Jack the Ripper

In the 1880s, London was the largest city on earth with more than seven million people. Many Londoners were very poor and the poorest often lived in the eastern area of the city, a slum known as the East End, where cheap housing could be found. The men of the East End worked hard in factories, in the markets or on the docks. Women also worked hard running the home or in factory - or cleaning jobs. If the men could find no work, they turned to crime, robbing others. If a woman had no work and no man she often turned to prostitution.

It was in the East End that Jack the Ripper's first victim was found on 6 September, 1888. There is some confusion because over a dozen women were murdered in Whitechapel between 1888 and 1891 but modern detectives believe that just five were victims of Jack the Ripper: Mary Anne Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. They say this because these five women were killed in the same horrible way. Their throats were cut, their stomachs were ripped open and one or more internal organs were removed.

Someone saying he was the murderer wrote to the police and the newspapers but many now believe this was done by a journalist to help sell more newspapers. The murders were not the first serial killings but they were the first to be seen as one by the police and the authorities. This was because London was the first place in the world to have a modern, city-wide police force which was beginning to use new sciences, like finger-printing.

The case set the pattern for many serial killings in the future. That is to say, the victims were prostitutes, the murderer killed in a special and strange way, the matter fascinated the public and the press complicated the case rather than helping.

The murders stopped as suddenly as they had started. This makes modern detectives believe that the murderer died, went to prison for a long time for something else he had done, or left the country; because when a serial killer begins to murder, he usually cannot stop until he is caught. So, even today, no-one is sure who killed these poor women and there are more than one hundred serious theories.

Some say that, because the victims were not used for sex, the murderer could have been a woman, perhaps a midwife who would know the inside of a woman's body and know how to cut women open. Others say it was a prince and so his crimes were covered up. Still others say it was one of the many foreign immigrants who lived in the area. Polish, Irish and Jewish suspects have all been suggested.

There have, sadly, been many serial killings since the Jack the Ripper case (or 'the Whitechapel murders' as the case is also called) but people are still fascinated by these terrible events of more than one hundred and twenty years ago.