Jack The Ripper
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Few cases of murder have puzzled police as much as the Whitechapel murders of 1888 puzzled the Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard did. There was little evidence of who the killer could have been, and the killer worked quickly and quietly as to never get noticed. There is only one name we know the killer by, and that is Jack the Ripper. “Jack” gained an immense amount of infamy, and to this day is extensively studied by so-called “Ripperologists”. His legend is based upon research, rumors, fictional accounts, and outright lies, and discriminating between them is very difficult due to the time barriers between today and 1888.
Whitechapel is a portion of the London East End, a notorious slum full of despondent people and the dregs of society. Immigrants, women of ill-fame, struggling artists, and hard-working men and women filled the massive housing buildings. Many of the buildings were dilapidated, and were often condemned. Even so, people still lived in them; it was better than living on the foul streets. The streets were full of garbage, and were filthy due to the increasing amount of industry that was spawning at the time and the pollution it created.
There were about three classes of people who resided in the East End; they were the homeless, the very poor, and the poor. Homeless people were considered to be at the absolute bottom of society’s hierarchy, with no source of income and a completely repulsive system of hygiene. They took no baths, never groomed
themselves, or any actions that would refine their appearance. The very poor had a very small income, which amounted to just enough to pay for a place to stay. They typically had no continuous job and did occasional work for people who needed physical labor done. The poor members of society had a steady job, and were slightly better off than the very poor, with enough money to have a place to stay and possibly support a small family.
The East End proved to be the perfect place for the Ripper to carry out his gruesome murders, since no one cared at all about the people who lived there. The police presence was somewhat elevated due to the massive number of immigrants that resided there, but usually either had their hands full with petty criminals or simply turned their head. The police presence was often criticized, being called incompetent by most citizens.
The first victim of the Ripper was a woman by the name of Mary Ann Nichols. She was five feet two inches tall, with a dark complexion and brown hair that was turning grey. She was around forty-four years of age at the time. The interesting thing about her, the thing that made her an incredibly easy target, was the fact that she was a prostitute. She was murdered in a secluded alley roughly twenty-five minutes after a police officer walked his route through it. Her body was discovered by Charles Cross and Robert Paul, and when they find her they thought she was alive. When the police arrived, she was dead. A very interesting thing to note was that she was found underneath the window of a very light sleeper, who noticed nothing out of the ordinary during the period of time that Mary Ann Nichols was murdered; therfore she must have
been killed quite discreetly.
The method in which Mrs. Nichols was murdered was unorthodox in its time, being one of the most graphic killings yet to occur. She had a bruise on the right side of her jaw, likely caused by the killer’s grip. She had two deep cuts on her neck, one ceasing midway through the neck and the other spanning the entire width of the neck. She had several deep cuts in various locations on her abdomen. Due to the direction of the cuts inflicted, it seemed that the killer would have been left-handed. One of the most disturbing facts about her homicide is that all of the injuries were inflicted with an incredible amount of violence, and it is obvious that the killer took great pleasure in the mutilation of his victims.
The next victim of the Ripper was Annie Chapman, a short, stout, moderately unattractive woman. She, like Mary Ann Nichols, was a prostitute, though she did bear some distinction. While most ladies of the night had serious drinking problems, Annie was described as being a women who “seldom took any drink” (casebook.org) by her friends. She was a rather bold woman, who, just days before being murdered, got into a brawl with another woman, who punched Annie hard in the face and breast, bruising her in both places. Both of these bruises were noticeable on Annie at the time of her death. Mrs. Chapman was murdered outside, in the public, against a fence that denoted the boundaries of Albert Cadoch’s backyard. The only person who might have any clue that she was being murdered was Cadoch himself, who said that he had heard someone say, “No,” and then he heard a thud of something landing against the fence.
Annie’s murder was much more brutal than that of Nichols. The thing about this
murder that stunned authorities was the evidence of a lack of a struggle having taken place, similar to Nichols’ murder. There were signs of suffocation, which were the swollen face when the body was discovered, and her protruding tongue. Her throat was cut very deeply, to the point where some post-mortem investigators thought that the killer was trying to sever her head since there was some damaged tissue between the vertebrate of the spine.
Chapman’s entire abdomen had been laid open, with the intestines severed from the tissue that held them inside of it, and were laid on her shoulder. The uterus had been cleanly removed, and a small portion of the vagina was missing, showing that the killer had taken the entire uterus without damaging any part of it. The rectum had not been touched, and part of the bladder had been removed as well. The anatomical knowledge and surgical prowess astonished the morticians and doctors that examined her body, especially due to the fact that there was adequate evidence that the Ripper had removed the pelvic organs with one clean sweep of the knife each. More importantly, this had all been done in a time frame that would make even the most impressive surgeons’ jaws drop: less than a quarter of an hour.
The nest victims of Jack the Ripper were both killed on the same day in a double event, with the first being Elizabeth Stride. She stood five feet five inches tall, and she had no teeth in the lower portion of her jaw. She was 45 years old at the time of her death, and was a quiet women in nature. She had a serious problem with drinking, and often appeared in court on charges of being drunk and disorderly. Her murder was much different than that of the other