As autumn leaves started to fall in 1888, Victorian London was reeling from a series of gruesome murders. Jack the Ripper was slaughtering women and butchering them, leaving a horrific scene behind.
But, shockingly, it was not just the Ripper. What many people don’t know is that at the same time as Jack the Ripper’s spree, there was another serial killer in London murdering and dismembering women in a manner that was every bit as shocking.
The Ripper case and the fascination and fear associated with it have overshadowed what was known as the Thames Torso Murders. Who was this other serial killer, and were these two inhuman predators really one: could he have been Jack?
The Thames Torso Murders
The Thames Torso Murders were a series of unsolved murders and dismemberment of women in London, England, from 1887 to 1889. What made this case difficult was that this was the same that the infamous Jack the Ripper was targeting women in the slums of the Whitechapel district in London.
It is true that the Thames Torso Murders were determined to be unrelated to Jack the Ripper. Almost unbelievably, London had two serial killers murdering and mutilating women at the same time.
This conclusion largely came from the methods of the murders, and what the murderers did to the bodies of their victims. The victims of the Thames Torso Murders were dismembered and lacked the mutilation of the genitals and abdominal area that was the modus operandi of Jack the Ripper.
There are four “canonical” murders attributed to the Thames Torso Murders; however, authorities consider similar murders that occurred in London back in 1873 and 1874, as well as another murder in Tottenham Court Road in 1884. Of the canonical four victims, only one was ever able to be identified.
The first of the canonical four murders is known as the Rainham Mystery. Workers pulled a wrapped bundle out of the River Thames and were horrified when they discovered a female’s torso in May of 1887.
Body parts that belonged to the same woman were discovered scattered across London, and medical experts were able to reconstruct her body minus the head and upper chest, which were never found. The investigators and medical experts said that the killer had some knowledge of anatomy and surgery, but the remains were not a sick joke by a medical student.
No cause of death was able to be determined, and at a coroner’s inquest, a jury had to give the verdict as simply, “Found Dead.”
A Pattern Emerges
The Thames Torso Murders also became known as the Whitehall Mystery, as a result of the locations of several body parts, although it was certainly not just Whitehall where the bodies were found. From September 11 through October 2, 1888, three days after the Ripper killed two girls in one night and just weeks before his sudden disappearance, the dismembered body parts of a woman in three different locations were uncovered.
On September 11, the arm of a woman was found in the Thames River off the village of Pimlico, and the second arm was recovered on September 28 alongside the Lambeth road. On October 2, the headless torso of a woman was found at the construction site for what would become Scotland Yard.
The month before the Whitehall Mystery, Jack the Ripper’s first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, was discovered on August 31, 1888, the start of his horrific, rapid and ferocious killing spree. While the investigators had determined the Thames Torso Murders were not related to Jack the Ripper, the people of London didn’t know.
People understandably became terrified of the dark, their neighbors, and strangers across the city. A medical expert involved in the Thames Torso Murders stated that “[I] thought the arm was cut off by a person who, while he was not necessarily an anatomist, certainly knew what he was doing-who knew where the joints were and cut them pretty regularly.”
Some investigators believed the murderer might have been a butcher or possibly a knacker. A knacker was a professional who was called in to remove the remains of dead animals (primarily horses) from the streets of London and then cut the remains up to fit onto a cart.
The Murder of Elizabeth Jackson
After the Whitehall Mystery, London was gripped by Jack the Ripper; however, by 1889, after months with no sign from Jack, people were less interested in the Ripper’s killings, and London saw a pause in murders for seven months. Maybe the Ripper or Rippers had stopped their attacks.
Unfortunately, unlike Jack the Thames Torso Murderer began killing again, and on June 4, 1889, the torso of a woman was pulled from the Thames in the village of Horselydown. At the same time the torso was being removed from the river, the left leg belonging to the deceased woman was fished out from underneath the Albert Bridge in Chelsea.
In a report from The London Times that was published on June 11, the pieces of the woman that had been collected so far were listed as “are as follows: Tuesday, left leg and thigh off Battersea, lower part of the abdomen at Horsleydown; Thursday, the liver near Nine Elms, upper part of the body in Battersea Park, neck and shoulders off Battersea; Friday, the right foot and part of leg at Wandsworth, left leg and foot at Limehouse; Saturday, left arm and hand at Bankside, buttocks and pelvis off Battersea, right thigh at Chelsea Embankment, yesterday, right arm and hand at Bankside.”
In perhaps a sick reference, one of her body parts had been tossed over the fence and onto the Shelley Estate, the home of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
At the inquest following the recovery of most of the woman’s remains, it was stated again that the dismemberment showed skill but not the fineness of a surgeon and looked more like the work of a butcher or knacker. The remains this time were fresher than the remains found at Rainham, and doctors were able to conclude that the victim was dead for about 48 hours before being dissected.
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This third victim was also about eight months pregnant, and unlike the first the authorities were able to identify her. Even though the woman’s head was never recovered, the body was identified as that of Elizabeth Jackson, who was homeless and a prostitute from Chelsea.
The Pinchin Street Torso Murder
The last of the canonical four victims was discovered on September 10, 1889. A police constable found the torso of a woman while on his beat on Pinchin Street.
Unlike the three previous murders, the torso showed signs of bruising that was believed to have been caused by a beating that took place the day before the torso was found. The abdomen of the remains was mutilated like the other Ripper victims, but the murderer didn’t mutilate her genitals.
Investigators who worked on the Ripper case believed this torso was the work of Jack the Ripper. Still, it was linked to the Thames Torso Murders mainly because of the lack of genital mutilation and evidence that the limbs were removed and looked like the other three Torso Murder victims. Her identity was never uncovered, and the rest of her limbs were never found.
But there may indeed have been more. Besides the canonical four, the Battersea Mystery and the Tottenham Court Road Mystery are believed to be related to the Thames Torso Murders.
In the Battersea Mystery, the remains of a woman’s torso were found near Battersea. Other limbs were found in nearby Limehouse, Woolwich, and Nine Elms in September of 1873.
A second torso of a woman was discovered in June 1874 in the Thames at Putney. Only the torso was found, and the jury at the inquest couldn’t agree to a verdict, so it was left as an unresolved case.
The Tottenham Court Road Mystery relates to the discovery of the remains of an unidentified woman in a span of five days. The victim’s skull, meat from the thigh, an arm, and a torso were found. One of the woman’s arms had a tattoo on it, which they believe meant that the victim was likely a prostitute.
So, who were these women, and who was killing and dismembering them, leaving their body parts in such distant and random locations around London? The leading theory associated with the Thames Torso Murders is also the simplest: that the victims might have been killed by Jack the Ripper and not a second murderer running loose in London at the same time.
However the police have repeatedly disagreed with this in their conclusion, and stated that there was no connection between the Thames Torso Murders and the Jack the Ripper case. It’s heavily debated whether the torso murderer was a separate killer in the same area or more victims of Jack the Ripper, even though the lack of genital mutilation is what led the police to believe that there were two serial killers active at the same time in the same location.
It is unlikely that the identity of the torso killer will be discovered all these years later when there wasn’t much additional evidence gathered. Even if it were, it would be untestable today.
Top Image: The Thames Torso murders, at the exact same time as those of Jack the Ripper, led to London becoming a city of fear. Source: John Tenniel / Public Domain.
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