The solution might be located in the vicinity of the abattoirs, meat vendors, bone collectors, and meat cutters situated close to the sites where the victims’ corpses were discovered. Share Article Share Article Facebook X LinkedIn Reddit Bluesky Email Copy Link Link copied Bookmark Comments
The moniker “Jack the Ripper” originated from a provocative communication, the “Dear Boss letter,” dispatched to the Central News Agency in September of 1888. The missive asserted accountability for the Whitechapel homicides and concluded with the alias “Jack the Ripper.” While very likely a publicity stunt by a journalist to improve sales, the title remained.
However, what was his authentic identity? A fresh hypothesis presented by two historians elucidates the macabre killings that have endured as an enigma since their occurrence 137 years prior in Whitechapel and the City of London. In a five-part sequence featured on The Rest is History podcast, premiering on Monday, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook will contribute their perspective on the sequence of slayings.
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The vast majority of historians concur that the identical individual murdered the quintet of women – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly.
Audience members must await the concluding installment on December 22 to ascertain the ultimate judgment concerning the perpetrator’s identity. They will scrutinize possible suspects, encompassing Queen Victoria’s grandson, her personal doctor, and the athlete WG Grace.
The notion that Jack the Ripper was necessarily a person of affluence or a member of the aristocracy, as opposed to “an ordinary individual,” was initiated by the innovator of contemporary tabloid journalism, WT Stead. Holland draws parallels to the Jeffrey Epstein affair, highlighting “upper-class individuals within the elite victimizing women from the working class.”
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Conversely, the key may reside in the environs of the meat processing centers, slaughterhouses, rendering plants, and flesh mongers positioned in proximity to where the ladies’ remains were discovered. “In the event that one is a renderer, a slaughterer, or a butcher, they possess knives, have expertise in anatomy, and possess a justification for being covered in blood,” Holland clarifies.
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Holland posits that these transgressions ensnared the populace’s curiosity due to the publication of the gothic story The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde along with the inaugural Sherlock Holmes novel two years ahead of the killings.
Holland characterized the offenses as “the initial authentic crime narrative of the present era,” further stating that they “establish the complete structure for both fictional detective stories and factual crime accounts… in addition to impacting the heyday of British horror.”
“Jack the Ripper has evolved into an emblem of enigma and allure, rendering it nearly the most repugnant aspect of the matter. One reflects upon the plethora of detective novels, thrillers, motion pictures, television series, and, notably, podcasts centered around the slaying of women by males for amusement—he constitutes the quintessential prototype thereof.”