JACK THE RIPPER
The name Jack the Ripper was first used in a letter that was received by the Central News Agency on New Bridge Street in the City of London on September 27th 1888.
By this date there had been several murders of prostitutes in the East End of London. Emma Smith had been attacked in Osborn Street in the early hours of the Tuesday morning after the bank holiday Easter Monday. She died the next morning of peritonitis. In the early hours of 7th August 1888 Martha Tabram was found on the first floor landing of George Yard Buildings just one street away from the place where Emma Smith had been attacked. She had suffered a frenzied knife attack and her killer had inflicted 39 stab wounds upon her body.
It is generally agreed that these two women were not victims of the killer who later became known as Jack the Ripper. But their two killings stirred up a certain amount of disquiet in the neighbourhood, so when three weeks later the body of another prostitute, Mary Nichols, was found in a gateway of Bucks Row in the early hours of August 31st 188, the people of Whitechapel were already beginning to feel uneasy.
Mary Nichols is generally believed to have been the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Her body was discovered by a carter named Charles Cross who was on his way to work at around 3.40am. He was joined at the scene by another carter named Robert Paul. But neither of them noticed the fact that her throat had been slashed so viciously that her head had almost been cut from her body. That discovery was made by the local beat officer PC Neil ho patrolled down Buck Row about three minutes after Paul and Cross had left the scene to tell a policeman of their find. Neil shone his lamp onto the body and saw the blood oozing from an open wound in the woman’s throat. In those days the police's main aim in the wake of a murder was to get the body away from the scene as quickly as possible. So by 4.30am Mary Nichols body had been removed to the nearby workhouse mortuary. It was here that Inspector Spratling made a further gruesome discovery when he looked under her skirts and found that she had been disembowelled.
In the wake of Mary Nichols murder Inspector Frederick George Abberline - a detective who had spent fourteen years working the crime ridden streets of Spitalfields and Whitechapel and had been promoted to the Metropolitan Police headquarters at Scotland Yard the previous year - was sent back to the area to take charge of the on the ground investigation into the killings.
Soon his men had come up with a likely sounding suspect in the form of a man whom the local prostitutes had nicknamed Leather Apron. It was alleged by Sergeant William Thicke that whenever anyone in the area spoke of Leather Apron they were referring to a man named John Pizer. So the police now had the first suspect in their hunt for the killer who became known as Jack the Ripper.
But by 5th September the Star newspaper had learnt of their main suspect and began running a series of articles that turned Leather Apron into a demon like figure. The articles also emphasised his Jewish appearance and this led to the first signs of anti-Semitism in the area.
On 8th September 1888 another prostitute named Annie Chapman was found murdered and mutilated in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street. Again she had been horribly mutilated but this time the killer had taken out and gone off with her womb. In the corner of the yard close by the body was found a freshly washed leather apron. As a result the local populace began attacking innocent Jews in the area and the police faced the alarming possibility that they were going to have a full scale pogrom in the East End of London. To try and contain the racial unrest extra uniformed officers were drafted into the area. As a result it became too difficult for the killer to strike again and the people of Whitechapel enjoyed a brief respite from their autumn of terror.
But on the 30th September the killer returned and murdered twice in the space of an hour. Elizabeth Stride was found murdered in Berner Street, and Catherine Eddowes was found murdered in Mitre Square. With Catherine Eddowes the killer had for the first time targeted the face and her cheeks, eyes, nose and ears had been mutilated. He had also removed and gone of with her uterus and left kidney.
The next day the police released the letter that had been received by the head of the Central News Office on New Bridge Street and which was signed Jack the Ripper. It read:
Dont mind me giving the trade name
Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. ha ha
It was this letter and its chilling signature that helped make the murders so famous, for once the newspapers latched on to the name they turned the murders into an international phenomenon.
The probability, however, is that the Jack the Ripper letter was not written by the killer but was more probably written by a journalist.
The police presence in the area was increased yet again in the wake of the double murder and as a result there were no more murders throughout the whole of October.
But on 9th November 1888 Mary Kelly was murdered in her room in Miller's Court of Dorset Street. This was the most gruesome murder of all for she had been virtually skinned down to the bone.
But with the murder of Mary Kelly the Jack the Ripper murders came to an end. The only explanation for the sudden cessation is that something happed to the killer after he murdered Mary Kelly. But what it was has been the course of constant speculation ever since.
It is one of the issues we discuss on our Jack the Ripper Walk, which follows the ripper’s trail of bloodshed and mayhem on an almost nightly basis.
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