What Everyone Should Know About Jack the Ripper

Today Jack seems like a mere amateur as a serial killer. In light of the massive number of victims linked to serial killers like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper barely rates a blip on the scale. That’s not meant to say that every life isn’t precious; most assuredly it is, but Jack the Ripper is considered to have five definite victims and perhaps as many as thirteen. More likely he was responsible for at most seven murders, however.

Where and When?

London’s Whitechapel district in 1888. Several possible victims were killed in 1889, but most of those are not generally thought to be authentic Ripper victims. Whitechapel at the time was a quite unsavory place; it was populated by the poor and was the working site of an estimated 1000 or more prostitutes.

So, What Does Ripping Someone Really Mean?

Jack the Ripper is famous today for two reasons. One, he was never caught. And two, the singularly horrific nature of his crimes. The Ripper specialized in bodily mutilation. Victimization include the slashing of necks, the removal of internal organs, and in one case a very precise dissection that must have taken a fair amount of time. He did not sexually assault his victims.

Didn’t Jack the Ripper Send Letters To The Police?

The police actually received thousands of letters purportedly written by the killer, but nearly all were clearly hoaxes. Three letters stand out, but even those three are the subject of much debate as to their authenticity. There simply has never been any way to be completely sure that Jack ever actually wrote a letter. The name Jack the Ripper came from a letter received on September 27, 1888, which was initially considered a hoax, but became subject to serious review when a remark about cutting off an ear turned up true when one of the victims had her ear cut off. The “From Hell” letter which gave the Johnny Depp movie version of the story its title is also considered authentic by some because it happened to contain a partial kidney thought to perhaps belong to victim Catherine Eddowes. It was never confirmed, however, that the kidney was Eddowes and many others believe this was nothing more than a macabre practical joke.

So Why Wasn’t He Caught?

Couple of reasons. For one thing, the murders of prostitutes was hardly a high priority for the police. Just like today, the murder of a young blonde Lady in an affluent part of the country would have knocked the story of Jack’s murders off the front page long enough for history to have forgotten him. Secondly, this was in the age before CSI. And even real life CSI isn’t enough to catch today’s criminals like they do on TV. Thirdly, if Jack really was some of the people who have been named as suspects, they probably did catch him, but covered it up.

Was It Really A Member of the Royal Family?

One theory has it that Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Elizabeth, was Jack the Ripper and that the reason he was never captured is because it was discovered that Prince Eddy did the deed and it was successfully covered up. But this theory would only make sense if the Prince were capable of conducting physician-quality dissection and since we all know that members of the British Royal Family are a bunch of inbred imbeciles incapable even of cutting their own meat at dinner, how likely is it that one of them would be capable of this?

So Who Did It?

Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know. The list of suspects even includes Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, though that theory is only taken seriously by those who consider Oliver Stone’s JFK to be a historical document. The most likely profile for the real Jack the Ripper is probably someone who was a physician who for one reason or another was no longer allowed to practice; who had therefore fallen on hard times and so could move about among the unsavory characters lurking in Whitechapel without standing out or drawing attention; who had some sort of psychological trauma that was being played out in the act of murdering loose women; and who probably was either killed himself or died accidentally not long after the last murder took place.