Jack the Ripper, the infamous British serial killer from the 1800’s, has experienced worldwide fame due to his violent actions, as well as how his true identity has been unknown for over a century. While there have been many theories, we may have new information on who the killer really was.
What did Jack the Ripper do?
The website “Jack the Ripper 1888,” published and run by author Richard Jones, details the actions of Jack the Ripper. The killer did a series of murders throughout London’s East End, which has been described as the “sordid underbelly of Victorian society” by Jones.
He gained infamy due to the overly violent ways in which he killed his victims: he would cut their throats and often disembowel, or remove some organs of the victims. Since Jack the Ripper was never caught, it cannot be said for certain how many victims he actually had, but the official file for the killings– labeled the Whitechapel Murder files– had almost a dozen victims listed.
He often focused on sex workers in the East End, luring them to hidden areas where he would then murder them. Surviving pictures of some of the crime scenes reveal violent, bloody attacks that would leave anyone sick to their stomach.
However, Jack the Ripper rose to international acclaim and still remains infamous to this day due to many reasons, which Jones discussed.
“Several factors combined to help make this series of crimes famous all over the world. Not least amongst them was the fact that the newspapers of the day gave a huge amount of coverage to the crimes and provided their readers with daily updates on them with the result that Jack the Ripper effectively became a menacing media figure,” Jones said.
He also claims that the serial killer became a representative of London’s East End and its evils that many outside the area associated with it, thanks to its rates of poverty, violence and various vices.
Victims of note
The Whitechapel Murders case file contains 11 victims, though it is unknown how many of these were actually murdered by Jack the Ripper himself. Experts have debated for decades which victims may belong to Jack the Ripper and which may have resulted from others.
There are five “canonical” victims of Jack the Ripper, which are identified thanks to Sir Melville Leslie Macnaghten, London’s Chief Constable and Assistant Commissioner at the time, who was largely involved in the investigation process.
Macnaghten connected these victims to Jack the Ripper due to the prominent style of violence that would ultimately be associated with him: slashed throats and mutilated abdomens.
The “canonical” victims– in order from earliest to latest– are Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly.
Mary Nichols worked as a prostitute and later a live-in-servant and was murdered late on Aug. 30, 1888. Her body was found by two men on the ground under a gateway; the men could not identify whether or not she was actually dead, and ultimately chose to walk away and search for a policeman.
“But what neither man had noticed in the pitch darkness of Buck's Row was that the woman's throat had been slashed so savagely that, according to some newspaper reports, her head had almost been severed from her body,” Jones said.
Annie Chapman was another sex worker who also sold flowers and handmade crafts; she worked in Crossingham’s lodging house. Before her death, she had gotten into an argument with another worker, which led to a physical fight that left her bruised and wounded.
Money became tight, and on Sept. 8, she went out to make enough money to afford a bed in a lodging house. Her mutilated body was found in the early morning of the same day.
Elizabeth Stride worked cleaning lodging rooms after moving from Sweden and briefly running a coffee shop. The night of her murder, she was seen with a man by multiple others. They all described him as being around 5’5”-5’-7”, with minimal facial hair and dark clothing, including a unique hat.
One man, Israel Schwartz, is said to be the only person to witness a Jack the Ripper murder in the making, as he witnessed Stride with a man only 30 minutes before her corpse was found.
He identified two men at the scene, and claimed that one tried to follow him when they noticed him while the other man attacked Stride.
“The presence of the second man is something of a mystery. It has suggested to some that the killer had an accomplice… However, the evidence seems to suggest that the police traced the second man, and eliminated him as a suspect,” Jones said.
The next victim, Catherine Eddowes, had just been released from prison when Stride’s body was found. She had been arrested a few hours earlier for intoxication charges and slept in a cell until she sobered up and could take care of herself.
She was released and began walking home– what she did not know, however, was that the murderer was walking from the opposite direction to the same square, Mitre Square.
Three men recounted that they had walked through Mitre Square at around 1:30 a.m., and could identify that Eddowes was with a man alone in the square. One man, Joseph Lawende, may have actually seen Jack the Ripper’s face close up as he saw the couple interact.
Eddowes’s body was found only 15 minutes later in a pool of blood by a patrolling policeman. Despite countless potential witnesses around to catch the murderer as he fled, it is said that no one saw or heard anything.
The final victim, Mary Kelly, was a younger woman who lived in a rented room in Miller’s Court. She had lived with a man, Joseph Barnet, for most of her time in the court, but he moved out a few weeks before her death.
Kelly was described as pleasant and enjoyable company, and she was quite popular before her death. She was last seen alive by Barnet around 7 p.m. the night before her murder; her corpse was found in her room the next day by men coming to collect her late rent.
“The wall behind the bed was spattered with blood. On the bedside table was a pile of bloody human flesh. And there on the bed, barely recognizable as human, lay the virtually skinned down cadaver of Mary Kelly,” Jones described.
Some reports claim that the work of Jack the Ripper was more the work of a devil than of a man, and the violent, gruesome ways he murdered his victims certainly play into this idea– however, who the murderer was still remains unsolved. There have been plenty of accusations towards many men who roamed the streets around the Whitechapel Church at the time.
Current suspect, and how this conclusion was made
There are lots of theories on what the murderer had knowledge of that led to the murders being carried out as they were. It was eventually concluded by police at the time that Jack the Ripper was one individual man, rather than two like they had briefly theorized, but his profession was still up for debate.
The almost surgical cuts of his victims have led many to believe, even today, that Jack the Ripper had medical knowledge or worked as a butcher. They also believed him to be insane due to the overly violent crimes, and often searched asylum records for anyone who may match his description.
Some previous suspects include George Chapman, a junior surgeon and assistant hairdresser; James Maybrick, a cotton merchant; Walter Sickert, a man fascinated with murder; and Charles Cross, the very first supposed eyewitness of a victim of Jack the Ripper.
The most recent “confirmed” suspect is Aaron Kosminski, a Polish barber who was only 23 during the year of the murders. A shawl supposedly found at one of the crime scenes went through a series of genetic analyses to identify DNA evidence.
David Adam, a writer for Science | AAAS, discusses the details of why Kosminski has been given attention again after a century.
“The results come from a forensic examination of a stained silk shawl that investigators said was found next to the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes, the killer's fourth victim, in 1888. The shawl is speckled with what is claimed to be blood and semen, the latter believed to be from the killer,” Adam said.
These details were published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the main part of the research– in which the mitochondrial DNA is compared to the victim and Kosminski’s living relatives– was not included. The authors claim that it was not included because the genetic sequences of the relatives is private information.
Roman Valine, a student at Case Western Reserve University, doubts there is enough evidence.
“I’m inclined to believe it’s [Kosminski] because the supposed DNA evidence was published in a peer-reviewed public journal, but there are researchers arguing that the DNA they used, the mitochondrial DNA, is something that’s much better suited for excluding suspects than pointing to them,” Valine said.
The researchers claim that the DNA does point to the killer having brown hair and brown eyes, which align with eyewitness reports. However, it is impossible to confirm major details that would truly bring the case to a close.
Jack the Ripper may be a case that never gets solved, but as science and forensics continues to evolve over time, it may be possible to find out who the infamous serial killer truly was.
