Grand Auctions in Folkestone, UK will offer a postcard left at Ealing Police Station, London in 1888 by someone purporting to be Jack the Ripper.
The author of the chilling missive has never been identified.
Jack the Ripper terrorised the streets of Whitechapel between 1888 and 1891
Chances are that it was not Jack the Ripper himself. The police received a huge number of these notes from cranks and oddballs across the city.
However, it was left shortly before the murder of Mary Kelly – the last of the five “canonical” victims of the notorious killer.
It’s inscribed: “Beware there is two women I want here they are bastards, and I mean to have them my knife is still in good order it is a students knife and I hope you liked the half of kidney.
“I am Jack the Ripper.”
The postcard was gifted to London Metropolitan Police officer John Hall when he retired in 1966.
John Hall's certificate of retirement
Hall's widow, Doreen, explained: “I found the card when I was going through my husband’s papers after his death.
"It makes you stop and think that when you touch the postcard it could have been handled by Jack the Ripper 130 years ago. It’s a scary thought!”
There’s no estimate available for the piece ahead of the October 9 sale.
Auctioneer Jonathon Hall explained: “Nothing like this from the police files has ever come up for sale before with such convincing provenance, so we are dealing with a very rare artefact indeed involving someone who still casts a chilling shadow even after all these years.
“More than a century after the Whitechapel Murders, the killings have never been solved and the identity of Jack the Ripper remains a mystery.
"It continues to grip the public’s imagination and the story is never very far from the news headlines, with books, films and TV programmes all dedicated to the subject.
“So could this postcard with its 43 menacing words be from the Ripper? We will never know for sure."
In 2007, DNA specialist Dr Jari Louhelainen at Liverpool John Moores University identified Jack the Ripper as Polish barber Aaron Kosminski.
Kosminski was a paranoid schizophrenic who was committed to an asylum in 1891.
Eleven women were killed in similar fashion in Whitechapel in between 1888-1891, which further supports this hypothesis.
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