Identifying Jack the Ripper: The History of the Main Suspects Accused of Being the Notorious Serial Killer
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Identifying Jack the Ripper: The History of the Main Suspects Accused of Being the Notorious Serial Killer
*Includes pictures *Includes investigators' accounts and newspaper accounts about the crimes and suspects *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents
“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…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.†– Excerpt from a letter widely believed to be from Jack the Ripper When one hears the term “Victorian,†many images come to mind. For some, the term conjures up visions of lace and gloves and delicate fans. Others think of tight corsets and even tighter morals. Others, swayed perhaps by one too many British costume dramas, envision gentle elegance and long lost beauty.
Naturally, few people think of multiple dead bodies cast about in the streets or dark bedrooms, most mutilated to a shocking degree, and yet, those tragic images played a significant role not only in late Victorian London but ever since. In 1888 and 1889, a killer stalked the dark backstreets of the city through the notoriously overcrowded and crime-ridden Whitechapel district, murdering young women and then cutting their bodies up like a butcher.
The Jack the Ripper case continues to fascinate historians and amateur sleuths so much that people have dubbed themselves Ripperologists, and since nobody knows for sure who the killer was, every aspect of the crimes is up for discussion, down to who the actual victims of the Ripper were and whether there was actually more than one Ripper. In addition to considering so many suspects, the police were only certain that 5 of the victims (the “canonical fiveâ€) were killed by Jack the Ripper, but there were at least 11 documented murders over the course of several years, and today those are called the Whitechapel murders. Even in the 19th century, authorities were debating how many of the 11 were the work of the Ripper, and as the murders have been compared and contrasted for nearly 130 years, the debate continues.
While the killer has no doubt been dead for decades, there is still no way to know for sure who he was. That is not to say that there are not suspects; in fact, there are literally hundreds of them, from virtually every walk of life, including a prince, several knights, a policeman, a number of surgeons or surgical students, a few women, and a great many violent criminals. The list is so extensive that it is nearly impossible to narrow down and still be comprehensive.
The first group of suspects that deserve the closest review are those who the police themselves suspected, back during the dreadful days in which the murders were committed. Like all the most likely candidates, they were men who had some sort of medical or butchering background and thus knew how to use a big knife well. Some had weak alibis, and others had none at all, but none were ever tried, indicating there was not enough evidence to arrest any of them. Another group that bears another look are those men who were considered viable suspects by the press and the public, for while these men escaped police attention, there was still something in their lives that made the common people consider them criminals capable of dastardly deeds. In some cases, it was a matter of bigotry, as people turned on those that were different from themselves, either in their ethnicity, sexual preferences, or religion. In other instances, the press itself felt that that it had found out something that the police had either missed or chosen to ignore. Some suspects has a more recent origin, consisting of people who have been accused by various authors long after the fact. This list is by far the most extensive and also the least viable. This is where the sensational stories come in, of princes and royal cover-up, of policemen who knew the killer to be one of their own.
