Jack the Ripper in London

Written by Matt, founder of Fun London Tours and an accredited City of London and City of Westminster Tour Guide Lecturer. He guides these walks himself.

Between August and November 1888, five women were murdered within about a mile of each other in Whitechapel and Spitalfields. No one was ever charged. The killer was never identified, the name “Jack the Ripper” came from a letter that was probably a hoax, and the case has stayed open for more than 135 years.

This is our guide to it: who the women were, where it happened, what stands there now, who the suspects were, and why the investigation failed. Our guides walk these streets every week.

Punch cartoon The Nemesis of Neglect, a ghostly hooded figure holding a knife drifting through a Whitechapel slum — The Nemesis of Neglect, drawn by John Tenniel for Punch, 29 September 1888. The magazine blamed the murders on the slums the East End had been left with.

The facts, in short

When	31 August to 9 November 1888
Where	Whitechapel and Spitalfields, with one murder inside the City of London
How many	Five generally agreed. Eleven in the wider police file
Arrested	Several men questioned, nobody charged
The name	From the “Dear Boss” letter, September 1888, widely thought to be a journalist’s invention
Still visible today	One of the five sites. The rest are built over

The five women

The case is usually told as a puzzle about the killer. It is more interesting, and a good deal better documented, as five lives.

Name	Age	Date
Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols	43	31 August 1888
Annie Chapman	47	8 September 1888
Elizabeth Stride	44	30 September 1888
Catherine Eddowes	46	30 September 1888
Mary Jane Kelly	about 25	9 November 1888

Four were in their forties. One was Swedish, one from Wolverhampton, one probably Irish. Four were living in casual lodging houses when they died, which is the detail that explains why they were on the street in the early hours of the morning.

Read about the five women, who they were and where they came from.

Where it happened

Almost none of it survives. Two of the streets were renamed by residents who wanted rid of the association, one no longer exists at all, and an office block now stands over the site of the last murder.

1894 Ordnance Survey map of Whitechapel and Spitalfields with the sites of the first seven Whitechapel murders marked in red — The first seven Whitechapel murders, the five plus Emma Smith and Martha Tabram, marked on an 1894 Ordnance Survey map.

Buck’s Row	Now Durward Street, renamed 1892
29 Hanbury Street	Demolished. The opposite side of the street is original
Berner Street	Now Henriques Street. A school occupies the site
Mitre Square	Still a square, the original buildings are gone
Dorset Street	Demolished in the 1960s.

The murder locations and what stands there today, including Goulston Street and the buildings that did survive.

Who was Jack the Ripper?

There is no answer, only a long list. Contemporary police suspects included Montague Druitt, Aaron Kosminski and Michael Ostrog. Later writers have added doctors, barbers, a member of the royal family and, on the strength of a much disputed DNA claim, a Polish barber again.

Illustrated London News engraving of vigilance committee men watching a suspicious man walk past in a dark Whitechapel street — A Suspicious Character, from the Illustrated London News, 13 October 1888, one of a series on the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee's night patrols.

The honest position is that the evidence that would settle it does not exist. The case files are incomplete, the forensic science of 1888 could not do what people assume it could, and every few years a new book announces a solution that does not survive scrutiny.

Who was Jack the Ripper? The suspects, the letters and the DNA claim.

Why was he never caught?

Because almost everything that would catch him now did not exist. There were no fingerprints in evidence, no blood typing, no photographs of most crime scenes, no central criminal record, and the two police forces working the case operated independently of each other.

Punch cartoon of a blindfolded policeman with arms outstretched, surrounded by jeering East End figures — Blind Man's Buff, Punch, 22 September 1888. The police, blindfolded, are told to turn round three times and catch whom they may.

Add to that an area of dense courts and alleys, thousands of transient residents, hundreds of false confessions and letters, and a press that printed speculation as fact. The investigation was not incompetent so much as unequipped.

Inside the investigation, and what the police actually had to work with.

Common questions

Whether he wrote the letters, how many women he really killed, where the victims are buried and why the case still holds attention: our Jack the Ripper questions and answers.

Seeing it for yourself

The sites are all public streets and you are free to walk them. The difficulty is that four of the five show you nothing at all, so without knowing what stood there you will be looking at an office wall.

Our Jack the Ripper walking tour covers the accessible sites, the investigation and the suspects, in small groups of four to twenty, over about two hours. It puts the women at the centre of the story and does not trade in gore. We also run it as a private tour for groups who would rather go on their own.