Information About ™Jack The Ripper |
|
Jack the Ripper is the Pseudonym given to an unidentified Serial Killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area of London in the second half of 1888 . The name is taken from a letter to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer, published at the time of the killings. Although many theories have been advanced, Jack the Ripper's identity may never be determined. The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a complex muddle of genuine historical research, freewheeling Conspiracy Theory and dubious Folklore . The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed subsequent authors, historians and mostly Amateur Sleuths — dubbed ''Ripperologists'' — to point their fingers at a wide variety of candidates. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer due to the savagery of the murders and the failure of police to effect a capture, with the Ripper sometimes escaping discovery by mere minutes. Victims were women earning income as casual Prostitutes . Typical Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the cadaver was subjected to abdominal and sometimes other mutilations. Many now believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them. Due to the nature of the wounds on some presumed Ripper victims, several of whom had internal organs removed, it has been proposed that the killer had a degree of Surgical or Medical skill, or was perhaps a Butcher , although this point, like most of the beliefs about the killer and facts in the case, is in dispute. VICTIMS The number and names of the Ripper's victims are the subject of much Debate , but the most accepted list (referred to as the "canonical five") includes the following five prostitutes (or presumed Prostitute in Eddowes' case) in the East End Of London :
This list should be treated with caution. Its authority rests on a number of authors' opinions, but the initial basis for these opinions mainly came from notes made privately in can be believed, was attacked in public), and/or Kelly (who was younger than other victims, murdered indoors, and whose mutilations were far more extensive than the others). Others prefer to expand the list by citing Martha Tabram and others as probable Ripper victims. Except for Stride (whose attack may have been interrupted), mutilations became continuously more severe as the series of murders proceeded. Nichols and Stride were not missing any organs, but Chapman's uterus was taken, and Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney carried away and was left with facial mutilations. While only Kelly's heart was missing from the crime scene, many of her internal organs were removed and left in her room. The five canonical murders were generally perpetrated in the darkness of night, on or close to a weekend, in a secluded site to which the public could gain access and on a pattern of dates either at the end of a month or a week or so after. Yet every case differed from this pattern in some manner. Besides the differences already mentioned, Eddowes was the only victim killed within the City Of London , though close to the boundary between the city and the metropolis. Nichols was the only victim to be found on an open street, albeit a dark and deserted one. Many sources believe Chapman was killed after the sun had started to rise, though that apparently was not the belief of the police at the time. A major difficulty in identifying who was and was not a Ripper victim is the large number of horrific attacks against women during this era. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, mutilations to the victim's abdomen and genital area, removal of internal organs and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper. Possible victims Victims of other contemporary and somewhat similar attacks and/or murders have also been suggested as additions to the list. Those victims are generally poorly documented. They include:
Some Ripperologists also cite cases involving mutilated boys as being similar enough to other Ripper murders to merit close attention. A few of the letters sent to police at the time that claimed to have come from the killer contained threats about killing children. GOULSTON STREET GRAFFITI After the "double event" of the early morning of on Goulston Street. The cloth was later confirmed as part of Eddowes' apron. There was Graffiti in white Chalk on the wall above where the apron was found. Long reported the message as "The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing." Other police officers recalled a slightly different message: "The Juwes are not The men That Will be Blamed for nothing." Police Superintendent Thomas Arnold visited the scene and saw the graffiti. He feared that with daybreak and the beginning of the day's business, the message would be widely seen and might worsen the general Anti-Semitic sentiments of the populace. Since the Nichols murder, rumours had been circulating in the East End that the killings were the work of a Jew dubbed "Leather Apron". Religious tensions were already high, and there had already been many near-riots. Arnold ordered the graffiti erased from the wall. He did not make any effort to photograph the graffiti before its erasure. While the graffiti was found in Metropolitan Police territory, the apron was from a victim killed in the City of London, which had a separate police force. Some officers disagreed with Arnold's order, especially those representing the City of London Police, who thought the graffiti was part of a crime scene and should at least be Photographed before being erased, but Arnold's order was upheld by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren . The graffiti was wiped from the wall at about 5:30 a.m. Most contemporary police concluded that the graffiti was a semi-literate attack on the area's Jewish population. Author Martin Fido notes that graffiti makes use of Double Negative s, a common feature of Cockney speech. He suggests that the graffiti might be Translated into standard English as "The Jews are men who will not take responsibility for anything" and that the message was written by someone who believed he or she had been wronged by one of the many Jewish merchants or tradesmen in the area. There is disagreement as to the importance of the graffiti in the Ripper case: some contend that the graffiti is merely coincidental, and was not written by the killer; others think there might be some connection to the murders. There is no definitive proof linking the graffiti to the murder, other than the placement of the bloodstained apron scrap nearby. There are several possible scenarios, most of which are based solely on speculation:
THE RIPPER LETTERS Over the course of the Ripper murders, the Police and Newspapers received many thousands of letters regarding the case. Some were from well-intentioned persons offering advice for catching the killer. The vast majority of these were deemed useless and subsequently ignored. Perhaps more interesting were hundreds of letters which claimed to have been written by the killer himself. The vast majority of such letters are considered Hoax es. Many experts contend that ''none'' of them are genuine, but of the ones cited as perhaps genuine, either by contemporary or modern authorities, three in particular are prominent:
Some sources list another letter, dated September 17 , 1888, as the first message to use the Jack the Ripper name. Experts believe this was a modern fake inserted into police records in the 20th century, long after the killings took place. They note that the letter has neither an official police stamp verifying the date it was received nor the initials of the investigator who would have examined it if it were ever considered as potential evidence. Neither is it mentioned in any police document of the time, and some who have seen it claim that it was written with a Ballpoint Pen , which was not invented until some fifty years after the Ripper crimes. INVESTIGATION It is important to note that investigative techniques and awareness have progressed greatly since the crimes. Many valuable Forensic Science techniques taken for granted today were unknown to the Victorian-era Metropolitan Police . The concept and motives of serial killers were poorly understood. Police recognised a sexual motive or element to the attacks, but were otherwise thoroughly unfamiliar with such crimes. MEDIA '' cartoon by John Tenniel (22nd September 1888) criticising the police's alleged incompetence]] The Ripper murders mark an important watershed in modern British life. While not the first serial killer, Jack the Ripper was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy around his killings. Reforms to the Stamp Act in 1855 had enabled the publication of inexpensive newspapers with wider circulation. These mushroomed later in the Victorian era to include mass-circulation newspapers as cheap as a halfpenny, along with popular magazines such as the ''Illustrated Police News'', making the Ripper the beneficiary of previously unparalleled publicity. This, combined with the fact that no one was ever convicted of the murders, created a haunting Legend that cast a shadow over later serial killers. Some believe the killer's nickname was invented by newspapermen to make for a more interesting story that could sell more papers. This became standard media practice with examples such as The Boston Strangler , The Green River Killer , the Axeman Of New Orleans , the Beltway Sniper , the Hillside Strangler , and the Zodiac Killer , besides the derivative British Yorkshire Ripper almost a hundred years later and the unnamed perpetrator of the "Thames Nude Murders" of the 1960s, whom the press dubbed Jack The Stripper . The poor of the East End had long been ignored by affluent society, but the nature of the murders and of the victims forcibly drew attention to their living conditions. This attention enabled social reformers of the time to finally draw attention from the respectable classes to the plight of the poor. A letter from George Bernard Shaw to the ''Star'' commented sarcastically on these sudden concerns of the press:
SUSPECTS See Also: list of proposed Jack the Ripper suspects Many theories about the identity of Jack the Ripper have been advanced. None is entirely persuasive, and some can hardly be taken seriously at all. JACK THE RIPPER IN POPULAR CULTURE Jack the Ripper has been featured in a number of works of Fiction , either as the central character or in a more peripheral role. See Jack The Ripper Fiction for details. The Ripper has also been referenced in other ways in popular culture. Artists as varied as Motörhead , Morrissey , Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds , LL Cool J , The White Stripes , Queensrÿche , My Chemical Romance , Link Wray , The Legendary Pink Dots , Bob Dylan , and Screaming Lord Sutch have recorded songs titled Jack the Ripper. Chicago-based pop-rock band Spitalfield took its name from Spitalfields , one of the sections of London's East End where the killer was active. A number of companies also produce Jack the Ripper figurines or toys (including Mezco and McFarlane Toys ), sometimes leading to public protest, as when the family of victims of alleged serial killer Robert William Pickton objected to the sale of Ripper dolls at the Vancouver Virgin Megastore . {Link without Title} In 2006 , Jack the Ripper was selected by the BBC History Magazine and its readers as the Worst Briton In History . (BBC) To date more than 140 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. Philip Sugden's ''The Complete History of Jack the Ripper'' (revised ed., 2002) is widely considered the best general overview of the case. Six regularly-published Ripper magazines have hit the market 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 ''Journal of the Whitechapel Society'' (2005-present). {Link without Title} REFERENCES
SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|