The 1888 Jack the Ripper Murders caused a wave of panic across the country. They also triggered a number of hoax letters supposedly from the Ripper.
In 1888 a Torquay girl called Charlotte Higgins, a 14-year-old domestic servant, was arrested and charged with writing threatening letters to her master, The Rev Samuel Harvey, a retired clergyman living at Holmdene in St Marychurch.
Police Sergeant Bright told the court that on the evening of the December 12 the Reverend had visited him and had handed over two letters which he and his wife and received. One threatened, “My God I’ll cut you up from head to foot; I’m the Whitechapel Murderer.” However, most of the contents were not made public as the magistrates considered the language ‘too disgusting’ for public consumption. Such threats were taken seriously by the Reverend Harvey. He asked for immediate police protection and his household was given an overnight guard.
Bright investigated and went to see Charlotte Higgins. She ‘showed him a place where she said a man had come over a wall at about half-past six o’clock on the same morning’. She claimed that the man had knocked on the door and when she asked him who he was he replied, “Open the door or by God I will murder you.”
Charlotte eventually confessed to writing the letters and was sent to prison for three weeks, and then to a reformatory for three years, probably as an example to others. Yet, many locals saw the sentence as unfair: “The decision of the Bench was received with loud hisses by the public in the body of the Court.”
Check out the full whole story.
Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!
