Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper
"A Suspicious Character," from the Illustrated London News for October 13, 1888 carrying the overall caption, "With the Vigilance Committee in the East End".
Born	Unknown
Cause of death	Unknown
Other names	Saucy Jack
Details
Victims	5 or more?
Country	UK
Date apprehended	Not apprehended

Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the late 19th century. The name is taken from a letter sent to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer.

The victims were women allegedly earning income as prostitutes. The murders were perpetrated in public or semi-public places at night or towards the early morning. The victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Theories suggest the victims were first strangled in order to silence them and to explain the lack of reported blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.

Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer owing to the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police in their attempts to capture the murderer, sometimes missing him at the crime scenes by mere minutes.

Due to the lack of a confirmed identity for the killer, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore and exploitation. Over the years, many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories regarding the identity (or identities) of the killer and his victims.

Jack the Ripper in popular culture

Further information: [[:Jack the Ripper fiction]]

Jack the Ripper has been featured in a number of works of fiction and in popular culture, either as the central character or in a more peripheral role.

At the time of the murders, a theatrical version of Robert Louis Stevenson's book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was being performed. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets drew much attention, even leading the star of the show to be accused by some members of the public of being the Ripper himself, although this theory was never taken seriously by the police.

The 1976 Judas Priest album, Sad Wings of Destiny features a song about Jack the Ripper entitled "The Ripper."

In 2001, Jack the Ripper was the subject of the Hughes' Brothers movie From Hell, starring Johnny Depp, Ian Holm, and Heather Graham. It was based upon the graphic novel of the same title by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

In 2006, Jack the Ripper was selected by the BBC History Magazine and its readers as the worst Briton in history.

The legend of the Ripper is still promoted in the East End of London with many guided tours of the murder sites. The Ten Bells, a Victorian pub in Commercial Street that had been frequented by Jack the Ripper's victims, was the focus of such tours for many years. To capitalise on this business, the owners changed its name to the "Jack the Ripper" in the 1960s, but following protests by feminists and others, the pub returned to its old name.

To date more than 200 works of non-fiction have been published which deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders, making it one of the most written-about true-crime subjects of the past century. Six periodicals about Jack the Ripper have been introduced since the early 1990s: Ripperana (1992-present), Ripperologist (1994-present, electronic format only since 2005), the Whitechapel Journal (1997–2000), Ripper Notes (1999-present), Ripperoo (2000–2003), and the The Whitechapel Society (2005-present).

See also

• Serial killer
• Jack the Stripper
• Joseph Vacher (aka the French Ripper)
• Yorkshire Ripper
• The Blackout Ripper
• Servant Girl Annihilator
• List of serial killers by number of victims

Additional reading

• The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden, (2002) ISBN 0-7867-0276-1
• The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook by Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, (2002) ISBN 0-7867-0768-2
• Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates by Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow, (2006) ISBN 0-7509-4228-2
• Jack The Ripper & The London Press by L. Perry Curtis, Jr. (2001) ISBN 0-300-08872-8
• Jack the Ripper: The Facts by Paul Begg, (2004) ISBN 1-86105-687-7
• The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow, (Revised edition 2005) ISBN 0-425-11869-X
• Ripperology by Robin Odell, (2006) ISBN 0-87338-861-5
• The Jack the Ripper A-Z by Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner, (1996) ISBN 0-7472-5522-9
• The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999) edited by Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund, ISBN 0-7867-0626-0
• Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell (2001) by Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner. Sutton: Stroud. ISBN 0-7509-2549-3

External links

• Casebook: Jack the Ripper has an extensive collection of contemporary newspaper reports related to the murders as well as articles by modern authors.
• The Metropolitan Police history of Jack the Ripper discusses the investigation into the killings.
• Information on the "Jack the Ripper and the East End" exhibit at London's Museum in Docklands that runs 15 May - 2 November, 2008.
• The National Archives - Jack the Ripper holds images and transcripts of letters claiming to be from Jack the Ripper.
• Whitechapel Society 1888 is a social organization dedicated to the Ripper case. It holds bimonthly meetings in London and has its own newsletter.
• Jack the Ripper History A site that looks at the history of the murders and puts them into the social context of the era in which they occurred.