Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper remains an unidentified serial killer, and one of the strangest pieces of evidence tied to him arrived by post on the 16th of October 1888. George Lusk, leader of a local vigilance committee in London's East End, opened a small box. Inside lay half of a human kidney, preserved in spirits of wine. A letter came with it. Its writer claimed to have fried and eaten the other half. Nobody has ever proved who sent the box, or whether the kidney belonged to any of the victims. That uncertainty runs through the whole case. The killer was active in and around Whitechapel, one of the poorest districts of London, during 1888. Who was he? How many women did he kill? Why does a name that probably began in a hoax still carry such force? And how did crimes in a district of slums grow into one of the most written-about subjects in true crime?
By 1888 the parish of Whitechapel held approximately 80,000 people. The crowding had been building for decades. Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers in the mid-19th century and swelled the population of major English cities, including the East End of London. From 1882, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire and other parts of Eastern Europe settled in the same streets.
Fifty-five per cent of children born in the East End died before the age of five. Work and housing conditions kept deteriorating, and a substantial economic underclass developed. Robbery, violence and dependence on alcohol were commonplace. For many women, poverty left prostitution as the only way to survive from one day to the next.
In October 1888 the Metropolitan Police tried to measure it. Their estimate was 62 brothels and 1,200 women working as prostitutes in Whitechapel. About 8,500 people slept every night in the district's 233 common lodging-houses. A coffin bed cost fourpence a night. A place on a rope stretched across the dormitory, called a lean-to or hang-over, cost two pence per person.
Between 1886 and 1889 the area also saw frequent demonstrations that brought police intervention and public unrest, among them Bloody Sunday in 1887. Antisemitism, nativism, racism, crime and deprivation all fed a public view of Whitechapel as a den of immorality. That view hardened in 1888, when the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper received media coverage on a scale nobody had seen before.
The body of Mary Ann Nichols was found at about 3:40 am on Friday the 31st of August 1888 in Buck's Row, now called Durward Street. About an hour earlier, a woman named Emily Holland had seen Nichols walking toward Whitechapel Road. Holland had once shared a bed with her at a common lodging-house in Thrawl Street, Spitalfields. Two deep cuts had severed Nichols's throat, one of them down to the vertebrae. A deep, jagged wound had opened her lower abdomen, and further incisions on both sides came from the same knife.
One week later, on Saturday the 8th of September, the body of Annie Chapman lay near the back-yard doorway of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. It was found at approximately 6 am. As with Nichols, two deep cuts had severed her throat. Her abdomen had been cut entirely open, and her autopsy showed that internal organs had been removed, including her uterus and parts of her bladder.
At the inquest, a witness named Elizabeth Long said she had seen Chapman outside the house at about 5:30 am. With her was a dark-haired man in a brown deerstalker hat and dark overcoat, whose appearance Long called "shabby-genteel". According to Long, the man asked Chapman, "Will you?" and Chapman answered, "Yes."
Two women died in the early hours of Sunday the 30th of September 1888, within roughly an hour of each other. Elizabeth Stride was found at approximately 1 am in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street, which is now Henriques Street. A single clean cut, six inches across her neck, had severed her left carotid artery and her trachea. She had no other mutilations, so it is uncertain whether the Ripper killed her or was interrupted. Witnesses reported seeing her with a man near Berner Street on the evening of the 29th and in the early hours of the 30th. Their descriptions conflicted. Some said he was fair and others dark, some said shabby and others well-dressed.
The body of Catherine Eddowes was found in a corner of Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. Her throat was cut from ear to ear and her abdomen ripped open. Her left kidney and most of her uterus had been removed. Her face was disfigured, with the nose severed, a cheek slashed and a triangular cut on each cheek. A piece of her right ear was later recovered from her clothing. The police surgeon who performed the post mortem judged that the mutilations would have taken "at least five minutes".
A cigarette salesman named Joseph Lawende had passed Church Passage, the narrow walkway to Mitre Square, with two friends shortly before the murder. He described a fair-haired man of medium build and shabby appearance standing with a woman who may have been Eddowes. His companions could not confirm his description. The two murders became known as the "double event".
At 2:55 am, a piece of Eddowes's bloodied apron turned up at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Chalked on the wall directly above it was the line: "The Juwes are The men That Will not be Blamed for nothing." The message seemed to blame Jews, yet nobody knows whether the killer wrote it or whether it was unrelated, since such graffiti were commonplace in Whitechapel. Sir Charles Warren, the Police Commissioner, feared it might spark antisemitic riots. He ordered it washed away before dawn.
Mary Jane Kelly was found at 10:45 am on Friday the 9th of November 1888, lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her face had been "hacked beyond all recognition" and her throat cut down to the spine. Her abdomen was almost emptied of its organs. Some had been placed beneath her head, others beside her foot and on a bedside table, and the heart was missing. Ashes in the fireplace suggested that the killer had burned several items to light the room. One recent fire was fierce enough to melt the solder between a kettle and its spout.
Each of these five murders took place at night, on or close to a weekend, and either at the end of a month or about a week after it. The mutilations grew more severe as the series went on, with the exception of Stride, whose attacker may have been interrupted.
Eleven separate murders, from the 3rd of April 1888 to the 13th of February 1891, were gathered into a Metropolitan Police docket known as the "Whitechapel murders". Opinions differ over which of them share a culprit. The first two entries in that file are not among the canonical five.
Emma Elizabeth Smith was robbed and assaulted in Osborn Street, Whitechapel, at approximately 1:30 am on the 3rd of April 1888. She told hospital staff that two or three men had attacked her, and she described one of them as a teenager. She died the following day at London Hospital from peritonitis. The press linked her case to the later killings, but most authors attribute it to ordinary East End gang violence.
Martha Tabram was murdered on a staircase landing in George Yard, Whitechapel, on the 7th of August 1888. She had suffered 39 stab wounds. All but one came from a bladed instrument such as a penknife, and with one possible exception a right-handed person inflicted them. The savagery, the lack of an obvious motive and the closeness in time and place led police to connect her with the later murders. Yet she had no slash wounds to her throat or abdomen. Many experts therefore leave her out.
In 1894, Sir Melville Macnaghten, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, wrote a report stating that the Whitechapel murderer had five victims and no more. The police surgeon Thomas Bond had already linked the five canonical cases in a letter to Robert Anderson, dated the 10th of November 1888. Macnaghten, however, did not join the force until the year after the murders, and his memorandum contains serious factual errors about suspects.
The authors Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow call the canonical five a "Ripper myth". They argue that only Nichols, Chapman and Eddowes can be definitely tied to one perpetrator. Others suppose that all six murders from Tabram to Kelly were one killer's work. Percy Clark, assistant to the examining pathologist George Bagster Phillips, linked only three. He thought the rest were committed by "weak-minded individuals... induced to emulate the crime".
Four more cases in the file came after Kelly. Rose Mylett, aged 26, was found strangled in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar, on the 20th of December 1888. Police believed she had hanged herself accidentally with her collar or taken her own life, but faint cord marks suggested strangling, and the inquest jury returned a verdict of murder. Alice McKenzie was killed shortly after midnight on the 17th of July 1889 in Castle Alley. Thomas Bond believed it was a Ripper murder, but his colleague Phillips disagreed.
On the 10th of September 1889, a decomposing, headless and legless torso of an unidentified woman aged between 30 and 40 was found beneath a railway arch in Pinchin Street. She had been badly beaten shortly before her death. The last case in the file is Frances Coles, found by PC Ernest Thompson at 2:15 am on the 13th of February 1891 beneath a railway arch at Swallow Gardens. Her throat had been deeply cut but her body was not mutilated, so some believe Thompson disturbed her attacker. She died before medical help arrived. James Thomas Sadler, a 53-year-old stoker who had argued with her about three hours earlier, was arrested and charged. The court discharged him for lack of evidence on the 3rd of March 1891.
Commentators have tied still more cases to the Ripper. "Fairy Fay" was supposedly a woman found in a doorway near Commercial Road on the 26th of December 1887. No murders were recorded in Whitechapel around that Christmas, and the story seems to have grown from a confused press report about Emma Smith. Most authors agree she never existed. Annie Millwood, a 38-year-old widow, entered the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary on the 25th of February 1888 with stab wounds to her legs and lower torso. She said an unknown man had attacked her with a clasp knife. She died on the 31st of March from apparently natural causes.
On the 2nd of October 1888, workers found a woman's headless torso in the basement of the new Metropolitan Police headquarters then being built in Whitehall. An arm and shoulder from the same body had been found floating in the Thames near Pimlico on the 11th of September. The body was never identified, and the case was called the "Whitehall Mystery". It and the Pinchin Street torso may belong to a series called the "Thames Mysteries", attributed to a "Torso killer". Only one of that killer's four victims was ever named. She was Elizabeth Jackson, a 24-year-old prostitute from Chelsea, whose remains were collected from the river between the 31st of May and the 25th of June 1889. Police at the time discounted any link to the Ripper.
A seven-year-old boy named John Gill was found dead in a stable block in Manningham, Bradford, on the 29th of December 1888, having been missing since the 27th. Similarities with the Whitechapel crimes led the press to speculate that the Ripper had killed him. His employer, a 23-year-old milkman named William Barrett, was twice arrested and twice released. No one was ever prosecuted. Across the Atlantic, Carrie Brown was strangled and mutilated in New York City on the 24th of April 1891. Her nickname was "Shakespeare", reportedly for her habit of quoting the sonnets. The murder was compared at the time to those in Whitechapel, but the Metropolitan Police eventually ruled out any connection.
The vast majority of the City of London Police files on the Whitechapel murders were destroyed in the Blitz. The surviving Metropolitan Police files still give a detailed picture of Victorian detective work. A large team of officers made house-to-house inquiries across Whitechapel. Forensic material was collected and examined. Suspects were identified and traced, then either examined more closely or eliminated. More than 2,000 people were interviewed, "upwards of 300" were investigated and 80 were detained. After the deaths of Stride and Eddowes, Sir James Fraser, Commissioner of the City Police, offered a reward of £500 for the arrest of the killer.
Detective Inspector Edmund Reid headed the Whitechapel (H) Division's Criminal Investigation Department at the start. After Nichols was killed, Detective Inspectors Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore and Walter Andrews came from Scotland Yard to help. The City Police joined under Detective Inspector James McWilliam once Eddowes was found, because Mitre Square lay within the City. Direction from above was patchy. Robert Anderson, the newly appointed head of the CID, was on leave in Switzerland from the 7th of September to the 6th of October, which covered the murders of Chapman, Stride and Eddowes. Warren responded by appointing Chief Inspector Donald Swanson to coordinate the inquiry from Scotland Yard.
Because of the mutilations, police suspected butchers, slaughterers, surgeons and physicians. A report from Inspector Swanson to the Home Office confirms that officers visited 76 butchers and slaughterers and checked all their employees for the previous six months. A note from Major Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police, shows that their alibis were investigated and that they were eliminated. Queen Victoria was among those who thought the culprit might be a butcher or cattle drover working the cattle boats between London and mainland Europe. Such boats usually docked at the nearby London Docks on a Thursday or Friday and left on Saturday or Sunday. Police examined them, but the murder dates matched no single boat's movements, and a crewman's transfer between boats was also ruled out.
In September 1888, volunteer citizens in the East End formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Its members patrolled the streets looking for suspicious characters. They were dissatisfied with the police failure to catch the killer, and some feared the murders were hurting local businesses. The committee petitioned the government to raise its reward, offered a reward of £50 of its own and hired private detectives to question witnesses independently.
At the end of October, Anderson asked Thomas Bond for an opinion on the killer's surgical skill and knowledge. Bond's answer is the earliest surviving offender profile. He based it on his own examination of Kelly and on the post mortem notes from the four earlier canonical victims. He concluded that all five murders were committed by the same hand, and that the women must have been lying down when killed, with the throat cut first. Bond firmly rejected the idea that the killer had scientific or anatomical training, or even "the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer". Instead he pictured a man of solitary habits, subject to "periodical attacks of homicidal and erotic mania". He considered revenge, brooding or religious mania as possible roots but thought neither likely.
No evidence shows that the killer had sexual contact with any victim. Some psychologists nonetheless argue that the way the bodies were left on display indicates sexual pleasure in the attacks. Others dismiss that view as insupportable supposition.
Six days after the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, The Manchester Guardian reported that police attention was directed at a "notorious character known as 'Leather Apron'". Reporters were frustrated that detectives would not share details, so many wrote speculative pieces. Rival journalists mocked the imaginary portraits of Leather Apron as "a mythical outgrowth of the reporter's fancy". A real man, John Pizer, a Jewish shoemaker who worked with leather, was known by that name and was arrested. The investigating inspector admitted there was no evidence whatsoever against him, and Pizer was soon released after his alibis were confirmed.
The "Dear Boss" letter was dated the 25th of September and postmarked the 27th of September 1888. It reached the Central News Agency that day and went on to Scotland Yard on the 29th. At first it was dismissed as a hoax. Then Eddowes was found three days after the postmark with part of an ear cut away, and the author's promise to "clip the ladys (sic) ears off" drew attention. The ear seems to have been nicked incidentally, and the threat to mail ears to the police was never carried out. The signature on this letter, "Jack the Ripper", was the first appearance of the name. Most letters that followed copied its tone, and some writers took pseudonyms such as "George of the High Rip Gang" and "Jack Sheridan, the Ripper". Some sources cite an earlier letter dated the 17th of September, but most experts think it was a fake slipped into police records in the 20th century.
A postcard postmarked the 1st of October 1888 reached the same agency that day. Its handwriting resembled the Dear Boss letter, and it mentioned the killings of the 30th of September with the words "double event this time". Some have argued that it was posted before the murders were widely publicised. Yet it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings, by which time details had spread through the press and Whitechapel gossip.
The third famous letter, the one addressed to Lusk, differed markedly in handwriting and style from the other two. Thomas Openshaw of the London Hospital examined the kidney it enclosed. He confirmed that it was human and from the left side, but contrary to false newspaper reports he could not determine anything more. Eddowes's left kidney had been taken by the killer, so some argue it was hers, while others call it a macabre practical joke. Openshaw later received a letter of his own signed "Jack the Ripper".
On the 3rd of October, Scotland Yard published facsimiles of the Dear Boss letter and postcard, hoping someone would recognise the handwriting. Warren privately told Godfrey Lushington at the Home Office: "I think the whole thing a hoax but of course we are bound to try & ascertain the writer in any case." On the 7th of October, George R. Sims wrote in the Sunday newspaper Referee that a journalist had probably written the letter "to hurl the circulation of a newspaper sky high". In a letter to Sims dated the 23rd of September 1913, Chief Inspector John Littlechild named the journalist as Tom Bullen. In 1931 a journalist named Fred Best reportedly confessed that he and a colleague at The Star had written the Ripper letters to "keep the business alive".
The appetite for such stories had a cause. The Elementary Education Act 1880 made school attendance compulsory regardless of class, so by 1888 more working-class people could read. Tax reforms in the 1850s had made cheap newspapers possible. Some cost as little as a halfpenny, and magazines such as The Illustrated Police News joined them. At the height of the investigation, over one million copies of papers covering the murders sold each day. Many articles were sensationalistic, false information was regularly printed as fact, and some speculation drew on local rumours that the culprit was Jewish or foreign.
Once the Dear Boss letter was published, "Jack the Ripper" replaced "Leather Apron" in the press and in public speech. The first name echoed "Spring-heeled Jack", another fabled London attacker who supposedly leapt over walls to strike his victims and escape. Inventing a nickname for a killer then became standard media practice. The Axeman of New Orleans, the Boston Strangler and the Beltway Sniper followed, along with Ripper-derived names such as the Yorkshire Ripper and the Rostov Ripper.
The killings clustered around weekends and public holidays, and within a short distance of each other. To many, that pattern suggests a man in regular work who lived nearby. Others have preferred an educated upper-class man, perhaps a doctor or aristocrat, who came into Whitechapel from a wealthier district. Such theories reflect older fears, including mistrust of the medical profession and of modern science, and anger at the rich exploiting the poor.
Sir Melville Macnaghten's 1894 memorandum names three suspects, but the evidence against each is at best circumstantial. Later writers added almost anyone connected to the case in contemporaneous documents. They also added famous figures whom the police never considered, among them the artist Walter Sickert and the author Lewis Carroll. Everyone alive in 1888 is long dead, so modern authors can accuse anyone "without any need for any supporting historical evidence".
Science has not broken the deadlock. No confirmed forensic evidence survives, and contemporaneous accounts are contradictory and unreliable. DNA analysis has tried to tie Aaron Kosminski, a Whitechapel barber, to crime scene evidence. Separate work has tried to tie Walter Sickert to letters that may themselves be hoaxes. The two claims are mutually incompatible, and critics have attacked the methods behind both. The mitochondrial DNA from the uncorroborated crime scene material was compared with undisclosed descendants of Kosminski, who had no children, and that comparison is considered questionable. Tests on the letters were inconclusive, because the surviving paper has been handled too often and is too contaminated. The Kosminski study could not be replicated, and its original data could not be located. The Journal of Forensic Sciences later published an official expression of concern.
The number of named suspects now exceeds one hundred, and authorities agree on none of them. The term "ripperology" describes the effort to settle the question, and the Ripper's identity is still unknown.
Within about two decades of the murders, the worst slums of the East End had been cleared and demolished. The victims' poverty and the murder sites' squalor had drawn attention to the overcrowded, insanitary conditions and galvanised public opinion against them. The streets and some buildings survive, and guided tours still walk the murder sites. For many years the Ten Bells public house in Commercial Street, which at least one canonical victim had frequented, was the focus of those tours.
In the aftermath, Jack the Ripper became a children's bogeyman, often drawn as phantasmic or monstrous. In films of the 1920s and 1930s he wore everyday clothes and hid a secret while preying on unsuspecting victims, with lighting and shadow suggesting evil. By the 1960s he had become a symbol of a predatory aristocracy and was usually shown as a gentleman in a top hat. The whole Establishment became the villain, and the Ripper stood for upper-class exploitation. His image borrowed from horror, including Dracula's cloak and Victor Frankenstein's organ harvest, and it has fused with genres ranging from Sherlock Holmes stories to the Japanese erotic horror Assault! Jack the Ripper.
Hundreds of works of fiction feature the Ripper, along with works that straddle fact and fiction, such as the Ripper letters and a hoax book called The Diary of Jack the Ripper. He appears in novels, short stories, poems, comic books, games, songs, plays, operas, television programmes and films. More than 100 non-fiction books deal only with the murders. The writer Colin Wilson coined the term "ripperology" in the 1970s for the study of the case by professionals and amateurs alike. The periodicals Ripperana, Ripperologist and Ripper Notes publish that research.
In 2006, a poll by BBC History magazine named Jack the Ripper the worst Briton in history. The Jack the Ripper Museum opened in east London in 2015 and drew criticism from Tower Hamlets mayor John Biggs and from protesters. Similar protests followed in 2021, when the second of two "Jack The Chipper" fish and chip shops opened in Greenwich. Some locals threatened to boycott it.
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Common questions
Who was Jack the Ripper?
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London in 1888. He was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron, and his identity remains unknown.
How many victims did Jack the Ripper have?
Five victims, known as the canonical five, are most often attributed to Jack the Ripper: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. A police file covers eleven Whitechapel murders between 1888 and 1891, and researchers disagree about how many were his work.
When did the Jack the Ripper murders take place?
The canonical five murders took place between the 31st of August and the 9th of November 1888. The wider Whitechapel murders file runs from the 3rd of April 1888 to the 13th of February 1891.
Where did Jack the Ripper commit his crimes?
The canonical murders took place in Whitechapel and Spitalfields in the East End of London, plus Mitre Square in the City of London. Whitechapel then held approximately 80,000 people and was marked by overcrowding and deep poverty.
How did Jack the Ripper get his name?
The name Jack the Ripper first appeared in the signature of the Dear Boss letter, postmarked the 27th of September 1888. The letter is widely believed to be a hoax, and it replaced the earlier press nickname Leather Apron.
Was Jack the Ripper ever caught or identified?
No, Jack the Ripper was never caught or identified. Over one hundred suspects have been named, and DNA studies linking Aaron Kosminski or Walter Sickert have been criticised, with the Kosminski study drawing an expression of concern from the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
What was the From Hell letter in the Jack the Ripper case?
The From Hell letter reached George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on the 16th of October 1888 with half a preserved human kidney. Thomas Openshaw confirmed the kidney was human and from the left side, but experts disagree on whether it came from Catherine Eddowes.
All sources
239 references cited across the entry
- 1Serial Killers: True Crime, p. 93
- 2Kershen, Anne J., "The Immigrant Community of Whitechapel at the Time of the Jack the Ripper Murders", in Werner, pp. 65–97; Vaughan, Laura, "Mapping the East End Labyrinth", in Werner, p. 225
- 3Honeycombe, The Murders of the Black Museum: 1870–1970, p. 54
- 5London, Novels and Social Writings, p. 147
- 7Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 1; Police report dated 25 October 1888, MEPO 3/141 ff. 158–163, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 283;
- 8Rumbelow, The Complete Jack The Ripper, p. 14
- 9Rumbelow, Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook, p. 30
- 10Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 131–149; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 38–42; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, pp. 21–22
- 11Marriott, John, "The Imaginative Geography of the Whitechapel murders", in Werner, pp. 31–63
- 12Haggard, Robert F. (1993), "Jack the Ripper As the Threat of Outcast London", Essays in History, vol. 35, Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia
- 13Woods and Baddeley, p. 20
- 15Cook, pp. 33–34; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 3
- 16Cook, p. 151
- 17Keppel, Robert D.; Weis, Joseph G.; Brown, Katherine M.; Welch, Kristen (2005), "The Jack the Ripper murders: a modus operandi and signature analysis of the 1888–1891 Whitechapel murders", Journal of
- 18Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–55
- 20Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, pp. 29–30
- 21Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 27–28; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–50; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 4–7
- 22Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 28; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 4–7
- 23e.g. The Star, 1888, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 155–156 and Cook, p. 62
- 24Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 29–31; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 47–50; Marriott, pp. 5–7
- 25Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 35
- 26Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 63
- 27Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–55
- 28Waddell, p. 75
- 29Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 51–55; Marriott, p. 13
- 30Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 43
- 31Whittington-Egan and Whittington-Egan, p. 91
- 34Eddleston, p. 21; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 60–61; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, pp. 24–27
- 35Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 42
- 36Honeycombe, The Murders of the Black Museum: 1870–1970, pp. 55–56
- 37Hogdson, p. 21
- 38Marriott, pp. 26–29; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 42
- 39Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 76
- 40Rivett and Whitehead, p. 36
- 41Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 153; Cook, p. 163; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 98; Marriott, pp. 59–75
- 42Holmes, p. 233
- 43Edwards, p. 60
- 44Cook, p. 157; Marriott, pp. 81–125
- 45Wilson et al., p. 38
- 46Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 176–184
- 48Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 177
- 49Howse, p. 88
- 50Hodgson, p. 27
- 52Medical report in Coroner's Inquests, no. 135, Corporation of London Records, quoted in Evans and Skinner, pp. 205–207 and Fido, pp. 70–74
- 53Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 171
- 54Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 193–194; Chief Inspector Swanson's report, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Evans and Skinner, pp. 185–188
- 55e.g. Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 30; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 118
- 56Norder and Sharp, p. 35
- 57Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 179
- 58Eddleston, p. 171
- 59Cook, p. 143; Fido, pp. 47–52; Sugden, p. 254
- 60Letter from Charles Warren to Godfrey Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Source
- 63Howse, p. 95
- 64Holmes, p. 239
- 65Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, pp. 292–293
- 66Thomas Bond "notes of examination of body of woman found murdered & mutilated in Dorset Street" MEPO 3/3153 ff. 12–14, quoted in Sugden, pp. 315, 319
- 67Eddleston, p. 63
- 68e.g. Daily Telegraph, 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 339–340
- 69Macnaghten's notes quoted by Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 584–587; Fido, p. 98
- 70Eddleston, p. 70
- 71Cook, p. 151; Woods and Baddeley, p. 85
- 72Macnaghten's notes quoted by Cook, p. 151; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 584–587 and Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 140
- 73e.g. Cook, pp. 156–159, 199
- 74Evans and Rumbelow, p. 260
- 75Interview in the East London Observer, 1910, quoted in Cook, pp. 179–180 and Evans and Rumbelow, p. 239
- 76Marriott, pp. 231–234; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 157
- 79Gordon, Alias Jack the Ripper, p. 179
- 80Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Forgotten Victims, p. 125
- 81Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 314
- 83Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 245–246; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 422–439
- 85Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 208–209; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 131
- 86Evans and Rumbelow, p. 209
- 87Marriott, p. 195
- 88Eddleston, p. 129
- 89Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 316
- 90Gordon, The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London, p. 159
- 91Evans and Rumbelow, p. 210; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 480–515
- 92Fido, p. 113; Evans and Skinner (2000), pp. 551–557
- 93Waddell, p. 80
- 95Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 317
- 97Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 218–222; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 551–568
- 98Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, pp. 21–23
- 100Fido, p. 15
- 101The name "Fairy Fay" was first used by Terrence Robinson in Reynold's News, 1950, "for want of a better name".
- 102Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 3
- 103Sugden, pp. 5–6
- 104Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, pp. 21–25
- 105The Eastern Post and City Chronicle, 7 April 1888
- 106Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 26
- 107Beadle, p. 75
- 108Beadle, p. 77; Fido, p. 16
- 109Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 27
- 110e.g. East London Advertiser, 1888
- 111Beadle, p. 207
- 112Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, pp. 311–312
- 113Beadle, p. 207; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 202; Fido, p. 100
- 115Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 142–144
- 117Gordon, The Thames Torso Murders of Victorian London, passim
- 118Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 210–213
- 120Gordon, The American Murders of Jack the Ripper, pp. xxii, 190
- 123Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 136
- 124Vanderlinden, Wolf (2003–04). "The New York Affair", in Ripper Notes part one No. 16 (July 2003); part two No. 17 (January 2004), part three No. 19 (July 2004 )
- 126Canter, pp. 12–13
- 127Inspector Donald Swanson's report to the Home Office, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 205; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 113; Evans and Skinner, The Ulti
- 128Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 184
- 130Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 675
- 131Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 205; Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 84–85
- 132Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 274
- 133Inspector Donald Swanson's report to the Home Office, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 206 and Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sour
- 134Marriott, John, "The Imaginative Geography of the Whitechapel murders", in Werner, p. 48
- 135Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 93; Daily Telegraph, 1888, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 341
- 136Robert Anderson to Home Office, 1889, 144/221/A49301C ff. 235–236, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 399
- 137Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 57
- 138Hodgson, p. 22
- 140Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Facts, p. 128
- 141e.g. Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 245–252
- 142Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 186–187; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 359–360
- 143Canter, pp. 5–6
- 144Letter from Thomas Bond to Robert Anderson, 1888, HO 144/221/A49301C, quoted in Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 360–362 and Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, pp.
- 145Woods and Baddeley, p. 38
- 146See also later contemporary editions of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, quoted in Woods and Baddeley, p. 111
- 147Evans and Rumbelow, pp. 187–188, 261; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 121–122
- 148Marriott, p. 205; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 263; Sugden, p. 266
- 149Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 43
- 150Woods and Baddeley, pp. 111–114
- 156Evans and Rumbelow, p. 261
- 157e.g. Frederick Abberline in the Pall Mall Gazette, 1903, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 264
- 158Cook, p. 31
- 163Meikle, p. 197; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 246
- 164"Expression of Concern: Forensic Investigation of a Shawl Linked to the 'Jack the Ripper' Murders" (2024), Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 69(5), p. 1938. .
- 165Whiteway, Ken (2004), "A Guide to the Literature of Jack the Ripper", Canadian Law Library Review / Revue canadienne des bibliothèques de droit, vol. 29(5), pp. 219–229
- 166Eddleston, pp. 195–244
- 167Whittington-Egan, pp. 91–92
- 168Donald McCormick estimated "probably at least 2000" (quoted in Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 180). The Illustrated Police News of 20 October 1888 said that around 700 lette
- 169Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 165; Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 105; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, pp. 105–116
- 171Over 200 are preserved at the Public Record Office (Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 8, 180).
- 172Fido, pp. 6–10; Marriott, pp. 219 ff.
- 173Cook, pp. 76–77; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 137; Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 16–18; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 48–49
- 174Cook, pp. 78–79; Marriott, p. 221
- 175Cook, p. 79; Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 179; Marriott, p. 221
- 176Cook, pp. 77–78; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 140; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 193; Fido, p. 7
- 177Cook, p. 87; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 652
- 180Eddleston, p. 155; Marriott, p. 223
- 181Marriott, p. 223
- 182Marriott, pp. 219–222
- 183e.g. Cullen, Tom (1965), Autumn of Terror, London: The Bodley Head, p. 103
- 184Cook, pp. 79–80; Fido, pp. 8–9; Marriott, pp. 219–222; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 123
- 185Sugden, p. 269
- 187Evans and Rumbelow, p. 170; Fido, pp. 78–80
- 189Wolf, Gunter (2008), "A kidney from hell? A nephrological view of the Whitechapel murders in 1888", Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation, vol. 23(10), pp. 3343–3349. .
- 190Cook, p. 146; Fido, p. 78
- 192Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 32–33
- 193Letter from Charles Warren to Godfrey Lushington, 1888, Metropolitan Police Archive MEPO 1/48, quoted in Cook, p. 78; Evans and Rumbelow, p. 140 and Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from He
- 194Quoted in Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 41, 52 and Woods and Baddeley, p. 54
- 195Cook, pp. 94–95; Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters From Hell, pp. 45–48; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, pp. 624–633; Marriott, pp. 219–222; Rumbelow, The Complet
- 196Quoted in Cook, pp. 96–97; Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, p. 49; Evans and Skinner, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook, p. 193; and Marriott, p. 254
- 199Professor Francis E. Camps, August 1966, "More on Jack the Ripper", Crime and Detection, quoted in Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 51–52
- 201Woods and Baddeley, pp. 20, 52
- 203Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 208
- 204Curtis, p. 214
- 210Manchester Guardian, 1888, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 98
- 211Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 214
- 212e.g. Manchester Guardian, 1888, and Austin Statesman, 1888, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 98–99; The Star, 1888, quoted in Evans and Rumbelow, p. 80
- 213Leytonstone Express and Independent, 1888, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 99
- 214e.g. Marriott, p. 251; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 49
- 215Report by Inspector Joseph Helson, CID 'J' Division, in the Metropolitan Police archive, MEPO 3/140 ff. 235–238, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 99 and Evans and Skinner, T
- 216Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell, pp. 13, 86; Fido, p. 7
- 217Ackroyd, Peter, "Introduction", in Werner, p. 10; Rivett and Whitehead, p. 11
- 218Marriott, John, "The Imaginative Geography of the Whitechapel murders", in Werner, p. 54
- 220Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, pp. 1–2; Rivett and Whitehead, p. 15
- 221Cook, pp. 139–141; Vaughan, Laura, "Mapping the East End Labyrinth", in Werner, pp. 236–237
- 222Dennis, Richard, "Common Lodgings and 'Furnished Rooms': Housing in 1880s Whitechapel", in Werner, pp. 177–179
- 223Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. xv; Woods and Baddeley, p. 136
- 224Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 19
- 225Dew, Walter (1938). I Caught Crippen. London: Blackie and Son. p. 126, quoted in Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 198
- 226Bloom, Clive, "Jack the Ripper – A Legacy in Pictures", in Werner, p. 251
- 227Woods and Baddeley, p. 150
- 228Bloom, Clive, "Jack the Ripper – A Legacy in Pictures", in Werner, pp. 252–253
- 229Bloom, Clive, "Jack the Ripper – A Legacy in Pictures", in Werner, pp. 255–260
- 230Begg, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, p. 299; Marriott, pp. 272–277; Rumbelow, The Complete Jack the Ripper, pp. 251–253
- 231Woods and Baddeley, pp. 70, 124
- 234JournalA New Front in the History Wars? Responding to Rubenhold's Feminist Revision of the RipperPaul Bleakley — 1 November 2022
- 236Woods and Baddeley, p. 176