Jack The Ripper

12 Pages 3047 Words

The worlds most notorious serial killer was active for only ten weeks, during which time he murdered five victims. Despite the relatively modest body count, his crimes terrorized the most populous city on earth, making headlines around the globe. To this day, Londons unidentified prostitute-killer remains the subject of more books, plays, films and articles than any other felon in recorded history. The mystery of Jack the Ripper opened on the 31st of August 1888, with the discovery of a womans lifeless body on Bucks Row, in the heart of the Whitechapel slums. The victims name was Mary Nichols, known as Polly to her friends, and she had earned her meager living as a prostitute before a final client showed a taste for blood. Her throat was cut, with bruises underneath the jaw suggesting that she had been punched or choked insensible before the killer plied his blade. The medical examiner discovered deep post-mortem slashes on the victims abdomen, with stab wounds to the genitals. The murder of an East End prostitute was nothing new to Scotland Yard. Detectives had two other cases on the books for 1888, already. Emma Smith had been attacked on April 2, by a gang of four or five assailants, living long enough to offer the police descriptions of her killers. Martha Tabram had been found in Whitechapel on August 7, stabbed 39 times with a weapon resembling a bayonet. Neither crime had anything in common with the death of Mary Nichols, and detectives were compelled to wait for further homicides to indicate a pattern. On September 8, they found their link with the discovery of Annie Chapmans corpse, a short half-mile from Bucks Row. The victim, yet another prostitute, had first been choked unconscious, after which her throat was cut and she was cruelly disemboweled. Her entrails had been torn away and draped across one shoulder; portions of the bladder and vagina, with the uterus and ovaries, were missing from the scene. The Lancet quoted Dr. B...