Who is Jack the Ripper?

Innumerable number of people have asked the same question, Who is Jack the Ripper? Was he really the murderer? Up until this very moment, no one came up with the answers except for assumptions and their doubts. The identity of the killer of five women in the East End of London in 1888 has remained a mystery, but the case has continued to horrify and fascinate. 

Between August and November 1888, the Whitechapel area of London was the scene of five brutal murders. The killer was dubbed 'Jack the Ripper'. . The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer that was disseminated in media. The letter is widely believed to have been a practical joke, and may have been written by a journalist in an intentional attempt to intensify interest in the story. There has been much speculation as to the identity of the killer. It has been suggested that he or she was a doctor or butcher, based on the evidence of weapons and the mutilations that occurred, which showed a knowledge of human anatomy.

Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. Violence to prostitutes was not uncommon and there were many instances of women being brutalised, but the nature of these murders strongly suggests a single perpetrator. The murderer is also sometimes thought to have made contact by letter with several public figures. These letters, like the chalk message, have never been proved to be authentic, and may have been hoaxes. The “Fromm Hell” letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper”. 

Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. An investigation into a series of brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1892 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, but the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore and pseudohistory. The term “ripperology” was coined to describe the study and the analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper’s identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.