Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the autumn of 1888. The name is taken from a letter sent to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer.

The victims were women allegedly earning income as prostitutes. The murders were perpetrated in public or semi-public places at night or towards the early morning. The victim's throat was cut, after which the body was mutilated. Theories suggest the victims were first strangled in order to silence them, which also explained the reported lack of blood at the crime scenes. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.

Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer owing to the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police in their attempts to capture the murderer, sometimes missing him at the crime scenes by mere minutes.


Due to the lack of a confirmed identity for the killer, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore and exploitation. Over the years, many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories regarding the identity (or identities) of the killer and his victims.



The Victims

It is unclear just how many women the Ripper killed. It is generally accepted that he killed five, though some have written that he murdered only four while others say seven or more. The public, press, and even many junior police officers believed that the Ripper was responsible for nine slayings. The five that are generally accepted as the work of the Ripper are:

Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, murdered Friday, August 31, 1888.

Annie Chapman, murdered Saturday, September 8, 1888.

Elizabeth Stride, murdered Sunday, September 30, 1888.

Catharine Eddowes, also murdered that same date.

Mary Jane (Marie Jeanette) Kelly, murdered Friday, November 9, 1888.
Besides these five there are good reasons to believe that the first victim was really

Martha Tabram who was murdered Tuesday, August 7, 1888, and there are important considerations for questioning whether Stride was a Ripper victim.

As to the actual number of women that the Ripper killed, Philip Sugden wrote in his excellent book, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, "There is no simple answer.

In a sentence: at least four, probably six, just possibly eight." All five of these listed plus Tabram were prostitutes and were killed between early August and early November 1888. All but Tabram and Kelly were killed outdoors and there is no evidence to suggest that any of them knew each other. They varied in both age and appearance. Most were drunk or thought to be drunk at the time they were killed.

One of the most intriguing of these fragments is the assertion by Sir Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the London Metropolitan Police in 1888, that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper. In an article published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1910, Anderson claimed that the Police had in fact solved the case, but had declined to publicize the fact because, as he says, "no public benefit would result from such a course, and the traditions of my old department would suffer". Anderson made similar assertions in other published sources, most notably in his book "The Lighter Side of My Official Life", also published in 1910. While Anderson never named the suspect in question, he did give a general description of him: the perpetrator was, according to Anderson, a low-class Polish Jew who was "caged in an asylum", and who was "at once identified" by "the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer." Anderson also tells us that the killer was "a sexual maniac of a virulent type" who lived "in the immediate vicinity of the scenes of the murders," and "whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute".

In 1959, the name of Anderson's Polish Jew suspect was finally revealed to be 'Kosminski', after the discovery of a copy of an internal police memo written in 1894 by Anderson's second in command, Melville Macnaghten. The memo lists as a suspect: "Kosminski, a Polish Jew, who lived in the very heart of the district where the murders were committed. He had become insane owing to many years indulgence in solitary vices. He had a great hatred of women, with strong homicidal tendencies."

This article proposes a re-examination of the suspect Aaron Kosminski. We will take a closer look at what is known about the Polish Jew hairdresser: his background of growing up in an environment characterized by poverty, oppression, and exposure to violence; his public display of masturbation; his diagnosis suggesting schizophrenia - that he hears voices which guide his every movement. We know, for example, that he threatened his sister with a knife. Melville Macnaghten claimed to have evidence that Kosminski hated women, and that he had homicidal tendencies. And there were other "circs", according to Macnaghten, that made him a strong suspect - evidence that has apparently been lost. Aaron was the right age basically, and he was said to have "strongly resembled the individual seen by the City PC near Mitre Square". He was identified by a witness. His presumed residence in 1888 was in the geographic center of the murders.