Jack The Ripper, The most famous serial killer i history! Friday, August 31, 1888 it all began. Charles Cross walked through Whitechapel's Buck's Row, where he found a young woman lying on the ground. She had been killed. The went to look for a policeman, and a few minutes later, Police Constable John Neil arrived. Neil awakened some of the residences in the respectable neighborhood to find out if they had heard anything suspicious, but to no avail. Soon, Dr. Rees Llewellyn arrived on the scene and examined the woman. The wounds to her throat had been fatal, he told them. Since parts of her body were still warm, the doctor felt that she had been dead no longer than a half-hour. Her neck had been slashed twice, which had cut through her windpipe and esophagus. She had been killed where she was found, even though there was very little blood on the ground. Most of the lost blood had soaked into her clothing.Later, the doctor was not so sure about the killer being left-handed. Identification would not be easy. But later, as news of the murder spread around Whitechapel, the police learned of a woman named "Polly," who lived in a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street. Eventually a woman from the Lambeth Workhouse identified her as Mary Ann Nichols, age 42. The next day her father and her husband identified her body. Mary Ann, also called Polly,had been living off her meager earnings as a prostitute. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The inspector in charge of the investigation was a police veteran named Frederick George Abberline. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The murderer of Polly Nichols left nothing behind in the way of witnesses, weapon or any other type of clue. None of the residents nearby heard any kind of disturbance nor did any of the workmen in the area notice anything unusual. Even though Polly had been found very shortly after her death, no vehicle or person was seen escaping the scene of the crime. At one point, suspicion focused upon three horse slaughterers who worked nearby, but it was proven that they were working while the murder occurred. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On Monday, August 6, 1888, several weeks before Polly Nichols' murder, Martha Tabram, a 39-year-old prostitute, was found murdered in George Yard She had been stabbed 39 times on "body, neck and private parts with a knife or dagger," according to Dr. Timothy Killeen's post-mortem examination report. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Some months earlier, Emma Smith, a 45-year-old prostitute, was attacked on April 2, 1888 at seven o'clock in the evening within 100 yards of where Martha Tabram was found. Her head and face were badly injured and a blunt instrument had been rammed into her vagina. She told the woman at her lodging house that several men robbed and assaulted her. While these incidences of violence so close together in Whitechapel were linked so firmly in the minds of their neighbors, the crimes themselves were very different. Tabram was probably murdered by one individual, while several men assaulted Smith. Robbery was clearly the motive of the Smith assault, but not the murder of Tabram. The nature of the wounds inflicted was quite different. Thus, it is not likely that the same assailant was responsible for both crimes. Only the Tabram murder bears any similarity to the work of the man eventually known as Jack the Ripper. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Prostitution was one of the only reliable means through which a single woman or widow could maintain herself. The police estimated that in 1888 there were some 1,200 prostitutes in Whitechapel, not including the women who supplemented their meager earnings by occasional prostitution. Because the people of Whitechapel firmly believed that the deaths of Martha Tabram, Emma Smith and Polly Nichols were connected, there was a great deal of pressure upon the police to bring the criminal(s) to justice. Three theories were entertained: (1) a gang of thieves was responsible, such as the men who robbed and assaulted Emma Smith, (2) a gang extorting money from prostitutes penalized the three women for failing to pay, (3) a maniac was on the loose. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jack The Ripper, descripsion: From all accounts he is five feet four or five inches in height and wears a dark, close-fitting cap. He is thickset and has an unusually thick neck. His hair is black, and closely clipped, his age being about 38 or 40. He has a small, black moustache. The distinguishing feature of his costume is a leather apron, which he always wears...His expression is sinister, and seems to be full of terror for the women who describe it. His eyes are small and glittering. His lips are usually parted in a grin which is not only not reassuring, but excessively repellent. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ as "Dark Annie," was a pathetic woman. She was essentially homeless, living at common lodging houses when she had the money for a night's lodging, otherwise roaming the streets in search of clients to earn a little money for drink, shelter and food. She was 47 when she died, a homeless prostitute. But her life had once been much different in 1869 when she was married to John Chapman, a coachman. Of the three children they had, one died of meningitis and another was crippled. The stress of illness and the heavy drinking of both husband and wife caused the breakup of their marriage. Things became much worse for Annie when John died and she lost the small financial security his allowance had provided her. The emotional shock of his death was just as bad as the financial loss and she never recovered from either. Suffering from depression and alcoholism, she did crochet work and sold flowers. Eventually she turned to prostitution, despite her plain features, missing teeth, and plump figure. For the most part, she was very easy going. However, a week before her death, she got into a fight with a woman over a piece of soap and Annie was struck on the left eye and on her chest. On Friday, September 7, 1888, Annie was told her friend that she was feeling sick. Unknown to her, she was suffering from tuberculosis. "I must pull myself together and get some money or I shall have no lodgings," she told her friend Amelia. Just before two in the morning on Saturday, September 8, a slightly drunken Annie was turned out of her lodging house to earn money for her bed. Later that morning, she was found several hundred yards away in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. 29 Hanbury Street was just across from the Spitalfields market. 17 people made the building their home, five of which had rooms overlooking the site of the murder. Of those five or so with rooms overlooking the site of the murder, some had their windows open that night. Spitalfields Market opened at 5 a.m., so there were many other people gathered that morning with businesses in the building at 29 Hanbury preparing for the opening of the market. Residents were leaving for work as early as 3:50 a.m. The streets around the market were filled with the commercial vehicles delivering to the marketplace. John Davis, an elderly carman who lived with his wife and three sons at 29 Hanbury, found Annie's body just after 6 a.m. He noticed that her skirts had been raised up to her pelvis. He went immediately to get help and returned with two workmen. By the time a constable was called, everybody in the house had been awakened. Yet, amazingly enough, even though the sun rose at 5:23 that morning, and so much traffic was present at that early hour, no one heard any suspicious disturbance or cry nor was anyone seen with bloody clothing or weapon. There was clean tap water in the backyard where Annie was found, but the murderer did not use the water to wash the blood from his hands or knife. Also amazing was the risk that the murderer took in this daylight crime. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. George Bagster Phillips, veteran police surgeon, was called to the spot and described what he saw for the inquest: "I found the body of the deceased lying in the yard on her back...The left arm was across the left breast, and the legs were drawn up, the feet resting on the ground, and the knees turned outwards. The face was swollen and turned on the right side, and the tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips; it was much swollen. The small intestines and other portions were lying on the right side of the body on the ground above the right shoulder, but attached. There was a large quantity of blood, with a part of the stomach above the left shoulder...The body was cold, except that there was a certain remaining heat, under the intestines, in the body. Stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but it was commencing. The throat was dissevered deeply. I noticed that the incision of the skin was jagged, and reached right round the neck." Dr. Phillips estimated that Annie Chapman had been dead approximately two hours. The absence of any cry heard by the residents of 29 Hanbury could be explained by the evidence that she was strangled into unconsciousness and immediately thereafter had her throat slashed. She had been murdered where she was found. While there was no sign that Annie had fought off her attacker, there was a strange occurrence that Dr. Phillips noted near the feet of the corpse. Annie had apparently kept in her pocket a small piece of cloth, a pocket comb and a small-tooth comb, all of which had appeared to be purposely arranged in some order. An envelope was found near her head containing two pills. On the back of the envelope were the words Sussex Regiment. The letter M and lower down Sp were handwritten on the other side. There was a postmark that said London, Aug. 23, 1888. Also, a leather apron was found along with some other trash around the yard. The testimony that Dr. Phillips gave at the inquest gave a more detailed view of the ferocity of the murder. The murderer had grabbed Annie by the chin and slashed her throat deeply from left to right with the possible failed attempt to decapitate her. This was the cause of death. The abdominal mutilations, described in the September 29 edition of the Lancet, were post mortem: The abdomen had been entirely laid open; that the intestines, severed from their mesenteric attachments, had been lifted out of the body, and placed by the shoulder of the corpse; whilst from the pelvis the uterus and its appendages, with the upper portion of the vagina and the posterior two-thirds of the bladder, had been entirely removed. No trace of these parts could be found, and the incisions were cleanly cut, avoiding the rectum, and dividing the vagina low enough to avoid injury to the cervix uteri. Obviously the work was that of an expert - of one, at least, who had such knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs with one sweep of the knife. Extensive conversations with the associates of Annie Chapman yielded neither good suspects nor any reasonable motive for the crime. Nor was there any suspicious person found escaping the scene of the crime. However, the investigation was not entirely fruitless and three important witnesses were found, one of which almost certainly caught a glimpse of the murderer. The first witness, John Richardson, was Mrs. Amelia Richardson's son. Between 4:45 and 4:50 on the morning of the murder, he visited 29 Hanbury to check the locks on the cellar in which Mrs. Richardson kept her tools and goods for her packing case enterprise. He opened the yard door and sat down on the step to cut a piece of leather from his boot that had been hurting his foot. As it was beginning to get light outside, he could see that the cellar locks had not been tampered with while he sat fixing his boot. He could also see that at that time, there was no body of Annie Chapman in the backyard. "I could not have failed to notice the deceased had she been lying there then," he said at the inquest. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Another witness, Albert Cadosch, living next door to 29 Hanbury Street testified that he heard voices coming from the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street just after 5:20 a.m. The only word he overheard was No. A few minutes later, around 5:30 a.m., he heard the sound of something falling against the fence. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The most important witness was Mrs. Elizabeth Long who was coming to the Spitalfields market and passed through Hanbury Street when she heard the Black Eagle Brewery clock strike 5:30 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ MRS. LONG: "I did not and could not recognize him again. He was, however, dark complexioned, and was wearing a brown deerstalker hat. I think he was wearing a dark coat but cannot be sure. , he was a man over forty, as far as I could tell. He seemed to be a little taller than the deceased. He looked to me like a foreigner, as well as I could make out. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Not unexpectedly, the people were angry with the police for their secrecy and lack of results. The government came under further criticism because it stood fast by its policy of not offering rewards for discovery of criminals. It was a policy that had been developed because of very bad experiences in offering rewards in the past. While Whitechapel was unsatisfied with the lack of results of the police investigation, it was hard to fault the police for the quantity of work that was produced. On Tuesday, September 11, a few days after the death of Annie Chapman, John Pizer, the famous "Leather Apron," was arrested. When Baxter asked Pizer why he went into hiding after the deaths of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman, Pizer said that his brother had advised him to do so. Just because Pizer was an unpleasant character did not make him the Whitechapel murderer. First of all, he had alibis for the times at which Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were murdered. When Polly was killed, Pizer was at a lodging house, which was corroborated by the proprietor. When Annie was killed, he was afraid to be seen and was staying with relatives, a story, which was corroborated by several people. Secondly, he lacked the skill to carve up Annie Chapman and remove her uterus. Pizer was released, but a number of others were picked up and questioned. Some were just eccentric and drunken characters that shot off their mouths about the murders; others were insane. Few were worthy of prolonged investigation, either because they lacked the medical skills or because they had alibis for the time the women were murdered. Often the alibis consisted of confinement in asylums or jails. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 a.m. on Sunday, September 30, 1888, Louis Diemschutz found a woman with a stream of blood running from her body. He screamed for policemen, and a few minutes later, Police Constable Henry Lamb and his associate were on the scene. While the police were coping with yet another Whitechapel murder, a most extraordinary thing happened just 1/4 of a mile away in Mitre Square. saw the body of a woman lying on her back with her feet facing the square, her clothes up above her waist. A man saw the body of a dead woman. her throat was cut and her bowels protruding. The stomach was ripped up. She was lying in a pool of blood. The City Police then began to search the area to see if the killer could still be found. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As it turned out, the murderer got his victim into the square, killed her, carved her up silently and completely escaped in the space of fifteen minutes. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ At 2:55 a.m. Constable Alfred Long found a piece of a bloody apron lying in the entrance to a building in Whitechapel's Goulston Street. Just above the apron, written in white chalk on the black bricks of the archway was the wording: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Juwes are - The men That - Will not - be Blamed- for nothing ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ After the murder in Dutfield's Yard, the police conducted house-to-house interviews with the people in that neighborhood. Any bystanders that had aggregated to watch the police conduct their examination were interrogated. The dead woman was approximately five feet two inches tall with a very light complexion and dark brown curly hair. She was dressed predominantly in black with a red rose decorating her jacket. Nothing to identify her nor anything of value was found in her pocket. After a few red herrings, she was identified as Elizabeth Stride, who was born in 1843 in Sweden. This time, many witnesses came forward to claim that they had seen Liz just before her death. One of them was Constable William Smith. "At 12:45 a.m. Israel Schwartz of 22 Helen Street...saw a man stop and speak to a woman, who was standing in the gateway. The man tried to pull the woman into the street, but he turned her round & threw her down on the footway & the woman screamed three times, but not very loudly. On crossing to the opposite side of the street, he saw a second man standing lighting his pipe. The man who threw the woman down called out apparently to the man on the opposite side of the road 'Lipski' & then Schwartz walked away, but finding that he was followed by the second man he ran as far as the railway arch but the man did not follow so far..." Catharine Eddowes, called Kate by all that knew her, was a very friendly and happy woman known for her good spirits and singing. She, like the other victims, had a periodic drinking problem, which led to quarrels with her companions and family. The evening before her death, she was going to visit her daughter to borrow some money. Kelly warned her about the Whitechapel killer and told her to come back early. "Don't you fear for me. I'll take care of myself and I shan't fall into his hands," she reassured him. Kate never got to her daughter's house, but she did find some money - enough to get stinking drunk and land in the jail at the Bishopsgate Street Police Station. She slept off her over indulgence until 12:30 a.m., when she asked to be allowed to go. Shortly afterwards, Constable Hutt let her go. She asked him what time it was and he told her it was just about one o'clock As in the deaths of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman, Kate's throat had been deeply slashed from left to right and the resulting wound was the cause of death. According to Dr. Brown's testimony, "the abdomen had been laid open from the breast bone to the pubes ...The intestines had been detached to a large extent ...(and) about two feet of the colon was cut away...The peritoneal lining was cut through and the left kidney carefully taken out and removed. The left renal artery was cut through. I should say that someone who knew the position of the kidney must have done it...The womb was cut through horizontally, leaving a stump of ¾ of an inch. The rest of the womb had been taken away with some of the ligaments. The vagina and cervix of the womb was uninjured. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "The face was very much mutilated. There was a cut about ¼ of an inch through the lower left eyelid dividing the structures. The right eyelid was cut through to about ½ inch. There was a deep cut over the bridge of the nose extending from the left border of the nasal bone down near to the angle of the jaw of the right side. The tip of the nose was quite detached from the nose." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ police, news agencies and individuals associated with solving the crimes. Only three of these letters have provided lasting food for Ripper scholars. Two, in particular, which are written by the same individual, actually gave rise to the name "Jack the Ripper." Before that time, the name had not been coined. The following letter, written in red ink, gave the notorious murderer his name. It was received by Central News on September 27, 1888 and was addressed to The Boss, Central News Office. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 25 Sept: 1888 Dear Boss I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha.ha. The next job I do I shall clip. The lady's ears off and send to the Police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly Jack the Ripper Don't mind me giving the trade name ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Then on the same letter, written horizontally was the following message: wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They Say I'm a doctor. now ha_ha The editor treated the letter as a hoax and did not send it to the police for a couple of days. The night after the police finally received the letter, Liz Stride and Kate Eddowes were murdered. On Monday morning following the murders, the Central News Agency received another letter postmarked October 1 in the same handwriting as the September 25 letter: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I wasn't codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. youll hear about saucy Jackys work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn't finish straight off. had not time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. Jack the Ripper ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The third important letter was sent October 16 to George Lusk who was the head of the Mile End Vigilance Committee. This time the letter was sent with a portion of a human kidney. Lusk was extremely upset. One of the other committee members felt sure that it was an animal organ preserved in wine, so they took the kidney to Dr. Thomas Openshaw at the London Hospital to examine. Much was published on what Dr. Openshaw allegedly said about the kidney, which he repudiated later. All that can be certain of what Dr. Openshaw really established was that it was a human adult kidney, which was preserved in spirits rather than in formalin, such as what was used in hospitals for specimens. The letter that accompanied the kidney was not written by the author of the two earlier letters signed Jack the Ripper. From hell Mr Lusk ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sir I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nice I may send you the bloody knife that took it out if you only wate a while longer Signed Catch me when You can Mishter Lusk ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Police visited the common lodging houses, interviewing over 2,000 lodgers. Some 80,000 handbills were printed up and distributed in the neighborhood. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ On the morning of Friday, 31st August, Saturday 8th, and Sunday, 30th September, 1888, Women were murdered in or near Whitechapel, supposed by some one residing in the immediate neighborhood. Should you know of any person to whom suspicion is attached, you are earnestly requested to communicate at once with the nearest Police Station, Metropolitan Police Office, 30th September, 1888. Special investigative work was done for several occupations. Some 76 butchers and slaughterers were interrogated about their operations and employees. Sailors working on the Thames River boats were also questioned. With the blessing of Sir Charles Warren, a group of bloodhounds were trained and deployed to the area. However, there was always some doubt that with the large number of people living in Whitechapel that a dog would be able to follow a single scent, particularly without an article of clothing from the killer. At the end of October, the experiment was abandoned. Things were starting to get back to normal in Whitechapel. There had been no murder for a month and the streetwalkers again began to ply their trade in force. One such woman was a good-looking young Irish girl by the name of Mary Kelly. Police officer Walter Dew knew her by sight. "She was usually in the company of two or three of her kind, fairly neatly dressed and invariably wearing a clean white apron, but no hat." Mary had a lot on her mind at the beginning of November. She was several weeks behind in her rent and her lover, Joe Barnett, was unemployed. She rented a first floor room in Miller's Court in the back of Dorset Street. She was born in Limerick and had lived in Wales. When she was 21 years old, she came to London and worked in a brothel. One of her clients was sufficiently taken by her to have her accompany him to France, but the relationship did not work out and she returned a couple of weeks later. Being an attractive woman, her various lovers supported her so that she did not have to live solely by prostitution. In 1887 she met Joe Barnett, a respectable market porter, and lived with him at various locations. Every once and awhile, they would drink up the rent money and get evicted. Finally they ended up at 13 Miller's Court. Mary did not have many relationships and the one she had with Joe was a solid one. They lived together until they had an argument and he moved out. Since he did not have any work, she had been forced to return to prostitution to survive. The cause of the argument was Mary's generosity in allowing a homeless prostitute to stay with them at Miller's Court and Mary's returning to prostitution to earn money. But this was more of a lover's spat than a break-up because they got together Thursday night, November 8, and he apologized for not having any money to give her. People described her as "tall and pretty, and as fair as a lily, a very pleasant girl who seemed to be on good terms with everybody." One of her acquaintances said she was abusive when drunk, but "one of the most decent and nicest girls you could meet when she was sober." Another acquaintance said Mary was "5 feet 7 inches in height, and of rather stout build, with blue eyes and a very fine head of hair, which reached nearly to her waist." Friday, November 9, 1888 was the day for the Lord Mayor's Show. This was a major festive event in the city. On that day he would be sworn into office in a style befitting a prince. Like many Londoners, Mary was planning on seeing this spectacle. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ John McCarthy sent his assistant Thomas Bowyer to see if he could collect any rent from Mary that Friday morning. When his knock went unanswered, he reached inside the broken window and pulled aside the curtain. He wasn't quite sure what he saw, but it caused him to run back to McCarthy. When McCarthy looked through the window, he was so horrified that he sent Bowyer for a constable. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The constable was talking with police officer Walter Dew and they went immediately to 13 Miller Court. They did not force the door, but pushed away a coat that served as a curtain over the broken window. The constable told Dew not to look inside, but he did anyway. "When my eyes had become accustomed to the dim light I saw a sight which I shall never forget to my dying day." Soon Dr. George Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon, and Inspector Abberline were there. They opened the door to a small, cluttered room with almost no furniture. Mary's body, unbelievably mutilated, lay sprawled on the bed. The cause of death was the severance of the carotid artery in the throat. The horrendous mutilation of this last and most hideous Ripper murder was done after her death. Dr. Thomas Bond, another veteran police surgeon, had been brought into the case specifically to determine the extent of medical knowledge the killer had. Dr. Phillips' examination report did not survive, but Dr. Bond's did: The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed...The whole of the surface of the abdomen & thighs was removed & the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds & the face hacked beyond recognition of the features & the tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone. The viscera were found in various parts: the uterus & kidney with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side & the spleen by the left side. The flaps removed from the abdomen & thighs were on a table. The ferocity of this murder astounded the veteran police surgeons. Her throat had been slashed with such force that the tissues had been cut all the way down to the spinal column. Dr. Bond went on to describe the ghastly destruction of her body: Her face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows & ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched & cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all of the features. The skin & tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin including the external organs of generation & part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia & muscles as far as the knee. The murder of Mary Kelly created panic in the streets of Whitechapel, which were again abandoned at night to the police patrols. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As winter set in, the frantic police activity began to slow. All suspects had been interrogated and leads came to a dead end. It appeared that Jack the Ripper had left the scene for good. However, there were two murders that were similar in nature that should be mentioned. The first was Alice McKenzie who was found dead in July of 1889. She too had died from the slashing of her carotid artery. If this was another victim of Jack the Ripper, the wounds to her throat and abdomen were different than the other murders. Drs. Bond and Phillips disagreed as to whether it was Jack or not. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In February of 1891, a pretty prostitute named Frances Coles was found with her throat cut. Dr. Phillips did not believe that Jack the Ripper was responsible and suspicion fell upon a man who had a quarrel with her. At any rate, the Jack the Ripper file was closed in 1892, the same year in which Inspector Abberline retired. The Ripper murders were over, but the legend lived on. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________