shared by most Ripper historians—many of whom believe that all correspondence received in the manhunt for the Ripper was fabricated by journalists and/or the public in general. "From Hell" letter On 16 October 1888, a cubical parcel measuring three-and-a-half inches containing half a preserved human kidney was received by the Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, George Lusk. This parcel was accompanied by a note, known as both the "Lusk letter" and the "From Hell" letter because of the phrase "from hell" used by the writer as the address of origin. The author of this letter claimed to have "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. The handwriting and style were unlike that of the "Saucy Jacky" postcard, as the general linguistic characteristics of this letter indicated the author was either Irish, of Irish extraction, or intentionally intending to mimic Irish pronunciations. Human kidney The kidney was taken to Thomas Horrocks Openshaw at the nearby London Hospital. Openshaw believed that the kidney was human, originated from the left side of the body, and that the organ had been preserved in spirits prior to being posted to Lusk on 15 October. The Daily Telegraph reported on 19 October that Openshaw had described the specimen as a recent "ginny kidney" from a 45-year-old female. However, the Star reported the same day that Openshaw denied the report strongly, saying it was impossible to detect the age or gender of the individual whom the kidney had belonged to, or how long the organ had been preserved in spirits. Major Henry Smith claimed in his memoirs that the kidney received by Lusk matched the one missing from Eddowes, because the length of renal artery attached to the kidney matched the missing length from the body, and both the body and kidney showed signs of Bright's disease. Smith's later recollection does not match the medical reports submitted by the examining pathologists or the police records. Police surgeon Brown said that the kidney had been trimmed up, and that the renal artery was entirely absent. Metropolitan police memos state that the kidney could have come from any body, such as those found in a hospital morgue. Smith's account is thought by historians to be dramatic licence on his part; the kidney itself could have been sent to Lusk as a medical student's prank. Saunders, who attended Eddowes's post-mortem, later stated to the press, "the right kidney of