Eleven women were murdered in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points, some or all of these unsolved murders have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Most, if not all, of the eleven victimsEmma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified womanwere engaged in prostitution. Smith was sexually assaulted and robbed by a gang. Tabram was stabbed 39 times. Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly, McKenzie, and Coles had their throats cut. Eddowes and Stride were murdered on the same night, within approximately an hour and less than apart; their murders are known as the "double event", after a phrase in a postcard sent to the press by someone claiming to be the Ripper. The bodies of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly had abdominal mutilations. Mylett was strangled. The body of the unidentified woman had been dismembered and decapitated, but the exact cause of her death is unclear.
The Metropolitan Police, City of London Police, and private organisations such as the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee were actively involved in the search for the perpetrator or perpetrators. Despite extensive enquiries and several arrests, the culprit or culprits evaded capture, and the murders were never solved. The Whitechapel murders drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End slums, which were subsequently improved. The enduring mystery of who committed the crimes has captured public imagination to the present day.
Background
In the late Victorian era, Whitechapel was considered to be the most notorious criminal rookery in London. The area around Flower and Dean Street was described as "perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis";Greenwood, James (1883), In Strange Company, London, p. 158, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 21, 45 Dorset Street was called "the worst street in London".Daily Mail, 16 July 1901, quoted in Werner (ed.), pp. 62, 179 Assistant Police Commissioner Robert Anderson recommended Whitechapel to "those who take an interest in the dangerous classes" as one of London's prime criminal "show places".Pall Mall Gazette, 4 November 1889, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 225 and Evans and Skinner (2000), p. 516 Robbery, violence and alcohol dependency were commonplace. The district was characterised by extreme poverty, sub-standard housing, poor sanitation, homelessness, drunkenness and endemic prostitution. These factors were focused in the institution of the 233 common lodging-houses within Whitechapel, in which approximately 8,500 people resided on a nightly basis.Honeycombe, The Murders of the Black Museum: 1870–1970, p. 54
The common lodging-houses in and around Whitechapel provided cheap communal lodgings for the desperate, the destitute and the transient, among whom the Whitechapel murder victims were numbered.Werner (ed.), pp. 42–44, 118–122, 141–170 The nightly price of a single bed was 4d ()Rumbelow, Complete Jack The Ripper p. 14 and the cost of sleeping upon a "lean-to" rope stretched across the bedrooms was 2d for adults or children.Rumbelow, Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook p. 30
All the identified victims of the Whitechapel murders lived within the heart of the rookery in Spitalfields, including three in George Street (later renamed Lolesworth Street), two in Dorset Street, two in Flower and Dean Street, and one in Thrawl Street.White, Jerry (2007), London in the Nineteenth Century, London: Jonathan Cape, , pp. 323–332
Police work and criminal prosecutions at the time relied heavily on confessions, witness testimony, and apprehending perpetrators in the act of committing an offence or in the possession of obvious physical evidence that clearly linked them to a crime. Forensic techniques, such as fingerprint analysis, were not in use,Marriott, p. 207 and blood typing had not been invented.Lloyd, pp. 51–52 Policing in London wasand still isdivided between two forces: the Metropolitan Police with jurisdiction over most of the urban area, and the City of London Police with jurisdiction over about a square mile (2.9 km2) of the city centre. The Home Secretary, a senior minister of the British government, controlled the Metropolitan Police, whereas the City Police were responsible to the Corporation of London. Beat constables walked regular, timed routes.Evans and Rumbelow, p. 14
Eleven deaths in or near Whitechapel between 1888 and 1891 were gathered into a single file, referred to in the police docket as the "Whitechapel murders"."The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper" , Metropolitan Police, retrieved 1 May 2009Cook, pp. 33–34; Evans and Skinner (2000), p. 3 Much of the original material has been stolen, lost, or destroyed.
Victims and investigation Emma Elizabeth Smith
On Tuesday 3 April 1888, following the Easter Monday bank holiday, a 45-year-old prostitute, Emma Elizabeth Smith, was assaulted and robbed at the junction of Osborn Street and Brick Lane, Whitechapel, in the early hours of the morning. Although injured, she survived the attack and managed to walk back to her lodging house at 18 George Street, Spitalfields. She told the deputy keeper, Mary Russell, that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of them a teenager. Russell took Smith to the London Hospital, where a medical examination revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis and died at 9:00am the following day.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 27–29; Cook, pp. 34–35; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–50; Evans and Skinner (2000), pp. 4–7
The inquest was conducted on 7 April by the coroner for East Middlesex, Wynne Edwin Baxter, who also conducted inquests on six of the later victims.Whitehead and Rivett, p. 18 The local inspector of the Metropolitan Police, Edmund Reid of H Division Whitechapel, investigated the attack, but the culprits were never caught.Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–50 Walter Dew, a detective constable stationed with H Division, later wrote that he believed Smith to be the first victim of Jack the Ripper,Dew, Walter (1938), I Caught Crippen, London: Blackie and Son, p. 92, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 29 but his colleagues suspected her murder was the work of a criminal gang.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 29 Smith claimed that she was attacked by two or three men, but either refused to or could not describe them beyond stating one was a teenager.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 28; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 4–7 East End prostitutes were often managed by gangs, and Smith may have been attacked by her pimps as a punishment for disobeying them or as an act of intimidation.Marriott, pp. 5–7 She may not have identified her attackers because she feared reprisal. Her murder is considered unlikely to be connected with the later killings.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 29–31; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–50; Marriott, pp. 5–7
Martha Tabram
On Tuesday 7 August, following a Monday bank holiday, Martha Tabram, a prostitute, was murdered at about 2:30 am. Her body was found at George Yard Buildings, George Yard, Whitechapel, shortly before 5:00 am. She had been stabbed 39 times about her neck, torso and genitals with a short blade. With one possible exception, all her wounds had been inflicted by a right-handed person.Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–52
On the basis of statements from a fellow prostitute, and PC Thomas Barrett, who was patrolling nearby, Inspector Reid put soldiers at the Tower of London and Wellington Barracks on an identification parade, but without positive results.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 51–53; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–55; Evans and Skinner (2000), pp. 8–18; Marriott, pp. 9–14 Police did not connect Tabram's murder with the earlier murder of Emma Smith; however, they did connect her death with later murders.In an interview reported in the Pall Mall Gazette, 24 March 1903, Inspector Frederick Abberline referred to "George-yard, Whitechapel-road, where the first murder was committed" (quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 56). Walter Dew wrote in his memoirs that "there can be no doubt that the August Bank Holiday murder ... was the handiwork of the Ripper" (I Caught Crippen, p. 97, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 56). In his memoirs, Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson said the second murder occurred on 31 August (quoted in Evans and Skinner (2000), p. 632).
Most experts do not connect Tabram's murder with the others attributed to the Ripper because she had been repeatedly stabbed, whereas later victims typically suffered slash wounds and abdominal mutilations; however, a connection cannot be ruled out.Evans and Rumbelow, p. 515; Marriott, p. 13
Mary Ann Nichols
On Friday 31 August, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered in Buck's Row (since renamed Durward Street), a back street in Whitechapel. Her body was discovered by cart driver Charles Cross at 3:45 am on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance. Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen was mutilated by a deep, jagged wound. Several shallower incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side were caused by the same knife used violently and downwards.Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 60–61; Evans and Skinner (2000), p. 35; Rumbelow, pp. 24–27 As the murder occurred in the territory of the J or Bethnal Green Division of the Metropolitan Police, it was at first investigated by the local detectives. On the same day, James Monro resigned as the head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) over differences with Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Charles Warren.Evans and Rumbelow, p. 64
Initial investigations into the murder had little success, although elements of the press linked it to the two previous murders and suggested the killing might have been perpetrated by a gang, as in the case of Smith.Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 98; Cook, pp. 25–28; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 62–63 The Star newspaper suggested instead that a single killer was responsible, and other newspapers took up their storyline.Cook, pp. 25–28; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 21–22 Suspicions of a serial killer at large in London led to the secondment of Detective Inspectors Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore and Walter Andrews from the Central Office at Scotland Yard.Evans and Skinner (2000), pp. 676, 678 On the available evidence, Coroner Baxter concluded that Nichols was murdered at just after 3 am where she was found. In his summing up, he dismissed the possibility that her murder was connected with those of Smith and Tabram, as the lethal weapons were different in those cases, and neither of the earlier cases involved a slash to the throat.Marriott, pp. 21–22 However, by the time the inquest into Nichols's death had concluded, a fourth woman had been murdered, on which Baxter noted, "The similarity of the injuries in the two cases is considerable."Marriott, pp. 22–23
Annie Chapman