Jack the Ripper documents and their limits

An unidentified murderer of adult women in Whitechapel in 1888. The name comes from press letters, not from a charging document. No one was convicted. Status is unsolved.

Mary Ann Nichols (31 August), Annie Chapman (8 September), Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes (30 September) and Mary Jane Kelly (9 November), all 1888. Macnaghten’s 1894 memorandum fixed the five-victim claim that later historians call canonical. Other Whitechapel murders in 1888–91 are in the wider police file.

Yes. The canonical five were adult women living in East End poverty. Several sold sex to survive. This page does not sexualise them or describe their bodies. They are named because the inquests named them.

No suspect was charged with the series. Forensic tools of 1888 could not individualise a stranger. Witness descriptions conflicted. Letters confused the public file. Later memoirs named names without producing trial evidence.

Some may be. Many are not. The “Dear Boss” letter that supplied the name is often judged a possible journalist’s hoax. The “From Hell” letter to George Lusk is debated separately. Hundreds of other letters are treated as copycat or crank mail.

No court has accepted such an identification. A 2014 mitochondrial-DNA claim tied to a disputed shawl and to Aaron Kosminski was criticised for chain of custody and for the limits of that DNA type. It did not close the case.