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Who was Jack the Ripper? Part 1

© Brenda Gambrell

Jack the Ripper is believed to be the most famous serial killer in history. In the fall of 1888, he stalked the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, brutally taking the lives of five prostitutes within a three-month period. Hundreds of books have been written about the killer, many authors deeming to have solved the long-standing debate over his true identity, yet despite these Jack the Ripper theories, the case remains unsolved.

The residents of the Whitechapel district accused the police of being incompetent and many to this day criticize them for not catching the brutal killer. The reality is that the investigation methods available at the time didn’t provide the police with a great advantage; the murders occurred before forensic science and fingerprinting. The only way for the police to prove someone committed a murder was by catching them in the act or through their own confession.

Despite the limited forensic science methods available at the time, investigators were able to gain a general physical description of Jack the Ripper from alleged eyewitness accounts. The serial killer was believed to be a white male, between 20 and 40 years of age, well dressed, average or below average height, and possibly a foreigner. Through examination of the victims’ wounds, they concluded that he was right-handed and did have some medical expertise. Since he claimed his victims on the weekend in the early morning hours, it was believed that he worked a regular job and that he was single (he could stay out all night without being questioned).

Certain suspects have gained more attention than others have, some pointed out by investigators on the case, and others made famous much later through the media. Sir Melville Macnaghten, the highly respected Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1889 named the following three ripper suspects:

Montague John Druitt, born in Dorset to a well-off family, he graduated with a degree in classics and went on to teach at a boarding school in Blackheath. Druitt’s father, who was a surgeon, died in 1885 and his mother was institutionalized for depression. In spite of these tragedies, he became financially prosperous and mingled in respectable social circles, but depression and suicide were prominent in his family. Shortly after being dismissed from his teaching position, his body was found floating in the Thames River in December 1888, a little more than a month after the last ripper victim, Mary Kelly, was found. A suicide note discovered by his brother stated, “Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die.” No hard evidence exists that Druitt was Jack the Ripper with the exception of the commissioner’s statement: “From private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer." Since Macnaghten claimed to have destroyed all of the documents pointing to Druitt as the Ripper, the truth may never be known.

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