Saucy Jacky

Everyone believes they know the story of Jack the Ripper. The public perception is that he was a sexual sadist who preyed upon aging, part-time prostitutes in an impoverished area of the East End of London known as Whitechapel.

During the ‘Autumn of Terror’, between August and November 1888, he killed and mutilated a number of these ‘unfortunates.’ While experts disagree on the exact number of victims, most say Jack killed at least five women.

Because the authorities never identified him, he became a legend and the stuff of nightmares. Most people imagine Jack as a well-dressed man in a cape and top hat carrying a doctor’s bag. Where this image came from is as uncertain as how such an implausible figure captured the public’s imagination. Jack needed anonymity to operate; he had to fit seamlessly into his surroundings. A well-dressed man in Whitechapel would have stood out and attracted far too much attention. 

Today, most researchers believe Jack was a resident of Whitechapel, an impoverished nobody who knew the alleyways and back streets because they were his home turf. But are they correct? Did Jack need intricate knowledge of Whitechapel’s streets to implement his diabolical plan?

In 1888, many East Enders thought Jack was a well-off West Ender who used Whitechapel as a private hunting preserve. Others thought a  European Jew must be responsible because no Englishman could commit such unspeakable atrocities. On the other hand, Jewish eyewitnesses usually described Jack as being of fair complexion, i.e. of European extraction and dressed like a sailor. While the different descriptions provide an insight into the prejudices of the inhabitants at the time of the murders, they do little to produce a viable suspect.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable features of the Whitechapel murders is the unreliability of the eyewitnesses. Some sought notoriety; others were motivated by a desire to gain a slice of the rewards on offer for the apprehension of Jack; at least one was motivated by hate towards the police; and a couple, though well-meaning, were simply mistaken.

For their part, the Metropolitan Police did not have a plausible suspect, even though a few Senior Officers put forward a list of possibilities. Indeed, these lists fuel much of the publishing industry, which has developed around the modern hunt for Jack the Ripper. But that does not mean the people named by the police are the only suspects put forward by contemporary researchers. Because details surrounding the Ripper Murders are uncertain, a case can be made against almost anyone in Whitechapel at the time if the evidence is  ‘cherry-picked’. 

But can we hope to solve a hundred-and-thirty-year-old murder mystery, or are we simply wasting our time? One thing is sure: because reliable information about the Ripper Murders is limited, a simple re-examination of the existing evidence is not an option. What is needed is a new avenue of investigation, one not used by the police in 1888. 

One enterprising author used DNA to attempt to prove the guilt of Robert Anderson’s prime suspect. While her approach is interesting, it is not conclusive. The provenance of the article of clothing examined is uncertain. Moreover, even if the article belonged to a Ripper victim and the suspect’s DNA was on it, the presence of the DNA does not establish guilt. It is just as conceivable the suspect handled the clothing during his police interrogation.

Oddly, there is a way forward; there was a glaring deficiency in the police investigation of the Ripper Murders. They failed to look for an underlying pattern in the Whitechapel murders. This failure is quite remarkable as the police should have pursued the links between the murders as one of their first avenues of investigation.

Rectifying this glaring omission offers us a chance to solve the enduring mystery of the Whitechapel murders.