Historic Cases: Jack the Ripper 1

Everyone has heard of Jack the Ripper, one of the oldest unsolved cases in history. There are even Ripperologists that spend all of their spare time studying the case of the murders of disenfranchised women trying to secure a bit of food, a cot to sleep on, and feed their addiction to alcohol through sex work. But the case can’t be reduced to what we think we know about the victims. Many of them were occasional sex workers. Others came from good families and even married well and had kids. None of them deserved what happened to them. Throats slit, disemboweled, and faces ruined. Polly Nichols. Annie Chapman. Elizabeth Stride. Catherine Eddowes. Mary Kelly who was so destroyed by the Ripper’s work that her remains didn’t seem human. And then as suddenly as the killings started, they stopped. Was the murders the work of a devoted and sophisticated killer or a crazed mental patient?