Serial killer Jack the Ripper has gone down in history as one of England's most notorious murderers. During his three-month killing spree, at least five women, all prostitutes, met their end at Jack's hands. Take a look back at Jack the Ripper's victims and where their bodies were found around historic London on the anniversary of his first kill, Aug. 31, 1888.
An imagined portrait of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, circa 1890. At least five murders attributed to the killer took place in Whitechapel, London in 1888.
Jack the Ripper, one of history’s most elusive and notorious serial killers, killed his first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, on Aug. 31, 1888. What would follow were three months of Londoners living in fear, as the man guilty was never found, and the birth of an urban legend that would go down in history. Nichols, a prostitute, was found at Buck’s Row, which today is Durward Street, in London’s Whitechapel district.
A view of the street where the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found lying across the gutter; her throat was slit and she had been stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen. Nichols would be the first of four victims: Annie Chapman, who was killed on September 8; Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, who died on September 30; and Mary Kelly, killed on November 7. All women were prostitutes.
Annie Chapman, a prostitute, was found in the doorway of a house in the Spitalfields neighborhood of London; her throat was also slit and she had been disemboweled. Part of her uterus was also missing.
The front page of a newspaper reports on a “Ghastly Murder in the East-End. Dreadful Mutilation of a Woman,” as part of its coverage of the murders of Jack the Ripper in London, England in Sept. 1888. At the time of publication, John ‘Leather Apron’ Pizer was a suspect and had been taken into custody due to his harassment of prostitutes. He was later released when his alibis held up.
The body of Elizabeth Stride – who, like Nichols and Chapman, was a prostitute – was found near the entryway of 40 Berner Street, now Henriques Street, in Whitechapel. His throat, also like the others, was slit but remained free of mutilations.
An illustration of police officers discovering the body of Catherine Eddowes on Sept. 30, 1888, forty-five minutes after Elizabeth Stride was killed.
Eddowes’ body was found in Mitre Square, 12 minutes from Elizabeth Stride’s murder sight. Unlike the previous victim, she was mutilated in addition to her throat being slashed; her intestines were pulled out and placed over her shoulders.
Sketches of the police investigation into the “Jack the Ripper” murders in Whitechapel, London in 1888. By H. C. Seppings Wright from the Illustrated London News on Sept. 22, 1888. “The public mind has, during several weeks past, been painfully excited by the unsuccessful attempts of the police to discover the perpetrator of repeated atrocious murders in the neighborhood of Whitechapel & Spitalfields.”
Mary Jane Kelly was Jack the Ripper’s last victim, killed after over a month of inactivity. She had been targeted in her lodgings behind 26 Dorset Street in Spitalfields and was found just before 11 a.m. Her death was the most graphic of the victims, with her breasts being cut off, her internal organs being cut out and placed around her room, and some muscle tissue being removed from her thighs. Jack the Ripper’s murdering spree ended with Kelly, and despite the London police’s best efforts, no one was ever found guilty.
