Jack the Ripper Case

In 1888, the people of London, England were plunged into darkness. A killer was on the loose, by the name of Jack the Ripper. The name in itself brings all sorts of violent and unnatural images to my head, and you probably have a pretty vivid picture of what this murderer looks like. It's unfortunate to say I wish I could tell you, but he was never caught. He wasn't like any other murderer of that day and age. He was ingenious and virtually invisible. Sadly, the only evidence we have on Jack the Ripper are witnesses, newspaper articles, the so called "Ripper Letters", and of course our very own opinions themselves.

When it comes to witnesses, you must be thinking that they must've surely seen who committed these heinous and gruesome crimes. Wrong, there were so many witnesses that each said something different, for example; a witness would state that "There was neither man nor woman there." - Joseph Allen (questioned by police about the murder of Alice McKenzie). While another would say "I was passing through Castle Alley Whitechapel trying the doors when I saw a woman lying on the pavement with her throat cut but I saw no one in the street at the time."- Walter Andrews (questioned by police about the murder of Alice McKenzie). With all these unreliable resources, police realized that they had a serious problem at hand.

The media is very notorious for exaggerating the news that it reports, and the media had an enormous part to play in the story of Jack the Ripper. This is what mainly made him famous. From adopting the name to the vivid depictions of these ghastly and distasteful crimes, the media practically created Jack the Ripper and all the countless conspiracies surrounding his case. With statements like "It was one of the most dreadful murders any one could imagine" and "The man must have been a perfect savage to inflict such a number of wounds on a defenseless woman in such a way." -The Murder in Whitechapel, The London Times- August 10, 1888. Once these news articles got out, chaos was released into the streets, causing a sense of panic among the citizens on London.

A series of letters were sent to the police and local press, claiming they were written by no other than Jack the Ripper himself! These letters were later dubbed with the name "The Ripper Letters". Most of them were deemed to be fakes written by either journalists trying to start a story