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THE WORK OF A DEVIL
31 August 1888
A woman is found dead in the East end.
It’s dark out, and it’s only by the light of his lamp that the police constable can see that her throat has been cut and she has been disembowelled. Two other men, both of them cart-drivers, are already reporting the body to another policeman, and word spreads to a doctor, who examines the body to officially declare her dead, and to specify that she must have died only half an hour before being found. The knowledge is unsettling. Buck’s Row is known to be home to some of the rougher Englishmen, but the violence and cruelty of this murder is something they are not used to. The police force had only been formed fifty-nine years prior.
The wounds: two deep cuts to the throat, approximately 8cm long and 10cm long, each of them deep enough to reach the spine, accompanied by two bruises on either side of the neck, indicating that the killer had choked or strangled her. A deep gash in the torso from the lower abdomen to the sternum, and several smaller cuts alongside it. It was decided that the killer must have some anatomical knowledge from the injuries inflicted on the victim.
The victim: Mary Ann Nichols, also called Polly. Forty two years old, and a lady of the night, struggling to provide for her five children. Identification was a struggle given the few belongings on the body, some of which included a handkerchief and a comb, but she was recognised by another resident of the lodging house she lived in. She was later identified by her husband, who no longer lived with her.
Police think the killing is gang-related. About four months prior, another woman in Whitechapel was attacked. She died in the hospital, but had told the police before passing that she had been attacked by a gang, and police theorise that the murders could be related.
They are very wrong.
The next theory is that the killer is a man called ‘Leather Apron’ by local prostitutes. The women have reported that he runs an extortion racket and has threatened the prostitutes in the area with violence. Police search for the man, but when the press hear of the theory, many of them emphasise the man’s ‘Hebrew appearance,’ and antisemitism takes hold of the area.
8 September 1888
In the early hours of the morning, a woman’s body is found less than a mile from where Mary Nichols had been discovered. This time, the violence and depravity has escalated.
The wounds: Almost the same as Mary’s. A deep cut across her throat, a gash in her abdomen inflicted with seemingly the same blade used on her neck. This time, the victim’s intestines have been pulled from her body, draped over her shoulders like a gruesome garland, and her uterus appears to have been taken by the killer. The doctor that performed the post-mortem investigation will be so sickened by the violence that he will refuse to describe the injuries in detail during the inquest.
The victim: Annie Chapman. Forty seven years old, making a living on the streets. She’d been seen around 5:30 in the morning by another prostitute who knew her, speaking to a man that the witness, Elizabeth, hadn’t seen clearly enough to identify. The man was heard asking Annie, ‘Will you?’ to which Annie responded, ‘Yes.’ Soon after, a man heard a woman’s voice shout, ‘No!’ followed by a thud. Annie’s body is found at about six in the morning.
A leather apron was found close to her body, though it was clean of blood stains. Soon after, the police identified ‘Leather Apron,’ who was a man named John Pizer. He was arrested by Sgt. William Thicke, but he had solid alibis for the murders, and he was soon ruled out as a suspect and cleared of any involvement.
The theory that the killer must have anatomical knowledge or may even be a doctor is solidified by the efficiency with which he removed Annie’s womb. At the time, there is a demand for wombs in the medical field; a coroner named Wayne Baxter claims that a curator from a museum at a London medical school had told him that an American doctor offered £20, equivalent today to about £3,258, for each womb that could be provided.
The police increase their presence in the area, which seems to have deterred the killer from any more attacks, and many residents of Whitechapel believe that the killer has stopped entirely.
30 September 1888
The night of the ‘double event.’
The ‘event’ starts at around one in the morning when a woman is found dead by a man named Louis Diemschutz. The police later think that Diemschutz must have interrupted the killer before he could finish what he set out to do. The next body is found less than an hour later.
The wounds: The first victim’s throat had been slashed, but her body was not mutilated, leading the police to believe the killer had been interrupted. The second victim had the killer’s signature wounds: Her throat had been cut and she had been disembowelled. But the killer had also removed and taken her uterus as well as her left kidney, and he had mutilated her face.
The victims: Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Forty four and forty six respectively, both assumed to be prostitutes, though it was unclear whether Catherine truly was or not. Elizabeth had married John Stride and worked running coffee shops, but returned to prostitution when her marriage failed and John passed away. She went by the nickname ‘Long Liz’ and lived occasionally with a man named Michael Kidney. Catherine had been with a man named John Kelly, who insisted she was not a prostitute and he never knew her to be one throughout their relationship, which had lasted seven years. At the time of her death, Catherine has ‘Bright’s disease,’ now called nephritis, a disease of the kidneys. Her friends describe her as an intelligent woman with a temper.
A piece of Catherine’s apron is found by the police later that day, stained with blood. The wall above is graffitied, reading, ‘the Juwes are the men that will not be blame for nothing.’ The Metropolitan police want to erase it from the wall, wanting to avoid any unrest caused by it due to the rampant antisemitism in the area, but the City of London police insist it may be evidence, and it should be preserved. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, arrives and orders it be erased, and it ultimately leads to a dead end.
A letter arrives at a London News Agency from the killer before Elizabeth and Catherine’s deaths, and it is released to the public afterward, as per the killer’s instructions: ‘Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight.’ In the letter, the killer claims to have kept the blood of his victims to write the letter with, but the blood coagulated and he was unable to, stating, ‘…it went thick like glue, and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha.’ The killer has a nonchalant, amused tone as he describes his gruesome crimes, mentioning his knife, ‘nice and sharp,’ as well as his last victim: ‘I gave the lady no time to squeal.’ It is in this letter that the killer gives himself the moniker that will last centuries: Jack the Ripper.
Prior to the letter, he had been known as the Whitechapel Murderer, the Red Fiend, as well as Leather Apron despite Pizer’s dismissal as a suspect. The killer writes under his signature, ‘Don’t mind giving me the trade name.’
Despite the discomfort throughout the entire letter, something that must stick out to the public and the investigators is the knowledge the Ripper has about the case. He refers to John Pizer as a suspect, stating, ‘That joke about leather apron gave me real fits,’ and he ends the letter with, ‘They say I’m a doctor now. Ha ha.’ The public had already been living with the fear that the killer lives with them, is one of them, but this letter solidifies this fear: the killer could be anyone they pass on the street, reading the newspaper, on his way to work, sipping tea and searching for his next victim.
The letter makes international news. Many newspapers dismissed the victims as simple prostitutes, paying the price for their ‘lifestyle choices,’ and reassured middle and upper class women that they were perfectly safe. Some historians claim that not all of the victims were actually sex workers, and rather they simply had no home or consistent place to stay. The women were vulnerable, and the killer, like many men, took advantage of their vulnerability.
More letters are received after the initial one, now called the ‘Dear Boss’ letter due to the opening, but they are dismissed as hoaxes. One letter is addressed as ‘From Hell,’ and contains half a kidney, initially believed to be Catherine Eddowes’s, but it is found to be a sick prank from a medical student.
9 November 1888
A cry of ‘murder!’ is heard at about four in the morning, but it is a common shout from drunks and brawlers, and it is ignored.
At around eleven in the morning, a landlord sends his assistant to collect an overdue payment from one of his tenants, but she does not answer the door when the assistant knocks. He looks inside through a window and sees blood, which he reports to his boss. The landlord goes to take a look himself, and will later say of the scene, ‘…it looked more like the work of a devil than of a man.’
The wounds: The victim had been skinned. Her uterus, kidneys, and one of her breasts had been removed and placed under her head like a pillow, her other breast along with her liver by her feet, and her intestines and spleen were placed on either side of her body. Other parts of her body had been removed and placed on the table by her bed. Her face had been mutilated beyond recognition, though the killer left her eyes untouched, and one of the inspectors would later comment that they ‘…seemed to be staring straight at me with a look of terror.’ The victim’s lover would only recognise her by her eyes and ears.
The victim: Mary Kelly. Twenty five years old and living in poverty, though popular and well-liked in the area. She lived for a time in a rented room with a fish porter named Joseph Barnet, who disliked that she had resorted to prostitution to make money, and moved out when Mary brought another prostitute over for a night. They’d had arguments about it, one of which escalated and resulted in a broken window, which they patched up with newspapers and a coat. Mary is the only victim of the killer to be found indoors instead of on the street.
20 December 1888
A drunk woman is seen with two men outside a pub at around two in the morning. She is found dead less than three hours later by a police sergeant and a police constable. She has died recently; her body is still warm, but they claim there are no visible signs of struggle or violence, and they say she must have died by suicide or natural causes. A postmortem is ordered in spite of this.
The wounds: The coroner’s assistant finds a mark on her neck that is less than a centimetre deep, accompanied by shallow scratches. The police surgeon states during the inquest that her nose had been bleeding and there was a ‘slight abrasion on the right side of her face.’ The mark the coroner found is concluded to have been from a cord tied around her neck tightly. Bruises are found on her neck that appear to be from thumbs and index and middle fingers, indication strangulation. The other scratches appear to have been from her attempts to release herself from the cord.
The victim: Rose Mylett. Twenty nine years old. She has one daughter, named Florence, who is eight years old at the time of her mother’s death, and is at school in Sutton. Rose goes by many names in the area, including ‘Drunken Lizzie’ due to her proclivity to drink, as well as ‘Millett’ and ‘Fair Alice.’ Her mother, who identifies her after her death, states that her true name is Catherine Mylett.
Despite the clear indications that Rose has been murdered, it is decided that this is not the work of the Ripper as the manner in which Rose died does not align with the Ripper’s usual violence. She had been strangled instead of eviscerated, and her body had not been mutilated.
Her murderer is not found.
17 July 1889
There hasn’t been a Ripper murder in nine months, and just as the public starts to ease into the idea that he may be finished, a woman is found next to a lamp-post around midnight. The Divisional Police Surgeon is brought to the scene, and he pronounces her dead.
The wounds: A zigzagged wound is found on her sternum, and despite it being shallow, there is blood over her abdomen and leg. She has not been mutilated.
The victim: Alice Mckenzie. About forty years old. She is identified by a man named James McCormack, who had lived with her for about six or seven years. She had lived with him as his wife, but McCormack does not know if Alice is married or not, nor what the reason was for her being outside in the late hours of the night. He claims she had never been out so late in the past. He describes her as a hard-working woman.
A clay pipe is found near Alice’s body. McCormack states that it did belong to Alice, and that she smoked very often. She is called ‘Claypipe Alice.’
Alice’s murder does not align with the Ripper’s propensities. The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police states when he returns from holiday that he believes that her murder was, ‘…an ordinary murder, and not the work of a sexual maniac.’
Her murderer is not found.
11 September 1889
Nearly a year from the first Ripper killing. The torso of a woman is found under a railway arch. This railway arch is close to where Elizabeth Stride was found in the previous year.
The wounds: The woman has been dismembered in a ‘skillful and deliberate’ manner. Her head and legs are nowhere to be found. Her hands are not hurt. There is a deep gash on her lower abdomen. It is not believed that the murder was committed in the same location as the discovery of the body due to the absence of blood on the ground, and it is concluded that she must have been murdered a few days beforehand, around the eighth of September.
The victim: Unidentified. She is laid to rest in a cemetery in Essex.
Some theorise that the Ripper has changed his modus operandi. None of her organs have been removed despite the killer clearly having enough time on his hands to dismember her, and this leads the police to believe that she must have been killed indoors, possibly in the killer’s residence. This murder is believed to be the work of another.
Her murderer is not found.
13 February 1891
A woman’s body is found by a police constable, who is adamant that he had passed by some fifteen minutes prior and hadn’t seen her, suggesting the killer had waited for him to leave to place the body. The contable says he hears a man’s footsteps departing before he spots the body. The constable blows his whistle when he sees the blood around the woman, and other officers join him. None of them have heard any kind of struggle or scream before the whistle.
The wounds: The victim’s throat has been slashed twice, enough to kill her. It is ordered by an inspector that her body is left in the position it has been found in during the initial inspection. The woman has a very faint pulse, and she is still warm, but it is too late to help her. It is later believed that she dies on the way to the hospital.
The victim: Frances Coles. Thirty one years old. She is identified by her father. She had apparently spent time with a sailor named Thomas Sadler, who is known for having several drunken altercations. Soon after Frances’ death, Sadler sells a knife he owns.
He is a suspect for Frances’s murder, as well as the other Whitechapel Murders, for a time, but the case falls apart, and he is soon cleared of any involvement. Frances is buried in an East London cemetery on the 25th of February.
Her murderer is not found.
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The suspects: Countless.
Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, known in London as George Chapman. In his twenties at the time of the Whitechapel murders, Chapman is known to be a misogynist, as the Ripper is assumed to be, and he was believed to have an ‘outrageous sexual drive,’ which aligns with the Ripper’s murders being sexually motivated.
Chapman only becomes a suspect after the murders end. He is a known killer: he is known to have killed at least three women, all of whom were once his wives. The first, Mary Spink, is said to have died of consumption, and soon after her death, Chapman is moving onto a woman he hires in his pub, named Bessie Taylor. He marries her, but is violent and abusive as he was with his first wife. A witness even claims he threatens Bessie with a revolver. Bessie begins showing symptoms of the same disease Mary had, and she dies of it. Chapman moves onto a woman named Maud Marsh, and they marry quickly, but Chapman loses interest quickly. He flirts with another woman, who refuses to be with him because he is married, and soon after, Maud falls ill. Her mother is suspicious of how enthusiastically Chapman volunteers to administer her medicine, and her suspicion spooks Chapman, who administers the medicine, which is poison, too quickly. Maud dies.
A post-mortem is ordered and arsenic is found in her organs and her brain. Chapman is arrested. The bodies of his previous wives are exhumed, and arsenic is found in them as well, but he is found guilty of only Maud’s murder. The jury needs only eleven minutes to deliberate. Chapman maintains his innocence until he is hanged on the seventh of April, 1903.
Despite having a clear hatred of women and murderous tendencies, Chapman would have been only twenty three at the time of the Whitechapel murders, which is younger than the eyewitnesses account for. Witnesses also claimed that the Ripper sounded intelligent, speaking in an ‘educated manner,’ but Chapman was a Polish immigrant who had only lived in London for about a year, and was likely not entirely fluent in English. Witnesses also neglected to mention any kind of foreign accent the Ripper may have had.
James Maybrick. Dies in 1889, after the ‘canonical’ Ripper killings, having been murdered by his wife by arsenic poisoning. In 1992, a journal is found that recounts the Ripper killings from the murderer's point of view. The journal is easily assumed to have belonged to James Maybrick by context provided in the text. Maybrick states in the journal that he saw his wife with an unnamed man in Whitechapel, and his anger compelled him to murder prostitutes in the area. He refers to his wife as ‘the bitch’ and ‘the whore.’ The journal describes the murders accurately in detail, and ends with, ‘I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentle man born. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.’ The last five words are identical to the end of the Dear Boss letter.
The diary is believed to be of the same time period as the killings, but forensic analysis comes back inconclusive. The man that turned the journal in, Michael Barrett, confesses that he forged the diary, but he later retracts this confession, and his wife claims the diary has been in her family’s possession since World War II. The decision on whether the journal is still undecided; there are reports in the journal about Mary Kelly’s murder that are inconsistent with official police reports as to where the killer placed her body parts in the room.
In 1993, an antique watch is purchased. There are etchings on it, reading the five canonical victims’ initials, along with a signature reading ‘J Maybrick’ and the words ‘I am Jack.’ Analysis finds that the scratches are compatible with the time period of the murders, but findings have been disputed.
Aaron Kosminski. The main suspect of the senior officers at the time of the murders. A Polish immigrant who arrived in London in around 1880, a few years after his brother moved. Little is known about his life in London, but it is later gathered from his medical reports that he is a hairdresser. He is summoned to court in December 1889 for not muzzling his dog, and he is required to pay a fee. This is his only run in with the law.
In 1890 he is admitted to a workhouse for displayed symptoms of mental illness, but he is released within three days. The next year he is re-admitted and is ‘certified as insane’ before he is transferred to a Lunatic Asylum in Middlesex County. The cause of his insanity is unknown, but his symptoms include ‘self-abuse’ and he is labelled as not being a danger to others. In the future, he will be thought to most likely have been schizophrenic, suffering of delusions and paranoia, but he is never classified as dangerous or homicidal.
Dr Francis Tumblety. An American doctor considered by an Inspector to be a quack. He is arrested on 7 November for ‘gross indecency,’ known to be homosexuality, and is released on bail. The Inspector believes Tumblety has committed suicide, but he is mistaken. Tumblety continues practising medicine, and is revealed to collect wombs in jars in his office, which he shows some guests. He is a known misogynist, but many believe that the notion that he is guilty is absurd.
The case against him is weak. There is no evidence that he is violent, and he is ‘not known as a sadist.’ The Metropolitan Police do not suspect him.
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Prince Albert Victor. Grandson of Queen Victoria, second in line to the British throne. He is seen as a disappointment to the royal family: his career in the military is not going anywhere, and there are rumours that he is a homosexual. He dies at the age of twenty eight in 1892.
The theory of Victor’s involvement is first brought up in a book written by Phillippe Julien in 1962. At this time, most suspects of the murders have passed away.
Julien theorises that the Prince was at least linked to the crimes if he wasn’t the Ripper himself. The theory is taken up by Dr Thomas Stowell, who writes an article using information from the prince’s own physician, Sir William Gull. Stowell states that Victor has contracted syphilis, which caused his mental state to deteriorate and drove him to insanity, prompting the murders in the East End. Stowell goes on to suggest that the royal family knew of Victor’s killings, but did not intervene until the ‘night of the double event,’ after which they put Victor in an insane asylum, where he stayed until he died.
Another theory is put forward that one of the prostitutes was potentially pregnant by Victor, and the royal family had her killed to cover it up, along with the other women, who possibly knew of the secret and had to be silenced.
Despite the abundance of theories against Victor, there are confirmations that he wasn’t even in London at the time of most of the murders, but others imply that it would not be difficult for the royal family to cover anything up. Still, there is no solid evidence outside of conspiracies.
The elusive nature of Jack the Ripper has captured the fascination of people throughout the world since the killings were initially taking place, inspiring different forms of media. Some pieces of literature depict the Ripper directly and literally, such as The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, published in 1913, and Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight, published in 1976. Others reference the murders, having been inspired by them, famously including the first Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as Time After Time by Karl Alexander, which was also made into a film.
The 1929 German film Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst tells the story of a woman who turns to prostitution and is followed by tragedy, inspired by the stories of the victims of Jack the Ripper. The episode With Affection, Jack the Ripper of the television series Sixth Sense explores the possibility of the Ripper having the opportunity of time travel to continue his killings.
The killings even inspired music, mostly in the metal subgenre. Judas Priest’s song The Ripper, released in 1976, tells the story of the killings from the Ripper’s point of view, including lyrics like ‘I’m a devil in disguise/I’m a footstep at night,’ and ‘All hear my warning/Never turn your back/On the ripper.’ Similarly, Motionless in White released a song in 2010 called London in Terror. The song includes lyrics like ‘I am the ripper and it’s killing time in this cutting room.’ American deathcore band established in 2006, Whitechapel chose their name from the notoriety of the Whitechapel area in London.
The Ripper killing inevitably also inspired other killings. Notably, Derek Brown was convicted in 2008 of the murders of two women despite their bodies never being found. He picked his victims in Whitechapel. Peter Sutcliffe, who killed from 1975-80, had at least twenty one victims, thirteen of whom were killed, and initially attacked sex workers. He was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper before he was caught.
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