Historians delving into the murder of Miriam Angel 124 years ago in Whitechapel—exactly a year before Jack the Ripper—have failed to solve the ‘whodunnit’ mystery.

Her demise remains one of the controversial Victorian crimes in London’s East End, even though craftsman Israel Lipski, the main suspect, was hanged at Newgate on August 22, 1887.

Members of the Whitechapel Society—whose main obsession in life is ‘Ripperology’—presented their research at a public ‘retrial’ at the Aldgate Exchange pub in Whitechapel High Street on Saturday to decide if he was guilty.

But the ‘jury’ was split evenly when author and society chairman William Beadle argued that the Jewish walking-stick maker was innocent, while author Mark Ripper—that really is his name—insisted Lipski had been ‘guilty as charged’.

Now the Whitechapel Society is to publish a paper on the case of Miriam Angel’s killing in lodgings at 16 Batty Street, St George’s-in-the East, with all the research notes from the ‘retrial’.