His biggest claim to fame is that he supposedly named himself “Jack the Ripper” in a series of taunting letters to the London press and that one letter enclosed a human kidney, allegedly from one of his victims. The idea that he corresponded with and taunted the authorities is part of Jack the Ripper’s lore, but in fact there is no conclusive evidence that any of the letters were written by the murderer or that the human kidney came from one of his victims. (Police at the time concluded it was a prank by a medical student.) There are 210 letters from different sources claiming to be the Whitechapel murderer archived in the London Metropolitan Police file folder MEPO 3/142.3 Not a single one has been authenticated as having come from the actual killer.
Other than a few witnesses claiming to have seen one of the victims in the company of a “gentleman,” there is no persuasive evidence that Jack the Ripper was from the upper class or that he was a physician or skilled surgeon or perhaps even a member of the royal family, a high-ranking Freemason, an artist or another famous serial killer like H. H. Holmes or Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, all of which claims have been argued by factions of ripperologists.4 Recently it has been suggested that there was a “Dracula connection” to the author Bram Stoker, while the “Alice in Wonderland connection” points to author Lewis Carroll as Jack the Ripper, and somewhere I am sure there is a theory out there that these murders were actually committed by aliens.5
I will outline here what we know “for sure” and, based on that, and only that, what we might be able to conclude speculatively about Jack the Ripper from a big-picture point of view.
Firstly, a large body of literature—or ripperature—on Jack the Ripper was written before 1975, when the original letters and police files were first made accessible to the author of The Complete Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, who is considered the soberest of the ripperologists. Prior to that, during the first eighty-seven years after the case, no legitimate, primary source history of the Whitechapel murders could have been written.
Much of the earlier nonsense written about Jack the Ripper, some of it based on outright made-up sources, left behind a large body of secondary material that continues to contaminate the line between fact and fiction.6 This is common in conspiracy literature: evidence is made to fit the theory (rather than the opposite) and gets incorporated into the overall historiography, and then is repeated from book to book until the original erroneous source is lost and forgotten.
Making matters harder, archives from other government departments involved in the investigation of the Whitechapel murders remained closed to researchers until 1992.7 Moreover, the infamous “Dear Boss” letter written in bloodred ink and signed “Jack the Ripper,” which introduced his moniker into the press, was pilfered in the 1880s and lost until its return in November 1987, when its anonymous possessor (probably a conscientious descendant of the police officer or functionary who took it home as a souvenir—a common occurrence in historical crime cases) mailed the letter back to the London police.
In 1888 the Whitechapel district in London’s East End was basically skid row for the near-homeless, alcoholic, mentally ill and destitute. There were numerous daily rooming houses, doss-houses/flophouses, soup kitchens, pubs, taverns, sweatshops, small foundries, slaughter yards, rag merchants, street hawkers and pawnshops, and literally over a thousand desperate prostitutes plying their trade.
It was a dirty and primitively violent cesspool of a place, and a lot of crimes committed there were not reported to authorities, but nonetheless, there were no murders in Whitechapel in 1886 or 1887. Zero. London itself, with a population of 5.5 million, reported only 8 murders in 1886 and 13 in 1887.8 So it’s easy to see why, when Whitechapel was suddenly hit with 8 murders in 1888 (including the 5 or 6 Ripper murders), it raised alarms. It pushed London’s overall murder total that year to a then-record high of 28. London was already experiencing a murder “epidemic”—and selling scads of newspapers—before Jack the Ripper came on the scene in August.
THE CANONICAL FIVE JACK THE RIPPER MURDERS
The five so-called “canonical victims” of Jack the Ripper were murdered from August 31 to November 9, 1888. (Most of the crime scenes have been obliterated in the reconstruction of London, but numerous websites and customized Google maps will show you the locations.)9 Contrary to popular film portrayals of the victims as attractive, saucy young women dressed in shiny satin Hollywood-Victorian saloon-girl gowns, most of the prostitutes murdered by Jack the Ripper were diseased with tuberculosis, hepatitis or syphilis; derelict, alcoholic, middle-aged (and “middle-aged” in the nineteenth century was like seventy-five years old today) prostitutes with missing teeth, greasy hair, scarred and sagging skin covered in weepy pus sores, clothed in stinky, soiled Oliver Twist rags. Subtract a century of social progress and civilization from today’s crack-and-meth-addicted hookers and truck-stop “lot lizards” who haunt the most forlorn corners of the American landscape, desperately selling themselves for a fix, the most degraded of the degraded, so frequently the preferred victims of serial killers to this day—the walking less-dead—and you’ll get Whitechapel 1888.
Mary Ann Nichols, Friday, August 31, 1888, forty-three years old, was found between three forty and three forty-five a.m. in a footway at Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. Nichols had been seen alive at two thirty a.m. in a state of drunkenness. She had no money for a doss-house room to flop the night in and went to the street to find a customer.
The victim was lying on her back with her dress pushed up to her waist.
Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, from left to right, so deeply that it nearly severed her head. The windpipe and spinal cord were cut through.
Two distinct additional cuts were made on the left side of the throat.
The abdomen had been jaggedly cut open along the center of her torso, beneath the ribs along the right side and under her pelvis to the left of her stomach, but no viscera or organs were extracted. There were two stab wounds to her genitals.
There were no bruises or wounds consistent with a struggle.
Wounds were made with a long-bladed and very sharp knife.
Her throat wounds appeared to have been inflicted first, while she was already forced to the ground, and the remaining wounds were inflicted postmortem.
Annie Chapman, Saturday, September 8, 1888, about 47 years old, was found about five forty-five a.m. in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields in Whitechapel. She was seen in a drunken state at two thirty a.m. and by a witness at five thirty a.m. talking with a man near where she was later found.
The victim was lying on her back, her legs drawn up and open, the feet resting on the ground and the knees turned outward. Her left arm was lying on her left breast.
The throat was deeply cut from left to right and the wound reached around the neck. The muscular structures appeared as though an attempt had been made to separate the bones of the neck.
The face was swollen and turned on the right side. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. There was a bruise over the right temple. On the upper eyelid there was a bruise, and there were two distinct bruises, each the size of a man’s thumb, on the top of the chest.
There were two distinct, clean cuts on the left side of the spine. They were parallel with each other and separated by about half an inch.
The abdomen had been entirely laid open, the intestines severed and lifted out of the body and placed on the shoulder of the corpse; whilst from the pelvis, the uterus and its appendages, along with the upper portion of the vagina and the posterior two-thirds of the bladder, had been entirely removed. No trace of these parts could be found.
The incisions were cleanly made, avoiding the rectum, and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid causing injury to the cervix uteri.
There was no evidence of a struggle or sexual
assault.
Two brass rings normally worn by the victim were missing and her ring fingers showed abrasions, indicating they were forcibly removed.
The contents of the victim’s pockets were emptied and arranged tidily at her feet.
Wounds were made with a long knife with a thin blade six to eight inches in length, similar to a medical amputation knife or a slaughterhouse knife.
The physical evidence indicated that the perpetrator seized the victim under the chin from behind and squeezed her throat until she was unconscious. The victim was then laid on the ground and her throat cut from left to right in two places, followed by the acts of mutilation.
The physician examining the body stated that, in his opinion, the perpetrator showed anatomical knowledge and surgical skill in his mutilation.
A water-resistant leather apron of the kind worn by butchers and leatherworkers was found in the yard near a water tap, leading to the unidentified perpetrator—and later a suspect, John Pizer—being called “Leather Apron.” There is no evidence that the apron was linked to the murder.
On Thursday, September 27, a London news agency received the infamous “Dear Boss” letter, the first of several signed “Jack the Ripper.” It included the following passages: “I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled . . . I love my work and I want to start again . . . The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you . . . Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly Jack the Ripper, Don’t mind me giving the trade name.”
It was treated as a joke at first, but on Saturday, September 29, the news agency forwarded the letter to the police literally hours before the “double event” of that night.
Elizabeth Stride, Sunday, September 30, 1888, about forty-five years old, was found at one a.m., inside the gates of Dutfield’s Yard at No. 40 Berner Street, at the corner of Commercial Road East in St. George-in-the-East. Stride had been seen that evening in the company of, and soliciting, numerous men. Her attack had been witnessed by several people and a vague description emerged, something on the order of “a man with a mustache.”
The victim was found near a wall, on her back with her legs drawn up and her knees fixed near the wall. Her right arm was over the belly; the back of the hand and wrist had on it clotted blood. The left arm was extended and there was a packet of breath mints in her left hand.
There was a clear-cut incision on the neck. It was six inches in length and commenced two and a half inches in a straight line below the angle of the jaw, one half inch in over an undivided muscle, and then becoming deeper, dividing the sheath. The cut was very clean and deviated a little downward. The arteries and other vessels contained in the sheath were all cut through. The cut through the tissues on the right side was more superficial, and tailed off to about two inches below the right angle of the jaw. The deep vessels on that side were uninjured. From this it was evident that the hemorrhage was caused through the partial severance of the left carotid artery.
The victim had been forced to the ground and her throat cut as she lay on her back.
No mutilation was evident, and the assumption is that the perpetrator was interrupted by passersby in the street.
Catherine Eddowes, Sunday, September 30, 1888, forty-six years old, was found at one forty-five a.m., at Miter Square, Aldgate, City of London. Eddowes was not working as a prostitute at the time but was severely alcohol dependent. She was detained for drunk-and-disorderly behavior and released by the police at twelve fifty-five, fifty minutes before being found dead. A witness claimed to have seen her at one thirty-five a.m. talking to a man about thirty years old, five feet, seven inches tall, with a fair complexion and mustache. He was wearing a pepper-and-salt-colored jacket which fit loosely and a gray cloth cap with a peak of the same color. He had a reddish handkerchief knotted around his neck.
The victim was lying on her back with the head turned to the left shoulder. The clothes were drawn up over the abdomen and her thighs were naked. The arms were by the side of the body as if they had fallen there. Both palms faced upward, the fingers slightly bent. A thimble was lying off the finger on the right side. The left leg was extended in a line with the body.
The throat was cut across to the extent of six or seven inches. A superficial cut commenced about an inch and a half below the lobe, and about two and a half inches behind the left ear, and extended across the throat to about three inches below the lobe of the right ear. The big muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. The larynx was severed below the vocal cord. All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife having marked intervertebral cartilages.
The face was severely mutilated. There was a cut about a quarter of an inch through the lower left eyelid, dividing the structures completely through. There was a scratch through the skin on the left upper eyelid, near to the angle of the nose. The right eyelid was cut through to about half an inch. There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose, extending from the left border of the nasal bone down near the angle of the jaw on the right side of the cheek. This cut went into the bone and divided all the structures of the cheek except the mucous membrane of the mouth. The tip of the nose was quite detached by an oblique cut from the bottom of the nasal bone to where the wings of the nose join the face. A cut from this divided the upper lip and extended through the substance of the gum over the right upper lateral incisor tooth. About half an inch from the top of the nose was another oblique cut. There was a cut on the right angle of the mouth as if made with the point of a knife. The cut extended an inch and a half, parallel with the lower lip. There was on each cheek a cut that peeled up the skin, forming a triangular flap about an inch and a half.
The front walls of the abdomen were laid open from the breastbone to the pubes. Her intestines were drawn out and placed over her right shoulder and smeared with fecal matter. One piece of intestine was detached from her body and placed between her body and left arm. The body was missing the left kidney and the uterus. The left renal artery was also severed. Several stab wounds were present, one in the liver and another in the left groin. The vagina and cervix of the womb were uninjured, but the majority of the womb was removed.
The weapon was a sharp, pointed knife about six inches in length.
There were no signs of a struggle.
The cause of death was hemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate, and the mutilations were inflicted postmortem as the victim lay on her back.
A piece cut from the victim’s apron, wiped in blood, was found nearby in a passageway entry on Goulstone Street under some graffiti written in chalk on the brick wall:
The Juwes are
The men that
Will not
be Blamed
for nothing
Fearing an anti-Semitic outburst, police erased the graffito before it could be photographed. Because of the spelling of “Juwes,” some schools of ripperology connect the graffito to Masonic terminology and allege that there was a conspiracy in a Mason-dominated police department to protect a fellow Mason and possibly a member of the royal family.10 However, London was covered in graffiti at that time and there is not a shred of evidence that the killer chalked that line of graffiti or that it had any connection to the crime whatsoever.
On Monday, October 1, the double murder, along with the Jack the Ripper letter, was splattered on the front pages of every newspaper. It was a big story introducing the Whitechapel murderer’s new moniker: Jack the Ripper. The newspapers debated the authenticity of that letter and the hundreds of crank and prank letters that
followed. No conclusive evidence links the letters to the actual unidentified perpetrator of the killings.
Mary Jane Kelly, Friday, November 9, 1888, about twenty-five years old, was found at ten forty-five a.m. in her ground-floor room in a lodging house on 26 Dorset Street by a rent collector. She was seen in the company of different men the night before and in the early morning. The last sighting was at two a.m. by a witness who was acquainted with Kelly and saw her in the company of a man with a pale complexion, a slight mustache turned up at the corners, dark hair, dark eyes, and bushy eyebrows. He was, according to this witness, of “Jewish appearance.” The man was wearing a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes, a long dark coat trimmed in astrakhan, and a white collar with a black necktie fixed with a horseshoe pin. He wore dark spats over light button-over boots. A massive gold chain in his waistcoat had a red stone hanging from it. He carried kid gloves in his right hand and a small package in his left. He was five feet six or seven tall and about thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Kelly and the man crossed Commercial Street and turned down Dorset Street. The witness followed them. Kelly and the man stopped outside Miller’s Court and talked for about three minutes. Kelly was heard to say, “All right, my dear. Come along. You will be comfortable.” The man put his arm around Kelly, who kissed him and said, “I’ve lost my handkerchief.” At this, he handed her a red handkerchief. The couple then headed down Miller’s Court.
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