1888 - London's East End witnessed a series of brutal murders of prostitutes. Until our time, these crimes remain unsolved. Jack the Ripper, who was he really - a maniac surgeon? Or an adherent of ritual murder? Perhaps a mentally ill member of the royal family?..
At the end of the 19th century, the British Empire was at its peak. Its possessions were scattered across the globe, they were inhabited by people of different races and religions.
However, in the center of this huge empire there was a place where, as journalists wrote, the sun never looked. London's East End was a disgrace to Britain and the entire civilized world. People lived there in poverty and squalor. Child mortality in this area of the English capital was twice the national average. Prostitution and unrestrained drunkenness, sexual abuse of minors, murder and fraud were common features of the local way of life.
All this turned out to be a well-fertilized breeding ground for the killer, whose black fame has reached our days. The streets and nooks and crannies of the East End became the scene of his bloody deeds.
The atrocities of Jack the Ripper are incomparable, of course, with the mass horrors that the 20th century presented to mankind. He killed, though with savage cruelty, only 5 women. But in this case, the question is, who was Jack the Ripper really? There is strong suspicion that Jack the Ripper was a member of the upper class of British society. It was these suspicions that piqued so much public interest in the East End Monster.
The first victim
Although Jack the Ripper remained a loathsome assassin in crime history, his dreadful hold on the East End was short-lived. He struck the first blow on August 31, 1888, when Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute who worked in the Whitechapel area, was brutally murdered. Her corpse was found in a maze of dark streets.
Polly, 42, was known as a binge drinker and a regular at all local eateries.
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With a high degree of probability, the police assumed such a scenario of the crime. "Polly Pretty" addressed the tall passer-by with the usual question in such cases: "Looking for entertainment, mister?" Most likely, she asked for 4p for her services. This paltry sum was enough to pay for a place in the flophouse and get a few sips of cheap gin. As soon as the man carried her away to a dark place, the prostitute's fate was sealed. A hand reached out to her throat, and after a couple of seconds it was cut from ear to ear.
“Only an abnormal person could have done this! the police doctor exclaimed. I've never seen anything like it before. Only a person who knew how to handle a knife could cut her in this way."
Because killings in the impoverished and dangerous area of the East End were commonplace, the police did not attach much importance to the incident. But only for one week.
On September 8, "Darkie Annie" Chapman, a 47-year-old prostitute with severe tuberculosis, was found stabbed to death near Spitelfiod Market.
And although there were no signs of rape, the nature of the murder, as in the first case, indicated that the killer cut and gutted the victim under the influence of the strongest sexual arousal.
In addition, the dismemberment of the body of "Dark-skinned Annie" (all her insides were lying next to the corpse) spoke of the killer's knowledge of anatomy or surgery. So it was clearly not an ordinary criminal.
The monster is having fun
The second murder had an unexpected continuation. On September 28, a scoffing letter came to the Fleet Street news agency. It said:
“I hear rumors from all sides that the police have caught me. And they still haven't even figured out me. I hunt certain types of women and will not stop cutting them until the time they tie me up. The last thing was great work. The lady didn't even have time to cry out. I love this kind of work and am ready to repeat it. Soon you will know about me again through a funny trick. When I finished the last thing, I took the ink in the gingerbread bottle with me to write the letter, but it soon thickened like glue and I couldn't use it. So I decided that red ink would work instead. Ha! Ha! Next time I will cut off my ears and send them to the police, just for fun."
The letter was signed: Jack the Ripper.
To the next letter, which was sent to the Whitechapel Police Commission, the maniac attached half a kidney. The sender claimed that the kidney was excised from the victim he killed and that he ate the other half.
Of course, investigators weren't sure if the second letter was sent by the same person who sent the first. But it was already known that the Ripper cut some organs from his victims. Skillfully cutting the victim's throat, he dismembered bodies, cut faces, opened the abdominal cavity, and removed the entrails. He left something next to the corpse, took something with him.
The third victim of the Ripper is Elizabeth Stride, nicknamed "The Long Liz" due to her height. On September 30, a junk dealer with his cart in Berner Street in Whitechapel noticed a suspect bundle and reported it to the police station. So the body of 44-year-old Liz was found.
As in previous cases, the victim's throat was slashed. At the same time, the killer was behind her. But there were no injuries or traces of sexual abuse on the body. The police decided that the offender was ashamed of his vile deeds. But that same afternoon, they found victim # 4.
Wave of fear
Catherine Edous, who was in her 40s, was found dismembered, her face was cut open, the extracted entrails lay on her right shoulder, both ears disappeared.
By that time, the British capital was already gripped by a wave of fear. Many women started carrying knives and whistles with them to call the police.
The Illustrated London News jokingly suggested that noble ladies get pearl-gripped pistols in case the Ripper wanted to expand the social sphere of murder. One of the stores even began to advertise steel corsets.
And in Whitechapel itself, female police officers began to dress and make up like prostitutes in the expectation that the criminal would take the bait and he could be detained.
It got to a farce. So, a journalist dressed up as a woman of easy virtue approached the disguised policeman and asked: "Are you one of us?" He replied: "No, really!" - and arrested the nimble reporter.
The Iddowes murder alarmed the police to the extreme. Her body was mutilated much more severely than in previous cases. The bloody path ran from the corpse to the scraps of a tattered apron that lay at the entrance. And next to the door on the wall was written in chalk: "Jews are not the kind of people who can be blamed for anything."
Sir Charles Warren, the head of the police, personally erased the inscription and thereby, perhaps, destroyed a very important piece of evidence. But he feared that with the then influx of Jews from Eastern Europe into the East End, this inscription could cause a wave of hostility towards them.
Rumors and suspicions
Rumors about who the maniac could be spread like wildfire. Some frightened residents of the area even talked that some policeman was doing this while patrolling the streets.
Among the suspects was a certain Russian doctor named Mikhail Ostrog. From somewhere a version appeared that he was allegedly sent by the tsarist secret police to incite hatred of Jewish emigrants.
There were those who claimed that the culprit was some crazy surgeon. Even Sir Charles Warren himself, a famous Freemason, was suspected. It has been suggested that he erased the writing on the wall in order to save the murderer-Mason from retribution.
The last murder took place on November 9th. The only difference was the fact that the victim belonged to a higher class of prostitutes - she had her own room.
Mary Kelly, 25, was murdered and brutally mutilated in a room she rented. This time, the Ripper had plenty of time to indulge in his nefarious work.
On the morning of November 10, the owner of the house, Henry Bowers, walked around the tenants and collected the rent, knocking on Mary's door. The entire previous evening, the attractive blonde spent her usual occupation - pestering passers-by, begging for money. The last man she was seen with, tall, dark-haired, with a mustache and a felt hunting hat, may have been her killer.
At the autopsy, by the way, it was found out that the woman was three months pregnant.
This ends the chain of brutal murders. But even now, more than a hundred years later, the mystery of the Ripper's short but bloody revelry remains unsolved.
1959 - 71 years after a series of murders, an old man recalled how, as a child, he once rolled a cart down Hanbury Street and heard screams: "Murder!" The old man said: “I was a boy, therefore, without hesitation, I ran up and squeezed through the crowd … And there she was lying, and steam was still coming from her insides. She was wearing red and white stockings. " The then boy saw the Ripper's second victim - Annie Chapman.
One of the suspects caused particular excitement in society, because it was the grandson of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarens. Suspicion fell on him only because there was a lot of talk about his madness. Immediately after a series of murders, the prince was rumored to have been sent to a psychiatric hospital to avoid a scandal.
The Duke was the eldest son of the future King Edward VII. It was said that he was bisexual and mentally damaged after contracting syphilis.
But first among the suspects, most likely, was occupied by Montague John Druitt, whose body was found in the Thames a few weeks after the murder of Mary Kelly.
Jill the Ripper?
Another author, William Stewart, suggested that Jack the Ripper did not exist, but in reality was Gipple the Ripper - a midwife who traded in clandestine abortions. At one time, she went to prison for prostitution. Released, Jill allegedly began to brutally take revenge on society.
Senior Police Officer John Stalker, who retired as Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester after investigating the Ripper case, stated:
“Until now, there is not the slightest real evidence against anyone that could be presented in court. The truth is, Jack the Ripper never feared getting caught. I am sure that the police have been near him more than once, but … The police in 1888 faced a very new phenomenon for them - a series of sexual murders committed by a man who was unfamiliar with his victims. Even now, after a century, it is quite difficult to solve such crimes."
And yet there is a man who is familiar with the Ripper case in detail, who is convinced that the culprit of those gruesome murders can be named. John Ross, a former police officer, is now in charge of the so-called "black museum" of the police. Not at all inclined to jump to conclusions, he tells visitors to his unusual exhibition that Jack the Ripper is actually an emigrant named Kosminsky. By the way, almost nothing is known about this man, except for the surname. And nevertheless, Mr. Ross assures that the data obtained by the police at one time when inspecting the scene of the incident point exactly to Kosminsky. It should be noted that not only Ross thinks so.
1894 February - Mr Ross's predecessor, fellow analyst Sir Melvy D. McKnaughton, wrote a seven-page reference and pinned it to the Jack the Ripper case. In this reference, he tried to refute some of the more common versions of the time.
The certificate said: “Kosminsky is a Polish Jew. This man has gone mad as a result of long years of loneliness and vice. He hated women, especially prostitutes, and was prone to murder … He is associated with many crimes, which makes it possible to suspect him."