Jack The Ripper Thesis

Jack the Ripper

One of the very first and most prolific serial killers was Jack the Ripper. For the past 127 years, he has held scholars and forensic scientists prisoner because of his anonymity and the graphic and demoralizing murders he committed. Jack the Ripper is considered significantly important because he set the foundation on how we understand and study serial killers and today his murders still stand as the longest unsolved cases in history.

Jack the Ripper was the name of a man who lived in the east end of London who was suspected of killing over five prostitutes(Introduction to the Case). The name, Jack the Ripper, originated from a letter that the Central News Agency received on September 27th, 1888 that was believed

to actually have been written by a journalist in order to draw more attention to the case (Introduction to the Case). The name Jack the Ripper is the name that is most widely known, but he was also known as the “Whitechapel Murder” and the “Leather Apron” (Introduction to the Case). The Ripper was an average built man who wore a long, black cloak, top hat, and carried a black medical bag (Texas State). All of the women who were killed were under the age of twenty years old and all killed at night in the streets of Whitechapel, London (Texas State). The prostitute’s bodies were left in open sight for everyone to see and the cuts on their bodies led people to believe he was left handed due to the direction of each scar (Texas State). The sight of the bodies and the places they were murdered showed that the killer was ruthless and had no doubt that he would get away with the murders. This is what made him the first recognized and most remembered serial killer of all time.
The Ripper was suspected of killing five or more prostitutes between April of 1888 and February of 1891. The victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly (Rumbelow, 15). At the same time of these five murders by Ripper who were known as the “Canonical Five”, there were also six other murders that are still unknown as to if Ripper was the murderer or not (Harrison 31). Each of these six victims were prostitutes on the East end of London and all shared very similar wounds to the murdered Canonical Five. The six others that were found dead in Whitechapel, had been brutally killed as well, but none of them had organs removed postmortem nor been killed with such precision as the five that were killed by Jack the Ripper.
Mary Ann Nichols was the first found dead out of the Canonical Five (Rubinstein). Her body was discovered in the early morning hours in front of a gated horse stable entrance in Bucks Row, Whitechapel. John Neil, the police officer for that area discovered her body and said her skirt was pulled above her waist and that her throat had two very deep lacerations. She also had many other wounds to her abdomen (Jack the Ripper's Rap Sheet).
The second girl the Ripper killed was Annie Chapman. Albert Cadosch, the last person to see Chapman alive, said that he saw her talking to a man on Hanbury St. (Rubinstein). Her body was found by John Davis in a backyard on Hanbury Street. Annie’s throat had been cut just like Nichols and her entire abdomen was cut open with her organs placed on her shoulder. When they got her body back to the morgue the specialist announced that part of her uterus and vagina had been removed (Harrison 54). After Chapman’s body was found, the murders started showing more and more similarities and they became closer in time intervals to each other.
As the killing spree proceeded to continue, Elizabeth Stride’s body was the next to be discovered on September 30th, 1888.

Her body was also discovered in the early morning hours in Dutfield’s Yard (Harrison 67). Some believe that she wasn’t murdered by Jack the Ripper because her body wasn’t mutilated like the others. However, her throat was slashed with the same precision as that of the other prostitutes (Introduction to the Case Book). On the exact same night, another body was found in Mitre Square (Rubinstein). Catherine Eddowes, the fourth prostitute to be murdered, throat had been slashed exactly like the other girls and her abdomen was also ripped open. The Ripper also took her left kidney and a major portion of her uterus (Rubinstein).

The last of the Canonical Five was Mary Jane Kelly. Her murder was the most severe and most gruesome of the five. She was found at Dorset Rd. lying face down in her bed dead (Harrison 76). Mary’s face was literally gone, her breasts were cut off, and her entire abdominal cavity was emptied including her heart (Introduction to the Case Book). Scholars and historians believe that she was the last of the Ripper’s victims because he either moved away, got sick and died, or got arrested for a smaller

crime.
Jack the Ripper has affected society in many deranged ways. Although he killed just five people, that we know of, imagine how many people he has influenced and how many people have tried to copied his murders. Many sick and twisted people are tranced by what he did and have taken his ideas and used them to hurt more and more innocent women. The Ripper has also provided us with information that the FBI and other agencies still use today to help catch these unethical people.
In the span of the past 127 years, there were many people suspected of committing the murders including: Prince Albert Victor, David Cohen, Lewis Carroll, Dr. T. Neil Cream, and Jacob Levy (Introduction to the Case). Although all of these men never were convicted of the crime, the research behind these men created many inferences about how and why The Ripper did such heinous crimes. Many scholars believe that Jack the Ripper was a persuasive and manipulative man when it came to approaching and talking to women. Due to the precision of the crimes, he was also believed to have a medical background. Jack the Ripper’s influence on today’s criminal justice system created the way we go about murder cases, which makes him a significant figure in today's society. The footprint he left on the earth has left a lasting impact on the way we look at and interpret how and why an individual acts recklessly and goes to such widths to murder innocent women.