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], issue of '']'' magazine, featuring cartoonist Tom Merry's depiction of the unidentified ] murderer Jack the Ripper.]] | ], issue of '']'' magazine, featuring cartoonist Tom Merry's depiction of the unidentified ] murderer Jack the Ripper.]] | ||
'''Jack the Ripper''' is an ] given to an unidentified ] |
'''Jack the Ripper''' is an ] given to an unidentified ] active in the largely impoverished ] area and adjacent districts of ], ] in the latter half of ]. The name is taken from a letter to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer, published at the time of the killings. | ||
The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, ] and ]. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed ''Ripperologists'' — the term used within the field for the authors, historians and ] ]s who study the case |
The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, ] and ]. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed '']''{{Fact|date=October 2007}} — the term used within the field for the authors, historians and ] ]s who study the case — to accuse a wide variety of individuals of being the Ripper. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era<ref>Perry L. Curtis (2001)'' Jack the Ripper and the London Press''</ref>, 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{{Fact|date=October 2007}}. | ||
Victims were women earning income as casual ]. The Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Some believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them and to explain the lack of reported blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from some victims has led to the proposal that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. | Victims were women earning income as casual ]. The Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Some believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them and to explain the lack of reported blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from some victims has led to the proposal that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. | ||
== |
==Victims== | ||
{{Ripper victims}} | {{Ripper victims}} | ||
⚫ | The number and names of the Ripper's victims are the subject of much debate. The so-called ''canonical five''<ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 260</ref> are a subset of the eleven victims listed in the police file documenting what were called "the Whitechapel murders"<ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'' </ref> | ||
===The first murders=== | |||
⚫ | The number and names of the Ripper's victims are the subject of much debate. The ''canonical five'' are a subset of the eleven victims listed in the police file documenting what were called "the Whitechapel murders" |
||
⚫ | 1. ], born c 1843, was attacked in ], Whitechapel April 3, 1888, and a blunt object was inserted into her vagina, rupturing her perineum. She survived the attack and managed to walk back to her lodging house with the injuries. 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 April 5, 1888. This was the first 'Whitechapel Murder', according to the book ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'' by Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow<ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 47-50</ref>. | ||
⚫ | 2. ] (name sometimes misspelled as Tabran; used the alias Emma Turner; maiden name Martha White), born on May 10, 1849, and killed on August 7, 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, 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. Her body was found at George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel <ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 51-55 </ref>. | ||
⚫ | == |
||
===The canonical five=== | |||
⚫ | The most widely accepted list, referred to as the canonical five, includes the following five prostitutes (or presumed prostitute in Eddowes' case) |
||
3. ] (maiden name Mary Ann Walker, nicknamed "Polly"), born on August 26, 1845, and killed on Friday, August 31, 1888. Nichols' body was discovered at about 3:40 in the early morning on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed ]), a back street in Whitechapel two hundred yards from the ]. Mary Ann Nichols was the first of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper <ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 56-62</ref>. | |||
4. ] (maiden name Eliza Ann Smith, nicknamed "Dark Annie"), born in September 1841 and killed on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Chapman's body was discovered about 6:00 in the morning lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard of 29 ], ]. The second of the 'canonical five' <ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 66-73 </ref>. | |||
⚫ | |||
* ] (maiden name Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, nicknamed "Long Liz"), born in ] on ], ], and killed on Sunday, ], ]. Stride's body was discovered close to 1:00 in the morning, lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed ]) in Whitechapel. | |||
⚫ | |||
⚫ | |||
⚫ | 5. ] (maiden name Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, nicknamed "Long Liz"), born in Sweden on November 27, 1843, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888. Stride's body was discovered close to 01:00 in the early morning, lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed ]) in Whitechapel. The third of the canonical five. | ||
⚫ | The authority of this list rests on a number of authors' opinions, but the basis for these opinions mainly came from notes made privately in 1894 by Sir ] as Chief Constable of the ] ], papers which came to light in 1959. Macnaghten's papers reflected his own opinion which was not necessarily shared by the investigating officers (such as Inspector ]). Macnaghten did not join the force until the year after the murders, and his memorandum contained serious errors of fact about possible suspects. 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 ] 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). Others prefer to expand the list by citing ] and others as probable Ripper victims. 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 |
||
⚫ | 6. ] (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, on the same day as the previous victim, Elizabeth Stride. Ripperologists refer to this circumstance as the "double event". Her body was found in ], in the City of London. The fourth of the canonical five victims. | ||
⚫ | Except for Stride (whose attack may have been interrupted), mutilations of the canonical five victims became continuously more 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. | ||
⚫ | 7. ] (called herself "Marie Jeanette Kelly" after a trip to Paris, nicknamed "Ginger"), reportedly born in either the city of Limerick or ], Munster, Ireland ca. 1863 and killed on Friday, November 9, 1888. Kelly's gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 am lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off ], Spitalfields. The fifth and last of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper. | ||
⚫ | The five canonical 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 ], 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. |
||
===Later murders=== | |||
⚫ | 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's ]. | ||
⚫ | 8. ] (true name probably Catherine Mylett, but was also known as Catherine Millett, Elizabeth "Drunken Lizzie" Davis, "Fair" Alice Downey or simply "Fair Clara"), born in 1862 and died on December 20, 1888. She was reportedly strangled "by a cord drawn tightly round the neck", 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, ]. | ||
⚫ | 9. ] (nicknamed "Clay Pipe" Alice and used the alias Alice Bryant), born circa 1849 and killed on July 17, 1889. She died reportedly from the "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. | ||
=== Other possible victims === | |||
⚫ | 10. "]", a term coined after a torso was found in similar condition to the body which constituted "]", though the hands were not severed, on September 10, 1889. The body was found under a railway arch in ], Whitechapel. An unconfirmed speculation of the time was that the body belonged to Lydia Hart, a prostitute who had disappeared. "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 <ref>Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) ''Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates'': 210-15 </ref>. | ||
Victims of other contemporary and somewhat similar attacks and/or murders have also been suggested as additions to the list. These victims are generally poorly documented. They include: | |||
⚫ | 11. ] (also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell"), born in 1865 and killed on February 13, 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, Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. After this eleventh and last 'Whitechapel Murder' the case was closed. | ||
* "Fairy Fay", a nickname for an unknown murder victim reportedly found on ], ] 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. The name of "Fairy Fay" does not appear for this alleged victim until many years after the murders, and it seems to have been taken from a verse of a popular song called '']'' that starts "Fare thee well my ] fay". 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. | |||
⚫ | ==The canonical five victims== | ||
* Annie Millwood, born ''c'' 1850, reportedly the victim of an attack on ], 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 ], 1888. | |||
⚫ | The most widely accepted list of Jack the Ripper's victims, referred to as the canonical five, includes the following five prostitutes (or presumed prostitute in Eddowes' case): ], ], ], ] and ]. | ||
⚫ | The authority of this list rests on a number of authors' opinions, but the basis for these opinions mainly came from notes made privately in 1894 by Sir ] as Chief Constable of the ] ], papers which came to light in 1959. Macnaghten's papers reflected his own opinion which was not necessarily shared by the investigating officers (such as Inspector ]). Macnaghten did not join the force until the year after the murders, and his memorandum contained serious errors of fact about possible suspects. 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 ] 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). Others prefer to expand the list by citing ] and others as probable Ripper victims. 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 {{Fact|date=October 2007}}. | ||
* Ada Wilson, reportedly the victim of an attack on ], 1888, resulting in two stabs in the neck. She survived the attack. | |||
⚫ | Except for Stride (whose attack may have been interrupted), mutilations of the canonical five victims became continuously more 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 five canonical 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 ], 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. Kelly's murder ended a six-week period of inactivity for the murderer. (A week elapsed between the Nichols and Chapman murders, and three between Chapman and the "double event".) | ||
⚫ | |||
⚫ | 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's ]. | ||
* "]", a term coined for the headless torso of a woman found in the basement of the new ] headquarters being built in Whitehall on ], 1888. An arm belonging to the body had previously been discovered floating in the ] near ], 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 in 1848, reportedly was the victim of an attack on ], 1888. She survived with only a light, though bleeding, cut on her throat. The wound was superficial and 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 ] between ] and ] 1889. She was reportedly identified by scars she had had prior to her disappearance and apparent murder. | |||
Evans and Rumbelow state that the 'canonical five' is a 'Ripper myth' and that the probable number of the Ripper's victims could range between three (Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes) and six (the previous three plus Stride, Kelly and Tabram) or even more<ref>Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 260</ref> | |||
⚫ | |||
⚫ | |||
⚫ | |||
* ] (nicknamed "Shakespeare",<!-- NOTE: She was NOT called Old Shakespeare, recent research has shown that it was simply Shakespeare when she was alive, and the Old part got tacked on years later in a news report that was not using "old" as part of her nickname but as a general descriptor. Later sources mentioning Old are in error. See http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/stevens_point_daily_journal/960428.html - --> reportedly for quoting ] by ]), born ''c''1835 and killed ], 1891, in ], ], ], ]. 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 ] eventually ruled out any connection.<ref> Wolf Vanderlinden, "The New York Affair" ''Ripper Notes'' part one issue 16 (July 2003); part two #17 (January 2004), part three #19 (July 2004 ISBN 0975912909)</ref> | |||
==Goulston Street graffiti== | ==Goulston Street graffiti== | ||
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==Investigation== | ==Investigation== | ||
] | ] | ||
It is important to appreciate that investigative techniques and awareness have progressed greatly since 1888. Many valuable ] techniques taken for granted today were unknown to the Victorian-era ]. The value of interpreting motives of serial killers, the concept of ], ], and other such knowledge and intelligence that have developed were poorly understood if not altogether unknown. Police recognised a sexual motive or element to the attacks, but were otherwise thoroughly unfamiliar with such crimes. |
It is important to appreciate that investigative techniques and awareness have progressed greatly since 1888. Many valuable ] techniques taken for granted today were unknown to the Victorian-era ]. The value of interpreting motives of serial killers, the concept of ], ], and other such knowledge and intelligence that have developed were poorly understood if not altogether unknown. Police recognised a sexual motive or element to the attacks, but were otherwise thoroughly unfamiliar with such crimes. | ||
The investigation into the Whitechapel murders was initially conducted by Whitechapel (H) Division C.I.D. headed by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. After the Nichols murder |
The investigation into the Whitechapel murders was initially conducted by Whitechapel (H) Division C.I.D. headed by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. After the Nichols murder Detective Inspectors ], Henry Moore and Walter Andrews were sent from Central Office at Scotland Yard to assist. After the Eddowes murder, which occurred within the ], the City Police under Detective Inspector James McWilliam were also engaged. | ||
While the investigation was not nearly as sophisticated as police work is today, the Jack the Ripper probe was filled with the earmarks of a modern investigation. The aforementioned Detective Inspectors all began a widespread inquiry that included interviewing witnesses and residents of the area, searching every imaginable spot for information.<ref>Odell, Robin. Ripperology: A Study of the World's First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomena. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006.</ref> Any methods such as fingerprinting would not have arrived on the scene until a few years later, so investigative methods were still in the development stages during the Jack the Ripper murders.<ref>Wilson, Colin and Damon. Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003.</ref> And any psychological profiling never went far beyond the idea of a “homicidal lunatic” <ref>Odell, Robin. Ripperology: A Study of the World's First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomena. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006.</ref> | |||
A group of volunteer citizens in London's East End called the ] patrolled the streets of London looking for suspicious characters, petitioned the government to raise a reward for information about the killer, and hired private detectives to question witnesses separate from the police. The committee was led by ] in 1888. Albert Bachert in 1889 claimed to be in charge of that group or perhaps a different group with the same stated purpose. | |||
On ] ], the British television channel ] released an ]-generated photo illustration showing what the researchers affiliated with the documentary believe the serial killer may have looked like. A former Metropolitan Police commander, John Grieve, was quoted as saying: "This is further than anyone else has got. It would have been enough for coppers to get out and start knocking on doors... they would have got him." Experts on the case, including author ], reacted with scepticism, noting that ]s are usually only put together through direct questioning of a live witness and that various Victorian police officials investigating the Ripper killings stated that either no one had got a good look at the killer, or perhaps only one or two, but certainly not the alleged "13 witnesses" whose statements Grieve and others affiliated with the documentary claimed to have used as the basis for the image. | On ] ], the British television channel ] released an ]-generated photo illustration showing what the researchers affiliated with the documentary believe the serial killer may have looked like. A former Metropolitan Police commander, John Grieve, was quoted as saying: "This is further than anyone else has got. It would have been enough for coppers to get out and start knocking on doors... they would have got him." Experts on the case, including author ], reacted with scepticism, noting that ]s are usually only put together through direct questioning of a live witness and that various Victorian police officials investigating the Ripper killings stated that either no one had got a good look at the killer, or perhaps only one or two, but certainly not the alleged "13 witnesses" whose statements Grieve and others affiliated with the documentary claimed to have used as the basis for the image. | ||
The '']'' was a group of people that patrolled the streets of London during the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. They patrolled London mainly at night in search for this murderer. The Committee was led by ] in 1888 and later by Albert Bachert. | |||
==Media== | ==Media== | ||
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At the time of the murders, a theatrical version of ]'s book '']'' was being performed. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets drew much attention, even leading ] to be accused by some members of the public of being the Ripper himself, although this theory was never taken seriously by the police. | At the time of the murders, a theatrical version of ]'s book '']'' was being performed. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets drew much attention, even leading ] to be accused by some members of the public of being the Ripper himself, although this theory was never taken seriously by the police. | ||
The british ] band ] recorded "The Ripper", a song inpired by Jack's character, in their 1976's album ]. | |||
The ] film '']'' featured Jack the Ripper stealing ] time machine and escaping to 1979 ], where he continued his murderous ways. | |||
The ] ] '']'' provided a comical explanation for the 'disappearance' of Jack the Ripper. It showed that he had been using the 'time portal' to hide in the 1990's after committing the murders, and was subsequently run over by a ] bus when confronted in the future. | |||
Spanish ] band Non Servium recorded "Jack" on their 2000 album N.S.A | |||
In ], Jack the Ripper was selected by the ] and its readers as the ]. | In ], Jack the Ripper was selected by the ] and its readers as the ]. | ||
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* ''The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper'' (1999) by ] and ] (editors), ISBN 0-7867-0626-0 | * ''The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper'' (1999) by ] and ] (editors), ISBN 0-7867-0626-0 | ||
* '']'' by ] (editor) | * '']'' by ] (editor) | ||
* ''Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed'' by ] - Published by Little Brown ] Originally published in 2002 and reprinted. | |||
* ''Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell'' (2001) by Stewart Evans and and Keith Skinner. Sutton: Stroud. | * ''Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell'' (2001) by Stewart Evans and and Keith Skinner. Sutton: Stroud. | ||
Revision as of 21:36, 22 October 2007
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Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the latter half of 1888. The name is taken from a letter to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer, published at the time of the killings. 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.
Victims were women earning income as casual prostitutes. The Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Some believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them and to explain the lack of reported blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from some victims has led to the proposal that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.
Victims
Template:Ripper victims The number and names of the Ripper's victims are the subject of much debate. The so-called canonical five are a subset of the eleven victims listed in the police file documenting what were called "the Whitechapel murders"
The first murders
1. Emma Elizabeth Smith, born c 1843, was attacked in Osborn Street, Whitechapel April 3, 1888, and a blunt object was inserted into her vagina, rupturing her perineum. She survived the attack and managed to walk back to her lodging house with the injuries. 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 April 5, 1888. This was the first 'Whitechapel Murder', according to the book Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow.
2. Martha Tabram (name sometimes misspelled as Tabran; used the alias Emma Turner; maiden name Martha White), born on May 10, 1849, and killed on August 7, 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, 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. Her body was found at George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel .
The canonical five
3. Mary Ann Nichols (maiden name Mary Ann Walker, nicknamed "Polly"), born on August 26, 1845, and killed on Friday, August 31, 1888. Nichols' body was discovered at about 3:40 in the early morning on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel two hundred yards from the London Hospital. Mary Ann Nichols was the first of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper .
4. Annie Chapman (maiden name Eliza Ann Smith, nicknamed "Dark Annie"), born in September 1841 and killed on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Chapman's body was discovered about 6:00 in the morning lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. The second of the 'canonical five' .
5. Elizabeth Stride (maiden name Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, nicknamed "Long Liz"), born in Sweden on November 27, 1843, and killed on Sunday, September 30, 1888. Stride's body was discovered close to 01:00 in the early morning, lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (since renamed Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. The third of the canonical five.
6. 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, on the same day as the previous victim, Elizabeth Stride. Ripperologists refer to this circumstance as the "double event". Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London. The fourth of the canonical five victims.
7. Mary Jane Kelly (called herself "Marie Jeanette Kelly" after a trip to Paris, nicknamed "Ginger"), reportedly born in either the city of Limerick or County Limerick, Munster, Ireland ca. 1863 and killed on Friday, November 9, 1888. Kelly's gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 am lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. The fifth and last of the canonical five victims of Jack the Ripper.
Later murders
8. 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"), born in 1862 and died on December 20, 1888. She was reportedly strangled "by a cord drawn tightly round the neck", 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.
9. Alice McKenzie (nicknamed "Clay Pipe" Alice and used the alias Alice Bryant), born circa 1849 and killed on July 17, 1889. She died reportedly from the "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.
10. "The Pinchin Street Murder", a term coined after a torso was found in similar condition to the body which constituted "The Whitehall Mystery", though the hands were not severed, on September 10, 1889. The body was found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel. An unconfirmed speculation of the time was that the body belonged to Lydia Hart, a prostitute who had disappeared. "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 .
11. Frances Coles (also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell"), born in 1865 and killed on February 13, 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, Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. After this eleventh and last 'Whitechapel Murder' the case was closed.
The canonical five victims
The most widely accepted list of Jack the Ripper's victims, referred to as the canonical five, includes the following five prostitutes (or presumed prostitute in Eddowes' case): Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
The authority of this list rests on a number of authors' opinions, but the 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. Macnaghten's papers reflected his own opinion which was not necessarily shared by the investigating officers (such as Inspector Frederick Abberline). Macnaghten did not join the force until the year after the murders, and his memorandum contained serious errors of fact about possible suspects. 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). Others prefer to expand the list by citing Martha Tabram and others as probable Ripper victims. 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 of the canonical five victims became continuously more 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 five canonical 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. Kelly's murder ended a six-week period of inactivity for the murderer. (A week elapsed between the Nichols and Chapman murders, and three between Chapman and the "double event".)
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's modus operandi.
Evans and Rumbelow state that the 'canonical five' is a 'Ripper myth' and that the probable number of the Ripper's victims could range between three (Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes) and six (the previous three plus Stride, Kelly and Tabram) or even more
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. At about 3:00 a.m., Constable Alfred Long discovered a bloodstained scrap of cloth in the stairwell of a tenement on Goulston Street. The cloth was later confirmed as part of Eddowes' apron.
There was writing in white chalk on the wall above where the apron was found. Long reported that the graffiti read:
"The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing".
Other police officers recalled a slightly different message:
"The Juwes are not The men That Will be Blamed for nothing".
Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold visited the scene and saw the graffiti. He feared that with daybreak and the beginning of the day's business, the message would be widely seen and might exacerbate the general Anti-Semitic sentiments of the populace. Since the Nichols murder, rumours had been circulating in the East End that the killings were the work of a Jew dubbed "Leather Apron". Religious tensions were already high, and there had already been many near-riots. Arnold ordered a man to be standing by with a sponge to erase the graffiti, while he consulted Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. Covering the graffiti in order to allow time for a photographer to arrive was considered, but Arnold and Warren (who personally attended the scene) considered this to be too dangerous, and Warren later stated he "considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once".
While the writing was found in Metropolitan Police territory, the apron was from a victim killed in the City of London, which has a separate police service. Some officers disagreed with Arnold and Warren's decision, 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 the message was wiped from the wall at approximately 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. Author Martin Fido notes that the graffiti included double negatives, a common feature of Cockney speech. He suggests that the graffiti might be translated into standard English as "The Jews are men who will not take responsibility for anything" and that the message was written by someone who believed he or she had been wronged by one of the many Jewish merchants or tradesmen in the area.
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 message was already there and the murderer dropped the scrap coincidentally, without interest in making a link (perhaps failing to notice the graffiti)
- The writing was 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 of apron at 3am
Ripper letters
Template:Ripper letters 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. The vast majority of these were deemed useless and subsequently ignored.
Perhaps more interesting were hundreds of letters which claimed to have been written by the killer himself. The vast majority of such letters are considered hoaxes. Many experts contend that none of them are genuine, but of the ones cited as perhaps genuine, either by contemporary or modern authorities, three in particular are prominent:
- The "Dear Boss" letter, dated September 25, postmarked and received September 27, 1888, by the Central News Agency, was forwarded to Scotland Yard on September 29. Initially it was considered a hoax, but when Eddowes was found three days after the letter's postmark with one ear partially cut off, the letter's promise to "clip the ladys ears off" gained attention. Police published the letter on October 1, hoping someone would recognise the handwriting, but nothing came of this effort. The name "Jack the Ripper" was first used in this letter and gained worldwide notoriety after its publication. Most of the letters that followed copied the tone of this one. After the murders, police officials contended the letter had been a hoax by a local journalist.
- The "Saucy Jack" postcard, postmarked and received October 1, 1888, by the Central News Agency, had handwriting similar to the "Dear Boss" letter. It mentions that two victims — Stride and Eddowes — were killed very close to one another: "double event this time". It has been argued that the letter was mailed before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, though it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area. Police officials later claimed to have identified a specific journalist as the author of both this message and the earlier "Dear Boss" letter.
- The "From Hell" letter, also known as the "Lusk letter", postmarked October 15 and received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on October 16, 1888. Lusk opened a small box to discover half a human kidney, later said by a doctor to have been preserved in "spirits of wine" (ethyl alcohol). 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. The writer claimed that he had "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. There is some disagreement over the kidney: some contend it had belonged to Eddowes, while others argue it was "a macabre practical joke, and no more".
Some sources list another letter, dated September 17, 1888, as the first message to use the Jack the Ripper name. Most experts believe this was a modern fake inserted into police records in the 20th century, long after the killings took place. They note that the letter has neither an official police stamp verifying the date it was received nor the initials of the investigator who would have examined it if it were ever considered as potential evidence. It is also not mentioned in any remaining police document of the time.
Ongoing DNA tests on the still existing letters have yet to yield conclusive results.
Investigation
It is important to appreciate that investigative techniques and awareness have progressed greatly since 1888. Many valuable forensic science techniques taken for granted today were unknown to the Victorian-era Metropolitan Police. The value of interpreting motives of serial killers, the concept of criminal profiling, fingerprinting, and other such knowledge and intelligence that have developed were poorly understood if not altogether unknown. Police recognised a sexual motive or element to the attacks, but were otherwise thoroughly unfamiliar with such crimes.
The investigation into the Whitechapel murders 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.
While the investigation was not nearly as sophisticated as police work is today, the Jack the Ripper probe was filled with the earmarks of a modern investigation. The aforementioned Detective Inspectors all began a widespread inquiry that included interviewing witnesses and residents of the area, searching every imaginable spot for information. Any methods such as fingerprinting would not have arrived on the scene until a few years later, so investigative methods were still in the development stages during the Jack the Ripper murders. And any psychological profiling never went far beyond the idea of a “homicidal lunatic”
On 20 November 2006, the British television channel Five released an E-FIT-generated photo illustration showing what the researchers affiliated with the documentary believe the serial killer may have looked like. A former Metropolitan Police commander, John Grieve, was quoted as saying: "This is further than anyone else has got. It would have been enough for coppers to get out and start knocking on doors... they would have got him." Experts on the case, including author Stewart P. Evans, reacted with scepticism, noting that facial composites are usually only put together through direct questioning of a live witness and that various Victorian police officials investigating the Ripper killings stated that either no one had got a good look at the killer, or perhaps only one or two, but certainly not the alleged "13 witnesses" whose statements Grieve and others affiliated with the documentary claimed to have used as the basis for the image.
The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was a group of people that patrolled the streets of London during the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. They patrolled London mainly at night in search for this murderer. The Committee was led by George Lusk in 1888 and later by Albert Bachert.
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. Reforms to the Stamp Act in 1855 had enabled the publication of inexpensive newspapers with wider circulation. 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 legend that cast a shadow over later serial killers.
Some believe that 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, and the Hillside Strangler, besides the derivative 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. This attention enabled social reformers of the time to finally gain the support of the "respectable classes". 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
Main article: Jack the Ripper suspectsMany theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper have been advanced. None have been entirely persuasive.
Jack the Ripper in popular 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. See Jack the Ripper fiction for information.
At the time of the murders, a theatrical version of Robert Louis Stevenson's book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was being performed. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets drew much attention, even leading the star of the show to be accused by some members of the public of being the Ripper himself, although this theory was never taken seriously by the police.
The british heavy metal band Judas Priest recorded "The Ripper", a song inpired by Jack's character, in their 1976's album Sad Wings of Destiny.
The 1979 film Time After Time featured Jack the Ripper stealing H. G. Wells time machine and escaping to 1979 San Francisco, where he continued his murderous ways.
The BBC sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart provided a comical explanation for the 'disappearance' of Jack the Ripper. It showed that he had been using the 'time portal' to hide in the 1990's after committing the murders, and was subsequently run over by a double decker bus when confronted in the future.
Spanish Oi! band Non Servium recorded "Jack" on their 2000 album N.S.A
In 2006, Jack the Ripper was selected by the BBC History Magazine and its readers as the worst Briton in history. (BBC)
The legend of the Ripper is still promoted in the East End of London, with many guided tours of the murder sites. The Ten Bells, a Victorian pub in Commercial Street that had been frequented by Jack the Ripper's victims, was the focus of such tours for many years. To capitalize on this business, the owners changed its name to the 'Jack the Ripper' in the 1960s, but following protests by feminists and others, the pub returned to its old name.
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. Philip Sugden's The Complete History of Jack the Ripper is widely considered the best general overview of the case. Six periodicals about Jack the Ripper have hit the market since the early 1990s: Ripperana (1992-present), Ripperologist (1994-present, electronic format only since 2005), the Whitechapel Journal (1997–2000), Ripper Notes (1999-present), Ripperoo (2000–2003) and the The Whitechapel Society Journal (2005-present).
Notes
- Perry L. Curtis (2001) Jack the Ripper and the London Press
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 260
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 47-50
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 51-55
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 56-62
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 66-73
- Stewart Evans and David Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 210-15
- Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 260
- Stephen Knight (1976) Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution
- Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner (2001) Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell
- Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow (2006) Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates: 137-40
-
DiGrazia, Christopher-Michael (March, 2000). "Another Look at the Lusk Kidney". Ripper Notes. Retrieved 2007-10-19.
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(help) - Odell, Robin. Ripperology: A Study of the World's First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomena. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006.
- Wilson, Colin and Damon. Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003.
- Odell, Robin. Ripperology: A Study of the World's First Serial Killer and a Literary Phenomena. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2006.
- William Taylor (2000) This Bright Field: a Travel Book in One Place: 83-92
References
- The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, (2002) ISBN 0-7867-0276-1
- The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook by Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, (2002) ISBN 0-7867-0768-2
- Jack the Ripper: The Facts by Paul Begg, (2004) ISBN 1-86105-687-7
- Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow, (2006) ISBN 0-7509-4228-2
- The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow, (Revised edition 2005) ISBN 0-425-11869-X
- Ripperology by Robin Odell, (2006) ISBN 0-87338-861-5
- The Jack the Ripper A-Z by Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner, (1996) ISBN 0-7472-5522-9
- The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999) by Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund (editors), ISBN 0-7867-0626-0
- Casebook: Jack the Ripper by Stephen P. Ryder (editor)
- Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell - Published by Little Brown UK Originally published in 2002 and reprinted.
- Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell (2001) by Stewart Evans and and Keith Skinner. Sutton: Stroud.
See also
- Jack the Stripper
- Långrocken (mysterious 1893 Swedish attacker of women some thought was Jack the Ripper)
- Joseph Vacher (aka the French Ripper)
- Yorkshire Ripper
- The Blackout Ripper
- Servant Girl Annihilator
External links
- Casebook: Jack the Ripper has an extensive collection of contemporary newspaper reports related to the murders as well as articles by modern authors.
- The Metropolitan Police history of Jack the Ripper discusses the investigation into the killings.
- The National Archives - Jack the Ripper holds images and transcripts of letters claiming to be from Jack the Ripper.
- Whitechapel Society 1888 is a social organization dedicated to the Ripper case. It holds bimonthly meetings in London and has its own newsletter.
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