Within the span of ten weeks, London’s overcrowded and impoverished East End was subjected to a series of grisly homicides that went unsolved. What made these slayings so unique to an area already heavily entrenched in violent crime, was the sheer brutality of the homicides. Inside the boundary lines of a single square mile, a number of prostitutes were strangled and mutilated by an unidentified serial killer known to the public as Jack the Ripper. Despite the efforts of the Metropolitan Police to find and capture the assailant, the true identity of the Ripper is as much of a mystery today as it was in 1888. Speculative theories concerning the identity of the Whitechapel butcher continue to evoke public interest and endure the test of time.
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The legendary pseudonym was signed at the end of a postcard written by an individual who claimed to be the one who committed the horrific crimes in East End. The postcard received by the Central News Agency forwarded it on to the Metropolitan Police (Metropolitan Police 2016). When the postcard and the alias reached the press, public interest in the Whitechapel murders grew. Speculation and gossip as to the identity of Jack the Ripper was sensational. However, historian and author William D. Rubinstein writes in his own analysis of the Ripper killings that, “The letter of September 25th, 1888, signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, was believed to be genuine by the police at the time, but this is disputed by some modern researchers” (3). Today, it is a common belief that this letter was nothing more than a hoax and that journalists penned the letter in an attempt to enhance curiosity in the story and increase newspaper …show more content…
The victims were prostitutes, between the ages of 24-42, who lived and worked in the slums of the East End. The assailant would start by strangling the victim until she was unconscious. He would then lay her on the ground in order to cleanly sever the carotid artery, which subsequently led to the victim’s death. In most cases, the killer would perform mutilating incisions to the body in varying degrees- and occasionally removing organs, such as a kidney or a uterus. However, the degree of brutality varied between victims and one woman was found with only a few cuts and stab wounds. It is generally believed that the killer must have been interrupted. In each of the Whitechapel murders, evidence suggest the assailant was a psychopath who garnered sexual satisfaction from the power of violence:
It is likely that Jack the Ripper utilized the violence of stabbing and slashing his victims with a knife as methods for exerting his power and control over the victim. He used a knife to penetrate the victim, and satisfied himself through the eroticized power of violence, the domination of the victim, and the mutilation and bleeding of the victim, rather than sexual intercourse (Keppel et al.
The legendary pseudonym was signed at the end of a postcard written by an individual who claimed to be the one who committed the horrific crimes in East End. The postcard received by the Central News Agency forwarded it on to the Metropolitan Police (Metropolitan Police 2016). When the postcard and the alias reached the press, public interest in the Whitechapel murders grew. Speculation and gossip as to the identity of Jack the Ripper was sensational. However, historian and author William D. Rubinstein writes in his own analysis of the Ripper killings that, “The letter of September 25th, 1888, signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, was believed to be genuine by the police at the time, but this is disputed by some modern researchers” (3). Today, it is a common belief that this letter was nothing more than a hoax and that journalists penned the letter in an attempt to enhance curiosity in the story and increase newspaper …show more content…
The victims were prostitutes, between the ages of 24-42, who lived and worked in the slums of the East End. The assailant would start by strangling the victim until she was unconscious. He would then lay her on the ground in order to cleanly sever the carotid artery, which subsequently led to the victim’s death. In most cases, the killer would perform mutilating incisions to the body in varying degrees- and occasionally removing organs, such as a kidney or a uterus. However, the degree of brutality varied between victims and one woman was found with only a few cuts and stab wounds. It is generally believed that the killer must have been interrupted. In each of the Whitechapel murders, evidence suggest the assailant was a psychopath who garnered sexual satisfaction from the power of violence:
It is likely that Jack the Ripper utilized the violence of stabbing and slashing his victims with a knife as methods for exerting his power and control over the victim. He used a knife to penetrate the victim, and satisfied himself through the eroticized power of violence, the domination of the victim, and the mutilation and bleeding of the victim, rather than sexual intercourse (Keppel et al.