In the autumn of 1888, a killer prowled the narrow, fog-covered streets of Whitechapel in London’s East End. He targeted vulnerable women — mostly prostitutes — and murdered them with a ferocity and anatomical precision that shocked even experienced police surgeons. He sent letters to newspapers and police taunting investigators. He was never caught.

More than 135 years later, Jack the Ripper remains the most famous unidentified serial killer in history. His case gave birth to modern criminal profiling, forensic investigation, and the global fascination with true crime that endures to this day.

This is the full story — the victims, the crimes, the suspects, and why the case has never been solved.

The Context: Whitechapel in 1888

To understand the Ripper case, you have to understand where it happened.

Whitechapel in 1888 was one of the most desperately poor neighborhoods in the Western world. Tens of thousands of people — many of them recent immigrants from Eastern Europe fleeing persecution — were crammed into overcrowded tenements and doss-houses. Unemployment was rampant. Disease was endemic. Prostitution was widespread simply because many women had no other means of survival.

The Metropolitan Police were widely distrusted in working-class areas. Lighting on many streets was minimal or nonexistent. The courts and alleys of Whitechapel formed a labyrinthine network that locals barely knew and outsiders couldn’t navigate.

It was, in other words, a place where a killer could operate with terrifying ease.

The autumn of 1888 was also a period of intense social and political tension. Newspapers were booming, literacy was rising, and the press was hungry for sensation. The Ripper murders arrived at exactly the moment when mass media was capable of amplifying them into a global phenomenon — which is part of why they have never been forgotten.

The Canonical Five

Investigators and historians generally agree on five confirmed victims — known as the “canonical five” — though the Ripper is suspected in additional murders. These five share consistent characteristics: all were killed in Whitechapel or the immediately surrounding area, all had their throats cut, and all showed evidence of abdominal mutilation.

Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols — August 31, 1888

Mary Ann Nichols, 43, was found in the early hours of August 31st in Buck’s Row (now Durward Street), Whitechapel. She had been killed elsewhere or where she lay — investigators were divided — with her throat cut deeply twice from left to right. Her abdomen had been severely mutilated.

Police surgeon Dr. Llewellyn examined the body and noted the injuries had been inflicted with a long-bladed knife. He estimated the killer needed no more than four or five minutes to inflict the wounds. The body was still warm when found at 3:40 AM.

Nichols had been sleeping rough after being turned out of a doss-house earlier that night for lack of the four-penny bed fee. She told friends she would earn it quickly. She was murdered within the hour.

Annie Chapman — September 8, 1888

Annie Chapman, 47, was found at approximately 6:00 AM in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Her throat had been cut twice. Her abdomen had been opened and her uterus, part of her bladder, and two thirds of her vagina had been surgically removed and taken from the scene.

The removal of organs — carefully excised, not hacked — alarmed investigators immediately. Police surgeon Dr. George Bagster Phillips stated that the killer had demonstrated “anatomical knowledge” and that the work could not have been performed by a novice. This assessment would fuel decades of speculation about the killer’s professional background.

Chapman had also been seen speaking with a man outside the Hanbury Street address at approximately 5:30 AM — just half an hour before her body was found. Witnesses described a man of “shabby genteel” appearance, over 40, dark complexion, wearing a deerstalker hat.

Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes — September 30, 1888 (“The Double Event”)

The night of September 29-30, 1888 is known as “the double event” — the only night the Ripper is believed to have killed twice.

Elizabeth Stride, 44, was found at 1:00 AM in Dutfield’s Yard, off Berner Street. Her throat had been cut but she showed no abdominal mutilation. Many investigators believe the killer was interrupted before he could complete his work — a witness named Louis Diemschutz arrived at the yard with his cart, and the killer may have fled.

Less than an hour later and less than a mile away — Catherine Eddowes, 46, was found in Mitre Square in the City of London. Unlike the Stride murder, which fell under the Metropolitan Police’s jurisdiction, Mitre Square was in the City of London — a separate police force. This jurisdictional division would create investigative complications that continue to frustrate researchers.

Eddowes had been horrifically mutilated. Her throat was cut. Her abdomen was opened. Her left kidney and the major part of her uterus had been removed. Her face had been methodically mutilated — the tip of her nose cut off, her cheeks slashed, her eyelids nicked.

A piece of Eddowes’ apron was found nearby — apparently used by the killer to wipe his hands or knife. Above it, chalked on a doorway, was a message: “The Juwes are the men That Will not be blamed for nothing.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren ordered the message erased before it could be photographed — allegedly to prevent anti-Semitic riots in the area. This decision has been criticized by investigators ever since. The handwriting was never analyzed. Whether the killer wrote it, or whether it was already there, has never been established.

Mary Jane Kelly — November 9, 1888

Mary Jane Kelly, approximately 25, was the youngest of the canonical five and died in the most horrific circumstances of all.

Unlike the other victims — who were killed outdoors — Kelly was murdered inside her rented room at 13 Miller’s Court, Dorset Street. The killer had privacy and time.

When her body was discovered at 10:45 AM on November 9th, the scene was described by attending officers as the worst thing they had ever seen. Kelly had been almost entirely dismembered. Her face had been rendered unrecognizable. Her organs had been systematically removed and arranged around the room. Her heart was missing and was never found.

Police surgeon Dr. Thomas Bond, who attended the scene and later examined all five victims, concluded that the mutilations had been performed by someone with “no scientific or anatomical knowledge” — directly contradicting the earlier assessment of Chapman’s wounds. This contradiction between medical opinions has never been satisfactorily resolved.

Kelly was two months pregnant at the time of her death.

The Miller’s Court murder was the last attributed to Jack the Ripper with confidence. After November 9th, 1888 — the murders stopped.

The Letters

During the autumn of 1888, hundreds of letters were sent to police and newspapers claiming to be from the Ripper. The vast majority were immediately dismissed as hoaxes. Three have attracted sustained serious attention.

The “Dear Boss” Letter — September 27, 1888

Received by the Central News Agency on September 27th, this letter is the first to use the name “Jack the Ripper” — and is the origin of the name that has defined the case ever since.

Written in red ink, the letter was cheerful and taunting in tone. The author claimed to have “clipped the lady’s ears off” and promised to send them to police — a detail that appeared prophetic when Eddowes’ earlobe was found nicked two days later.

Most modern researchers believe this letter — and the follow-up “Saucy Jacky” postcard — were written by a journalist to generate publicity. The style and timing suggest someone with inside knowledge of the investigation, possibly a reporter with police contacts. The name “Jack the Ripper” may be entirely a media invention.

The “From Hell” Letter — October 16, 1888

This letter is widely considered the most likely to be genuine.

It was sent not to police or a newspaper but to George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee — a detail that suggests the author had specific knowledge of Lusk’s role rather than simply reading about the case in the papers.

The letter arrived with half a preserved human kidney. A doctor who examined it concluded it was the left kidney of a woman of approximately 45 years old — consistent with Catherine Eddowes, whose left kidney had been removed.

The letter is semi-literate, misspelled, and lacks the theatrical quality of the “Dear Boss” letter. It reads as follows:

“From hell. Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk”

The kidney could not be definitively linked to Eddowes in 1888. DNA analysis in the modern era has been proposed but the original kidney is no longer available for testing.

The “Openshaw” Letter — October 29, 1888

A follow-up letter sent to Dr. Thomas Openshaw, who had examined the kidney sent to Lusk. Written in a similar style to “From Hell,” it references the kidney and taunts Openshaw. Most researchers who consider “From Hell” genuine also consider this letter authentic.

The Police Investigation

The Ripper investigation was unprecedented in scale for its time — and deeply flawed in ways that investigators have analyzed ever since.

The Metropolitan Police Response

The Metropolitan Police, under Commissioner Sir Charles Warren, deployed hundreds of officers in Whitechapel. They conducted door-to-door inquiries, interviewed thousands of residents, and established a system of regular patrols through the area. They collected approximately 2,000 statements in connection with the murders.

Despite this, the investigation was hampered by:

No forensic science. Fingerprint analysis would not be established as an investigative tool until 1901. Blood typing did not exist. The concept of DNA was a century away. Investigators were limited to witness testimony, physical description, and circumstantial evidence.

Competing jurisdictions. The City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police operated independently. The double event — with Stride in Metropolitan territory and Eddowes in City territory — created immediate friction over evidence sharing and investigative direction.

The erased message. Warren’s decision to erase the chalk writing above the piece of Eddowes’ apron before it could be photographed is still debated. His stated reason — preventing anti-Semitic violence — may have been genuine, but the loss of potential evidence was significant.

Press interference. The explosion of press coverage — newspapers were publishing multiple editions daily during the murders — contaminated the investigation continuously. Witnesses changed their stories after reading newspapers. False leads multiplied. The killer’s name came from a press agency letter of doubtful authenticity.

The City of London Police

The City Police, under Commissioner Sir James Fraser and Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline’s counterpart Detective Inspector James McWilliam, conducted their own parallel investigation into the Eddowes murder. Their files — separate from the Metropolitan Police records — provide an important supplementary record of the investigation.

Frederick Abberline

The lead investigator for the Metropolitan Police was Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline, a 12-year veteran of Whitechapel policing who knew the area intimately. Abberline conducted hundreds of interviews personally and remained convinced to the end of his life — he died in 1929 — that the Ripper was a man named George Chapman (real name Seweryn Kłosowski), a barber surgeon who was executed in 1903 for poisoning three wives.

Most modern researchers disagree with Abberline’s conclusion. Chapman/Kłosowski’s modus operandi — slow poisoning — is entirely inconsistent with the frenzied knife attacks attributed to the Ripper.

The Main Suspects

Over 135 years, more than 500 individuals have been named as suspects. A handful have attracted serious, sustained investigative attention.

Montague John Druitt (1857-1888)

Druitt was a barrister and school teacher who drowned himself in the Thames in December 1888 — just weeks after the final Ripper murder. His body was recovered on December 31st.

He was first named as a suspect in the private memoranda of Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Melville Macnaghten, written in 1894. Macnaghten described Druitt as “sexually insane” and suggested he had been “a doctor in the employ” of the police — a factual error, as Druitt was a barrister, not a doctor.

The case for Druitt: his suicide coincides with the end of the murders; he was dismissed from his teaching position around the time of the murders (the exact reason is unknown but suspected to involve sexual misconduct); he had family connections to medicine.

The case against: no physical evidence links him to any murder; his physique does not match witness descriptions well; a barrister with no medical training is inconsistent with the anatomical precision of the Chapman mutilations.

Aaron Kosminski (1865-1919)

Kosminski was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who worked as a hairdresser in Whitechapel and was committed to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1891 suffering from auditory hallucinations and delusions. He died there in 1919.

He was named in Macnaghten’s memoranda as one of three main suspects and has been the focus of intense modern investigation.

In 2014, author Russell Edwards published a book claiming to have identified Kosminski definitively as the Ripper through DNA analysis of a shawl allegedly found near Catherine Eddowes’ body. Edwards claimed to have matched DNA on the shawl to a living maternal descendant of Kosminski.

The claim was immediately challenged by the scientific community. The shawl’s chain of custody was not established — it appeared at auction in 2007 with no documentation of its provenance. The DNA analysis was conducted by Dr. Jari Louhelainen, and peer-reviewed criticism identified a significant error in the initial analysis involving a mitochondrial DNA sequence. A corrected analysis was published but the provenance questions remain unresolved.

Kosminski remains a serious suspect but is far from definitively identified.

Michael Ostrog (1833-1904)

Also named in Macnaghten’s memoranda, Ostrog was a Russian-born con artist and thief with a long criminal record. He claimed at various times to be a doctor or surgeon. He was later shown to have been in France during some of the murders — significantly weakening his candidacy.

Most modern researchers dismiss Ostrog as a viable suspect.

George Chapman / Seweryn Kłosowski (1865-1903)

As noted above, this was Abberline’s preferred suspect. A Polish-born barber surgeon who lived in Whitechapel in 1888, Chapman was convicted and executed in 1903 for poisoning three common-law wives.

The fundamental problem: poisoners and frenzied knife killers are psychologically very different categories of offender. The organized, patient, intimate method of poisoning is almost entirely inconsistent with the disorganized, frenzied, outdoor attacks attributed to the Ripper.

Francis Tumblety (1833-1903)

An American “quack doctor” who was in London in 1888 and was actually arrested — though for gross indecency (homosexual offences), not murder. He fled to America before trial.

He was named as a suspect by Chief Inspector John Littlechild in a private letter discovered in 1993. Littlechild described Tumblety as a “very likely” suspect and noted that he collected “anatomical specimens” — specifically uteruses — in glass jars.

Tumblety was known to have a violent hatred of women. He was physically large and strong. His medical background — though fraudulent in a formal sense — would have given him knowledge of anatomy.

The case against: his homosexuality makes him an unlikely attacker of women in the psychological profile sense; his “specimens” claim was never verified; the Littlechild letter is a private opinion, not evidence.

Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence (1864-1892)

One of the most famous and least credible suspects — the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and grandson of Queen Victoria. He was named as a Ripper suspect in sensational books beginning in the 1970s, sometimes embedded in elaborate royal conspiracy theories.

He has been definitively eliminated. Court records and his own diary establish his presence at documented events — including a house party at Sandringham — during the nights of the murders. He died of influenza in 1892 at age 28.

The Forensic Evidence: What Modern Analysis Has Found

The Ripper case has attracted modern forensic attention repeatedly, with mixed results.

The Kosminski shawl: As discussed above — disputed chain of custody, contested DNA analysis, unresolved.

Handwriting analysis: Numerous graphologists have analyzed the letters over the decades. No consensus has emerged on whether any letters are genuine or who wrote them.

Geographic profiling: In 2013, a geographic profiling study by Dr. Kim Rossmo and colleagues published in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling analyzed the spatial distribution of the murders and victim last-known locations. The analysis suggested the killer’s “anchor point” — home or workplace — was in the area around Flower and Dean Street, Spitalfields. This is consistent with several suspects but does not identify any individual.

The DNA question: Modern extraction of DNA from the original letters and envelopes has been proposed and partially attempted. The results have been inconclusive — partial profiles, contamination issues, and chain-of-custody problems with 135-year-old evidence make definitive results extremely difficult.

Why Was He Never Caught?

The combination of factors that allowed the Ripper to escape justice is almost perfectly designed to defeat a 19th-century investigation:

No forensic science. Without fingerprinting, blood typing, or DNA, investigators had only witnesses — and witnesses in Whitechapel were unreliable, often intoxicated, and frequently reluctant to speak to police.

The geography. Whitechapel’s maze of courts and alleys allowed a killer who knew the area to disappear within seconds of an attack. Several murders happened within earshot of populated areas.

The victims. The social position of the victims — street prostitutes in one of London’s poorest neighborhoods — meant that police, press, and the public initially paid them less attention than they deserved. By the time the case became a national sensation, crucial early investigation time had been lost.

The letters. The flood of hoax letters — some estimates put the number at over 600 received by police — consumed enormous investigative resources and contaminated the evidence base.

The killer’s apparent control. The Ripper showed no signs of escalation beyond the five canonical murders (plus possible additional victims). He appeared to choose his moments carefully, operated quickly, and never left witnesses who survived with a useful description.

The Legacy

Jack the Ripper’s legacy extends far beyond the case itself.

Modern criminal investigation was directly shaped by the Ripper murders. The failures of 1888 drove the development of forensic science, criminal profiling, and inter-agency cooperation in ways that continue to influence policing today.

The victims’ legacy. In recent years, researchers and historians have pushed back against the Ripper’s cultural dominance of his own case. Books like The Five by Hallie Rubin Smith (2019) and Naming Jack the Ripper by Russell Edwards have refocused attention on the lives and stories of the women who were killed — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — rather than on the identity of their killer.

The cultural phenomenon. More books have been written about Jack the Ripper than about any other criminal in history. There are Ripper walking tours, museums, films, television series, and academic conferences. The case has become a global cultural fixation that shows no sign of fading.

Key Facts

  • Active period: August–November 1888
  • Location: Whitechapel, London, England
  • Confirmed victims: 5 (the canonical five)
  • Suspected additional victims: 4-6 (disputed)
  • Lead investigator: Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline
  • Status: Officially unsolved — case closed by Metropolitan Police
  • Most credible suspects: Montague John Druitt, Aaron Kosminski
  • Most famous letter: “From Hell” (October 1888)
  • End of murders: November 9, 1888 (Mary Jane Kelly)

Sources & Further Reading

  • Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (1994) — the most comprehensive single-volume history of the case
  • Rubin Smith, Hallie. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019) — essential reading for understanding the victims as people
  • Fido, Martin. The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper (1987)
  • Macnaghten, Melville. Days of My Years (1914) — memoir of the Assistant Commissioner who named the three main suspects
  • Evans, Stewart P. and Skinner, Keith. The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook (2000) — the most complete documentary record
  • Casebook: Jack the Ripper (casebook.org) — the most comprehensive online archive of primary documents
  • Rossmo, D. Kim et al. “Geographic profiling the Jack the Ripper murders.” Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling (2013)
  • Metropolitan Police files, MEPO 3 series — National Archives, Kew (partially available online)
  • City of London Police files — London Metropolitan Archives

The identity of Jack the Ripper remains one of history’s most debated mysteries. Watch our full breakdown on the GrimChronicleShow YouTube channel.