JACK THE RIPPER
A criminal in London in the late nineteenth century apparently responsible for several ghastly murders by slashing. His identity is unknown.
Jack the Ripper was a murder in London in the late 1880's. He was known to have killed at least five women- all London prostitutes, in that year. His actual identity has never been known, although there were accusations and blame pointed towards some- but a leading suspect was never found.
The Ripper was also thought to be known as the same person dubbed the "Leather Apron".
His victims, that were found, were known to be named the "canonical five". The "canonical five" murders were generally perpetrated in the dark of night, on or close to a weekend, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access, and on a pattern of dates either at the end of a month or a week or so after.
These are the known victims of the Ripper:
Mary Ann Nichols: (nicknamed "Polly") was killed on Friday 31 August 1888. Her body was discovered by market porter Charles Cross at about 3:40 a.m. on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row (now Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel 200 yards from the London Hospital. Her throat was severed deeply by two cuts; the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. There also were several incisions running across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife used violently and downwards.
Mary Ann's mortuary photograph
Annie Chapman: (maiden name Eliza Ann Smith, nicknamed "Dark Annie") was killed on Saturday 8 September 1888. Her body was discovered about 6 a.m., lying on the ground near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Like Mary Ann Nichols's, her throat was severed by two cuts. Her abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was later discovered that the uterus had been removed.
Annie's mortuary photograph
Elizabeth Stride: (nicknamed "Long Liz") was killed on Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was discovered about 1 a.m., lying on the ground in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. There was one clear-cut incision on the neck; the cause of death was massive blood loss from the nearly severed main artery on the left side. The cut through the tissues on the right side was more superficial, and tapered off below the right jaw. That there also were no mutilations to the abdomen has left some uncertainty about the identity of Elizabeth's murderer, along with the suggestion her killer was interrupted during the attack.
Catherine Eddowes: (also known as "Kate Conway", "Kate Kelly" and "Mary Ann Kelly", from the surnames of her two "common-law husbands", Thomas Conway and John Kelly) was, like Elizabeth Stride, killed on Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. The throat was, as in the former two cases, severed by two cuts; the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. She was 46. Her and Stride's murders were later called "The Double Event" in the media, and across London.
Catherine's mortuary photo
and Mary Jane (Marie Jeanette) Kelly: (called herself "Marie Jeanette Kelly" after a trip to Paris; nicknamed "Ginger") was killed on Friday 9 November 1888. Her gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 a.m., lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her throat had been severed down to the spine, and her abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. Her heart was missing.
(Mary Jane's crime scene photo)
Her Tomb Stone
(Other Jack the Ripper crime scene photos)
Yet every case differed from this pattern in some manner. Besides the differences already mentioned, Eddowes was the only victim killed within the City of London, though close to the boundary between the City and the metropolis. Nichols was the only victim to be found on an open street, albeit a dark and deserted one. Many sources state that Chapman was killed after the sun had started to rise, though that was not the opinion of the police or the doctors who examined the body. Kelly's murder ended six weeks of inactivity for the murderer. (A week elapsed between the Nichols and Chapman murders; three between Chapman and the "double event".)
The large number of horrific attacks against women during this era adds some uncertainty as to exactly how many victims were killed by the same man. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper's modus operandi.
Other victims in the Whitechapel murder file, also believed to be Jack the Ripper.
Six other Whitechapel murders were investigated by the Metropolitan Police at the time, two of which occurred before the canonical five and four after. Figures involved in the investigation and some later authors have attributed some of these killings to Jack the Ripper.
These two murders occurred before the canonical five:
Emma Elizabeth Smith
was attacked on Osborn Street, Whitechapel, on 3 April 1888; a blunt object was inserted into her vagina. She survived the attack and walked back to her lodging-house. She was taken to a hospital, where she told police that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. She fell into a coma and died on 4 April 1888. According to Dr. G. H. Hillier, attending surgeon at the London Hospital, the injuries indicated use of great force, which caused a rupture of the peritoneum and other internal organs, this led to peritonitis, which he deemed the cause of death.
Martha Tabram
(sometimes spelled as Tabran; maiden name Martha White, alias Emma Turner) was killed on 7 August 1888. She had a total of 39 stab wounds. Of the non-canonical Whitechapel murders, Tabram is considered another possible Ripper victim for a variety of reasons. The location (George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel) and date of this murder are close to those of the core Ripper murders, and those similarities are compounded by the savagery of the killing and its lack of obvious motive. However, the attack differs somewhat from those of the canonical ones in that it consisted of stabbing as opposed to slashing the throat and postmortem injuries.
These four murders happened after the canonical five:
Rose Mylett
(true name probably Catherine Mylett, but was also known as Catherine Millett, Elizabeth "Drunken Lizzie" Davis, "Fair" Alice Downey, or simply "Fair Clara") was reportedly strangled "by a cord drawn tightly round the neck" on 20 December 1888, though some investigators believed that she had accidentally suffocated herself on the collar of her dress while in a drunken stupor. Her body was found in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar.
Alice McKenzie
(nicknamed "Clay Pipe Alice", and sometimes used the alias Alice Bryant) was killed on 17 July 1889. She died from severance of the left carotid artery, and several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body, found in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. One of the examining pathologists, Dr. Thomas Bond, believed this to be a Ripper murder, though another pathologist, Dr Phillips, who had examined the bodies of three previous victims, disagreed. Later writers are also divided between those who think that an unknown murderer tried to make it look like a Ripper killing to deflect suspicion from himself and those that ascribe it to the Ripper.
"The Pinchin Street Torso"
– a headless and legless torso of a woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel on 10 September 1889. The mutilations were similar to the body which was the subject of the "The Whitehall Mystery", though in this case the hands were not severed. It seems probable that the murder had been committed elsewhere and that parts of the dismembered body were dumped at the crime scene. Speculation, at the time, that the remains were of Lydia Hart, a prostitute who had recently disappeared, was disproved when she was soon located in a local infirmary where she was receiving medical treatment to cure the after effects of a "bit of a spree". The identity of the victim was never established. "The Whitehall Mystery" and "The Pinchin Streets Murderer" have been suggested to be part of a series of murders, called the "Thames Mysteries" or "Embankment Murders", committed by a single serial killer, dubbed the "Torso Killer". Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso Killer" were the same person or separate serial killers active in the same area has long been debated. As the modus operandi of the torso killings differs from that of the Ripper, crime writer Don Rumbelow discounted any connection between the two. Even though the discovery of the Pinchin Street torso prompted renewed speculation as to the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Frances Coles
(also known as Frances Coleman, Frances Hawkins and nicknamed "Carrotty Nell") was killed on 13 February 1891. Minor wounds on the back of the head suggest that she was thrown violently to the ground before her throat was cut. Otherwise there were no mutilations to the body. Her body was found under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. A man named James Thomas Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police and charged with her murder and was briefly thought to be the Ripper himself. However he was discharged from court due to lack of evidence on 3 March 1891. After this eleventh and last Whitechapel Murder the file was closed.
After the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes during the night of 30 September, police searched the area near the crime scenes in an effort to locate a suspect, witnesses or evidence. At about 3:00 a.m., Constable Alfred Long discovered a bloodstained piece of an apron in the stairwell of a tenement on Goulston Street. The cloth was later confirmed as being a part of the apron worn by Catherine Eddowes. There was writing in white chalk on the wall (or, in some accounts, the door jam) above where the apron was found. Long reported that it read, "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing." The writing is referred to by a number of authors as the "Goulston Street Graffito". Detective Daniel Halse (City of London Police), arrived a short time later, and took down a different version: "The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing." A copy according with Long's version of the message was taken down and attached to a report from Chief Commissioner Sir Charles Warren to the Home Office. Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold visited the scene and saw the writing. Later, in his report of 6 November to the Home Office, he claimed, that with the strong feeling against the Jews already existing, the message might have become the means of causing a riot:
"I beg to report that on the morning of the 30th of September, last my attention was called to some writing on the wall of the entrance to some dwellings No. 108 Goulston Street, Whitechapel which consisted of the following words: 'The Juwes are not [the word 'not' being deleted] the men that will not be blamed for nothing,' and knowing in consequence of suspicion having fallen upon a Jew named John Pizer alias 'Leather Apron,' having committed a murder in Hanbury Street a short time previously, a strong feeling existed against the Jews generally, and as the building upon which the writing was found was situated in the midst of a locality inhabited principally by that sect, I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot and therefore considered it desirable that it should be removed having in view the fact that it was in such a position that it would have been rubbed by persons passing in & out of the building."
Since the Nichols murder, rumors had been circulating in the East End that the killings were the work of a Jew dubbed "Leather Apron". Religious tensions were already high, and there had already been many near-riots. Arnold ordered a man to be standing by with a sponge to erase the writing, while he consulted Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. Covering it in order to allow time for a photographer to arrive was considered, but Arnold and Warren (who personally attended the scene) considered this to be too dangerous, and Warren later stated he "considered it desirable to obliterate the writing at once".
Although in practice there is no agreed list; some believed that "Jack" didn't kill either Stride and/or Kelly, but instead killed Martha Tabram on August 7th.
Some believed he may have killed more, but any author or journalist that tried to credit The Ripper of more than eight victims were discredited due to the lack of evidence.
His preferred method of killings were strangling his victims, then laying them down and cutting the arteries in their throats; this was followed by a varied process of mutilation, during which parts of the body were removed and kept. Because Jack did this quickly, often in the dark, and because he seemed to have great anatomical knowledge, people have assumed the Ripper had a doctor's or surgeon's training. As with much of the case, there is no consensus: a contemporary thought him simply a blunderer.
During the autumn and winter of 1888/89 a number of letters circulated among the police and newspapers, all claiming to be from the Whitechapel murderer; these include the 'From Hell' letter and one accompanied by part of a kidney. Ripperologists consider most, if not all, of the letters to be hoaxes, but their impact at the time was considerable, if only because one contained the first use of 'Jack the Ripper', a nickname the papers swiftly adopted and which is now synonymous.
The Ripper killings were neither obscure nor ignored at the time. There was gossip and fear in the streets, questions at high levels of government, offers of rewards and resignations when nobody was caught. Political reformers used the Ripper in arguments and policemen struggled with the limited techniques of the time. Indeed, the Ripper case remained high profile enough for many of the police involved to write private accounts years later. However, it was the media who made 'Jack the Ripper'.
By 1888 literacy was common amongst the crowded citizens of London and newspapers reacted to the Whitechapel Murderer, whom they initially christened 'Leather Apron', with the frenzy we expect from modern tabloids, stirring opinions, fact and theory – along with the probably hoaxed Ripper letters – together to create a legend which seeped into popular culture. From the very start, Jack doubled as a figure from the horror genre, a bogeyman to scare your kids.
The sensational nature of the crimes (the victims were raped and mutilated) and the fact that they remained unsolved has generated hundreds of books, articles, and stories propounding various theories about the identity of the Ripper. Some of the more bizarre involve the Russian secret police, Masonic conspiracies, or members of the royal family. In their enthusiasm to validate a cherished theory, many otherwise reputable writers falsified evidence. One of the most persistent myths is that the Spiritualist and clairvoyant Robert James Lees had given the police advance knowledge of the crimes and identified the murderer through clairvoyant powers. This continuing story stemmed from a hoax article in the Chicago Sunday Times-Herald (April 28, 1895) and was repeated in London newspapers
Among the many books, that by British author Melvin Harris, Jack the Ripper: The Bloody Truth (1987), has particular interest because of the occult connections it draws. Harris advances a convincing case that the Ripper was Dr. Roslyn D'Onston (born Robert Donston Stephenson), a journalist and medical man obsessed with the occult. D'Onston himself wrote articles claiming to know the true identity of Jack the Ripper. He also claimed to know exactly how the crimes were committed and stated that they were part of a black magic ritual. In his writings, D'Onston used the pseudonym Tautriadelta.
One of these articles was published in the April 1896 issue of the journal Borderland, edited by Spiritualist W. T. Stead. In a foreword to the article, Stead writes that the author "prefers to be known by his Hermetic name of Tautriadelta" and also states: "The writer … has been known to me for many years. He is one of the most remarkable persons I ever met. For more than a year I was under the impression that he was the veritable Jack the Ripper, an impression which I believe was shared by the police, who, at least once, had him under arrest; although as he completely satisfied them, they liberated him without bringing him into court."
In the article itself Tautriadelta claims to have studied occultism under the novelist Bulwer Lytton, celebrated for his occult stories, and to have witnessed or taken part in extraordinary occult phenomena in France, Italy, India, and Africa.
D'Onston lived in London's Whitechapel, where the Ripper murders took place, in the same lodging house where Theosophist Mabel Collins and her occultist friend Vittoria Cremers lived. Collins became infatuated with D'Onston, but subsequently experienced fear and revulsion around him. She once told Cremers about something D'Onston said to her and showed her, and said "I believe D'Onston is Jack the Ripper." Cremers had noticed a large black box in D'Onston's room, and one day, while the doctor was out, she looked inside the box. She found some books and also some black ties that had dried, dull stains at the back. She thought the stains might be blood.
Later, commenting on a newspaper report that the Ripper would kill again, D'Onston laughed and said, "There will be no more murders. Did I ever tell you that I knew Jack the Ripper?" He went on to describe in detail how the Ripper had carried out the murders, said they were "for a very special reason," and related how he had concealed the organs cut from the victims in the space between his shirt and tie.
The story of the discovery by Cremers is retold in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1969) without naming D'Onston. Aleister Crowley also writes: "At this time London was agog with the exploits of Jack the Ripper. One theory of the motive of the murderer was that he was performing an Operation to obtain the Supreme Black Magical Power. The seven women had to be killed so that their seven bodies formed a 'Calvary cross of seven points' with its head to the west."
All these references are detailed by Melvin Harris in his book, and he also cites an unsigned article by D'Onston that reinforces Crowley's claim that the murders were a black magic operation. The article is titled "Who Is the Whitechapel Demon? (By One Who Thinks He Knows)" and propounds in detail a black magic theory about the murders, stemming from occultist Éliphas Lévi 's work Le Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic. D'Onston's precise knowledge of the methods and intentions of the murders, impudently combined with false clues while posing as an investigator of the crimes, makes a strong case that he was Jack the Ripper, as W. T. Stead, Vittoria Cremers, and Mabel Collins suspected.
A century later, Jack the Ripper is still hugely famous world over, an unknown criminal at the center of a global manhunt. But he is more than that, he's the focus of novels, films, musicals and even a six inch high model plastic figure. Jack the Ripper was the first serial killer adopted by the modern media age and he's been at the forefront ever since, mirroring the evolution of western culture.
The case was closed officially in 1892, but the mysterious anonymity of the killer has kept the case in the public eye ever since.
*Sources: http://www.answers.com/topic/jack-the-ripper &
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/famouspeople/p/prjackripper.htm & http://vanessawest.tripod.com/crimescenephotos.html*
Reported by: *NocturnalMistress* |
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