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Crime & heists
31 August 1888 – 9 November 1888 · Whitechapel, London
Murder & violenceStatus: Unsolved
Image: R. Taylor (R. & E. Taylor (Firm)) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
5victims generally attributed to the same killer
In 1888 Whitechapel was one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of London. Tens of thousands of people lived in overcrowded tenements and common lodging houses where a bed was rented by the night. Many women without a steady income lived on casual work and sometimes on prostitution, and spent the night in the street when they could not raise the money for a bed. The streets were narrow and poorly lit.
Between 31 August and 9 November 1888 five women were murdered: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. Stride and Eddowes died on the same night, 30 September. In four of the five cases the body was severely mutilated after death. The police file on the 'Whitechapel murders' covers eleven murders between 1888 and 1891; whether all of them belong to the same killer is uncertain.
The Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police questioned more than two thousand people and detained dozens of suspects, without result. Forensic tools such as fingerprinting did not yet exist. The police and the press received hundreds of letters; most researchers regard the letter signed 'Jack the Ripper' as a hoax. Local residents set up their own patrol, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.
Police Commissioner Charles Warren resigned in November 1888. The press coverage drew attention to living conditions in the East End and contributed to the clearance of the worst slums. More than a hundred suspects have been named since, but no theory has been proven; recent DNA claims, too, have been criticised by specialists. Historians now pay more attention to the lives of the victims themselves.