A fascination with the Jack the Ripper murders is a great way to begin talking about late-Victorian London. While “Ripperologists” focus on the unsolved mystery of the killer’s identity, that is not the focus of historians. There simply was not enough evidence collected at the time to go back and solve the murder, and the evidence that was collected was deeply problematic.
It is this lack of evidence of the time that makes the case interesting to historians. Because there were so few solid facts at the time, it encouraged contemporaries to speculate about the identity of the killer. “Jack the Ripper” was a late-Victorian bogeyman, and people projected all of their deepest fears into the mythic killer’s identity. Police officers, journalists, government officials, novelists, reformers, community members and the lay public all gave expression to their deepest anxieties and concerns. Without a clear suspect, they imagined their own worst nightmares coming to life. Thus writings about the Whitechapel murders are a wonderful way to explore broader social issues at the time. Their speculations provide wonderful primary source material for understanding late-Victorian England.
As Judith Walkowitz notes, coverage of the Ripper murders needs to be understood as part of larger ongoing conversations of power, space, and sexuality at the time. “Drawing on cultural fantasies—about the grotesque female body, about the labyrinthine city, about the mad doctor—that had long circulated among different strata of Victorian culture, media coverage also highlighted new elements of late-Victorian conceptions of the self and London’s imaginary landscape.” 1
While there is (and can be) no consensus of how many women were murdered by a single killer in Whitechapel in and around 1888, at the time there was a general belief that five women were killed by a single killer. The women were:
Mary Ann Nichols: discovered August 31 in Buck’s Row
Annie Chapman: discovered 8 September behind 29 Hanbury Street
Elizabeth Stride: discovered 30 September 1888 in Berner Street
Catherine Eddowes: discovered 30 September 1888 in Mitre Square
Mary Jane Kelly: discovered 9 November 1888 at Miller’s Court2
There are a number of wonderful (and not so wonderful) resources on Jack the Ripper. Check our Sources page for more information and specific detail about the Jack the Ripper murders.
Sadly, there were a number of women murdered in 1888 in Whitechapel whose deaths did not generate the same levels of interest. 45-year-old widow Emma Smith was viciously assaulted in April, and shortly after describing her attack to authorities, she died. She was attacked at the corner of Brick Lane and Wentworth street, and dragged herself to her George Street lodging house before dying in London Hospital on Whitechapel Road. In August, 39-year-old Martha Tabram was stabbed to death in George Yard, a notorious tenement block.3 At the time, however, the police did not identify these women as victims of the Jack the Ripper killing (nor did they later). Police determined that Smith had been the victim of a gang and that Tabram had been killed by a soldier (as her wounds were seemingly inflicted by bayonet).4
One of the main goals of this website is to see the totality of Whitechapel, and compare the representations of the area before and after the killings to see how they influenced public opinion. What quickly became apparent is that the Ripper murders were placed in a specific contemporary context very quickly. Murder was not common at the time, but it was not unheard of. After the murder of Mary Ann Nichols, journalists looked to other recent crimes for comparison.
The year before the Ripper murders, there was another gruesome murder of a woman in Whitechapel that gripped headlines. In this case it was Miriam Angel, a young Jewish woman found in her own rooms after nitric acid was forced down her throat. Her Jewish neighbor was found hiding under the bed with signs of poison around his mouth. However, he was barely injured and was eventually convicted of her murder. The crime not only drew on contemporary fears about poison and anxiety about increasing levels of immigration, it also became heavily associated with Whitechapel. Articles about the murder of Mrs. Angel were titled “The Whitechapel Tragedy,” “The Mysterious Tragedy at Whitechapel,” and “The Whitechapel Murder.”5 These stories helped cement associations between the neighbourhood and terrible crime.
And when women were killed in Whitechapel a year later, it was inevitable that journalists made comparisons. The location of Elizabeth Stride’s murder in Berner’s-street was within yards of the location of Miriam Angel’s death. Journalists could focus on the “evil repute” of the area, mentioning its ancient nickname as “Tiger’s bay,” given because of the “ferocious character of the desperadoes who frequented it.”6 If one went looking simply for articles describing Whitehchapel in a negative way, or looking for stories about violence and murder in the neighbourhood, one can certainly find them.
Those living within Whitechapel worried at the time that the murders might overshadow the complex lives of the people who lived there. Samuel Barnett was a clergyman, a social activist, and founding member of the settlement movement in East London. He moved to Whitechapel and both he and his wife Henrietta were active participants in trying to improve the neighborhood at every level. A sympathetic outsider, he was aware that the Jack the Ripper killings reinforced and magnified every terrible impression people had of Whitechapel. “The series of murders, and the revelations at the inquests of the daily life lived by men and women, have so impressed the public mind that Whitechapel at once suggests to strangers thoughts of degradation.”7 Barnett understood that the lurid details of poverty, prostitution, and violence that spilled out across the pages of the contemporary press were creating a caricature. While Barnett realized Whitechapel, and the East End as a whole, had problems, he did not see them as defining the area. He was always keen to emphasize the nuance and complexity of his neighbours’ lives.