Day out with Kids Bainbridge England

The mystery of the identity of 'Jack the Ripper' has never been solved [GETTY]

Dianne Bainbridge says distant relative William Belcher matches every characteristic of the profile for Britain’s most infamous serial killer, whose five gruesome murders terrorised London’s Whitechapel area and ended in 1888.

Belcher had experience of butchery, he was a milkman who could move around at odd hours without raising suspicion and he had a history of violence against women. He also left London as the Ripper’s murders appeared to end, moving to Hartlepool with his wife and young daughter and changing his surname to Williams.

He can then be linked to two similar murders in the North of England, both near the train route between London and the town in County Durham.

Mrs Bainbridge, 55, who runs a wedding shop in Newcastle, started her research three years ago after a relative gave her a memento mori card for a boy called James Walter Robert Webber, who died aged seven in 1888.

This card, which parents gave to mourners at funerals in Victorian times, had been handed down through the generations. The name Webber, however, did not fit into the family tree.

Dianne Bainbridge's discovery could shed light on the identity of the notorious serial killer [BSKYB]

James Maybrick, a wealthy cotton merchant thought by some to be Jack the Ripper [GETTY]

I went out of my way to prove they were not involved with the Ripper, but every time I entered new details, links came up

Mrs Bainbridge, a mother of three, obtained the boy’s birth certificate and found he had an older sister, Annie Belcher, who was married to William and lived in Whitechapel in 1888 with him and their four-year-old daughter Kate, but then seemed to vanish.

She then found Annie, William and Kate “Williams” living in Hartlepool from 1888 onwards, with the same middle names, dates and places of birth as the Belchers, and no trace of them before this date.

They told relatives they had lived in Devon before moving to County Durham.

Mrs Bainbridge said: “It felt like they were trying to write off their lives in London and rewrite their history. They were clearly running away from something.