A physician friend of Inspector Frederick Abberline by the name
of Dr. Thomas Dutton was a student of microphotography as well as
being a leader in the Chichester and West Sussex Microscopic
Society. (I find it hard to believe there was such a club!) Through
Abberline, 128 letters and notes were examined microscopically by
Dr. Dutton himself. These were originally sent to Scotland Yard,
Central News Agency and to individuals. Of these 128, Dr. Dutton
decided 34 were by the same hand, trying to make it look like
different writers. Dr. Sutton blamed police for not taking some of
the letters more seriously. They assumed they must have been done
by hoaxters.
Dutton concluded that the writer of at least these 34 letters
were written by someone trying to make himself sound
semi-illiterate, some others, the neat script of a clerk. The same
with the language, some were all slang and lower class, some with
Americanisms, and some with deliberately misspelled words such as
"Juwes". (Dr. Dutton claimed to have photographed the infamous
writing on the wall at Goulston St.) He also felt that the Ripper
moved around alot from the different postmarks on the letters. This
is probably true from what we now know about serial killers. They
are very mobile.
In the end, most of the letters were deemed as fakes. This may
have derailed the investigation for good.
