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The Victims of Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper is remembered as one of history?s most famous, daring, and
heinous serial killers. His technique of getting his victims to lay down before
he slashed their throats, then disemboweling them in a matter of a minute or two
with as little blood flow as possible distinguishes him as one of the most
methodical, ruthless killers to ever live. He even performed some of his
gruesome murders right in the street and left his victims to be found minutes
later by people or policemen passing by. This demonstrates what extremes he
would actually go to to fulfill his desire for killing. Through my report I will
attempt to create a brief profile of his victims as well as explore the
methodical and horrendous ways they were murdered. 1.Mary Anne ?Polly?
Nichols Mary Anne Nichols was found dead on Aug. 31, 1888 between 3:30 and 4:00
A.M. by a porter on his way to work. At a first glance, it appeared to the
porter that the woman was just laying down in the street merely unconscious.
Police officer John Neil was summoned to the scene minutes after the body was
found. The light from his lamp revealed that the woman was in fact dead with a
slashed throat. Dr. Rees Ralph Llewellyn was performing a surgery when he was
called to make an official examination of the body. After the examination was
complete he pronounced the woman dead by means of a slashed throat. He also took
special note that the body was still warm, indicating that the victim had been
dead perhaps only minutes before being discovered. The body was removed to the
mortuary shed at the Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary to be autopsied.
Only then was the unusually large puddle of blood that had collected beneath the
body seen. Once at the mortuary, Dr. Llewellyn performed a full autopsy which
revealed more about the manner of the murder that was not acknowledged during
the street examination. Not only was her throat slashed, but her abdominal area
and sexual organs had been brutally sliced and mutilated, which explained the
large puddle of blood beneath the body. Furthermore, there were many bruises on
the sides of her face which indicated that she had been knocked unconscious
before being mutilated. The murder was believed to have been committed with a
stout- handled blade of six to eight inches long (Geary, p.7). Mary Anne Nichols
was the first victim of Jack the Ripper who was deliberately mutilated. She was
known as ?Polly? by her friends, and was a drunken street prostitute in her
early forties. She married at the age of nineteen to a printer named William
Nichols. They had five children together. The two eventually separated shortly
after Mary Anne developed a drinking problem. William took custody of all of
their children, except for the oldest, Edward, and paid Mary a weekly allowance
of $5.25 until he learned of her lifestyle as a street prostitute. Mary Anne was
last seen by a friend named Ellen Holland at 2:30 a.m. on the corner of Osborn
Street and Whitechapel High Street. It was noted that she was drunk and
staggering at the time. After a weekend of investigation, the Metropolitan
Police Force was unable to come up with much useful information regarding the
murder of Mary Anne Nichols. 2. Annie Chapman On Sept. 8, 1888, a little before
6:00A.M., Annie Chapman was found laying dead at the foot of steps at the back
of a lodging house by a lodger named John Davis. The first sight of the dead
body sent Davis screaming down his street, alarming the whole neighborhood.
Inspector Joseph Luniss Chandler of the Commercial Street station arrived with
his men to seal off the scene and the building from the large crowd that had
already gathered before their arrival. Dr. Wynne Baxter-Phillips was summoned to
the scene to examine the body. His brief examination revealed that the woman?s
throat was cut with two deep slashes, so deep, in fact that the woman was almost
beheaded. A scarf had been tied around her neck as if to hide the slashed
throat. Her skirt was lifted just above her knees and her legs were bent up and
cut. After her skirt was lifted up, it revealed that her entire body cavity was
opened up, with the entrails entirely scooped out and placed over her right
shoulder. This was an even worse mutilation than the previous victim. The body
was brought to the same mortuary as before, where Dr. Baxter-Phillips performed
a full autopsy. He discovered something that surprisingly had not been noticed
at the scene of the crime; her sexual organs were completely missing. She had
bruises on her face and chest, which implied that there had been a struggle, and
like Polly Nichols, she was probably knocked unconscious before being mutilated.
Again, it was believed that the murder was committed with a stout- handled knife
with a blade of six to eight inches. Annie Chapman was another drunken street
prostitute. She was short, stout, and in her mid-forties. At the age of
twenty-eight, she married John Chapman in London and moved to Windsor. They had
two daughters, although one died, and a crippled son. She abandoned her family
shortly before her daughter died and returned to London. She received sporadic
allowances from her husband until he died. It was allegedly her alcoholism and
immorality that broke up their marriage. She made a living by selling flowers
and matches, soliciting as a prostitute, and occasionally living off of male
friends. Inspector Frederick Abberline of the Great Scotland Yard was assigned
to supervise the investigation, which involved hundreds of policemen. Little
information was found though, due to the lack of cooperation of citizens of the
neighborhood. 3. Elizabeth Stride, 4. Catherine Eddows Elizabeth Stride was
found dead in a dark alley off of Berener Street on Sept. 30, 1888. At 1:00
a.m., Mr. Louis Diemschutz was driving a horse cart when he turned into the dark
alley to see a figure laying on the ground in his path. As he looked closer, he
saw that it was a woman on her back, either dead or just merely drunken. As a
few men arrived on the scene from down the court, the light from their lamps
revealed her slashed throat and the large puddle of blood that had collected
around her. Police arrived to the scene quickly and sealed it off. Dr. William
P. Blackwell, a physician in the neighborhood, was first to examine the body,
and was later joined by Dr. Baxter-Phillips. They observed that the body was
still warm, with a single slash to the throat. But surprisingly, no other
mutilations were found. This gave them the idea that the murderer had been
interrupted in his process of mutilating the woman by the entrance of Mr.
Diemschutz?s cart into the alley. Since the alley was very dark, it would have
made it easy for the killer to flee from the scene. The body was removed to the
same mortuary where Dr. Baxter-Phillips, this time assisted by Dr. Blackwell,
once again performed the full autopsy. Besides the slashed throat, no other
violations could be found by either of the doctors. The general feeling about
Elizabeth Stride?s murder was that it was indeed the work of Jack the Ripper,
and that, because he was interrupted, he did not finish the job. There were two
other theories though: (1) this murder was just the work of an imitator, and
(2), it was the result of a private dispute totally unconnected to the Ripper
murders. Elizabeth Stride was another street prostitute in her early forties,
but unlike the first two victims, she was not known to have a drinking problem.
At the age of twenty-three, she started the life of a prostitute and gave birth
to a still-born baby. She was also admitted twice into the hospital for venereal
diseases. At the age of twenty-seven she married John Thomas Stride and had two
children with him. In 1878, when the steamer Princess Alice sunk off of Woolrich,
Elizabeth claimed her husband and two children had tragically died in the
catastrophe, however, research by Dr. Baxter-Phillips revealed that John Thomas
Stride had actually died in Bromley in 1884, a few years after their marriage
had broken up. His research revealed no evidence of their two children. On the
night of Stride?s death, in Mitre Square, no more than a ten-minute walk from
the scene of her murder, the body of Catherine Eddows was found. At 1:45 A.M.,
police officer Edward Watkins was walking his routine route when he saw a woman
laying on her back. Her body had been ripped open,?Like a pig in the market,?
as officer Watkins colorfully put it (Geary, p.26). The officer had passed
through the square just fifteen minutes earlier, and at that time all seemed
quiet and well. Minutes after the body was found, Dr. George Sequira arrived on
the scene from a nearby surgery to examine the body. He was accompanied by city
police surgeon Dr. Frederick Brown. They discovered that her throat had been
opened with one deep slash, and her face had several small cuts and nips with a
long diagonal slash that severed the tip of her nose and a piece of her right
ear. Her body had been completely ripped up the middle. As with Annie Chapman,
her internal organs had been completely scooped out and placed over her right
shoulder. Both doctors agreed that by the look of it, the disembowelment had
been done in a hurry, but there were no signs of a struggle. As with the
previous victims, there was no spattering or spewing of blood, but instead just
a large puddle of blood that had slowly collected under the body. That
afternoon, Doctors Brown and Sequira performed the autopsy on the body, and
found that her uterus and one of her kidneys were completely missing. This led
to a theory that the murderer was actually just after women?s organs to sell
them on the black market and make a big profit. Catherine Eddows was an
alcoholic in her early forties who made a living from prostitution. According to
her friends, she claimed that she had married a man named Thomas Conway, and had
three children (1 daughter, 2 sons). There were, however, no traces of their
marriage found on registers. The two eventually separated, her daughter, Annie,
saying that it was because of her mother?s drunkenness and periodic absences,
and her sister, Elizabeth Fisher, saying that it was because of Conway?s
drinking and violence. The two boys went to live with their father, and Annie
went to live with Catherine. Annie would eventually marry Louis Phillips. She
and her husband would frequently move around to avoid her mother?s scrounging.
Catherine was last seen by the police at 1:00 A.M., roughly forty-five minutes
before her death. She was brought in to the police station after being found
passed out in an alley at about 8:00 P.M.. The police released her at 1:00 A.M..
Witnesses claimed to have seen a man with a woman, who most certainly looked
like the victim, standing in Mitre Square at 1:30 A.M.. They described the man
as about thirty years old, with a fair complexion and a light mustache. He wore
a loose jacket and a ?reddish-brown? handkerchief with a peaked cloth cap.
He had the overall look of a sailor. The police investigated the whole morning
under the supervision of Sir Henry Smith, the assistant city police
commissioner. They were able to find a blood-smeared knife and a blood-smeared
article of clothing which matched the fabric of the victim?s skirt. 5. Mary
Jane Kelly On Nov. 9, 1888, the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper?s last
victim, was found in a room on Miller?s Court, a filthy alley-way off of
Dorsey Street. At about 10:30 A.M., Mr. McCarthy, the landlord, sent his
assistant to collect past-due rent from Kelly. After receiving no answer from
within the room, and finding that the door was locked, the assistant peered in
through a broken window pane. One glimpse of the scene inside the room and the
assistant was sent running in horror to the police. Inspector Walter Beck
arrived first at the scene shortly after 11:00 A.M. to seal off the court, and
about thirty minutes later Mr. McCarthy broke open the door to the room. The
first few to enter the room were completely unexpectant of the degree of carnage
with which they were faced. One officer was reported to vomit violently outside
in the gutter after a first glimpse. Dr. Baxter-Phillips arrived at the scene to
make an initial examination of the remains. The bed of the victim was completely
soaked with blood, and the carcass of the victim was literally carved to pieces
(Geary, p.52). Baxter-Phillips estimated that the killer was busy on the body
for at least two hours, and that the victim had been deceased for seven to eight
hours. The mid-section had been completely emptied out and the internal organs
were arranged around the body on the bed. Large sections of flesh and muscle
tissue had been stripped from the bone and placed on the bed-side table. The
front of her upper body had been completely carved off, except for her eyeballs,
which were left in their sockets. From the looks of the room, no signs of a
struggle appeared to have taken place, in fact, the victims clothes were neatly
folded and stacked on a chair. At 3:30 P.M., Dr. Baxter-Phillips proceeded to
reassemble the remains with the help of police surgeon Dr. Thomas Beck, and
several other assistants. They labored for several hours, assembling the body
together,?Like a jig-saw puzzle,? as one of the assistants put it (Geary,
p.54). They also found that there were cuts on her hands, indicating that she
had offered some resistance to her killer, and that none of her organs were
found missing. Despite that she was in her early twenties, Mary Jane Kelly
seemed to be no different from the other victims of the Ripper. She had married
at the age of nineteen to a collier named Davies, who died two or three years
later in a mine explosion. They had no children together, or at least there aren?t
any records that they did. Shortly after her husband?s death, she began her
career as a prostitute in a London brothel, and she also started her life as an
alcoholic. The police?s investigation found that Mrs. Mary Anne Cox, a local
resident, had seen Mary Jane Kelly in the evening at about 11:45 P.M. entering
her room with a short, stout man with a ?carroty? mustache. Ms. Sarah Lewis,
who entered the court at about 2:30 A.M., said she had passed a man loitering
outside the entrance of Dorsey Street, and that somewhere around 4:00 A.M.
(about the hour that the doctors placed the time of death), they heard a woman?s
voice cry ?Oh Murder!? (Geary, p. 57) from somewhere in the court. Neither
of the women took the cry to be of great importance, since such exclamations
were quite common in the neighborhood. Police believed that the murders of all
off these victims were performed by the same killer, Jack the Ripper. All of the
victims? lifestyles and age were the same, which led investigators to believe
that there was a certain personal profile for the Ripper?s choice of victims.
All of the victims, with the exception of Kelly, were in their mid-forties. They
were all prostitutes and most of them lived their lives as alcoholics. They all
had been previously married, and most had children. All of their marriages had
fallen apart after a few years. They eventually chose alcoholism and
prostitution for their lifestyle, and practically lived their lives in the
gutter. A profile such as this led investigators to believe that it was personal
frustration that the Ripper was venting against these women. The manner of the
murders also led investigators to believe that they were all done by the same
killer, in that they all fell prey to a distinct style of mutilation. A slashed
throat, and mutilations of both the internal and sexual organs were all
trademark methods of Jack the Ripper. The extremities of these methods also
indicated an obvious hatred towards these victims, most likely because of their
lifestyles. Although the dismemberment was shocking, it showed a precision that
indicated a knowledge of human and, perhaps, medical training. Although there
were many suspects in question, there was not enough evidence to convict any one
of them. As a result of the lack of evidence, the true identity of Jack the
Ripper, to this day, still remains a mystery. However, it is possible to form a
personal profile of the London East-end slasher based on the evidence, just as
investigators have formed profiles of modern serial killers such as Ted Bundy,
Jeffrey Dahmer or the Son of Sam. Based upon the information that was gathered
by investigators from eye witnesses, the victims that were last seen alone with
someone were last seen with a man. Also, since the victims were all prostitutes,
the killer was probably a man who acted like he was interested in what they had
to offer, then caught them off guard to perform his gruesome task. This man was
probably a loner, or very prominent and had freedom to move about unquestioned.
He was also probably a local man who had lived in the area for quite a while,
and was very familiar with the alleys and streets, which would explain why he
was able to flee from the murder scene of Elizabeth Stride. One theory of what
his motives were for the murders was that perhaps he was a customer of
prostitution and happened to become infected with a disease, so decided to have
his revenge by violently murdering a handful of prostitutes. Another theory was
that maybe he was taking revenge for a family member who was in a similar
situation, or that he came from the same situation as some of the children of
the prostitutes and was also left by his mother who ended up as a prostitute. Or
maybe he just felt that he was merely cleansing society and doing it a favor by
killing off a handful of people who he felt were scum who corrupted society. The
ideal profile of Jack the Ripper was a single man, probably a doctor, who had
bad experiences with prostitutes in the past, and had lived in London long
enough to become familiar with it?s streets and alleys. He was obviously very
daring and nerveless to commit such crimes in the streets, because he could have
been caught at any time by anyone who happened to be passing by.
Bibliography
Bibliography: Beg, Paul, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner. The Jack the Ripper
A-Z., London: Headline Book Publishing, 1991. Geary, Rick. Jack the Rippere A
Joumal of the Whitechapel Murders. New York: Nantier Beall Minoustchine
Publishing, Inc., 1995. Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper.
New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994.
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