Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer[1] active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England, in late 1888. The name originated in a letter sent to the London Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer.
The victims were women earning income as prostitutes. Two of the victims' throats were cut, after which the bodies were mutilated. Theories suggest that the victims first were strangled, in order to silence them, which may explain the reported lack of blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.[2]
Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era,[3] bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer because of the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police to capture the murderer (they sometimes missed him at the crime scenes by mere minutes).[4][5]
Because the killer's identity has never been confirmed, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. Many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories about the identity of the killer and his victims.
In the mid 19th century, England experienced a rapid influx of mainly Irish immigrants, who swelled the populations of both the largely poor English countryside and England's major cities. From 1882, Jewish refugees escaping the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and eastern Europe added to the overcrowding and the already worsening work and housing conditions.[4] London, especially the East End and the civil parish of Whitechapel, became increasingly overcrowded, resulting in the development of a massive economic underclass.[6] This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888, the London Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels.[7] The economic problems were accompanied by a steady rise in social tensions. In 1886–1889, demonstrations by the hungry and unemployed were a regular feature of London policing.[4]
The murders most often attributed to Jack the Ripper occurred in the latter half of 1888, though the series of brutal killings in Whitechapel persisted at least until 1891. A number of the murders involved extremely gruesome acts, such as mutilation and evisceration, which were widely reported in the media. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October, when a series of media outlets and Scotland Yard received a series of extremely disturbing letters from a writer or writers purporting to take responsibility for some or all of the murders. One letter, received by George Lusk, of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included a preserved human kidney. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer terrorizing the residents of Whitechapel, nicknamed "Jack the Ripper" after the signature on a postcard received by the Central News Agency. Although the investigation was unable to connect the later killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified.
[edit] Known victims
Metropolitan Police files show that the investigation began in 1888 and eventually came to encompass eleven separate murders, stretching from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891, known in the police docket as the "Whitechapel murders".[8] In addition, authors and historians have connected at least seven other murders and violent attacks with Jack the Ripper. Among the eleven murders actively investigated by the police, five are almost universally agreed upon as the work of a single killer, collectively called the "canonical five" victims:
Mary Ann Nichols (nickname, "Polly"), killed Friday 31 August 1888. Her body was discovered by a man named Charles Cross at about 3:40 A.M. on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (now Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel 200 yards from the London Hospital. Her throat was severed deeply by two cuts; the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. There also were several incisions running across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife used violently and downwards.
Annie Chapman (maiden name, Eliza Ann Smith; nickname, "Dark Annie"), killed Saturday 8 September 1888. Her body was discovered about 6 A.M., lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Like Mary Ann Nichols's, her throat was severed by two cuts, one deeper than the other. The abdomen was ripped entirely open and the uterus was removed.
Elizabeth Stride (nickname, "Long Liz"), killed Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was discovered about 1 A.M., lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. There was one clear-cut incision on the neck; the cause of death was massive blood loss from the nearly severed main artery on the left side. The cut through the tissues on the right side was more superficial, and tapered off below the right jaw. That there also were no mutilations to the abdomen has left some uncertainty about the identity of Elizabeth's murderer, along with the suggestion her killer was disturbed during the attack.
Catherine Eddowes (also known as "Kate Conway" and "Mary Ann Kelly," from the surnames of her two common-law husbands, Thomas Conway and John Kelly), killed Sunday 30 September 1888 (the same day as the previous victim, Elizabeth Stride). Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London. The throat was, as in the former two cases, severed by two cuts; the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. She was 46. Her murder, and the murder of Elizabeth Stride would go on to be called "The Double Event," in the media, and across London.
Mary Jane Kelly (called herself "Marie Jeanette Kelly" after a trip to Paris; nickname, "Ginger"), killed Friday 9 November 1888. Her gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 A.M., lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her throat had been severed down to the spine, and her abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. Her heart was missing.
Wanted poster issued by the police during the 'autumn of terror', 1888.The authority of this list rests on a number of authors' opinions, but historically the idea has been based upon the 1894 notes of Sir Melville Macnaghten, Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Service Criminal Investigation Department.[4] Macnaghten did not join the force until the year after the murders; and his memorandum, which came to light in 1959, contains serious factual errors about possible suspects. There is considerable disagreement about the value of Macnaghten's assessment of the number of victims. Some researchers have posited that the series may not have been the work of a single murderer, but of an unknown larger number of killers acting independently. Authors Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow argue that the "canonical five" is a "Ripper myth" and that the probable number of victims could range from three (Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes) to six (the previous three, plus Stride, Kelly, and Martha Tabram) or more. Macnaghten's opinion of which crimes were committed by the same killer was not shared by other investigating officers, such as Inspector Frederick Abberline.[9]
Except Stride, whose attack may have been interrupted, mutilations of the "canonical five" victims became increasingly severe as the series of murders proceeded. Nichols and Stride were not missing any organs; but Chapman's uterus was taken, and Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney carried away and her face mutilated. While only Kelly's heart was missing from her crime scene, many of her internal organs were removed and left in her room.
The "canonical five" murders were generally perpetrated in the dark of night, on or close to a weekend, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access, and on a pattern of dates either at the end of a month or a week or so after. Yet every case differed from this pattern in some manner. Besides the differences already mentioned, Eddowes was the only victim killed within the City of London, though close to the boundary between the City and the metropolis. Nichols was the only victim to be found on an open street, albeit a dark and deserted one. Many sources state that Chapman was killed after the sun had started to rise, though that was not the opinion of the police or the doctors who examined the body.[10] Kelly's murder ended six weeks of inactivity for the murderer. (A week elapsed between the Nichols and Chapman murders; three between Chapman and the "double event".)
The large number of horrific attacks against women during this era adds some uncertainty as to exactly how many victims were killed by the same man. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper's modus operandi.
[edit] Other victims in the Whitechapel murder file
Six other Whitechapel murders were investigated by the Metropolitan Police at the time, two of which occurred before the "canonical five" and four after. Figures involved in the investigation and later authors have attributed some of these to Jack the Ripper.
These two murders occurred before the "canonical five":
Emma Elizabeth Smith was attacked on Osborn Street, Whitechapel, on 3 April 1888; a blunt object was inserted into her vagina. She survived the attack and walked back to her lodging-house. Friends brought her to a hospital, where she told police that she was attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. She fell into a coma and died on 5 April 1888.[9] According to Dr. G. H. Hillier, attending surgeon at the London Hospital, the injuries indicated use of great force, which caused a rupture of the peritoneum and other internal organs, this led to peritonitis, which he deemed the cause of death.[11]
Martha Tabram (name sometimes misspelled Tabran; maiden name, Martha White; alias, Emma Turner), killed 7 August 1888. She had a total of 39 stab wounds. Of the non-canonical Whitechapel murders, Tabram is named most often as another possible Ripper victim, because of the evident lack of obvious motive, the geographic and periodic proximity to the canonical attacks, and the attack's remarkable savagery. The main difficulty in including Tabram is that the killer used a somewhat different method (stabbing, rather than slashing the throat and then cutting); but it is now accepted that a serial killer's method can change, sometimes quite dramatically.[citation needed] Her body was found at George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel.[9]
These four murders happened after the "canonical five":
Rose Mylett (true name probably Catherine Mylett, but was also known as Catherine Millett, Elizabeth "Drunken Lizzie" Davis, "Fair" Alice Downey, or simply "Fair Clara") was reportedly strangled "by a cord drawn tightly round the neck" on 20 December 1888, though some investigators believed that she had accidentally suffocated herself on the collar of her dress while in a drunken stupor. Her body was found in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar.
The discovery of the Pinchin Street torso on 10 September 1889 prompted renewed speculation as to the identity of Jack the Ripper: cover of the 21 September 1889, issue of Puck magazine, by cartoonist Tom Merry.Alice McKenzie (nicknamed "Clay Pipe" Alice and sometimes used the alias Alice Bryant), a prostitute, was killed on 17 July 1889. She reportedly died from "severance of the left carotid artery", but several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body. Her body was found in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. Police Commissioner James Monro initially believed this to be a Ripper murder and one of the pathologists examining the body, Dr Bond, agreed, though later writers have been more circumspect. Evans and Rumbelow suggest that the unknown murderer tried to make it look like a Ripper killing to deflect suspicion from himself.[9]
"The Pinchin Street Torso" – a headless and legless torso of a woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel on 10 September 1889. The mutilations were similar to the body which was the subject of the "The Whitehall Mystery", though in this case the hands were not severed. It seems probable that the murder had been committed elsewhere and that parts of the dismembered body were dumped at the crime scene.[9] Speculation, at the time, that the remains were of Lydia Hart, a prostitute who had recently disappeared, was disproved when she was soon located in a local infirmary where she was receiving medical treatment to cure the after effects of a "bit of a spree". The identity of the victim was never established. "The Whitehall Mystery" and "The Pinchin Streets Murderer" have been suggested to be part of a series of murders, called the "Thames Mysteries" or "Embankment Murders", committed by a single serial killer, dubbed the "Torso Killer".[12][13] Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso Killer" were the same person or separate serial killers active in the same area has long been debated.[14] The Pinchin Street murder prompted a revival of interest in the Ripper—manifested in an illustration from "Puck" showing the Ripper, from behind, looking in a mirror at alternate reflections embodying current speculation as to whom he might be: a doctor, a cleric, a woman, a Jew, a bandit or a policeman.[9]
Frances Coles (also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell") was killed on 13 February 1891. Minor wounds on the back of the head suggest that she was thrown violently to the ground before her throat was cut. Otherwise there were no mutilations to the body. Her body was found under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. A man named James Thomas Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police and charged with her murder and was briefly thought to be the Ripper himself. However he was discharged from court due to lack of evidence on 3 March 1891. After this eleventh and last "Whitechapel Murder" the case was closed.[9]
[edit] Other alleged Ripper victims
In addition to the eleven murders officially investigated by the Metropolitan Police as part of the Ripper investigation, various Ripper historians have at times suggested a number of other contemporary attacks as possibly being connected to the same serial killer. In some cases, the records are not clear if the murders had even occurred or if the stories were fabricated later as a part of Ripper lore.
"Fairy Fay," a nickname for an unknown murder victim allegedly found on 26 December 1887 with "a stake thrust through her abdomen". It has been suggested that "Fairy Fay" was a creation of the press based upon confusion of the details of the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith with a separate non-fatal attack the previous Christmas.[15] The name of "Fairy Fay" was first used for this alleged victim in 1950.[16] There were no recorded murders in Whitechapel at or around Christmas 1886 or 1887, and later newspaper reports that included a Christmas 1887 killing conspicuously did not list the Smith murder. Most authors agree that "Fairy Fay" never existed.[15][17]
Annie Millwood, born c. 1850, reportedly the victim of an attack on 25 February 1888. She was admitted to hospital with "numerous stabs in the legs and lower part of the body". She was discharged from hospital but died from apparently natural causes on 31 March 1888.[17]
Ada Wilson, reportedly the victim of an attack on 28 March 1888, resulting in two stabs in the neck. She survived the attack.
Whitehall mystery of October 1888"The Whitehall Mystery", a term coined for the headless torso of a woman found in the basement of the new Metropolitan Police headquarters being built in Whitehall on 2 October 1888. An arm belonging to the body had previously been discovered floating in the River Thames near Pimlico, and one of the legs was subsequently discovered buried near where the torso was found. The other limbs and head were never recovered and the body never identified.
Annie Farmer, born c. 1848, reportedly was the victim of an attack on 21 November 1888. She survived with only a superficial cut on her throat, apparently caused by a blunt knife. Police suspected that the wound was self-inflicted and did not investigate the case further.
Elizabeth Jackson, a prostitute whose various body parts were collected from the River Thames between 31 May and 25 June 1889. She was reportedly identified by scars she had had prior to her disappearance and apparent murder.
Carrie Brown (nicknamed "Shakespeare",[18] reportedly for quoting William Shakespeare's sonnets) was killed 24 April 1891 in Manhattan, New York City. She was strangled with clothing and then mutilated with a knife. Her body was found with a large tear through her groin area and superficial cuts on her legs and back. No organs were removed from the scene, though an ovary was found upon the bed. Whether it was purposely removed or unintentionally dislodged during the mutilation is unknown. At the time, the murder was compared to those in Whitechapel though the Metropolitan Police eventually ruled out any connection.[19]
[edit] Investigation
Inspector Abberline from an 1888 newspaperThe surviving Whitechapel Murders police files allow a quite detailed view of investigative procedure in Victorian times. A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries, lists of suspects were drawn up and many were interviewed, forensic material was collected and examined. A close reading of the investigation shows a basic process of identifying suspects, tracing them and deciding whether to examine them more closely or to cross them off the list. This is still the pattern of a major inquiry today.[20] The investigation was initially conducted by Whitechapel (H) Division C.I.D. headed by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. After the Nichols murder, Detective Inspectors Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore, and Walter Andrews were sent from Central Office at Scotland Yard to assist. After the Eddowes murder, which occurred within the City of London, the City Police under Detective Inspector James McWilliam were also engaged. However, overall direction of the murder enquiries was confused and hampered by the fact that the newly appointed head of the CID, Sir Robert Anderson, was on leave in Switzerland between 7 September and 15 October, during which time Chapman, Stride and Eddowes were killed. This prompted the Chief Commissioner of the Met., Sir Charles Warren, to appoint Superintendent Donald Swanson to coordinate the enquiry from Scotland Yard. Swanson's notes on the case survive and are a valuable record of the investigation.[4]
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