Jack the Ripper - Whitechapel, 1888

Of all the murders, solved and unsolved, that occured in the Victorian era, the Jack the Ripper killings are the ones that grab the attention of most people. Not only for the fact that Jack might have been the first sexually motivated killer or the first modern day serial murderer, but mostly because they were never solved. Countless of motives and suspects have been brought up over the years since he so silently vanished and yet to this day not one final clue has been found.
Who was the man who stalked the East End area of London and killed five (if not more) prostitutes in the most gruesome ways possible and why did he feel propelled to do these actions?

The victims
There has been wide speculation as to the exact number of victims. The official count is five, although other figures range from as low as four to as high as nine. One thing that can almost be sure is that besides the official five there are good reasons to include Martha Tabram (39 years old) as the first victim. She was murdered on Tuesday, August 7th in Whitechapel, her body was found on the first floor landing of the George Yard Buildings and although she had been stabbed thirty-nine times, her throat had not been slashed, and she had not been cut open. Unlike some of the later victims all of her organs were still intact and therefore this murder was seen as perhaps an early 'piece of work' by Jack the Ripper before he got his infamous modus operandi down. It could also be that someone entirely different killed her - but this person also has never been found. The first official Jack the Ripper killing was Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, who was found on Friday, August 31st, 1888 in Buck's Row. She was barely alive and quickly succumbed to her injuries after being found. The Star newspaper reported her death as "no murder was ever more ferociously and brutally done". She had been slashed twice in the lower part of the abdomen and her throat had been slashed twice. The gashes nearly severed the head from the body. There was no doubt about it, this was truly the work of someone who knew what he was doing. Panic didn't set about yet in Victorian London, it was common for prostitutes to be killed and there were many of them in London alone (records show a huge amount of 80,000 of fallen women as they were commonly called) and so what did the death, albeit gruesome, of one woman mean?
A second death brought the horror much closer, however. On Saturday, September 8th the body of Annie Chapman (45 years old) was found in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street. The post-mortem suggested that the immediate cause of death was suffocation, but that the throat had been cut, the abdomen had been opened up and some internal parts of the body had been removed and taken away, the intestines had been lifted out of the body and placed on the left shoulder of the corpse. Again it seemed that the killer obviously had some knowledge of anatomical or pathological examinations and it was the belief of the coroner that the extent of the injuries pointed to the fact that the killer had leisurely dissected the body for at least an hour. The third and fourth victims were both murdered on Sunday, September 30th. The first was a Swedish prostitute called Elizabeth Stride (45 years old) whose body was find in Dutfield's Yard by a jewellery salesman who was driving his cart into the yard. When his pony shied he went to investigate and found Elizabeth's body with a deep gash across her throat. It was still warm and it was later believed that whoever had carried out the murder had been disturbed, possibly by the jeweller himself. There has been some discussion that Elizabeth might not have been a ripper victim as there was none of the usual mutilation, but it's nothing more than mere speculation. At any rate there was to be another murder that day and the fourth victim was Catherine Eddowes (46 years old) whose body was found in Mitre Square. It can be safe to say that the Ripper was frustrated to say the least after his last botched murder and he took it out on Catherine who had been last seen alive just 5 minutes before her body was found by a City Police Constable. In five minutes grave mutilations were inflicted on her, including a cut throat, her face was slashed in several places, her intestines had also been pulled out and placed over her right shoulder and the left kidney and uterus has been removed and taken away.
If Victorian London thought this was the worst Jack the Ripper could do, they were wrong.
On Friday, November 9th the mutilated remains of Mary Jane Kelly (the youngest of all the victims, she was 25 years old) were found in her rented room at 13 Miller's Court by Thomas Bowyer who had been sent to collect over-due rent from Mary. When he received no reply to his knocking he peered through the window and what he saw sent him running straight to the police station. When the police finally smashed the door in, they found Mary on the bed barely recognizable, she had been mutilated beyond belief. Parts of her had been cut out and placed around the bed and room and other parts were missing, her face had been skinned and slashed, her throat slashed so violently that her head was nearly severed, the whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied, her breasts had been cut off. Such was the extent of the mutilation that she could only be identified by her eyes and hair.

The suspects
The following are the suspects that I myself have read the most about - feel free to suggest any suspect that you think I should add here.
Prince Albert Victor - One of the more controversial and famous proposed suspects, his name was only first mentioned many years after the murders and after his own death in 1892. His name is involved in no less than three major theories, yet these theories have been labeled as nonsense after it was found that the Prince was nowhere near London on several of the dates of the murders. He was in fact in Scotland.
Joseph Barnett - Mary Jane Kelly's lover at the time of her death, he was not proposed as a suspect until the 1970's. He's portrayed as a lover scorned, he didn't want Mary to prostitute herself any longer and may have murdered the other prostitutes in at attempt to scare Mary from the streets. When it didn't work and when he also noticed that his love for her was perhaps not requited he finally murdered her with a frenzy only a scorned lover could possess. Yet, if he had truly loved her, would he have mutilated the woman of his life in such a grotesque manner?
Dr. T. Neill Cream - Convicted and hanged in 1892 for poisoning several other prostitutes, he was honestly quite mad. The only true link is the fact that as the trapdoor on the scaffolding opened he uttered the words 'I am Jack...'. As Ripper hysterica was still in full swing at that time, it was immediately presumed that he had actually confessed to being Jack the Ripper - even though no other clues led to him. Cream had in fact served a prison sentence from 1881 to 1891 in Joliet, Illinois and therefore could not possibly have been in England, let alone London.
Montague John Druitt - Declared sexually insane by Scotland Yard, he quite possibly became intensely depressed after his mother became seriously mentally ill and was found drowned in the river Thames almost 2 months after the last murder. There however is very little evidence that can positively tie him to the Ripper case.
Jill the Ripper - First suggested by Inspector Abberline himself, one of the police officers investigating the murders, it was thought that a deranged midwife (possibly an abortionist) or a woman posing as one could have been responsible for at least the Mary Jane Kelly murder (one of her neighbour testified to have seen Mary not once but twice several hours after her actual death, she recognized her by the clothes she was wearing). A midwife would have been more easily trusted than a man and it would have been fairly normal for her to walk around the city with bloodied clothes.
Severin Klosowski (George Chapman) - No relation to Annie Chapman. Murdered three of his wives by poisoning them and was subsequently hanged in 1903. Inspector Abberline was known to hold strong suspicions towards Chapman and even though there were seemingly striking similarities between Chapman and what is known of the Ripper, it is slightly strange that a savage mutilator can so easily reform himself into being a calculated poisoner seven years later.
James Maybrick - His name has only appeared as a suspect after a controversial diary emerged in the early 1990's which has been said to have been written by him. Before the diary his name was only put in connection with his own supposed murder by his wife Florence Maybrick. The diary can't be proven as either a forgery or the real thing, and who-ever may have forged the diary has never come forward, so the mystery continues to this day.
Walter Sickert - A suspect tentatively put forward in the 1970's and the early 1990's, he was very recently again brought forward by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell. She claimed to see proof against him in certain of his paintings and she is sure that he wrote at least one of the famous taunting Ripper letters as she has found DNA linking both him and the letter. Most of these letters have been debunked as hoaxes and Sickert is not regarded as a serious suspect by Ripperologists as for one there is strong evidence that he was in fact in France for most of the murders.
Dr. R. DŽOnston Stephenson - He was mainly suspected as he seemed to have a huge interest in the case, even though he was never known to show any kind of violence towards women. It would then be fairer to say that he may well have been one of the earliest, if not the first, amateur Ripperologist.

In the end there are more myths and strange theories than there are helpful clues. Most of the police files were destroyed during the Second World War and what wasn't destroyed had most probably already been thrown away. Perhaps those files contained the true name of Jack the Ripper and perhaps we'd rather not know as this mystery still intrigues people to this day. In the end five innocent women died and that's all that really matters. I sometimes feel that the search for the suspects, some connected to wildly exaggerated stories, overshadows the memories we should keep for the victims and that is indeed a shame.