Police photograph of the murder scene of Mary Jane Kelly, the 5th canonical victim of Jack the Ripper.
Autumn 1888…Victorian London…Whitechapel…sharp knives…ripped women… We all know the story of Jack the Ripper. No one knows who he was but we have all heard of him and we all know what he did.
For those of us who are willing to look past the sensational, however, a few iconic and poignant images stand out starkly against the Victorian haze. Who could forget the upstanding and well-loved Catherine Eddowes singing softly to herself in her cell at Bishopsgate Police Station an hour before she was released just in time for her fateful meeting with Jack? The image of the delicate red rose and white maidenhair fern that Elizabeth Stride pinned to her jacket before going out on that last night of her life will also stay fresh forever. And then there was Mary Jane Kelly’s beautiful waist length hair that she absolutely refused to cover up with any hat. In stark contrast to this stands the fact that the killer mutilated Kelly’s face so hideously that she could be identified only by her eyes and ears…
What is there to say about Jack the Ripper that has not already been said? Who did he kill? His “canonical” victims comprise four middle aged lower class women who were at the bottom of the food chain – although they were not, as is commonly thought, prostitutes – and one beautiful young Irish girl who was indeed one of London’s “unfortunates”. Did he kill any other women? Maybe. Maybe not. We simply do not know although a few others could possibly be added to the list; middle aged lower class Martha Tabram, for instance. Did he have a consistent modus operandi? Possibly. Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes all had their throats slashed and were then disemboweled but Tabram was merely stabbed in the abdominal area, Stride only had her throat cut and Kelly was mutilated beyond words. Who was he? Again, we do not know and we are no closer to identifying him now than we were 120 years ago. Did he strike fear into the hearts of every woman living in the city: YES! Is he the serial killer that has spawned the largest number of conspiracy theories and media events: YES! And will we ever lose our fascination with The Ripper: NO!
One of the reasons why The Ripper so appeals to the public imagination is that he was the first killer who branded himself. The “Whitechapel Murderer” is a mouthful but that’s what the police and press were calling him before he gave himself the name “Jack the Ripper” in the “Dear Boss” letter sent to the Central News Agency in London in September 1888. His compulsion to boast about his crimes did not stop there and he sent out more postcards and letters during the weeks and months after the murders, his actions eerily foreshadowing those of both Zodiac and BTK. The Ripper – “just for jolly” – went further, though, and mailed to the Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee something that was probably a piece of Catherine Eddowes’s left kidney. Like most things Ripper, however, there are doubts: doubts about whether the kidney actually belonged to Eddowes and doubts about whether the killer himself had written all, or any, of the letters.
The rest of his appeal probably stems from the utter mystery that surrounds him. No one ever heard him, no one ever saw him and he seemed to have the gruesome ability to kill and horribly mutilate women in a matter of minutes and then disappear without trace into the thick London fog. And let us also not forget the hideous trophies that he took: Kelly’s heart, Eddowes’s kidney, Chapman’s womb… Who can even imagine what horrible things he did with such bizarre keepsakes?

Other killers have been compared to The Ripper – Edward Leonski and Peter Kurten come to mind – but not one of them will ever have even a fraction of The Ripper’s notoriety. And that is as it should be as the world does not want another Jack the Ripper.
Sources:
Jack the Ripper Wikipedia
Schechter, Harold. The Serial Killer Files. New York: Ballantine Books (2003)
Wilson, Colin. The History of Murder. Edison: Castle Books (2003)
Casebook Jack the Ripper Casebook Jack the Ripper
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