Dear Boss - a letter from a killer?

_{4 mins to read | May 18th, 2026 | Andy}

Hard by St Bride’s Church, with its famous wedding cake steeple nestles an unassuming building that for a period of time in Victorian London was at the centre of a media firestorm and from which a name emerged that would go down in infamy. The building is No. 5 New Bridge Street, just off Fleet Street, and it was once the home of the Central News Agency, a news distribution service with something of a reputation for sensationalism in its reporting.

Starting in August 1888, the outlet, like many others in London, had followed with fascination a series of particularly brutal murders of women that had occurred in the East End of London, centred around Whitechapel.

However, on 27 September the Central News Agency was directly drawn into the case when a letter, purporting to be from the perpetrator, and addressed to The Boss, Central News Office, London City arrived in the post at 5 New Bridge Street. It was written in red ink and began “Dear Boss”.

The letter was a gloating one, mocking the police’s inability to catch him, glorying in his murderous handiwork and one in which the unknown author pledged that he was impatient to get to work again. The letter was signed off as “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”. This was the first time the name Jack the Ripper had been heard of.

Initially dismissed as a hoax by agency staff it was nevertheless forwarded to the Metropolitan Police who also had their doubts. However, less than 24 hours later the killer had struck twice more killing Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddowes, who was actually killed within the City of London, and whose face had been badly mutilated.

Looking again at the letter, the police found that certain aspects of it were indeed prophetic including a desire to get to work right away and to “clip the ladys ear off” of his next victim, Eddowes’s right ear lobe had been removed. Coincidence, or was the letter indeed from the killer?

On 1 October, a second Dear Boss missive, this time in the form of a postcard arrived at the Central News Agency. Known as the Saucy Jacky postcard, as the author boastfully calls himself, it was also written in red ink and referenced the double murder and ears again. It appeared to have been written just hours after the new murders occurred and was again signed off with "Jack the Ripper".

Under pressure to make some progress on the case the decision was taken by the police to publish facsimiles of the Dear Boss communications on posters and handbills in the hopes that someone would recognize the writing. The Dear Boss letter and postcard started appearing in newspapers all over the country and the name Jack the Ripper was on everyone’s lips.

Rather predictably, the letter and postcard spawned a number of copycat missives with letters continuing to arrive from Jack the Ripper well into the 20th century. Also, some doubt was cast on the authenticity of the original letters with some journalists calling the unknown letter writer a grim practical joker. The police grew to believe this too with some senior figures actually believing it to be the work of a journalist, maybe even an employee or manager of the Central News Agency itself.

After November 1888, no more murders of a similar type were committed, and the killer of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly was never identified.

It’s now almost certain that the writer of the Dear Boss letter and the perpetrator of the atrocities wasn't the same person, and we’ll probably never know the true identity of either, but whoever it was had created a phenomenon and the name Jack the Ripper has become firmly embedded in the public imagination to this day.

So, that’s the story of No.5 New Bridge Street, proof that in the City of London even the most ordinary looking building can sometime have a most extraordinary past.