The nickname given to an unknown serial killer who killed five women in the Whitechapel section of the East End of
London from August
31 to November 9, 1888. The killer was given this nickname because a knife was used to cut the victims throats and mutilate their abdomens. To this day, nobody knows the identity of the killer, since nobody saw or heard anything suspicious.
By
today's standards, the Ripper murders would barely make headlines; a faceless
lust killer murdering five streetwalkers in a huge slum that's already swarming with criminals and lowlifes. 55% of children were dead before age five; outhouses, clogged sewers, slaughterhouses, and
horse-drawn buggies ensured that the filth and stench; overcrowding in crumbling buildings and low job prospects ensured that whole families were
homeless; drinking and fights were rampant, and many
people were missing teeth or had black eyes. Many women were forced to sell themselves as a sure way of supporting themselves and feeding their children, even if it meant going off to secluded nooks with six or seven strange (and potentially dangerous) men each day.
Contrary to the
popular (romanticized) image of a black-caped figure in a
top-hat, the victims were last seen with very nondescript, working-class men; the Ripper would most certainly have been caught had he worn the cape and
top-hat.
There have been many theories as to who did this and there have been numerous urban legends (
even the Royal Family was not spared the rumors), although most of these stories are certainly false.
While
Jack the Ripper has gone down in history as the star of history's great whodunnit, few
people remember the victims:
-Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, found at 3:
45 AM, August 31, 1888, age 43. Mother of five, three of whom were grown at the time. Separated from her husband, whom she left because of his affair during her fifth pregancy, Polly became caught in the downward spiral of drinking and prostitution. Polly was a homeless alcoholic during her last days and was last seen trying to secure
money to pay for a bed at her lodging house.
-Annie Chapman, found at 6 AM, September 8, 1888, age 47. Mother of three, one of whom was born crippled, another dead at the age of twelve in 1882.
Annie and her husband, while originally lower middle-class, took to drinking from the stresses around their children and separated after falling into poverty. His death in 1886 was a death-blow to her will to live. By her death,
Annie was malnourished, homeless, and suffering from tuberculosis and syphillis.
-Elizabeth "Long
Liz" Stride, found at 1 AM, September 30, 1888, age 45. She had separated from a husband in 1881 and had a troubled common-law
marriage with a dock worker at her death.
-Catherine "Kate" Eddowes, found at 1:45 AM, September 30, 1888, age 46. Mother of three grown children. Separated from her first common-law husband, she was living quite happily with her second, going from doss house to doss house. An intelligent, bubbly
woman, her last night was spent sleeping off the drink in a local jail until the
police released her at 1 AM.
-Mary
Jane Kelly, aka "Ginger" or "Fair Emma", found at 10:45 AM, Novemeber 9, 1888, age 25. The youngest victim and the only victim to be killed indoors, she had a ground-floor flat and allowed her homeless
friends to spend the night there, although she and her boyfriend had recently broken up for just that reason. Originally worked in a high-class brothel in the West End of
London, but somehow fell to the slums of the East End.
