Case File: Jack the Ripper

Victorian-era London saw an influx of impoverished immigrants from Ireland and Eastern Europe crowd into squalid East End slums, which were rife with crime, violence, alcoholism and other vices, including prostitution.

Racist, antisemitic and anti-Catholic sentiments were all too common, and violent attacks on female sex workers were often blamed on the victims. Still, a series of gruesome murders beginning in 1888 shocked Londoners.

Emma Smith was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death that April by two to four men (accounts vary). Four months later, Martha Tabram met a similar fate after she was repeatedly stabbed all over her body in a staircase just a few blocks away from where Smith was attacked. 

Investigators weren’t convinced that the murders of these two sex workers were related, and some researchers today think there isn’t enough evidence to link these deaths to Jack the Ripper’s five later murders, which are referred to as “canonical” murders because of their similarly gruesome style of attack. 

On August 31, 1888, the still-warm body of 43-year-old Mary Ann Nichols was discovered on a Whitechapel-area street called Bucks Row. Her throat had been slashed so completely she was nearly decapitated. Her abdomen had also been sliced and her stomach was cut open. 

The following week, Annie Chapman, 47, was found mutilated in an alley in Spitalfields. Her body had been horribly dismembered, with her abdomen opened, several internal and sexual organs removed and her intestines carefully draped across her shoulder.

By this time, a terrorized public began calling the killer “Leather Apron,” a reference to the item worn by butchers. Owing to the culprit’s obsession with human organs, there was speculation that the killer could be a butcher or perhaps a surgeon. (Some authorities, however, dispute this supposition because the murderer seemed to have only a crude understanding of anatomy.) 

On September 30, 1888, during a one-hour nighttime period, two women were murdered. At around 1:00 a.m., a peddler was driving his wagon through Whitechapel when his pony refused to take another step. Stepping down to investigate, the peddler saw the remains of Elizabeth Stride. Her body was still warm though her throat had been slashed; some experts believe the killer might have been interrupted during the murder.

Minutes later, Catherine Eddowes was found in a pool of blood in Mitre Square, just a few blocks away from where Stride had been killed. Eddowes’ body and face had been severely mutilated, with her throat slashed from ear to ear, her intestines, uterus and a kidney removed and a piece of her ear chopped off.

Mary Jane Kelly–the last of the five canonical victims–was behind on her rent, so her landlord and an aide went to collect on November 9. “The sight that we saw I cannot drive away from my mind," the landlord later said. “It looked more like the work of a devil than of a man.”

Kelly’s face had been hacked so badly it was beyond recognition. Her throat was severed to the bone, and her abdomen had been emptied of its organs, many of which were carefully arranged around her corpse.

Witnesses to the murders claimed to have seen some of the victims with a man shortly before their demise, but their descriptions were wildly different; some said he was a tall, well-dressed gentleman, while others said he was short and burly with a commoner’s simple clothing. 

Concerned citizens formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in September 1888, fearing not only for their safety, but also that the gruesome killings were having an impact on their business revenues. They, like many other London residents, grew increasingly frustrated with the police, who repeatedly failed to find a murderer who was operating in such a public manner.

Like some serial killers after him, Jack the Ripper seemed to delight in publicity and in teasing the authorities. Several letters claiming to be penned by the killer were sent to newspapers or to police. One such letter, known as the “Dear Boss” letter sent to the Central News Agency on September 27, carried a chilling threat.

“I love my work and want to start again,” the author wrote. “You will soon hear of me with my funny little games… The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly.”  A few days later, Eddowes was found with her ear clipped off. The letter was signed “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” a name that investigators and the public quickly adopted. Another letter, the “From Hell” letter, was received by the leader of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, George Lusk, on October 16, 1888. The letter was mailed along with half of a human kidney.

The letter, riddled with misspellings, suggested that the murderer also engaged in cannibalism: “I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.”

The official investigation into the murders continued for years–even after the killings had stopped by 1891–but no arrests occurred even after police interrogated dozens of butchers, surgeons, physicians and other likely suspects. The Metropolitan Police Service officially identified four prime suspects in the case, but none were ever charged with murder due to a lack of hard evidence.

Several other murders occurred in the crime-ridden Whitechapel and Spitalfields areas in the months before and after the canonical five killings. Some bore the trademark of Jack the Ripper, such as a slit throat and bodily mutilation, but investigators disagree on whether they should be linked to Jack the Ripper, a copycat killer or someone entirely unrelated.

Alice McKenzie, for example, was discovered in a Whitechapel alley in July 1889. Her throat had been stabbed twice and, like some Jack the Ripper victims, her skirts had been lifted up to reveal her genitals and her abdomen, which was cut from her breast to her navel.

One of the four main suspects identified by police was Aaron Kosminski, an immigrant Polish barber living in Whitechapel who spent much of his adult life in insane asylums. In 2022, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a report stating that genetic testing of blood and semen from a shawl found at Eddowes's murder scene was a DNA match with one of Kosminski's living relatives. These findings, however, were widely criticized as lacking in important details and too weak to be definitive.

Other suspects named by the Metropolitan Police Service included Michael Ostrog, a Russian-born petty criminal and conman who claimed to be a surgeon in the Russian navy; Montague John Druitt, a barrister and schoolteacher who drowned himself in the Thames River shortly after the last canonical murder; and James Thomas Sadler, a seaman who was a suspect in the 1891 murder of Frances Coles, a Whitechapel prostitute. None of these men were charged with murder due to a lack of evidence.

Newspapers came under intense criticism for their sensationalistic handling of the Jack the Ripper cases, but that didn’t stop editors from exploiting the killings. The availability of cheap, halfpenny newspapers, combined with the reluctance of police to reveal details of their investigation, led to lurid speculation by reporters and the rapid spread of rumors, including those tinged with racist and antisemitic overtones.

The crowded, unsanitary conditions in Whitechapel and other East End slums received greater attention during and after the murder spree. Many slum neighborhoods benefited from the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, which allowed the construction of new housing for people forced to move out of condemned buildings.