Jack The Ripper Research Paper

Introduction

In the impoverished area in and around Whitechapel, London during 1888 a series of disturbing, gruesome murders took place. Some murders in this area occurred before and after what is recognised as Jack the Rippers time. However between the months of September and November of 1888 five women, all prostitutes and residents of Whitechapel, were believed to have been murdered by the same hand. The murders brought a lot of fear and attention inside and outside of London. The unidentified figure believed to be the killer of these women was to become known as Jack the Ripper.

Victims

Around the time of the gruesome Jack the Ripper murders, there were several other murders which took place in the Whitechapel Area, including a woman named

Martha Trabram. There is a number of people who consider Trabram to be the Ripper’s first victim, due to the brutality of her being stabbed thirty-nine times on August 7, 1888. Although this woman’s wound patterns were distinctly different from those of any of The Canonical Five .
The first canonical victim of Jack the Ripper was a fourty three year old woman by the name of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols. Her body was discovered during the very early hours of the morning on the 31st of August 1888. She was discovered in the street by two passing car men. The next victim, a woman named Annie Chapman whose badly mutilated body was found by a man named John Davis on the 8th of September.
During the early hours of September 30, 1888 two women were murdered, this would later become known as the “Double Event”. The first was a woman named Elizabeth Stride whose body was discovered at approximately 1am. Her throat had been cut, but due to the lack of mutilations and abdominal wounds, some doubt whether or not Stride was even a Ripper Victim. However, due to the way her throat was cut most experts agree that she was murdered by the same killer as the previous two victims. It is also believed that the killer had been interrupted before they got a chance to mutilate her body like with the other victims, due to fear of being caught perhaps. The second woman to be killed that night was Catherine Eddows, whose body was discovered just fourty five minutes after Elizabeth Strides’. Like the previous victims, this woman’s throat had been cut, and along with that her abdomen was cut open and her left kidney had been removed.
The last Whitechapel victim to be considered a part of the Canonical Five was Mary Jane Kelly whose body was discovered in her home at Millers Court on the morning of November 9th, 1888. Mary Jane Kelly’s murder was by far the most gruesome and disturbing. She was discovered by her landlord who had come to collect rent, he discovered her body to be horribly mutilated beyond recognition. Organs had been removed and placed on the bedside table, her heart was missing from the crime scene and her face had been cut away at as well. After the death of Mary Kelly, no more horribly gory murders like this occurred, at least none that bared any strong similarities with these five.

Suspects
During the time of the murders, and decades after they’d taken place, hundreds of suspects have been named by officials and Ripperologists . There are both some very believable theories behind who could’ve committed these crimes as well as some very outlandish accusations.

Perhaps one of the most well-known suspects or at least most mentioned is a man named Montague John Druitt.

Druitt was a man who was found dead in the River Thames on December 31 1888, the official cause of his death being a suicide-drowning. He probably would not have even been considered a suspect if not for the coincidental timing of his death taking place just weeks after the murder of the final canonical Ripper victim, and the fact that there were no more Ripper victims taken after his death, it was also taken into account that his family did have a history of mental illness, this could have been a contributing factor to his suicide. At first another reason he was suspected was that he was falsely recorded of being a Doctor, when he was actually a barrister and assistant schoolmaster, and some people had the belief that Jack the Ripper may have been a doctor or someone of a similar profession. Suspicion that he was responsible for the murders lessened when that mistake was realised. Despite there being no real reason to believe that this man was in any way related to the murders aside from the time of his suicide, he is still a popular suspect and one of the first names to pop up after searching for Jack the Ripper

suspects.
Another suspect, albeit it may be a farfetched one is a man named John Maybrick. He was a cotton merchant and he wasn’t even considered a suspect until over one hundred years after his death. However, there is a journal, which is supposedly written by Jack the Ripper, and although the diary never specifically mentions John Maybrick, the details of the journal apparently make it clear that it was this man’s life being described in the book.
Two other known theories about the kind of person Jack the Ripper could have been is the Lodger theory and the Jill the Ripper theory. The Lodger theory is based upon the image that Dr. L Forbes Winslow, the son of a psychiatrist and a qualified physician with an interest in crime, had created. After becoming actively involved in the Jack the Ripper case, he claimed to have an accurate mental image of who the murderer was. Forbes Winslow had a firm belief that the murderer was a homicidal lunatic who was driven to murder women under the religious-based obsession that he held a duty to rid the world of this class of women (prostitutes).
The Jill the Ripper theory is that the murderer may not have been a man at all, but a woman, presumably a midwife or someone of a similar profession. As it would not have been out of place to see a midwife wandering the streets at odd hours, with some blood on her clothes. It would also fit in with the speculation that Jack the Ripper possessed at the very least some basic knowledge of the human anatomy. However this theory is often discarded for several reasons. One of the reasons being that most of the Ripper’s victims had been cut and mutilated after being killed or losing consciousness due to strangulation and then set on the ground. Meaning that there is a very good chance that the killer was not splattered with blood at all.

Did the killer possess medical knowledge?
There has been speculation on whether or not the killer possessed any form of medical or surgical knowledge, there have also been theories suggesting that he may have been someone like a butcher, with no formal education but still at least a vague understanding on how to cut something up. This is due to the fact that the majority of Ripper victims were cut open and had at least one or more organ removed.
Depending on where you find your information, opinions on whether Jack the Ripper had any degree of medical or surgical knowledge varies from source to source.

Some people have a firm opinion that the killer had absolutely no type of knowledge regarding the human anatomy, while some others believe that it is the most likely thing. This theory is supported by the manner in which these murders occurred. The killer had a very narrow time frame to mutilate these women to the extent he did, it was also night time when his victims were killed. So it would be quite unlikely that an uneducated amateur would be able to perform the task of removing one or more organs from a woman’s body, in the dark and in such a short amount of

time.

Conclusion

To conclude this report, it has gone over the famous Jack the Ripper case in London, Whitechapel, 1888. The report has talked about the victims of the supposed Jack the Ripper and given a small description of each of the murders in The Canonical Five. It then continued to elaborate on Montague John Druitt, who was most predominantly the most suspected and John Maybrick was also another suspect of the murders. The report also have two well-known theories that revolve around just what type of person Jack the Ripper could have been, that being the theory of Lodger Theory, which was thought of by Dr. L. Forbes Winslow, and the Jill Theory; of that the murderer could have been female. And finally, the report has discussed the ideal that whether or not Jack the Ripper had medical knowledge, while giving a small insight into just why or why not this may have been the case.