Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of the East End of London, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved women working as prostitutes who lived in the slums of the East End of London. Their throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to speculation that the killer had some anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and numerous letters were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard from people purporting to be the murderer.
The name "Jack the Ripper" originated in the "Dear Boss letter" written by someone claiming to be the murderer, which was disseminated in the press. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax and may have been written by journalists to heighten interest in the story and increase their newspapers' circulation. Another, the "From Hell letter", was received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and came with half a preserved human kidney, purportedly taken from one of the victims. The public came to believe in the existence of a single serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, mainly because of both the extraordinarily brutal nature of the murders and extensive media coverage of the crimes.
Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed enduring international notoriety on the Ripper, and the legend solidified. A police investigation into a series of eleven brutal murders committed in Whitechapel and Spitalfields between 1888 and 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the 1888 murders. Five victims – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – are known as the "canonical five", and their murders between 31 August and 9 November 1888 are often considered the most likely to be linked. The murders were never solved, and the legends surrounding these crimes have since become a combination of historical research, folklore and pseudohistory, capturing public imagination to the present day.
In the mid-19th century, England experienced an influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the populations of the major cities, including the East End of London. From 1882, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire and other parts of Eastern Europe immigrated into the same area. The parish of Whitechapel in the East End became increasingly overcrowded, with the population rising to approximately 80,000 inhabitants by 1888. Work and housing conditions deteriorated, and a substantial economic underclass developed. Fifty-five per cent of children born in the East End died before the age of five. Robbery, violence, and alcohol dependency were commonplace, and the endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution to survive on a daily basis.
In October 1888, London's Metropolitan Police Service estimated that there were 62 brothels and 1,200 women working as prostitutes in Whitechapel. Approximately 8,500 people resided in the 233 common lodging-houses within Whitechapel every night, with the nightly price for a coffin bed being fourpence (equivalent to £2 in 2025) and the cost of sleeping upon a "lean-to" or "hang-over" rope stretched across the dormitory being two pence per person.
The economic problems in Whitechapel were accompanied by a steady rise in social tensions. Between 1886 and 1889, frequent demonstrations led to police intervention and public unrest, such as Bloody Sunday (1887). Antisemitism, crime, nativism, racism, social unrest, and severe deprivation influenced public perceptions that Whitechapel was a notorious den of immorality. These perceptions were strengthened in 1888 when the series of vicious and grotesque murders attributed to "Jack the Ripper" received unprecedented coverage in the media.
The large number of attacks against women in the East End during this time adds uncertainty to how many victims were murdered by the same person. Eleven separate murders, stretching from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891, were included in a Metropolitan Police investigation and were known collectively in the police docket as the "Whitechapel murders". Opinions vary as to whether these murders should be linked to the same culprit, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the "canonical five", are widely believed to be the work of the Ripper. Most experts point to deep slash wounds to the throat, followed by extensive abdominal and genital-area mutilation, the removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of the Ripper's modus operandi. The first two cases in the Whitechapel murders file, those of Emma Elizabeth Smith and Martha Tabram, are not included in the canonical five.
Smith was robbed and sexually assaulted in Osborn Street, Whitechapel, at approximately 1:30 am on 3 April 1888. She had been bludgeoned about the face and received a cut to her ear. A blunt object was also inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis and died the following day at London Hospital. Smith stated that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom she described as a teenager. This attack was linked to the later murders by the press, but most authors attribute this murder to general East End gang violence unrelated to the Ripper case.
Tabram was murdered on a staircase landing in George Yard, Whitechapel, on 7 August 1888; she had suffered 39 stab wounds to her throat, lungs, heart, liver, spleen, stomach, and abdomen, with additional knife wounds inflicted to her breasts and vagina. All but one of Tabram's wounds had been inflicted with a bladed instrument such as a penknife, and with one possible exception, all the wounds had been inflicted by a right-handed person.
The savagery of the Tabram murder, the lack of an obvious motive, and the closeness of the location and date to the later canonical Ripper murders led police to link this murder to those later committed by Jack the Ripper. However, this murder differs from the later canonical murders because although Tabram had been repeatedly stabbed, she had not suffered any slash wounds to her throat or abdomen. Many experts do not connect Tabram's murder with the later murders because of this difference in the wound pattern.
The "canonical five" Ripper victims are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.
The body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered at about 3:40 am on Friday 31 August 1888 in Buck's Row (now Durward Street), Whitechapel. Nichols had last been seen alive approximately one hour before the discovery of her body by a Mrs. Emily Holland, with whom she had previously shared a bed at a common lodging-house in Thrawl Street, Spitalfields, walking in the direction of Whitechapel Road. Her throat was severed by two deep cuts, one of which completely severed all the tissue down to the vertebrae. Her vagina had been stabbed twice, and the lower part of her abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound, causing her bowels to protrude. Several other incisions inflicted to both sides of her abdomen had also been caused by the same knife; each of these wounds had been inflicted in a downward thrusting manner.
One week later, on Saturday 8 September 1888, the body of Annie Chapman was discovered at approximately 6 am near the steps to the doorway of the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. As in the case of Nichols, the throat was severed by two deep cuts. Her abdomen had been cut entirely open, with a section of the flesh from her stomach being placed upon her left shoulder and another section of skin and flesh – plus her small intestines – being removed and placed above her right shoulder. Chapman's autopsy also revealed that her uterus and sections of her bladder and vagina had been removed.