Last week, the UK's College of Policing announced that they had found a walking cane with Jack the Ripper's "only reported facial composite" carved into it. This was eight years after the artifact was stolen from a local staff college.

They were unable to find Jack the Ripper, but they have solved the mystery.

The report states that Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline received the cane in 1888 from his staff "at the end of his most infamous crime, the Whitechapel murders which were committed and remain unsolved."

Between April 1888 to February 1891, there were at least 11 murders that were unsolved in London's Whitechapel district. Five of them were in 1888. These five were all attributed to Jack the Ripper. But nobody knows if all of them were committed by the same person because that's what "unsolved." means. No one knew at the end 1888 whether this particular series of murders was over. If the gift was actually given in 1888, and it does seem to have a message with that number on it, it could not have been meant to mark the end of the Ripper case. The case was still open. This would not have been to celebrate Abberline's retirement from the Metropolitan Police. He didn't retire until 1892.

There is also the nontrivial truth that Abberline failed to solve even one murder in the most notorious of all murder sprees. This gift seems incredibly awful. Chief Inspector, everyone chipped in to get you this cane, which has a carving of the face of the murderer that you were unable to catch. This will leave a lasting legacy of complete and abject failure. There's also cake.

The report does not provide any details about how the "facial combination" was made. Drawings were apparently made from witness reports at the time. There have been other sketches since then, but all of them seem pretty mediocre. The face on the cane reminds me of Frederick Abberline or Wilford Brimley, except that it isn't adorned with facial hair. This would be a better idea than giving a detective a composite murderer he didn’t catch to keep as a reminder.

The College of Policing currently has the cane on display. An official stated that it would be displayed "alongside original newspaper cuttings so that our officers can first-hand see how far we have advanced in policing." This is a significant improvement over Frederick Abberline.