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Quick answers
Who was Jack the Ripper?
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.
Who were the canonical five?
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.
Were the victims adult women?
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.
Why was the case never solved?
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.
Are the Jack the Ripper letters genuine?
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.
Did DNA identify the killer?
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.
The story that can be told without harm is a sequence of inquests, patrols and headlines.
The story that English culture prefers is a fog and a bag. This page keeps the first.
Beats
- An East End already in the papers
Whitechapel in 1888 was a subject of housing inquiries and immigration argument before the autumn murders. The police file did not invent the district’s fame; it inherited it.
- Five inquests in ten weeks
From Nichols to Kelly the coroners named adult women and recorded that a killer remained unknown. Stride and Eddowes died the same date, 30 September, which the press called the “double event.”
- Leather Apron and the letters
A local scare name, then a published “Jack” signature, turned a murder series into a character. Vigilance committee patrols and extra beats followed the headlines as much as the evidence.
- Warren goes, the year ends
The commissioner resigned in November. Murders that some officers wished to attach to the same hand continued into later years without a charge.
- Memo, memoirs, myth
Macnaghten in 1894, Anderson’s later books and a century of amateur naming built a literature larger than the 1888 jacket. No trial ever tested it.
The story that remains honest is unsolved. The story that sells tickets is something else.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.