The face of Jack the Ripper has been discovered in an unlikely place after police went digging through some old stuff.
More accurately, an idea of what Jack the Ripper looked like has been discovered, because – as with anything relating to the famous Victorian serial killer – we just can’t be sure.
However, you’re gonna want to see this still.
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The terrifying impression was found on the end of a walking cane that was owned by a detective who worked the case and became obsessed with catching the man - or woman, perhaps? - responsible for the murders of at least five women in the East End of London in the late 1800s.
Frederick Abberline worked for Scotland Yard at the time and was removed from the case in 1889 because he couldn’t find the man responsible.
However, his walking stick bears the only facial composite of the killer carved into the handle.
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OK, it might be a fairly fanciful imagining of what Jack the Ripper could have looked like, but it’s still a seriously cool piece of history.
We still aren’t sure exactly who committed the murders, though there are a few suspects that have been identified over the years.
As for the cane itself, that was stored at the Police College in Bramshill, Hampshire, for many years, though it had thought that the cane might have been lost when the school was closed in 2015.
Now though, it’s turned up again after staff went searching through some archived stuff at the College of Policing headquarters in Ryton, West Midlands.
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A spokesperson for the institution said two members of staff turned the cane up whilst searching through the stuff left over after Bramshill closed.
It has now been placed on display in order to act as a reminder to recruits about how far policing has come since those dark days.
The college’s content creator Antony Cash said: "Finding this cane was an exciting moment for us.
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"Jack the Ripper is one of the biggest and most infamous murder cases in our history and his crimes were significant in paving the way for modern policing and forensics as it caused police to begin experimenting with and developing new techniques as they attempted to try and solve these murders, such as crime scene preservation, profiling and photography.
"This walking cane is such a fascinating artefact which represents such a historically significant time in policing.
"It’s amazing that we can put it out on display here in Ryton, alongside the original newspaper cuttings, so that our officers can see first-hand how far we’ve advanced in policing since then."
At least five women were killed by the Ripper in Whitechapel, before they were mutilated in a way that suggests that the killer knew anatomy and perhaps even had a surgical background.
The killer also sent messages to police taunting them, as well as grisly pieces of the victims including part of a kidney.
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Suspects in the Ripper murders have ranged from famous names such as Prince Albert and Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, to less well-known people like Montague John Druitt, Aaron Kosminski, and doctor Francis Tumblety.
We’ll probably never know who it actually was, so this cane is the closest we may ever be to seeing the true face of the monster that terrorised Victorian London.
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock/College of PolicingTopics: UK News, Weird, True Crime