JACK THE RIPPER

Over a period of three months, starting in August 1888, six women, five of whom were prostitutes, were killed within a square mile of Whitechapel. Their corpses were mutilated in a grotesque manner. The first of the Ripper s victims, Mary Ann Nichols, was slain in Whitechapel on 31 August 1888. The other women who he murdered were: Martha Turner in George Yard Buildings off Whitechapel Road on 7 August 1888; Mary Ann Nicholls in Buck's Row on 31 August; Annie Chapman in a yard off Hanbury Street on 8 September; Elizabeth Stride in Beaver Street also on 8 September; Catherine Eddowes in Berner Street on the 30^th of the same month; and Marie Kelly in Miller's Court on 9 November. After the slayings, the killer sent confessions to the police, signing himself as Jack the Ripper . The attacks ended as suddenly as they had begun. The Met's inability to solve the crimes prompted the Police Commissioner to resign in disgrace.

One of the very few facts that is known about the killer is that he was left-handed.

There is now an active local tourist industry that is focused upon the murders.

Suspects

The Duke of Clarence

Albert Victor Duke of Clarence & Avondale, a younger son of the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII), is a suspect. He was an eccentric who was inclined to wearing capes and deerstalkers.¹

¹. Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrator Sidney Paget modelled Sherlock Holmes's appearance on that of Clarence. (Paget was awarded the job because of a publisher's mistake. The work had been intended for his brother Walter Paget.)

Montague Druitt

One of the favoured candidates for Jack the Ripper is Montague Druitt, a schoolmaster whose brother was a doctor in the East End. Although Druitt had been a student at the University of Oxford, he associated in the same social circles as many of the Apostles, a group of former Cambridge students. Many of them were bisexual or homosexual. Their sex lives were often carried out under assumed identities and in clandestine manners. That they should have extended their protection to him may not have been unreasonable in view of what light his public exposure might have thrown upon their own activities. The police investigation was wound up after the teacher's corpse had been retrieved from the Thames in December 1888.

The Victims

Of the five canonical victims, only Marie Kelly was an active as a prostitute. She was in her twenties, whereas the other four were in their forties. She was killed inside, whereas they were killed outside.

The Whitechapel Society

The Whitechapel Society is a group criminologists and historians who are interested by Jack the Ripper and the environment in which the killings occurred. The group grew out of the Cloak & Dagger Club, a body that was formed at the prompting of Camille Wolff (1912-2014), a book dealer who specialised in crime. She hoped that Jack was neither Jewish, because she was Jewish herself, or American, because they had more than enough serial killers.

Website: www.whitechapelsociety.com

David Backhouse 2024