relatively the same may have slight differences in measurements of the sheets of paper due to the speed of drying or the way the machine cut it.

These characteristics - measurements and spacing between the wire the paper was formed on - are the paper's Y profile, and matching Y profiles mean the paper came from the same batch. Bower says it is not unusual for an individual to have stationery that comes from many batches, and that even when the paper is ordered from the stationer, there could be different batches mixed in, although the watermarks and embossing or engraving are the same. The discrepancies in the Sickert and Ripper letters pertain to their measurements. For example, the "Dear Openshaw" letter with the A Pirie watermark is from the same batch as the November 22nd A Pirie Ripper letter mailed from London, but not from the same batch as the other November 22nd A Pirie letter supposedly mailed from Manchester. Clearly, the Ripper had a mixture of A Pirie batches when he wrote these November 22nd letters, unless one wishes to make the case that there were two different individuals who just happened to write Ripper letters on A Pirie 8c Sons paper of the same type and color on November 22nd.

Differences in measurements can, in some instances, be attributed to conservation. When paper is heated by applying a protective membrane, for example, the paper shrinks slightly. More probable is that the differences in measurements can be explained by reorders from the stationer. During the late 1880s, personalized stationery was usually ordered in a quire, or twenty-four sheets, including unprinted second sheets. A reorder of the same personalized stationery on the same type of paper with the same watermark could quite easily come from a different batch. Or perhaps the stationer used a different standard size, such as Post quarto, which was approximately seven by nine inches, or Commercial Note, which was eight by five inches, or Octavo Note, which was nominally seven by four-and-a-half inches.

An example of a discrepancy in paper size is a Ripper letter with a Joynson Superfine watermark that was sent to the City of London Police. The torn half of the folded stationery measures 6% inches by 9%o inches. Another Ripper letter on the same type of paper with the same watermark was sent to the Metropolitan Police and that stationery is Commercial Note, or eight by five inches. A Sickert letter written on Monckton's Superfine that we examined in Glasgow measures seven and one-eighth inches by nine inches, while a Ripper letter sent to the City of London Police on the same type of paper with a matching Monckton's Superfine watermark measures seven and one-eighth inches by eight and nine-tenths. Most likely, this suggests the Monckton's Superfine stationery is from different batches, but this by no means indicates it was from different Ripper letter-writers.

I point out these different paper batches only because a defense attorney would. In fact, paper of the same type and watermark but from different batches doesn't necessarily mean a setback in a case and, as Bower pointed out, having studied other artists' paper, he "would expect to find variations like this." Bower also discovered paper in Ripper letters that did not have variations, and because they also had no watermarks, these letters were not really noticed by anyone else. Two Ripper letters written to the Metropolitan Police and one Ripper letter written to the City of London Police are on matching very cheap pale blue paper - and for three letters to come from the same batch of paper strongly indicates that the same person wrote them, just as matching watermarks, especially three different types of matching watermarks, are hard to dismiss as coincidence.

Our discovery of "matching" watermarks has been a source of great excitement for all of us working the Ripper case, but I must admit that a not-so-good watermark moment came early in the investigation. The head of conservation at the Public Record Office, Mario Aleppo, contacted me and said his staff had found numerous other A Pirie amp; Sons watermarks and I might want to have a look. I immediately returned to London and discovered to my horror that the A Pirie amp; Sons watermarks were not on Ripper letters but on the stationery the Metropolitan Police were using at the time. I was shocked. For a moment, I was completely unnerved and thought my life might disintegrate right before my eyes. There has always been a theory that Jack the Ripper was a cop.

The A Pirie amp; Sons watermark on the Metropolitan Police stationery is the only other non-Sickert/Ripper-related A Pirie watermark I have found during my research, but I am happy to report that the watermark on the Metropolitan Police stationery is quite different from the one on the Ripper and the Sickert letters. The police stationery watermark has no date and includes the words LD and Register. The paper is of a different quality and color. It is eight by eleven inches and not greeting-card size. Besides the difference in the wording and design of the watermarks, the police paper is wove and the Sickert/Ripper paper is laid.

The firm Alexander Pirie 8c Sons, Ltd., got its start in the paper-making business in 1770 in Aberdeen, and its rapid growth and respected reputation resulted in the acquisition of cotton mills, plants, and factories in London, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, New York, St. Petersburg, and Bucharest. A Pirie didn't become a separate company until 1864, and from this information one might presume that there was no A Pirie amp;c Sons watermark prior to that date. However, existing records in Aberdeen do not indicate exactly when A Pirie began using its name on watermarks. A Pirie became a limited-liability company in 1882, merged with another firm in 1922, and went out of business at some point in the 1950s.