The Man With the Hoe and Other Poems

The lodger had "eight suits of clothes, eight pairs of boots, and eight hats." He could speak several languages and "when he went out he always carried a black bag." He never wore the same hat two nights in a row. Shortly after the torso was discovered near Pinchin Street, the lodger told the landlord he was going abroad and left abruptly. When the landlord went inside the rooms, he discovered the lodger had left "bows, feathers and flowers, and other articles which had belonged to the lower class of women," and three pairs of leather lace-up boots and three pairs of "galoshes" with India rubber soles and American cloth uppers that were "bespattered with blood." The Ripper obviously kept up with the news and was aware of this story as it appeared in the London edition of the New York Herald, or perhaps in some other paper such as the Weekly Dispatch. In the Ripper's poem of November 8, 1889, he makes clear references to the tale told by the landlord: "Togs 8 suits, many hats I wear." He denies he was the peculiar lodger who wrote "rigmaroles" about immoral women: Some months hard gone near Finsbury Sqre: An eccentric man lived with an unmarried pair - The tale is false there never was a lad, Who wrote essays on women bad ...»