Jack The Ripper

Background -

In the mid-19th century, Britain experienced an influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the population, causing Whitechapel to become extremely overcrowded. Work and housing conditions worsened, and a significant economic under-class developed.

Robbery, Violence and alcohol dependency were commonplace, and the poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888, London police estimated that there were 62 brothels and 1,200 prostitutes in Whitechapel alone.

Anti-semitism, crime, nativism, racism and social disturbance influenced public perceptions that Whitechapel was a notorious den of immorality. In 1888, such perceptions were strengthened when a series of and grotesque murders attributed to “Jack The Ripper” received unprecedented coverage in the media.

Murders -

The large number of attacks against women in the east end during this time adds uncertainty to how many victims were killed by the same person. Eleven separate murders, stretching from April 3, 1888 to February 13, 1891, were included in a London Police Investigation and were known collectively as the “Whitechapel Murders”. Opinions vary as to whether these murders are linked to the same perpetrator, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the “Canonical Five” are widely believed to be the work of Jack The Ripper.

Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of the RIpper’s modus operandi. The first two cases in the Whitechapel murders file, those of Emma Elizabeth Smith and Martha Tabram, are not included in the canonical five.

Emma Elizabeth Smith was robbed and sexually assaulted in Osborn Street, Whitechapel on April 3, 1888. A blunt object was inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis and died the following day at London Hospital. She said that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. The attack was linked to the later murders by the press, but most attributed It to gang violence unrelated to the Ripper case.

Martha Tabram was killed on August 7, 1888, she had suffered 39 stab wounds. The savagery of the murder, lack of obvious motive, and the closeness of the location and date of the later Ripper murders led police to link them. The attack differs from the canonical five murders in that Tabram was stabbed rather than slashed at the throat and abdomen, and many experts do not connect it with the later murders because of the difference in the wound pattern.

Canonical Five -

The Canonical Five Ripper victims are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

Mary Ann Nichols’ body was discovered at 3:40am on August 31, 1888 in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. Her throat was severed by two cuts, and the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. Several other incisions on the abdomen were caused by the same knife.

Annie Chapman’s body was discovered at 6am on September 8, 1888 near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitafeilds. Her throat was severed by two cuts. The abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was later discovered that the uterus had been removed. At the inquest, one witness described seeing Chapman at 5:30am with a dark haired man.

Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed in the early morning hours of September 30, 1888. Stride’s body was discovered at 1am in Dutfeild’s Yard, in Whitechapel. The cause of death was one clear-cut incision which severed the main artery on the left side of the neck. The absence of mutilations o the abdomen has led to uncertainty about whether Stride’s murder should be attributed to the Ripper or whether he was interrupted during the attack. Witnesses though they saw Stride with a man earlier that night but gave differing descriptions.

Eddowes’ body was found in Mitre Square, London, 45 minutes after Stride’s was found. The throat was severed and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. A local man named Joseph Lawende had passed through the square with two friends shortly before the murder, he described seeing a man with a woman who could have been Eddowes. Eddowes’ and Strides’ murders were later called the “Double Event”. Part of Eddowes’ bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Some writing on the wall above the apron piece became known as the Goulston Street graffiti and seemed to implicate a jew or jews, but it was unclear whether the graffiti was written by the murderer or was merely incidental. Police commissioner Charles Warren feared it would spark anti-semitic riots and ordered it be washed away before dawn.

Mary Jane Kelly’s mutilated body was discovered lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller’s Court, off Dorset Street, Spitafeilds, at 10:45am on November 9, 1888. The throat had been severed down to the spine, and the abdomen almost emptied of it’s organs. The heart was missing.

The canonical murders were perpetrated at night, on or close to a weekend, either at the end or a month or a week or so after. The mutilations increased in severity as the series of murders proceeded, except for Stride, whose attacker may have been interrupted. Nichols was not missing any organs, Chapman’s uterus was taken, Eddowes had her uterus and kidney removed and her face mutilated and Kelly’s body was eviscerated and her face hacked away, though only her heart was missing.

Later Whitechapel Murders -

Kelly is generally considered to be the Ripper’s final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprits death, imprisonment, institutionalism or emigration. The Whitechapel murders file details another four murders that happened after the canonical five, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, The Pinchin Street Torso and Frances Coles.

Mylett was found strangled in Clarke’s Yard, High Street on December 20, 1888. There was no sign of a struggle, and the police believed that she had accidentally hanged herself on her collar while drunk or committed suicide. Nevertheless, the inquest jury returned a verdict of murder. McKenzie was killed in July 17, 1889 by severance of the left carotid artery. Several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body.

The Pinchin Street Torso was a headless and legless torso of an unidentified woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, on September 10, 1889. It seems probable that the murder was committed somewhere else and that parts of the dismembered body were dispersed for disposal. Coles was killed on February 13, 1891 under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. Her throat was cut but the body was not mutilated.

James Thomas Sadler was seen earlier with Coles and was arrested by police, charged with her murder, and briefly thought to be the Ripper. He was discharged from court for lack of evidence of March 3, 1891.

Investigation -

The surviving police files on the Whitechapel murders allow a detailed view of the investigative procedures. A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries throughout Whitechapel. Forensic material was collected and examined. Suspects were identified, traced and either further examined or eliminated from the suspect list. More than 2,000 people were interviewed, 300 investigated and 80 people detained.

The investigation was initially conducted by the Metropolitan Police’s criminal investigation department headed by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. After the murder of Nichols, detective inspectors Fredrick Abberline, Henry Moore and Walter Andrews were sent from Scotland Yard to assist.

The overall direction of the murder enquiries was hampered by the fact that the newly appointed head of the CID Robert Anderson was on leave in Switzerland between September 7th and October 6th, during the time when Chapman, Stride and Eddowes were killed.

Butchers, Slaughterers, surgeons, and physicians were suspected because of the manner of the mutilations. A report from Inspector Swanson to the home office confirms that 76 butchers and slaughterers were visited, and that the injury encompassed all their employees for the previous six months.

Criminal Profiling -

At the end of October, Robert Anderson asked police surgeon Thomas Bond to give his opinion on the extent of the murderer’s surgical skill and knowledge. The opinion offered by Bond it the earliest surviving offender profile. Bond’s assessment was based in his own examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and the post mortem notes from the four previous canonical murders. He wrote;

“ All five murders no doubt were committed by the same hand. In the first four, the throats appear to have been cut from left to right, in the last case owing to the extensive mutilation it is impossible to say in which direction the throat was cut but, arterial blood was found on the wall in splashes close to where the woman’s head must have been laying. All the circumstances surrounding the murders lead me to form the opinion that the women must have been lying down when murdered and in every case the throat was cut first.”

Bond was strongly opposed to the idea that the murderer possessed any kind of scientific of anatomical knowledge, or even the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer. In his opinion, the killer must have been a man of solitary habits, subject to periodical attacks of homicidal and erotic mania, with the character of the mutilations possibly indicating satyrisis. Bond also stated that the homicidal impulse may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of the mind, or the original disease but neither are very likely.

There is no evidence of any sexual activity with any of the victims, yet psychologists suppose that the penetration of the victims with a knife and “leaving them on display in sexually degrading positions with the wounds exposed” indicates that the perpetrator derived sexual pleasure from the attacks.

Suspects -

The concentration of the killings around weekends and public holidays and within a few streets or each other has indicated to many that the Ripper was in regular employment and lived locally. Others have thought that the killer was an educated upper-class man, possibly a doctor or aristocrat who ventured into Whitechapel from a more well-to-do area. Such theories drawn on cultural perceptions such as fear of the medical profession, mistrust of modern science, of the exploitation of the pour by the rich. Suspects proposed years after the murders include virtually anyone remotely connected to the case by contemporary documents, as well as many famous names who were never considered in the police investigation.

Everyone alive at the time is now dead, and modern authors are free to accuse anyone “without any need for any supporting historical evidence”. There are many theories about the identity and profession of Jack The Ripper, but authorities are not agreed upon any of them and the tuber of named suspects reaches over one hundred.

Despite continued interest in the case, the Ripper’s true identity remains unknown to this day, and will likely remain so.

Letters -

Over the course of the Ripper murders, the police, newspapers, and others received hundreds of letters regarding the case. Some were well-intentioned offers of advice for catching that killer, but the vast majority were useless. Hundreds of letters claimed to have been written by the killer himself, and three of these in particular are prominent, the “Dear Boss” letter, the “Saucy Jacky” postcard and the “From Hell” letter.

The “Dear Boss” letter, dated September 25, was postmarked September 27, 1888. It was received that day by the central news agency, and was forwarded to Scotland Yard on September 29. Initially it was considered a hoax, but when Eddowes was found three days later with one ear partially cut off, the letter’s promise to “clip the ladies ear off” gained attention. Eddowes’ ear appeared to have been nicked incidentally during that attack. However, the letters threat to send the ears to police was never carried out. The name “Jack The Ripper” was first used in this latter by the signatory and gained worldwide notoriety after it’s publication.

The “Saucy Jacky” postcard was postmarked October 1, 188 and was received the same day by the central new agency. The handwriting was similar to the “Dear Boss” letter. It mentions that two victims were killed very close to one another, which was thought to refer to the murders of Stride and Eddowes. It has been argued that the letter was posted before the murders were publicized, making it unlikely that a civilian would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known and published by journalists.

The “From Hell” letter was received by George Lusk, leader of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, on October 16, 1888. The handwriting and style is unlike that of the “Dear Boss” and “Saucy Jacky” notes. The letter came with a small box in which Lusk discovered half of a kidney, preserved in Ethanol. The writer claimed that he fried and ate the other half of the kidney. The kidney was examined by Dr.Thomas Openshaw of London Hospital, who determined it was human and from the left side, but couldn't determine any other biological characteristics. Openshaw subsequently also received a letter signed “Jack The Ripper”.

Scotland Yard published facsimiles of the “Dear Boss” letter on October 3, in the ultimately vain hope that someone would recognize the handwriting. Police officials later claimed to have identified a journalist as the author of both the “Dear Boss” letter and “Saucy Jacky” postcard. The journalist was identified as Tom Bullen.

Legacy -

The nature of the murders and of the victims drew attention to the poor living conditions in the east end and galvanized public opinion against the overcrowded, unsanitary slums. In the two decades after the murders, the worst of the slums were cleared and demolished =, but the streets and some buildings survive and the legend of the Ripper is still promoted by guided tours of the murder sites. In 2015, the Jack The Ripper Museum opened in East London.

In addition to the contradictions and unreliability of contemporary accounts, attempts to identify the real killer are hampered by the lack of surviving forensic evidence. DNA analysis on extant letters is inconclusive, the available material has been handled many times and it too contaminated to provide meaningful results. There have been mutually incompatible claims that DNA evidence points conclusively to two different suspects, and the methodology of both has also been criticized.