Background
'Jack the Ripper' is the name given to the unidentified person responsible for a series of murders in the Whitechapel district of London in the autumn of 1888. Whitechapel was then a deeply overcrowded and impoverished neighbourhood, and police records show many women there making a living through prostitution. The victims were women trying to survive in these conditions.
The women most widely accepted as the 'canonical five' are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Police files, however, grouped eleven killings between 1888 and 1891 under the heading 'Whitechapel murders', and it has never been proven that all of them were the work of one person.
What happened
Nichols was found on 31 August in Buck's Row and Chapman on 8 September on Hanbury Street. On the night of 30 September Elizabeth Stride was found near Berner Street and Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, within the City of London; the press called it the 'double event'. The fifth victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was found on 9 November in her room at Miller's Court.
Hundreds of letters reached newspapers and police during the autumn. The 'Dear Boss' letter introduced the name 'Jack the Ripper', which was most probably invented by a journalist. The 'From Hell' letter was sent to George Lusk, head of a local vigilance committee, together with part of a human organ; most of the letters are considered hoaxes.
Investigation
The Metropolitan Police's Whitechapel (H) Division led the inquiry, supported by Scotland Yard detectives such as Frederick Abberline, and the City Police joined after Eddowes's death. Officers interviewed more than 2,000 people, investigated over 300 and detained about 80. Surgeon Thomas Bond produced one of the earliest known offender profiles, and local residents formed a volunteer committee to patrol the streets. Much of the City Police archive was later destroyed in the Blitz.
More than a hundred names have been put forward as suspects, but nobody was ever charged and the evidence against any of them is at best circumstantial. DNA claims about Aaron Kosminski have been widely criticised by scientists.
Where it stands today
The case was never solved. Even so, the murders changed debates about policing, the press and urban poverty, and they are often cited in the history of modern crime reporting and offender profiling. On this page Dark Location remembers the women of Whitechapel as people with their own life stories, not as props in the 'Jack' legend.