Jack the Ripper: Case Study

Lesson 1: The Setting, the Crimes, and the Victims

Other Victims

Prior to the five deaths acknowledged to be the work of Jack the Ripper, two other women in the Whitechapel area had also been violently murdered.

The first, Emma Smith, was a widowed woman who lived in a lodging house. In April of 1888 she left in the evening and returned to her lodgings in the early morning. She claimed she had been attacked and robbed, and had suffered head injuries and pains to the abdomen. She was taken to the hospital where it was found that a blunt instrument had been thrust into her. She died the following day. She had lived to tell that her assailants had been a gang of youths.

In order for her to have been a Ripper victim she would either have to have been lying about her attacker, or there would have to be some truth to the theory that the Ripper was more than one person. For this reason, the idea that she may have been the first Ripper victim has been generally discounted.

Martha Tabram was more likely to have been a Ripper victim. Some believe her murder was the first Ripper crime. Like most of the other victims, she was short, overweight, middle-aged and a prostitute. Martha had separated from her husband who had left her because of her drinking problem. He stopped the small allowance he gave her after finding out she was living with another man. The other man also left her. She couldn't pay her rent and was essentially homeless, living in and out of shelters at the time of her death.

The night of her murder, she and another prostitute had been drinking with two soldiers. Martha left with one of them, whose identity is unknown. That was the last time she was seen alive. She was not considered a Ripper victim because her throat had not been slashed and her body had not been mutilated. She had been viciously stabbed 39 times in a manner similar to the recognized Ripper crimes.

Some experts believe Elizabeth Stride was not one of the Ripper's victims because her body was not mutilated as were the others. Some believe her death could have been the result of a domestic dispute instead.

There are those who believe that the killing did not stop after November 9, 1888. Other suspicious murders include a female torso which was found September 10 off nearby Pinchin Street. The corpse had been dismembered but there was no evidence the throat had been slashed. The case remains unsolved and the victim unidentified.

On February 13, 1891 the body of a 26 year old prostitute named Francis Cole was found in the Whitechapel area. Her throat had been cut, but her body had not been mutilated.

Many experts believe that Jack the Ripper may have moved to a different area and continued to kill in a more low-profile manner. Other unsolved murders which fit the Ripper's MO (modus operandi or method of killing) are also sometimes attributed to him. But only five murders are commonly accepted as being victims of the same man, Jack the Ripper.

More about Martha Tabram's murder can be found in chapter 3 of Portrait of a Killer-Jack the Ripper: Case Closed. More on other possible Ripper victims can be found in Chapter 27,p.349-351.

  1  2  3  4  5  6