Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved women working as prostitutes who lived in the slums of the East End of London. Their throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to speculation that the killer had some anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and numerous letters were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard from people purporting to be the murderer.
The name "Jack the Ripper" originated in the "Dear Boss letter" written by someone claiming to be the murderer, which was disseminated in the press. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax and may have been written by journalists to heighten interest in the story and increase their newspapers' circulation. Another, the "From Hell letter", was received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and came with half a preserved human kidney, purportedly taken from one of the victims. The public came to believe in the existence of a single serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, mainly because of both the extraordinarily brutal nature of the murders and extensive media coverage of the crimes.
Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed enduring international notoriety on the Ripper, and the legend solidified. A police investigation into a series of eleven brutal murders committed in Whitechapel and Spitalfields between 1888 and 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the 1888 murders. Five victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly—are known as the "canonical five", and their murders between 31 August and 9 November 1888 are often considered the most likely to be linked. The murders were never solved, and the legends surrounding these crimes became a combination of historical research, folklore and pseudohistory, capturing public imagination to the present day.
Background
In the mid-19th century, England experienced an influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the populations of the major cities, including the East End of London. From 1882, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire and other parts of Eastern Europe immigrated into the same area. The parish of Whitechapel in the East End became increasingly overcrowded, with the population rising to approximately 80,000 inhabitants by 1888. Work and housing conditions deteriorated, and a substantial economic underclass developed. Fifty-five per cent of children born in the East End died before the age of five. Robbery, violence, and alcohol dependency were commonplace, and the endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution for survival.In October 1888, London's Metropolitan Police Service estimated that there were 62 brothels and 1,200 women working as prostitutes in Whitechapel. Approximately 8,500 people resided in the 233 common lodging-houses within Whitechapel every night, with the nightly price for a coffin bed being fourpence and the cost of sleeping upon a "lean-to" or "hang-over" rope stretched across the dormitory being two pence per person.
The economic problems in Whitechapel were accompanied by a steady rise in social tensions. Between 1886 and 1889, frequent demonstrations led to police intervention and public unrest, such as Bloody Sunday. Antisemitism, crime, nativism, racism, social unrest, and severe deprivation influenced public perceptions that Whitechapel was a notorious den of immorality. These perceptions were strengthened in 1888 when the series of vicious 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 murdered by the same person. Eleven separate murders, stretching from 1888 to 1891, were included in a Metropolitan Police investigation and were known collectively in the police docket as the "Whitechapel murders". Opinions vary as to whether these murders should be linked to the same culprit, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the "canonical five", are widely believed to be the work of the Ripper. Most experts point to deep slash wounds to the throat, followed by extensive abdominal and genital-area mutilation, the 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.Smith was robbed and sexually assaulted in Osborn Street, Whitechapel, at approximately on 1888. She had been bludgeoned about the face and received a cut to her ear. A blunt object was also inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis and died the following day at London Hospital. Smith stated that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom she described as a teenager. This attack was linked to the later murders by the press, but most authors attribute this murder to general East End gang violence unrelated to the Ripper case.
Tabram was murdered on a staircase landing in George Yard, Whitechapel, on 7 August 1888; she had suffered 39 stab wounds to her throat, lungs, heart, liver, spleen, stomach, and abdomen, with additional knife wounds inflicted to her breasts and vagina. All but one of Tabram's wounds had been inflicted with a bladed instrument such as a penknife, and with one possible exception, all the wounds had been inflicted by a right-handed person.
The savagery of the Tabram murder, the lack of an obvious motive, and the closeness of the location and date to the later canonical Ripper murders led police to link this murder to those later committed by Jack the Ripper. However, this murder differs from the later canonical murders because although Tabram had been repeatedly stabbed, she had not suffered any slash wounds to her throat or abdomen. Many experts do not connect Tabram's murder with the later murders because of this 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.The body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered at about on Friday 1888 in Buck's Row, Whitechapel. Nichols had last been seen alive approximately one hour before the discovery of her body by a Mrs. Emily Holland, with whom she had previously shared a bed at a common lodging-house in Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, walking in the direction of Whitechapel Road. Her throat was severed by two deep cuts, one of which completely severed all the tissue down to the vertebrae. Her vagina had been stabbed twice, and the lower part of her abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound, causing her bowels to protrude. Several other incisions inflicted to both sides of her abdomen had also been caused by the same knife; each of these wounds had been inflicted in a downward thrusting manner.
File:29 Hanbury Street, 1888.jpg|thumb|right|29 Hanbury Street. The door through which Annie Chapman and her murderer walked to the yard where her body was discovered is beneath the numerals of the property sign.
One week later, on Saturday 1888, the body of Annie Chapman was discovered at approximately near the steps to the doorway of the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. As in the case of Nichols, the throat was severed by two deep cuts. Her abdomen had been cut entirely open, with a section of the flesh from her stomach being placed upon her left shoulder and another section of skin and flesh—plus her small intestines—being removed and placed above her right shoulder. Chapman's autopsy also revealed that her uterus and sections of her bladder and vagina had been removed.
At the inquest into Chapman's murder, Elizabeth Long described having seen Chapman standing outside 29 Hanbury Street at about in the company of a dark-haired man wearing a brown deerstalker hat and dark overcoat, and of a "shabby-genteel" appearance. According to this eyewitness, the man had asked Chapman, "Will you?" to which Chapman had replied, "Yes."
Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were both killed in the early morning hours of Sunday 1888. Stride's body was discovered at approximately in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street in Whitechapel. The cause of death was a single clear-cut incision, measuring six inches across her neck which had severed her left carotid artery and her trachea before terminating beneath her right jaw. The absence of any further mutilations to her body has led to uncertainty as to whether Stride's murder was committed by the Ripper, or whether he was interrupted during the attack. Several witnesses later informed police they had seen Stride in the company of a man in or close to Berner Street on the evening of 29 September and in the early hours of 30 September, but each gave differing descriptions: some said that her companion was fair, others dark; some said that he was shabbily dressed, others well-dressed.
File:CatherineEddowesJacktheRipperCanomicleVictimFourMitreSq.30091888a.jpg|thumb|left|Contemporaneous police drawing of the body of Catherine Eddowes, as discovered in Mitre Square
Eddowes's body was found in a corner of Mitre Square in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after the discovery of the body of Elizabeth Stride. Her throat was severed from ear to ear and her abdomen ripped open by a long, deep and jagged wound before her intestines had been placed over her right shoulder, with a section of the intestine being completely detached and placed between her body and left arm.
The left kidney and the major part of Eddowes's uterus had been removed, and her face had been disfigured, with her nose severed, her cheek slashed, and cuts measuring a quarter of an inch and a half an inch respectively vertically incised through each of her eyelids. A triangular incision—the apex of which pointed towards Eddowes's eye—had also been carved upon each of her cheeks, and a section of the auricle and lobe of her right ear was later recovered from her clothing. The police surgeon who conducted the post mortem upon Eddowes's body stated his opinion these mutilations would have taken "at least five minutes" to complete.
A local cigarette salesman named Joseph Lawende had passed by a narrow walkway to Mitre Square named Church Passage with two friends shortly before the murder; he later described seeing a fair-haired man of medium build with a shabby appearance with a woman who may have been Eddowes. Lawende's companions were unable to confirm his description. The murders of Stride and Eddowes ultimately became known as the "double event".
A section of Eddowes's bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel, at. A chalk inscription upon the wall directly above this piece of apron read: "The Juwes are The men That Will not be Blamed for nothing." This graffito became known as the Goulston Street graffito. The message appeared to imply that a Jew or Jews in general were responsible for the series of murders, but it is unclear whether the graffito was written by the murderer on dropping the section of apron, or was merely incidental and nothing to do with the case. Such graffiti were commonplace in Whitechapel. Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren feared that the graffito might spark antisemitic riots and ordered the writing washed away before dawn.
The extensively mutilated and disembowelled body of Mary Jane Kelly was discovered lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields, at on Friday 1888. Her face had been "hacked beyond all recognition", with her throat severed down to the spine, and the abdomen almost emptied of its organs. Her uterus, kidneys and one breast had been placed beneath her head, and other viscera from her body placed beside her foot, about the bed and sections of her abdomen and thighs upon a bedside table. The heart was missing from the crime scene.
Multiple ashes found within the fireplace at 13 Miller's Court suggested Kelly's murderer had burned several combustible items to illuminate the single room as he mutilated her body. A recent fire had been severe enough to melt the solder between a kettle and its spout, which had fallen into the grate of the fireplace.
File:MaryJaneKelly Ripper 100.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Black and white photograph of an eviscerated human body lying on a bed. The face is mutilated.|Police photograph of the body of Mary Jane Kelly as discovered in 13 Miller's Court, Spitalfields, 9 November 1888 Each of the canonical five murders was perpetrated at night, on or close to a weekend, either at the end of a month or a week after. The mutilations became increasingly severe as the series of murders proceeded, except for that of Stride, whose attacker may have been interrupted. Nichols was not missing any organs; Chapman's uterus and sections of her bladder and vagina were taken; Eddowes had her uterus and left kidney removed and her face mutilated; and Kelly's body was extensively eviscerated, with her face "gashed in all directions" and the tissue of her neck being severed to the bone, although the heart was the sole body organ missing from this crime scene.
Historically, the belief that these five canonical murders were committed by the same perpetrator is derived from contemporaneous documents which link them together to the exclusion of others. In 1894, Sir Melville Macnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Service and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, wrote a report that stated: "the Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims—& 5 victims only". Similarly, the canonical five victims were linked together in a letter written by police surgeon Thomas Bond to Robert Anderson, head of the London CID, on 1888.
Some researchers have posited that some of the murders were undoubtedly the work of a single killer, but an unknown larger number of killers acting independently were responsible for the other crimes. Authors Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow argue that the canonical five is a "Ripper myth" and that three cases can be definitely linked to the same perpetrator, but that less certainty exists as to whether Stride and Kelly were also murdered by the same person. Conversely, others suppose that the six murders between Tabram and Kelly were the work of a single killer. Percy Clark, assistant to the examining pathologist George Bagster Phillips, linked only three of the murders and thought that the others were perpetrated by "weak-minded individual ... induced to emulate the crime". Macnaghten did not join the police force until the year after the murders, and his memorandum contains serious factual errors about possible suspects.