JACK THE RIPPER TOURS - HISTORY

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If you are taking one of our Jack the Ripper tours it helps to know a little of the story in advance. Below you will find a brief synopsis of the walk. It outlines the five main victims of Jack the Ripper and explains how two earlier murders were, at the time, attributed to  him. It also tells you a little about the public reaction to the killings and discusses the police investigation. Finally it reveals the answer to one of the most frequently asked questions on our Jack the Ripper tours - where did his name come from?

It is generally agreed that Jack the Ripper had five victims. Those victims were Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. However, the police file contained several other murders, notably two that were committed before the murder of Mary Nichols on August 31st 1888. These victims were Emma Smith and Martha Tabram. Emma Smith almost certainly wasn't a victim of Jack the Ripper. It is almost certain that she was a victim of one of the High Rip gangs that were operating extortion rackets amongst the prostitutes in the area in 1888. Her murder, however, was highly significant for it was with her death that the police opened their file on the Whitechapel murders, a file that by the end of the year would include the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper.

Experts are still divided on whether or not Martha Tabram was a victim of Jack the Ripper. Some argue that she wasn't since her injuries just weren't consistent with the later acknowledged victims. Others say that she may well have been his first victim and point out that her killer targeted her throat and lower abdomen just as Jack the Ripper would with the later victims. At the time, however, there was little room for doubt. Three violent murders of women had taken place over a relatively short period of time and as far as the people of Whitechapel were concerned the same killer or killer had to have been responsible. Thus it was that, following the murder of Mary Nichols on August 31st 1888, the police began to face up to the alarming possibility (prematurely as it happens) that they had a repeat killer loose on the streets of the East End.

In the week following the murder of Mary Nichols the prostitutes of the area began talking about a man who they had nick-named 'Leather Apron' and told police how he was running an extortion racket amongst them. A police officer named Sergeant Thicke was quick to identify this man as one John Pizer. But before the police could find him the newspapers learnt of the police's suspicions and articles began appearing in the press speaking of the sinister character called 'Leather Apron' who was prowling the streets after dark. The articles also emphasised his Jewish appearance. These articles had two effects. Firstly,  signs of anti-Semitism began surfacing in the East End of London as a result of them.  Secondly, John Pizer got to know of the police's suspicions and became so terrified of falling victim to a baying mob that he promptly went into hiding amongst his relatives and the police were unable to find him.

At 6am on the 8th September 1888, another prostitute was found murdered in the back yard of number 29 Hanbury Street. She had been horrifically mutilated and furthermore her killer had removed and gone off with her womb. In the corner of the yard the police found a freshly washed leather apron. This discovery caused the anti-Semitism that had been rife in recent days to erupt into full scale anti-Jewish unrest as mobs began terrorising innocent Jews. As it transpired the apron belonged to one of the residents of number 29 Hanbury Street and so was not in any way related to the murder or the murderer. But, egged on by the press, the mob fury continued and extra police officers were drafted into the area in an attempt to contain it and prevent what one newspaper called "murders from panic to add to murders from a lust for blood."

On 10th September Sergeant Thicke finally arrested John Pizer. But he had provable alibis for the nights of the two most recent murders and was ruled out as a suspect. Later he turned up as a witness at Annie Chapman's inquest where the Coroner publicly cleared him of any involvement in the killings. It was at that inquest that Dr Bagster Phillips, the police surgeon who had carried out the post mortem on Annie Chapman suggested that in removing her womb her killer had shown signs of possessing some surgical knowledge. This led the Coroner, Wynne Baxter, to announce publicly that an American doctor had been visiting hospital dissecting rooms offering money for wombs. Baxter also gave it as his opinion that the prospect of receiving financial remuneration may have led someone to kill Annie Chapman for her womb. His theory caused a sensation and gave birth to the popular image of Jack the Ripper as a doctor.

Throughout September the police brought in suspect after suspect. But, although their trawls through the streets of the East End were yielding up numerous men whom it was better were removed from circulation, the killer himself continued to evade them. One result of the increased police presence in the area was that it became too dangerous for the killer to strike again, and so the people of Whitechapel enjoyed a brief respite from their autumn of terror.

But on the 30th September the killer returned and struck twice in less than an hour murdering Elizabeth Stride in Berner Street and Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square. Although it seems likely that he was interrupted in the killing of Elizabeth Stride and was, therefore, only able to cut her throat, he had made up for the interruption on the body of the unfortunate Catharine Eddowes. In addition to disembowelling her he had, for the first time, targeted a victim's face, and had cut deep V's into her cheeks and eyelids, cut off her nose and sliced into the lobes of her ears. He had also removed and gone off with her uterus and her left kidney.

Because of these cuts to her ears the police were forced to take seriously a letter that had been handed to them on the 29th September by the Central News Agency. Written in red ink and addressed to 'The Boss' it had been received by the agency on 27th September. The letter purported to come from the killer and threatened that "next time I operate I shall clip the lady's ears off.' On the 1st of October the Metropolitan Police made this letter public, and the fact it bore the chilling, though apt, signature 'Jack the Ripper' caught the public imagination and helped turn five sordid East End murders into an international phenomenon. The probability is that the letter was not written by the murderer, and several high ranking police officers would later go on record to say that it was the work of a London journalist "known to senior Scotland Yard detectives." It is because of this letter, or to be more precise, the signature on this letter, that the murders are still so famous today.

In mid October Mr George Lusk, the president of the Mile End Vigilance committee received another letter that claimed to be from the murderer and which was addressed 'From Hell.' This letter contained a piece of human kidney which the killer boasted he had taken from "one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise.." Although some experts claim that the kidney was part of the one removed from Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, the general consensus is that it was probably a hoax that had been perpetrated by a medical student who acquired the kidney from a hospital dissecting lab.

No murders occurred in October, probably as a result of the further increased police presence in the area in the wake of the double murder. But on the 9th November the horribly mutilated body of Mary Kelly was found in her room at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street. She had been virtually skinned down to the bone causing her landlord, John McCarthy, to tell a journalist that her murder "looked more like the work of a devil than the work of a man.

But with the death of Mary Kelly the Jack the Ripper murders came to an end. Nobody knows for certain why this happened, although it is almost certain that the reason must be because something happened to the killer. Exactly what that something was has been the source of rampant speculation ever since and every year books come out with titles such as 'Jack the Ripper the final solution' or 'Case Closed.' What is not well known is that the two highest ranking officers on the case both claimed that the police had caught the killer, and one of the two even went so far as to name him.

At the end of our Jack the Ripper walk we reveal who the police's leading suspect was and speculate on why they never named him officially.

So why not join a tour through the streets and places where the 1888 murders occurred and allow us to unmask the ripper for you.

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