Murder a foot: Jack the Ripper and crime in the Victorian England During the years of the Victorian era the world saw many changes. The world witnessed the birth a new method of faster and easier transportation, the steam locomotive. The opportunities that this new innovation held were astonishing, with the ability to easily move from one area to another, migration began to arise. This caused a large surge in efficiency. Many people became aware to the fact that the more efficient they were the more money they would make. “With greater speed came a greater need for industries and businesses to make more and make it quicker. Steam made this possible and changed working life forever.” (Robinson). All this power and money floating around …show more content…
His murders mainly occurred in London’s East end in Whitechapel. At the time tension was at an all-time high due to immigration, poor treatment of the working class, as well as robbery, violence, and alcohol dependency being commonplace. Whitechapel was notoriously known for being an immoral area full of brothels and prostitution rings, and had been raided various times by the police. All of the unrest strengthened perceptions of the horridness of Whitechapel, and when a series of vicious and grotesque murders attributed to "Jack the Ripper" received unprecedented coverage in the media it continued to …show more content…
At the time it was very uncommon that the murder of a prostitute be reported, but these murders were different. “They [The killings] were marked by sadistic butchery, suggesting a mind more sociopathic and hateful than most citizens could comprehend.” (Editors). It was believed that the killer was either a doctor or a butcher due to the precision that was used in the cuts. However, one of the coroners, Thomas Bond, stated “In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cut up dead animals.” Although the public name for the killer was the “Whitechapel butcher”, the name no longer rang true. The Ripper committed a total of five known murders, referred to as the “Canonical five”. All of the victims received slashes to the throat, parts of the abdomen torn open by a deep and jagged wounds, and parts of their uteruses and other organs missing. Bond also believed that the murderer was a solitary man with satyriasis, a condition that meant he suffered frequent sexual urges. This being supported by the way he would violate and position his victims after the fact. The homicidal aspect, Bond stated, was an “…impulse that may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of the mind, or that religious mania may have been the
August 7th, 1888 Martha Tabram, a local prostitute, is found stabbed to death. This is the beginning of a mystery still unsolved to this day. Whitechapel, London is where Jack the Ripper would do his killings. The only problem is nobody knew who he was.
According to Exodus 20:13 “you shall not murder,” however the world consists of countless people who disobey this command. Murderers are especially horrific if they are serial killers because it is awful enough to kill one person, but to murder repeatedly is sickening. It is extremely depressing to know that some murderers never get caught. One of the most infamous serial killers whose identity was never uncovered is Jack the ripper. Numerous people have different theories relating to who Jack the ripper was, but none have been proven. One main theory is that America’s first serial killer, H. H. Holmes was London’s Jack the ripper. To find evidence to prove the theory of whether or not H. H. Holmes was Jack the ripper; crucial evidence to look at are the similarities between the killers.
In the year 1888, Whitechapel of London was targeted in a stream of ferocious murders so explicit that it grew to a response that came from all of Victorian England. The media, police investigators and local civilians were deeply impacted upon these occurrences in several ways. Jack The Ripper is to this day infamously known as the killer of at least 5 female prostitutes in the span of only one month, and is recognised to have changed society forever.
The next two victims have many similarities in more ways than one, Elizabeth stride and Catherine eddows were murdered on Sunday September 30th within an hour of each other, they were both middle aged at around 45 and were both alcoholics with sordid histories and both divorced there was no real difference between the two. All of these aspects were the reasons why jack the ripper attracted so much attention but it was manly because all of the women were prostitutes and that they were murdered so horrifically, it was attracted more as nearly all the sex organs within the female body had been mutilated which in some way entertained the public. The first Ripper victim was Polly Nicholls her body was found a little after four a.m. on the 31st August 1888, she was found on her back with her skit pushing up to her waist and a deep cut across her throat, the decapitation of his victims would soon become a trade mark for the Ripper, Polly's abdomen was slashed and she was stabbed twice in her womb, the extent of the wounds inflicted on the victims suggest that the ripper murders were sexually motivated.
Jack the ripper the notorious and legendary London murderer started his reign of terror in the August of 1888. Jack the ripper is a fairly difficult character to find proper information on (regrettably noted) however his murders are not. It is speculated that he killed more than five people but the Canonical five are a definite. All of them where prostitutes from the Whitechapel area of London; a poor and deteriorating side of town. The first of these murders was Mary Nichols she was murdered on August 31st 1888 (www.jack the ripper.org). The murders that happened after followed in this order. Annie Chapman was the second of the five main victims she was murdered on September 8th 1888(www.jack the ripper.org). The third and fourth victims shared the same day of death with a peculiar twist. Jack the Ripper was known to deface and mutilate all the bodies in which he slayed, Elizabeth Stride the third victim was wholly intact(www.bbc.co.uk/history). Both Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes died on the same day September 30th 1888(www.jack the ripper.org). The final victim to be famously associated with the case of Jack the Ripper was Mary Kelly who was killed on November 9th 1888. All of the victims were more than likely unaware of their fates beforehand, he typically knocked them out before he would kill and maim them. Jack the Ripper's scenes in which he left the corpses were calculated, he was informed and educated on how it is he done what he did. It was believed at the time that he was potentially a doctor or a butcher due to the tools needed to do what was done to the bodies. In addition to this the cuts left on the body showed that the killer had knowledge of the human anatomy and the way it worked. He usually always started the
The story of Jack the Ripper has survived the test of time with the gruesome details of the mystery killings, yet there has been an even crueler killer within more recent history. In the streets of 1930s Cleveland, a butcher wandered the streets of a vagrant district known as Kingsbury Run, bodies followed in his footsteps, more bodies than that of Jack the Ripper. This man killed twelve or more people in the span of three years; he is known as The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. Between 1935 and 1938 a killer roamed the streets of Cleveland, Ohio and murdered at least twelve people, though there is evidence to suggest up to twenty victims. The time period in which the killings occurred was during a time when the city of Cleveland was growing
This sparked the most interest for me. What if, this serial killer, is someone who took the oath to treat and heal humans? The first body was found on August 7th, a prostitute by the name of Mary Ann Nichols. She was She was forty-three years old, and her body was found mutilated on Durward street.
The Jack the Ripper Murders happened in the East End of London in 1888 and, although the Whitechapel Murderer was only a threat to a small section of the community in a small part of London, the murders had a huge impact on society as a whole.
Like all good horror stories, the legend of Jack the Ripper is founded in some aspects of truth. In 1888, five female prostitutes were murdered over a span of four months in Whitechapel, a poverty-stricken and crime-ridden district on the East End of London. These women are generally known as the “canonical five victims,” but there are many disputes on how many victims there actually were. According to one Jack the Ripper website, the Whitechapel Murders file lists as many as eleven victims, but not all of these were the murderer’s true victims (Jones). Another certain truth is that the majority of the women
This killing was much more violent than the other that had happened that day. Her face had been mutilated and the killer had run off with her left kidney and her uterus. The fifth victim of these five that were heavily speculated to be The Ripper was Mary Kelly. She was murdered on November 9th, 1888. The Ripper had skinned her almost to the bone and left her in Miller’s
The Whitechapel Murders and those of Jack the Ripper are not generally one and the same. Over a period of three years towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of prostitutes were murdered under different circumstances the murder of prostitutes was not an especially unique occurrence during those times but several of the murders drew particular attention on account of the savagery with which the victim's bodies were mutilated. Within the Whitechapel Murders was a cluster of murders that demonstrated sufficient similarities as to suggest that they were committed by the same person. One of the first instances of serial murder was thus identified and sensationalised in the media as the work of Jack the Ripper', nicknamed on the
Jack the Ripper was one of the most famous and renowned killers in history. Even though he was not the first serial killer, he was the first killer to strike on a metropolis setting. Jack the Ripper was in his prime at a time when the media had a strong control over society and society as a whole was becoming much more literate. Jack started his killing campaign at a time of political controversy between the liberals and social reformers along with the Irish Home rule partisans. The reports of Jack the Ripper were collected and reported by the police, but then the different newspapers with their political influences slightly distorted the stories to give them their own effect. It has been more the one hundred years since the last murder
Murders were not unusual in the “east end” of London. Some historians thinks, there were dozen murders and a few say only five.
The reason I am led to believe this is because of the way they did it for so long, and the way organs were taken out. Researchers said that they suspected many doctors of being the Ripper, because you would have to know the body anatomically. THE BRUTAL MURDERS OF FIVE prostitutes in London's East End in the autumn of 1888 by an unknown killer who came to be called Jack the Ripper' are probably the most famous unsolved crimes in history. First he would strangle his victims, cut their throats and eviscerated them. His last victim, Mary Jean Kelly, he completely butchered ,cutting off her breasts , taking the flesh from her legs down to the bone , eviscerated her also ,and cut out her heart. Joseph Barnet, her lover, identified her only by her hair color. Many of Jack the Ripper’s victim’s showed signs of cannibalism. No one is certain of how many people Jack the Ripper killed.
The murder of Mary Kelly is intriguing and it is unlike the murders of the other victims. Her body was discovered indoors, locked from the inside. She had been living with a younger prostitute at the time, but nothing had been seen. Kelly’s landlord sent his assistant, Thomas