Jack the Ripper - Victims, Goulston Street graffiti, Ripper letters, Investigation, Media, Suspects, Jack the Ripper in culture

Unidentified English murderer, who between August and November 1888 murdered and mutilated at least seven prostitutes in the East End of London. The murderer was never discovered. The affair roused much public disquiet, provoked a violent press campaign against the CID and the home secretary, and resulted in some reform of police methods. Speculation about the murderer's identity was still continuing in the 1990s, fuelled by the publication of his alleged diary in 1993. More than 100 books have been written about Jack the Ripper, many of which offer theories about his true identity.

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Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London in the latter half of 1888.

The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, conspiracy theory and folklore. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed Ripperologists — the term used within the field for the authors, historians and amateur detectives who study the case — to accuse a wide variety of individuals of being the Ripper. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer owing to the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police in their attempts to capture the Ripper, sometimes missing the murderer at his crime scenes by mere minutes. The removal of internal organs from some victims has led to the proposal that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge or skill.

Victims

The canonical five Jack the Ripper victims
Mary Ann Nichols
Annie Chapman
Elizabeth Stride
Catherine Eddowes
Mary Jane Kelly

The number and names of the Ripper's victims are the subject of much debate.

The canonical five victims

The most accepted list, referred to as the "canonical five", includes the following five prostitutes (or presumed prostitute in Eddowes' case) in the East End of London:

Mary Ann Nichols (maiden name Mary Ann Walker, nicknamed "Polly"), born on August 26, 1845, and killed on Friday, August 31, 1888. Annie Chapman (maiden name Eliza Ann Smith, nicknamed "Dark Annie"), born in September 1841 and killed on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Elizabeth Stride (maiden name Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, nicknamed "Long Liz"), born in Sweden on November 27, 1843, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888. Catherine Eddowes (used the aliases "Kate Conway" and "Mary Ann Kelly," from the surnames of her two common-law husbands Thomas Conway and John Kelly), born on April 14, 1842, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888. 1863 and killed on Friday, November 9, 1888.

The authority of this list rests on a number of authors' opinions, but the initial basis for these opinions mainly came from notes made privately in 1894 by Sir Melville Macnaghten as Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Service Criminal Investigation Department, papers which came to light in 1959. For this and other reasons, some Ripperologists prefer to remove one or more names from this list of canonical victims: typically Stride (who had no mutilations beyond a cut throat and, if one witness can be believed, was attacked in public), and/or Kelly (who was younger than other victims, murdered indoors, and whose mutilations were far more extensive than the others). Some researchers have even posited that the 'series' may not have been the work of a single murderer, but of an unknown number of killers acting independently.

Except for Stride (whose attack may have been interrupted), mutilations became continuously more severe as the series of murders proceeded.

The five canonical murders were generally perpetrated in the darkness 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. 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. 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.

A major difficulty in identifying who was and was not a Ripper victim is the large number of horrific attacks against women during this era. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, mutilations to the victim's abdomen and genital area, removal of internal organs and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper.

Other possible victims

Victims of other contemporary and somewhat similar attacks and/or murders have also been suggested as additions to the list. They include:

"Fairy Fay", a nickname for an unknown murder victim reportedly found on December 26, 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. There are no records of anyone having been murdered at or around the time of the alleged Fairy Fay murder, and newspaper reports listing Whitechapel atrocities that included a Christmas 1887 killing conspicuously did not list the Smith killing. maiden name Martha White), born on May 10, 1849, and killed on August 7, 1888. Of the non-canonical Whitechapel murders, Tabram is named most often as another possible Ripper victim,owing to the evident lack of obvious motive, the geographical and periodic proximity to the canonical attacks, and the remarkable savagery of the attack. The main difficulty with including Tabram is that the killer used a somewhat different modus operandi (stabbing, rather than slashing the throat and then cutting), but it is now accepted that a killer's modus operandi can change, sometimes quite dramatically. She was reportedly identified by scars she had had prior to her disappearance and apparent murder. Alice McKenzie (nicknamed "Clay Pipe" Alice and used the alias Alice Bryant), born circa 1849 and killed on July 17, 1889. "The Pinchin Street Murder", a term coined after a torso was found in similar condition to "The Whitehall Mystery", though the hands were not severed, on September 10, 1889. "The Whitehall Mystery" and "The Pinchin Street Murder" have often been suggested to be the works of a serial killer, for which the nicknames "Torso Killer" or "Torso Murderer" have been suggested. Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso Killer" were the same person or separate serial killers of uncertain connection to each other (but active in the same area) has long been debated by Ripperologists. Frances Coles (also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell"), born in 1865 and killed on February 13, 1891. Carrie Brown (nicknamed "Shakespeare", reportedly for quoting sonnets by William Shakespeare), born circa 1835 and killed April 24, 1891, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. At the time, the murder was compared to those in Whitechapel though London police eventually ruled out any connection.

Goulston Street graffiti

After the "double event" of the early morning of September 30, police searched the area near the crime scenes in an effort to locate a suspect, witnesses or evidence.

There was graffiti in white chalk on the wall above where the apron was found.

Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold visited the scene and saw the graffiti. Since the Nichols murder, rumours had been circulating in the East End that the killings were the work of a Jew dubbed "Leather Apron".

Whilst the graffiti were found in Metropolitan Police territory, the apron was from a victim killed in the City of London, which had a separate police force.

Some officers disagreed with Arnold's order, especially those representing the City of London Police, who thought the graffiti constituted part of a crime scene and should at least be photographed before being erased, but Arnold's order was upheld by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. The graffiti were wiped from the wall at about 5:30 a.m.

Most contemporary police concluded that the writing of the graffiti was a semi-literate attack on the area's Jewish population.

There is disagreement as to the importance of the graffiti in the Ripper case. Several possible explanations have been suggested by various authors:

Author and conspiracy theorist Stephen Knight suggested that "Juwes" referred not to "Jews," but to Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum, the three killers of Hiram Abiff, a semi-legendary figure in Freemasonry, and furthermore, that the message was written by the killer (or killers) as part of a Masonic plot (however, there is no evidence that anyone prior to Knight had ever referred to those three figures by the term "Juwes") The murderer wrote the graffiti and then dropped the piece of apron to indicate a link The writing on the wall was already there and the murderer wanted to indicate a link in support of the message The graffiti were already there and the murderer dropped the scrap coincidentally, without interest in making a link (perhaps failing to notice the graffiti) The graffiti were added sometime after the apron piece was dropped — presumably shortly after the murder (thought to have happened just before 1:45am) — but before the discovery of the scrap at 3am

Ripper letters

Jack the Ripper letters
"Dear Boss" letter
"Saucy Jack" postcard
"From Hell" letter

Over the course of the Ripper murders, the police and newspapers received many thousands of letters regarding the case. Some were from well-intentioned persons offering advice for catching the killer.

Perhaps more interesting were hundreds of letters which claimed to have been written by the killer himself. The name "Jack the Ripper" was first used in this letter and gained worldwide notoriety after its publication. It mentions that two victims—Stride and Eddowes—were killed very close to one another: "double event this time." One of Eddowes' kidneys had been removed by the killer, and a doctor determined the kidney sent to Lusk was "very similar to the one removed from Catherine Eddowes," though his findings were inconclusive.

Some sources list another letter, dated September 17, 1888, as the first message to use the Jack the Ripper name.

Investigation

It is important to note that investigative techniques and awareness have progressed greatly since the crimes. The concept and motives of serial killers were poorly understood.

On 20 November 2006, the BBC and Scotland Yard released an e-fit showing what detectives believe the serial killer looked like.

Media

The Ripper murders mark an important watershed in modern British life. While not the first serial killer, Jack the Ripper's case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy. These mushroomed later in the Victorian era to include mass-circulation newspapers as cheap as a halfpenny, along with popular magazines such as the Illustrated Police News, making the Ripper the beneficiary of previously unparalleled publicity. This, combined with the fact that no one was ever convicted of the murders, created a haunting legend that cast a shadow over later serial killers.

Some believe the killer's nickname was invented by newspapermen to make for a more interesting story that could sell more papers. This became standard media practice with examples such as the Boston Strangler, the Green River Killer, the Axeman of New Orleans, the Beltway Sniper, the Hillside Strangler, and the Zodiac Killer, besides the derivative British Yorkshire Ripper almost a hundred years later and the unnamed perpetrator of the "Thames Nude Murders" of the 1960s, whom the press dubbed Jack the Stripper.

The poor of the East End had long been ignored by affluent society, but the nature of the murders and of the victims forcibly drew attention to their living conditions. A letter from George Bernard Shaw to the Star commented sarcastically on these sudden concerns of the press:

Whilst we Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation and organization, some independent genius has taken the matter in hand, and by simply murdering and disembowelling four women, converted the proprietary press to an inept sort of communism.

Suspects

Many theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper have been advanced.

Jack the Ripper in culture

Jack the Ripper has been featured in a number of works of fiction and popular culture, either as the central character or in a more peripheral role.

In 2006, Jack the Ripper was selected by the BBC History Magazine and its readers as the worst Briton in history. (BBC)

To date more than 150 works of non-fiction have been published which deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders, making it one of the most written-about true-crime subjects of the past century.