Who was Jack the Ripper? Part One

Who was Jack the Ripper? 

Everyone seems to have their own ideas as to the identity of the London's most notorious Serial Killer, as well as thoughts on what happened to him, and where he went and what he did after the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. Here, I will go over the timeline of the confirmed Ripper murders, as well as unconfirmed, and suspects, and bring about my own conclusions, as should you. So, where do we start? Well, how about with the Canonical Five.

Although eleven women were murdered around the time of the Ripper's reign, there were five victims that stood apart from the rest. The Canonical Five, as they are known, are believed to have all been murdered by the same hand. All five victims, prostitutes of the East End, shared distinct and similar wounds, as well as postmortem organ removal and mutilations in some cases.These five victims were all killed under cover of darkness, typically in the early morning hours. All of these murders also occurred on a weekend, or within one day of.

Martha Tabram

Tuesday, August 7th, 1888, 3:30 AM; Wentworth Street: Tabram, a hawker and prostitute in the East End, was brutally murdered in the early morning hours of August 7, 1888. On the eve of her murder, Tabram was out drinking with an acquaintance (a fellow unfortunate who went by the name of ‘Pearly Poll') and two soldiers at a public house near the George Yard Buildings. Shortly before midnight on August 6th, Tabram and her friend paired off with their clients, Tabram heading through the archway into George Yard on Wentworth Street.

Tabram's body was first encountered at around 3:30 AM on August 7th by carman George Crow. He had been returning home after work, and because of the darkness in the stairwell, mistook her body as that of a drunk woman passed out on the landing.

At around 5 AM, her body was again discovered by another resident of George Yard Buildings, but by this time there was enough light in the stairway to reveal her ghastly wounds. She had been stabbed 39 times. The wounds focused on her throat, chest and lower abdomen, and appeared to have been inflicted by a small blade with the exception of one violent stab through her chest which looked to have been performed with a large dagger or bayonet.

Many feel that Tabram was the Ripper's first victim, due to the proximity of the murder in relation to the others, as well as the brutal nature of the crime. However, a number of experts also agree that another individual was responsible for Tabram's death, and not Jack the Ripper. Tabram's wound patterns were distinctly different from the Canonical Five, in that she received multiple stab wounds as opposed to being slashed, which is believed to be the modus operandi of the Ripper. If it were the Ripper, however, and this was his first killing in London, he may have a different MO than the others. A blade was still used, and this could have been him "testing the waters" so to speak.

Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols 

Friday, August 31st, 1888, 3:40 AM; Buck's Row, Whitechapel:
 A carter named Charles Cross made his way down the narrow avenue of Buck’s Row on his way to work. In the early morning darkness, Cross stopped at the sight of a large object lying in the doorway of a horse stable. He walked closer to investigate, thinking it was a tarpaulin abandoned in the street. A few feet closer, though, he realized the figure on the ground was human. As he hesitated, unsure of how to proceed, he heard another man’s approaching footsteps.

It was another carter, Robert Paul, also headed to work. Cross called the other carter over, telling him that there was a woman in the street. Together, in the dark, the two men approached the figure stretched out on the ground. She was lying prone, her skirts pulled up to her waist. Tentatively, they felt her hands and face, finding them cold. Cross thought that he sensed some movement in her chest, though, which allowed the possibility that she was alive. The men tugged her skirts down over her knees to at least cover her up, and argued whether they should prop her up in the doorway.

They were unsettled by the whole incident though, and they were both running late for work. They decided not to render further assistance on the scene, justifying their behavior by agreeing to tell the first constable they ran into on their way about what they had seen. They left the woman’s body alone on Buck’s Row, lying across the gateway. Minutes later they came across PC Mizen 55H, John Neil.

Durward Street aka Buck's Row very much as it would have looked in 1888.
The arrow shows the location where the body of Polly Nichols was discovered.

When he arrived, he shone his lantern on Polly's body which revealed her lifeless eyes staring up into the night sky. Her throat had been deeply severed in two locations - nearly decapitating her - and her lower abdomen partially ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. The killer had also made several other incisions in her abdomen with the same blade. The doctor who had arrived at the scene to examine her body had deemed her time of death to be less than 30 minutes from the time she'd been found. 

Her death came only 5 days after her 43rd birthday.

Inspector John Spratling arrived and consulted with Thain after the body had been taken away by ambulance. Thain indicated where the body had lain as one of the sons of Emma Green, a widow who owned a neighboring house, washed blood from the cobblestones. Llewellyn had noted that the blood that had spilled from the body’s throat onto the ground was about equivalent with the volume of two wine-glasses. Ambulance workers had noted that though a bit of blood had trickled from her throat onto the street, the back of her dress and her weathered brown ulster was completely soaked in congealed blood as well.

Dr. Llewellyn had gone home to bed after the body had been taken to a workhouse mortuary in Old Montague Street, but was summoned again soon afterward. While attempting to move the body from the ambulance into the morgue, Inspector John Spratling observed that unusually brutal mutilations lay beneath Nichols’ clothing. Her abdomen had been slashed, a jagged cut exposing her innards from pubis to breastbone, along with additional cuts to the abdomen. The wounds had been inflicted with violent downward stabs into the victim’s body. Llewelyn’s complete postmortem report from September 1st is lost to time, but surviving notes taken by Spratling upon an initial examination of the body summarize findings this way:

"…her throat had been cut from left to right, two distinct cuts being on left side, the windpipe, gullet and spinal cord being cut through; a bruise apparently of a thumb being on the right lower jaw, also one on left cheek; the abdomen had been cut open from centre of bottom of ribs along right side, under pelvis to left of the stomach, there the wound was jagged; the omentum, or coating of the stomach, was also cut in several places, and two small stabs on private parts; [all] apparently done with a strong bladed knife; supposed to have been done by some left handed person; death being almost instantaneous."

Speculation arose over several points including whether the killer was left-handed, and whether, perhaps, he had killed her in a separate location and then left her on Buck’s Row. This would seem to be supported by the fact that no one in the area had heard screaming, and that she was found lying on her back as if carefully placed. The blood at the scene, also, seemed to be minimal when considering the ghastly wounds to her abdomen, unless she had been killed somewhere else. That hypothesis, however, would later be dismissed. There were no trails of blood leading to the site where her body was found, and nobody had heard a carriage or other vehicle carry her to the spot. Additionally, Dr. Llewelyn confirmed that the blood from the lacerations to her abdomen had mostly congealed into the body itself.

All the wounds also showed signs of being made with the same knife, a “strong-bladed knife, moderately sharp, and used with great violence,” according to the doctor. Other facts about the possible killer were unclear, but Llewelyn speculated that he might have had some knowledge of human anatomy, due to the fact that he had attacked the vital organs and veins of the victim.

The blood spatter implied, however, that none of the lacerations were what ultimately killed the victim. If her throat were cut first, there would have been far more blood, presumably spattered against the wall of the stable or further across the cobblestones rather than pooled directly under her head. Instead, experts agree that it is very likely the woman was manually choked to death before being mutilated. The entire act would have taken place in about five minutes between 3:30 and 3:40am, and inspectors acknowledged that the approach of Charles Cross may have even interrupted and scared the killer away.

Annie Chapman

September 8th, 1888; Hanbury Street, Spitalfields; 5:30 am, 9 days after the murder of Polly: As the nearby brewery clock struck 5:30, Elizabeth Long, also known around Whitechapel as Mrs. Durrell, was walking along Hanbury Street when she passed a man and a woman standing against No. 29. The man’s back was to her so she couldn’t see his face, but he was dressed in a long black coat and was wearing, according to Long, a deerstalker hat.

As she passed, she heard the man say, “Will you?”
The woman, whom Long later identified as Annie Chapman, replied, “Yes.”

The backyard at 29 Hanbury Street
Annie Chapman's body was found next to the fence, just by the steps.

5:15 am, a young carpenter who lived at No. 27 Hanbury Street named Albert Cadosch went out into his backyard, probably to use the lavatory. He reportedly heard a woman’s voice say “No,” and a sound of something falling against the fence connecting the backyards of No. 27 and 29. Approximately twenty minutes later, her badly mutilated body was found by carter John Davis near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street.

Her throat had been cut in much the same manner as Mary Ann Nichols had been slashed, and her abdomen ripped entirely open. Her intestines, torn out and still attached, had been placed over her right shoulder. A later autopsy revealed that the killer had removed her uterus and parts of her vagina, leading inspectors to believe that Jack the Ripper had some sort of medical training or at least a basic (self studied) knowledge of anatomy.

The doctor was so disturbed by the damage done to Annie’s corpse that he refused to go into explicit detail about the abdominal mutilations during the inquest. His description is as follows:

"The left arm was placed across the left breast. 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. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The tongue was evidently much swollen. The front teeth were perfect as far as the first molar, top and bottom and very fine teeth they were. The body was terribly mutilated…the stiffness of the limbs was not marked, but was evidently commencing. He noticed that the throat was dissevered deeply; that the incision through the skin were jagged and reached right round the neck…"

29 Hanbury Street

The fact that Annie’s tongue was found protruding from her mouth implied that she, like Polly Nichols, had died from asphyxiation rather than from the damage done by the killer’s blade. The autopsy revealed indications found in the lungs and membranes of the brain of advanced disease. In fact, from the state of her lungs, investigators speculated that had she not been murdered on the 8th of September, she would soon have died of tuberculosis. In spite of the fact that she was described as “plump”, her body also showed signs of starvation. There was a little food in her stomach, but no alcohol in her system, which eliminated the possibility of her having spent time recently in a public house.

The crime scene seemed to imply that Annie did not put up much of a struggle. Even Cadoche, who presumably heard Annie and her murderer from the adjoining backyard, described a limited amount of noise coming from the yard of No. 29. It is possible, however, that in her sickly state, and so taken by surprise by the attack, and she did not have the opportunity to cry out before being stifled.

Additionally, Annie’s belongings had been scattered across the backyard of No. 29, a fact that has baffled students of the case for over a century, starting with investigators. Dr. Philips said that Annie’s belongings had been placed near her body in order, “that is to say arranged there.” These belongings included a piece of muslin, an envelope corner containing two pills, and a comb wrapped in paper. Abrasions on her fingers showed that she had been wearing three rings, apparently of brass, but those had either been pawned or taken by the murderer. She was also wearing a kerchief around her neck, which she had been wearing when she left the lodging house.

Press also claimed that two farthings were found in the yard, though this is not stated in police reports. In spite of many scholars believing the farthings to be a press fabrication, the mysterious farthings have remained the source of speculations as to the Rippers identity and possible affiliations.

The envelope with the two pills was found on the ground, and there were considerable efforts on the part of investigators to find the sender. The envelope was stamped with the seal of the Royal Sussex Regiment, and the letters “M”, “S”, and the number “2” were visible on the envelope. Police followed this potential lead to the Regiment, and came up empty-handed. Afterward, William Stevens came forward to how the envelope had been a random find inside the boarding house rather than actual correspondence.

Illustrated Police News – September 15, 1888

A few drops of blood were visible on the fence above Annie’s head, but not as much as to suggest that her throat had been cut while she was still living. Remarkably, a nearby water spigot showed no signs of having been touched by someone whose hands were covered in blood, a further sign of the Ripper’s audacity.

Also found on the scene was a leather workman’s apron, which led to the arrest of a villainous figure in Whitechapel, known as “Leather Apron”, really named John Pizer. The apron was later found to belong to a resident of No. 29, and Pizer was released after his alibis were confirmed.

Elizabeth Stride

September 30th, 1888; Berner Street, Whitechapel

Dr. Thomas Barnardo was well known in Whitechapel as a servant to the poor. With a background as a doctor, Barnardo had become a street minister and also went on to open a famous house for impoverished young boys. On September 26th, 1888, Dr. Barnardo was visiting the lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean. There was a group of women sitting in the lodging house kitchen, looking “thoroughly frightened” and talking about the Whitechapel murders.

One woman sat at the table crying. “We’re all up to no good, no one cares what becomes of us! Perhaps some of us will be killed next.”

Several days later, Barnardo identified Liz Stride’s body as one of the women who had been present in the lodging house kitchen for that foreboding conversation.

Berner Street circa 1909. This photo shows the street looking much the same as it did during the time of Stride's murder in 1888. Her body was found just inside the entrance to Dutfield's Yard, which was located just below the wagon wheel seen in this photograph.

Two distinct elements make Stride’s murder unique among the canonical five. First, there were no mutilations to her abdomen in the way that there were on the bodies of the other four victims. Second, the cause of death was not determined to be strangulation, as there were no marks of strangulation on her body.

There had been some criticism of how police had handled the Annie Chapman investigation. Men from the medical community, for example, complained that it was a failure to have just used one doctor for the autopsy without getting a second opinion. For that reason, both Dr. Phillips and Dr. Blackwell conducted Elizabeth Stride’s autopsy.

Liz was found in possession of two pocket-handkerchiefs, a thimble and a piece of wool attached to a card. A red flower was pinned to the dark jacket she wore. She was also found clutching a package of cachous, which were used to sweeten the breath. These cachous were still in the package and not scattered around, as they would have been if she had been suddenly knocked to the ground.

Dr. George Phillips and Dr. Frederick Blackwell agreed that the cause of death was blood loss from the left carotid artery due to the wound on her throat. The gash to the throat was consistent with the wounds of the other Ripper victims, including a clean, deep knife wound of about 6 inches that moved from left to right. Some have speculated that it is possible the murder could have been performed with a different knife, specifically a shoemaker’s knife, than the previous two. In fact, doctors conceded that this was a possibility; however, it is also possible the same weapon used on Nichols and Chapman was used on Long Liz.

Puzzlingly, though, Dr. Phillips and Inspector Reid mentioned in their reports that there was no sign of blood spatter that would indicate she had been killed while standing. In fact, PC Lamb indicated in his testimony that, “She looked as if she had been gently laid down.” Phillips claimed there was no trace of malt liquor, anesthetics, or narcotics in Stride’s stomach. Therefore, drugging or drunkenness cannot account for Stride having gone down without a struggle.

According to Dr. Blackwell:
There was a check silk scarf round the neck, the bow of which was turned to the left side and pulled tightly. I formed the opinion that the murderer first took hold of the silk scarf at the back of it and then pulled the deceased backwards.

An alternate theory regarding Stride’s cause of death was presented by Bill Beadle in The Journal of the Whitechapel Society as something called RCA. This stands for Reflex Cardiac Arrest and occurs when a subject dies due to a sudden pressure to major arteries on the neck. This occurs more commonly in victims who are drunk or extremely frightened. With fewer forensic resources than modern investigators, this conclusion would have been impossible to determine in 1888.

Some believe that the Ripper did not kill Elizabeth Stride at all, due to the differences between her injuries and those of the other victims. It is also possible, however, that the Ripper was merely interrupted by the arrival of Louis Diemschutz and his pony, and for this reason he was compelled to claim a second victim on the evening of the Double Event. Stride is also not considered one of the Canonical Five due to these reasons.

Catherine Eddows 

September 29th, 1888; Aldgate Street; City of London

At about 1:30 am, Joseph Lawende, a commercial traveller, Joseph Hyam Levy, a butcher, and Harry Harris, a furniture dealer were walking nearby. They were heading down 16-17 Duke Street from the Imperial Club. The three passed by a couple walking in the opposite direction. Harris did not notice them at all, and Levy took little note of them other than the fact that they were both rather shabby looking.

Lawende, however, had the best memory of the couple’s appearance of all. While he didn’t see the woman’s face, he was later able to recognize her clothing. He went on to describe the man as looking to be about 30 years old, five foot seven inches tall, with a mustache, wearing a loose-fitting salt and pepper jacket and a red handkerchief around his neck. Lawende was the last person, besides her killer, to lay eyes on Catherine Eddowes while she still lived.

At 2 AM, Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown arrived at Mitre Square to perform the on-site post mortem, later continuing the autopsy at the Golden Lane mortuary twelve hours later.

Of all the Ripper victims up until this point, Catherine Eddowes’ body had the greatest amount of damage to the entire body. Her throat was cut in the same manner, about six or seven inches from left to right, and she was disemboweled. The large vessels on the left side of the neck were severed. Her intestines were also placed over her right shoulder, and had been nicked, releasing smeared fecal matter upon the space behind her shoulder. About two feet of intestine had been detached from the body and placed between Eddowes’ body and left arm. Whereas the previous disemboweled victims (Nichols and Chapman) had fairly straight and organized cuts to their abdomens, Eddowes had been cut in a more jagged and erratic manner.

Kate was also the first to have her face mutilated by the Ripper. A triangular flap was peeled from the skin of each cheek, with tips pointing toward the eyes that some have said look like arrows. There were also cuts made to her eyelids, including one that was about an inch and a half long to the left eye.

Upon examining her internal organs, Brown found that Eddowes’ right kidney was pale, or as he described: “bloodless with slight congestion of the base of the pyramids.” This was a sign that she suffered from Bright’s disease. The left kidney had been removed, and could not be found in or around the body. The uterus had been cut horizontally and had been removed all but for a quarter of an inch-sized stump. Brown made several summarizing comments at the conclusion of his post-mortem exam. Among these, was that the murder was the work of one person, and that this person had severed Eddowes’ throat so suddenly that there was no way she could have cried out. He also stated that whoever had removed Eddowes’ kidney must have had some knowledge of where the kidney was located to be able to so quickly remove it in the dark, whether that meant he was a medical man or a slaughterhouse worker. Brown asserted that he had no idea what reason someone would have to take any of the body parts away.

At 3 am, soon after Brown came to examine Eddowes’ body, there was a piece of fabric covered with blood and fecal matter lying in a passageway near Goulston Street in Whitechapel. This fabric was found to match a part missing from Eddowes’ own apron, seeming to imply that after the murder, the Ripper had headed back into Whitechapel. Goulston Street was only about a 15-minute walk from Mitre Square. Another puzzling piece of evidence was a graffito found above the place where the soiled fabric was found. Written in chalk, it said, “The Juwes are the men that Will not be Blamed for nothing”. Not knowing whether or not this was related to the murder, and afraid that this might incite anti-Jewish rioting and violence, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren demanded that it be washed away before morning.

Mary Jane Kelly 

November 9, 1888; 13 Miller’s Court, Whitechapel 

As he perused his accounting books, John (aka “Jack”) McCarthy, could not overlook the fact that his tenant, Mary Jane Kelly, was six weeks behind in her rent. He had allowed the fees to accumulate, and this morning decided that it was time to see if Kelly could pay up tasking his shop assistant, Thomas Bowyer, with catching Kelly before she left her room for the day. Kelly, like many others in the city, was planning to observe the procession of Right Honorable James Whitehead as he drove to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand to be sworn in as mayor.

The room at #13 Miller’s Court was actually a converted bedroom from #26 Dorset Street, which opened to the street just beyond the courtyard. A passageway into Miller’s Court from Dorset Street led to Kelly’s little room, which had a door on one side and two windows around the corner from the door. Tenement apartments lined the rest of the courtyard, and nothing else stood inside but a water pump and a dustbin.

Photograph of Miller's Court No. 13 the day of the murder. Broken window panes can be seen in the window nearest the door.

Thomas Boyer discovering the body of Mary Kelly

The second thing he saw sent him running back to his employers’ office. McCarthy followed him back to Miller’s Court. He drew the curtain aside to see just what the office assistant had: a bloody corpse, mangled beyond recognition, with parts strewn all over the blood-soaked bed. McCarthy sent his assistant to find a constable, and Bowyer soon came across Inspector Walter Beck and Detective Walter Dew chatting on Commercial Street.

“Another one. Jack the Ripper. Awful. Jack McCarthy sent me.”

Bowyer could barely get the words out of his mouth. The officers followed him, observing the carnage through the broken window with queasy horror. They sent for Inspector Abberline, who was in charge of the Ripper Case. The Inspector arrived at 11:30 am and Dr. George Bagster Phillips, a police surgeon who had also responded to the murder of Annie Chapman, arrived around the same time.

Rather than immediately break the door down, however, the officer and medical investigator had been instructed to wait for the arrival of two police bloodhounds, Burgho and Barnaby. Using dogs to sniff out murderers was a new and untested technique, but the Home Office of Scotland Yard had been eager to show the public that they were taking the Whitechapel murders seriously.

The two-hour wait signaled a considerable breakdown in communication within the police force, though. A few weeks earlier, the dogs’ owner, a breeder named Edwin Brough, had reclaimed his hounds from the police when it became clear that Scotland Yard would neither be paying nor insuring him for their services. Nobody told this to Abberline, however, and in the interim two hours, he could do little more than block off Miller’s Court to pedestrians and wait. Finally, Superintendent Arnold arrived at 1:30 pm in the afternoon, ordering the door to be broken down. John McCarthy used a pickax to chop the front door down. The scene inside, which they had only glimpsed at before, would haunt them forever.

Presumably, without the presence of police walking their beats, concealed in a private room, the Ripper had the time and privacy to carry his compulsions further than he had to that point. As with previous victims, there were entrails and organs piled to the right of the body. This time, there were also other lacerations and organ displacements: Kelly’s uterus, kidneys, and one breast were placed beneath her head. Her left lung was torn and her heart was completely missing.

The Ripper had taken the flaps of skin, which he’d stripped from the thighs and abdomen, and piled them on the bedside table. Those were the lumps that Thomas Bowyer had first spotted when he peeked in through the broken window. Every feature of Kelly’s face was irregularly slashed. Her nose, ears, cheeks, and eyebrows were all partially removed and her lips were sliced multiple times. The bed was saturated in blood, and Dr. Phillips stated with confidence that the cause of death, this time, was “severance of the carotid artery” rather than asphyxiation. There were conflicts as to Kelly’s time of death between the medical contingents. The confusion was made worse by the long delay between the discovery of Kelly’s corpse and the ability for investigators to examine the body. Dr. Thomas Bond held that the murder took place at 1 or 2 am. Based on witness testimony, Metropolitan Police believed it took place around 3:30 or 4 am. Dr. Phillips, who had responded to other Ripper murder scenes, asserted that the time of death was 5 or 6 am.

One of the Canomical Five, but presumed to be the seventh victim of the Ripper by media.

Later Whitechapel Murders

Following Kelly's ghastly murder, there were four other women who were killed in the Whitechapel district during that same period, the first of which was Rose Mylett. Mylett was found strangled in Clarke's Yard on High Street on December 20, 1888. Investigators assessed that her death may have been the result of a drunken stupor, as there were no visible signs of a struggle apparent anywhere on her body or clothing. Even though the inquest deemed it to be a murder, her death in no way resembled a Ripper killing.

The body of Alice McKenzie was found on July 17, 1889, in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. She had suffered a severed carotid artery, along with multiple small cuts and bruises across her body – evident of a struggle. One of the pathologists involved in the investigation dismissed this as a possible Ripper murder, as it did not match with the findings of the three previous Ripper victims he had examined. Writers have also disputed McKenzie as being a victim of Jack the Ripper, but rather of a murderer trying to copy his modus operandi in an attempt to deflect suspicion.

The tenth Whitechapel murder victim was “The Pinchin Street Torso”. The victim was named as such because she was found headless and legless under a railway arch on Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, on September 10, 1889.

Investigators believed that the victim was murdered at a different location, and the body dismembered for disposal.

Frances Coles was murdered on February 13, 1891. She was found at Swallow Gardens – a passageway beneath a railway arch between Chamber Street and Royal Mint Street, Whitechapel – with her throat slit. Visible wounds on the back of her head suggested that Coles was likely thrown to the ground after having suffered to knife wounds across her throat. Apart from the cuts to her throat, there were no mutilations to her body.

A man named James Thomas Sadler, who authorities believed to be Jack the Ripper, was arrested and charged with her murder, but was later discharged on March 3, 1891 due to lack of evidence.

Regardless of whether or not the Ripper's bloodsport ended with Mary Jane Kelly, it's certain that it did end. I, however, do not believe these other victims to have been the Ripper's, and my opinions will become evident as our investigation continues. Many speculate that the end of the killings was due to either illness and eventual death, or perhaps insanity which led to institutionalization. Some suggest he may have fled the country and lived in self-imposed exile. One thing that is certain… along with the other killer(s) involved in the Whitechapel Murders, his true identity has never been ascertained. 

This leads me to Part Two, where we will discuss suspects on the Ripper Murders, and what could have possibly happened to Jack the Ripper after his spree in Whitechapel.