SERIAL KILLER Jack the Ripper caused mass hysteria like no murderer had done before.
The story was kept alive for generations after no one was ever caught for killing working women in the East End of London.
Jack the Ripper was the pen name that signed off on a chilling letter alleged to be from the killer printed in London newspapers at the height of his terror.
Five women — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — are widely held to have been victims of the Ripper, although later murders were attributed to him.
All were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable around the Whitechapel area between August and November 1888.
Their bodies were mutilated, many of them being disembowelled.
Chapman’s uterus was taken, Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney removed and her face mutilated, while Kelly’s body was completely destroyed and her face hacked away.
Such was the fear at the time that the streets of London emptied after nightfall, leaving the once bustling Victorian capital deathly silent while the Ripper roamed the streets.
Jack the Ripper committed at least five murders in or near the Whitechapel district of London’s East End.
All of the victims were prostitutes and all of their corpses had been mutilated.
Scotland Yard was inundated with criminal investigations in rough East End leaving them overstretched and under-resourced.
Their lack of arrests and the continuing murder spree led to widespread criticism verging on derision of the police effort to catch the Ripper.
Volunteer citizens put themselves forward to try to help with the case and the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was formed.
Its members patrolled the streets looking for suspects and hired private detectives to bring the menace to an end.
Top of the list of suspects were local butchers and surgeons because of the brutality of the killings — the Ripper was clearly not averse to blood.
Even Queen Victoria was made aware of the harrowing killings and formed her own theories that the Ripper must be a butcher.
The fact that many killings took place on weekends or public holidays also suggested the killer was a regular worker who lived nearby.
While investigations proved fruitless at the time, “ripperologists” are still trawling through evidence to find the true identity of the killer.
The number of named suspects reaches over one hundred.
Among them is cotton merchant James Maybrick who died a year after the last of the Ripper murders.
A diary allegedly belonging to him detailed the murders but its authenticity is disputed.
Thomas Cutbush, a violent criminal, is also among the list of suspects.
He worked in Whitechapel at the time of the killings and allegedly harboured a hatred for prostitutes and a grim fascination with medicine and surgery.
Respected poet Francis Thompson is alleged to have carried out the murders because he wrote about killing people, had surgical experience and was known to be close to one prostitute in the Whitechapel area at the time.
The Ripper case was the first to cause a worldwide media frenzy, and fervent speculation continues to this day.
Indeed, in January 2018 the mystery seemed to have inched closer to being solved when an expert matched the handwriting of two letters claiming to be from the killer.
Hundreds of such letters were sent to police and media, and their origin has remained a mystery with many believing they were written by journalists in an attempt to boost circulation.
But a scientific study seemed to shed new light on the mystery, focusing on the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper appears for the first time, and the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard.
It found similar linguistic constructions in both letters, such as the phrasal verb ‘to keep back’, as well as similarities in the handwriting.
A recent theory which came to light in February 2018, is that the Ripper may have been a Dutch serial killer and sailor.
Crime historian Dr Jan Bondeson named Hendrik de Jong as a prime suspect.
De Jong murdered two wives in his homeland and is believed to have travelled to London regularly.
Another suspect to emerge is the American serial killer HH Holmes.
Lawyer Jeff Mudgett, is the great-great-great-grandson of Holmes, who murdered at least nine known victims.
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