This Day In History

November 9: Jack the Ripper's Final Kill

The myths and rumours around Jack the Ripper are legion. Who knows what really happened in the East End of London back in the 1880s? We do know many women were killed, and here are the raw facts behind their demise, including some non-Ripper victims.

* Emma Elizabeth Smith, was robbed and sexually assaulted on Osborn Street, Whitechapel, on 3 April 1888. A blunt object was inserted into her vagina, which ruptured her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis, and died the following day at London Hospital. She said that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager. Though this attack was linked to the later murders by the press, it was almost certainly gang violence unrelated to the Ripper.

* Martha Tabram, was killed on 7 August 1888. She had 39 stab wounds. Of the  Whitechapel murders, Tabram is considered another possible Ripper victim for a variety of reasons: the closeness of the location (George Yard, Whitechapel) and date to those of the core Ripper murders; the lack of obvious motive; and the savagery of the killing. However, the attack differs from the others in that it was a stabbing as opposed to slashing the throat and postmortem injuries.

The large number of horrific attacks against women during this era adds some uncertainty as to exactly how many victims were killed by the same man. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper's modus operandi.

The "canonical five" Ripper victims are:

* Mary Ann Nichols was killed on Friday 31 August 1888. She was last seen at 2:30 AM walking along Whitechapel Road. Her body was discovered at about 3:40 a.m. in Buck's Row (now Durward Street), Whitechapel. Her throat was severed deeply by two cuts; the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. There also were several incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife used violently and downwards.

* Annie Chapman was killed on Saturday 8 September 1888. She was last seen at 5:30 AM, talking to a foreign-looking man in a deerstalker hat. A few moments later, a young carpenter heard a woman crying "NO!" and something falling against a fence. Her body was discovered at about 6 a.m. near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Like Mary Ann Nichols's, her throat was severed by two cuts. Her abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was later discovered that the uterus had been removed. At the inquest, one witness described seeing Chapman with a dark-haired man of "shabby-genteel" appearance at about 5:30 a.m.

* Elizabeth Stride was killed on Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was discovered at about 1 a.m., in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. There was one clear-cut incision on the neck; the cause of death was massive blood loss from the nearly severed main artery on the left side. Some uncertainty about the identity of Stride's murderer, along with the suggestion her killer was interrupted during the attack, stem from the absence of mutilations to the abdomen. Witnesses who may have seen Stride with a man earlier that night gave differing descriptions: some said her companion was fair others dark; some said he was shabbily-dressed others well-dressed.

* Catherine Eddowes was, like Stride, killed on Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. The throat was severed by two cuts, and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. A local man, Joseph Lawende, had passed through the square shortly before the murder with two friends, and he described seeing a fair-haired man of shabby appearance wearing a red scarf, with the appearance of a sailor, with a woman who may have been Eddowes. His companions, however, were unable to confirm his description. Eddowes' and Stride's murders were later called the "double event". Part of Eddowes' bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Some writing on the wall above the apron piece, which became known as the Goulston Street graffito, seemed to implicate a Jew or Jews, but it was unclear whether the graffito was written by the murderer as he dropped the apron piece, or merely incidental. Police Commissioner Charles Warren feared the graffito might spark anti-Semitic riots, and ordered it washed away before dawn. 

* Mary Jane Kelly was killed on Friday 9 November 1888. Her gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 a.m., lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her throat had been severed down to the spine, and her abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. Her heart was missing.