Jack the Ripper and the search for a name
Jack the Ripper remains an unidentified killer associated with London's Whitechapel district in 1888. The murders were never solved, despite the enduring familiarity of the name. Five women, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, are usually grouped together as the canonical five. Their deaths occurred between 31 August and 9 November 1888 and are often considered the killings most likely to be linked. A wider police investigation covered eleven murders in Whitechapel and Spitalfields between 1888 and 1891, but investigators could not conclusively connect every killing to the murders of 1888.
The neighborhood surrounding those deaths was under severe economic pressure. Irish immigration had increased the populations of England's major cities during the middle of the nineteenth century, including London's East End. Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire and elsewhere in Eastern Europe began arriving in the same area from 1882. Whitechapel's population reached approximately 80,000 by 1888, while housing and working conditions deteriorated. Poverty drove many women into prostitution as a means of daily survival. Police estimated that Whitechapel had 62 brothels and 1,200 women working as prostitutes in October 1888. Around 8,500 people stayed in its common lodging houses each night.
The name Jack the Ripper came from the Dear Boss letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer and circulated through the press. That letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, possibly written by journalists seeking greater interest and newspaper circulation. Numerous letters claiming to come from the killer reached newspapers and Scotland Yard as rumors of connected murders intensified during September and October. A different letter, known as From Hell, reached George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee with The From Hell letter included a disturbing enclosure whose origin was never established.. The kidney was purportedly taken from a victim; the claim accompanied the package without establishing its origin.
The search for Jack the Ripper involved house-to-house inquiries, examination of forensic material, and the tracing and questioning of suspects. More than 2,000 people were interviewed, upwards of 300 investigated, and 80 detained. Detective Inspector Edmund Reid initially headed the Whitechapel division's investigation. After Nichols was killed, Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore, and Walter Andrews came from Scotland Yard to help. Eddowes's murder brought in City Police investigators because she died within the City of London. Robert Anderson, the newly appointed head of the Criminal Investigation Department, was away in Switzerland during several killings. Charles Warren appointed Donald Swanson to coordinate the inquiry from Scotland Yard.
The injuries directed attention toward occupations involving knives and anatomy. Butchers, slaughterers, surgeons, and physicians came under suspicion. A surviving note from Major Henry Smith says local butchers and slaughterers were eliminated after their alibis were investigated. Swanson reported that police visited 76 butchers and slaughterers and investigated their employees from the preceding six months. Queen Victoria was among those who suspected a butcher or cattle drover traveling aboard cattle boats between London and mainland Europe. Investigators examined those boats, but no single vessel's movements matched the murder dates. They also ruled out the possibility of a crewman transferring between boats.
Public efforts to find Jack the Ripper developed alongside the police work. Volunteer citizens in the East End formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in September 1888 and patrolled streets in search of suspicious characters. Dissatisfaction with the failure to apprehend the killer helped motivate the group, while some members also worried about the effect on neighborhood businesses. The committee petitioned the government to raise a reward for information leading to an arrest. It offered a reward of its own and hired private detectives to question witnesses independently. After Stride and Eddowes were killed, City Police Commissioner James Fraser also offered a reward for the killer's arrest.
Medical opinion took another direction when Anderson asked police surgeon Thomas Bond to assess the murderer's surgical skill at the end of October. Bond drew on his examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and postmortem notes concerning the other four canonical murders. His assessment became the earliest surviving offender profile. He considered all five killings the work of the same person and believed the women had been lying down when attacked. Yet he strongly rejected the suggestion that the killer possessed scientific or anatomical expertise. Bond even disputed the idea that the murderer had the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer.