Jack the Ripper's information

The Mystery of a Hundred Years' Fog City: Jack the Ripper/Re-discussion

Until the beginning of19th century, London was a very dangerous city for ordinary residents. In fact, it was not until 1829 that Scotland Yard established a police system to govern the whole city. More than half a century later, in 1888, under the increasingly dazzling light of the colonial empire, on the surface, London has become a first-class good capital with considerable protection for personal and property safety. However, at the bottom of Victorian society, there are many undercurrents of social and political changes caused by hypocrisy, poverty and injustice. This is particularly evident in the East End, which is famous for immigration and poverty. In less than a square mile of land, the East End of London not only gathered a large number of workers at the bottom of the traditional British class, but also absorbed about 40 thousand Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Russia.

In order to survive, these eastern residents, that is, lucky men, earn meager income by selling labor between nearby wholesale markets and warehouses and docks, while unfortunate people are unemployed and live on the streets because of too many labor competitors. On the other hand, women and children in the Eastern District have to sell 1 1 hour of labor every day to make a living or supplement their families. According to statistics, there are about 200 menial jobs, from weaving to cleaning chimneys. For women, selling their bodies is a relatively high-paying industry. 1888, it is estimated that there are 60,000 to 80,000 prostitutes in London, and the East District is one of the most frequent areas of the city and the lowest.

Selected murders in Whitechapel series

1August 7, 888, a hot summer night. A worker found a female corpse in an alley near Whitechapel in east London, with 39 knives on her body, 9 of which were cut from her throat. The deceased was Martha Turner, nearly forty years old, an alcoholic prostitute who lived in the local area for thirteen years (note 1).

At 3: 45 am on August 3rd/Kloc-0, a coachman who was about to go to work found Mary Ann Nichols, a 43-year-old prostitute, lying in a pool of blood in a desolate warehouse area (now called Dword Street, behind the Whitechapel subway station 100 yards away). It was not until the autopsy that afternoon that the unusual thing about this murder case was discovered. The face of the deceased was badly bruised, the neck was cut twice, some front teeth fell off, the lower abdomen and genitals were poked, and the intestines were pulled out of the abdominal cavity. The forensic doctor judged it to be a thin knife of six to eight inches.

The East End of London has always been notorious, and there are dragons and snakes around Whitechapel, which is also known as the "East End of the East". However, although local crimes are frequent, there are few fatal murders, let alone such shocking and cruel cases as Marianne's. After Marian's tragic death was made public, the media began to call it "Whitechapel murder" together with Marta's murder and another local murder earlier that year, believing that the murderer was the same person, and made a lot of reports on the murderer's means of committing crimes. The images and voices of the media make local residents feel uneasy. Women in ordinary families are still afraid to walk at night. Policemen in plain clothes patrol everywhere, and residents have set up their own patrol teams. The media have speculated whether the murderer will commit another crime after taking these emergency measures.

At 5: 45 am on September 8, the old driver living on the third floor of a cheap hotel-style apartment almost fainted when he saw a female body lying by the fence in the backyard. The police later investigated and proved that Annie Chapman, a 47-year-old deceased, was another prostitute. The neck was cut, laparotomy was performed, and the intestines were scattered on the left chest. There was no sign of struggle before death. The autopsy found that some genitals and urinary organs of the deceased were missing, and it was judged that the murder weapon knife was similar to the previous case.

At one o'clock in the morning on September 30, the horse driven by coachman Louis hesitated on a dark road near his home. Louis polished a match and saw a woman lying on the ground. After careful study, he was surprised to find another female body. The deceased was Elizabeth strand, a 44-year-old Swedish prostitute. Her throat was cut, but there was no laparotomy. She died because her left carotid artery was cut off and she lost a lot of blood. Next to the morgue (40 Berner St) is a normal Jewish gathering place. At the time of the incident, dozens of Jews gathered in the club, and no one found anything unusual outside the house.

While a large number of policemen were concentrated in the area around the murder scene, and there were many different views on the murderer's tactics, at 1 45 am, a patrolman found another female body in a bag-shaped Aldgate hundreds of yards away. The corpse was disfigured by laparotomy and some kidneys were missing. According to the description of the police, there was nothing unusual when he 1: 30 patrolled this place. Without exception, the deceased was a prostitute: Catherine Edworth, 46 years old.

Jack the Ripper

On September 27th, a news agency received a letter written in red ink and covered with fingerprints. The screenwriter jokingly indicated that he was the murderer of serial murders in a non-working class tone, and signed Jack the Ripper; ; 1 October1day, the same company received another postcard judged to be the same person. The police did not take this clue seriously and thought it was just one of many pranks at that time (the discussion about the "authenticity" of these two letters was inconclusive in later research). However, through media reports, the name of "Jack the Ripper" has spread like wildfire; The whole of London, Britain and even the whole world began to call him the murderer of the Whitechapel serial murder. Jack, who is extremely bloodthirsty and abnormal, is not satisfied at this time

1 1 at 0: 45 on the morning of 9th 10, the landlord called someone to collect the rent of mary carey (who lives at No.9 Miller Garden), and he has been in arrears for six weeks. When the trustee knocked on Mary's door, no one answered. When he found the door locked, he looked into the room through the window and suddenly saw a hellish scene on earth. Mary was lying naked on the bed in a pool of blood, with her nose, ears and breasts cut off, some skin on her face and lower abdomen cut off, her internal organs cut off and scattered on the bed and bedside table, and the walls were covered with blood. The police later determined that the murderer committed the crime for at least two or three hours, making the deceased the worst of the above murders. Mary carey, 26, Irish, separated from her former cohabitant a few days before her death. She is the youngest and most beautiful victim of serial murder, and the only one who has a fixed residence.

After the mary carey case, Jack the Ripper seems to have begun to disappear; The same technique has not appeared in London for several years. Analysis of this series of cases, we can sum up many of the same characteristics as follows:

All the victims are cheap prostitutes at the bottom of society, except mary carey, who has no fixed residence.

Most of the victims were married and had children. Later, they left their families and wandered around East London, and they all had cohabitants.

All the victims had moderate to severe alcoholism; Alcoholism is often the reason why these victims leave their families.

Except mary carey's case, the victims of other murders were seen walking in the street an hour or two before the bodies were found, and they were all drunk. Catherine Aidan was detained for drunkenness and disorderly conduct on the night of the murder. She was released from the police station at 1 am and found dead in the street at 1 45.

In addition to mary carey's case, a neighbor heard a woman's cry for help at 3 am, "Murder!" (Murder), although other murders took place not far from the thoroughfare and there were many houses nearby, they all seemed to be quiet when they happened.

The police found that the victims of this murder showed no signs of strong struggle before they died.

Within 30 minutes to 2 hours before each murder, witnesses witnessed the deceased talking with a strong and dignified man in his thirties, who had to wear a hat.

At that time, the police, who invested a lot of manpower, were deeply helpless about this series of murders with unknown motives, no traces of crime and only contradictory eyewitness testimony. At that time, fingerprints had not been used to handle cases, forensic medicine was rough, and the police who handled cases on a daily basis were not even sure what class should be taken as the focus of the investigation (first confirming the class affiliation of suspects is the traditional mode of handling cases in a well-defined society). Faced with this unprecedented hot potato, the police's ability to handle cases has been criticized, and even Queen Victoria questioned the police's efficiency in handling cases, which led to changes in the top management of the police station. After the popularity of the media subsided, the police decided to stop investigating the Whitechapel serial murder in 1892 (note 2).

Who's Jack the Ripper?

After the successive murders in Whitechapel, the police made no progress in handling the case. When local residents living in fear meet men with slightly suspicious appearance and behavior, they will shout to the masses to hand them over to the police station, but most of these so-called suspects are immediately recovered by the police after interrogation. After several murders, according to the knife method and the time of the murder, the forensic autopsy thought that the murderer should have anatomical knowledge; One hundred yards away from Marianne's body is the huge building of the Royal Hospital in London, so there are rumors that the murderer may be a nearby doctor. Several local doctors were even detained by plainclothes police for a long time. Therefore, until recently, in the film, Jack the Ripper was portrayed as a mysterious man dressed in black, with surgical instruments in his hand, walking into the darkness on the foggy East Street.

At that time, there was a chauvinistic idea that Jack the Ripper, who was cruel and abnormal, must not be a native of Britain, so the suspect pointed the finger at immigrants. Because of the anti-Semitic complex of residents in the East District at that time, Jewish immigrants living in the East District at that time were most often suspected to be involved. In addition, there have been rumors that a Russian Anna moved to Paris in the 1970s, then went insane, murdered several prostitutes and was put in a mental hospital. However, in 1988, the serial murder case was judged to have been cured by the hospital before it was released and transferred to East London. After the murder, there was no trace.

After World War I, specialized books on Jack the Ripper began to appear in Britain (the first book was The Mystery of Jack the Ripper published by Leonard Matters in 1929). Since then, the upsurge of studying and trying to find out who Jack the Ripper is has been going on, and even the terms "Ripper" and "Ripper" have appeared, and the related books have been published all over the world. These studies have found dozens of suspicious "Jack", but most of them are actually only speculations with extremely weak evidence. Among them, the "royal conspiracy theory", which has become the reasoning habit of some modern British people, involves the Duke of Clarence, the grandson of Queen Victoria, who might have become king, but died of influenza in 1893; It is said that he secretly married a low-level social painting model and had children. The serial murders were made by members of a secret society led by a noble to cover up this fact. Up to now, many people still think that Buckingham Palace has something to do with Jack the Ripper.

Jack may be a midwife?

Conan Doyle, who began to conceive a series of Sherlock Holmes stories shortly before the murder, claimed that according to his Sherlock Holmes reasoning, the murderer was a man disguised as a woman to avoid being seen by others. This "female connection" later developed into another theory, that is, Jack the Ripper may be a midwife, but there is a theory that Jack the Ripper is a woman.

1959, a secret police report 65 years ago was made public, which also caused an uproar. In this report 1894, the police chief who handled the case pointed out in a positive tone that the three most likely suspects were a lawyer aged 3 1 year, who committed suicide by throwing himself into the Thames at the end of 1888, and a Polish Jew who died in1888. According to the follow-up study, it is not impossible for these three people to be Jack the Ripper, but the possibility is not too high.

Recently, there are two exquisite works that put forward two different theories. 1995, an American pointed out in his book "Jack the Ripper" (Note 5) that the key to identifying the murderer lies in the last serial murder case, because the final version of this murder case as the opening is somewhat different from the previous cases in characteristics. Therefore, the author concludes that the Ripper is actually Yue Se barnett, the cohabitant of the last victim, mary carey. Yue Se used to be a fishmonger, earning a lot of money. 1In July, 888, his fishmonger's license was revoked for stealing, and he made a living by doing odd jobs. Mary, who hasn't appeared in the street for a long time, had to return to her old job, because her cohabitant's income suddenly decreased, and she wanted to break up with Yue Se. According to the inference in the book, Yue Se first warned Mary by killing prostitutes one after another, and then angrily killed his girlfriend who had lived together for a year and a half in the most cruel way.

The authenticity of the mysterious diary

Another book (Note 6), published in 1998, is more than 400 pages thick, which is related to the Diary of Jack the Ripper (Note 7) discovered in Liverpool in the early 1990s. 1in April, 1993, the local newspaper disclosed that someone had found an old leather diary with black gold edges. The author of the diary calls himself the mysterious Jack the Ripper. Influenced by the forgery of Hitler's diary, most "Ripper Scientists" at that time sneered at this diary and immediately thought it was another fake stunt. However, the filmmaker Paul Feldman spent five years going through all the relevant files and dated the diary. The first 48 pages were cut off by a knife, leaving only 63 pages scribbled. The conclusion is that neither he nor other experts can confirm the authenticity of the diary. What is particularly convincing is that some statements in the diary were deliberately hidden by the police for the convenience of handling cases after the incident. These hidden parts were not made public until more than ten years ago-but the diary itself was identified as written at the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20th century. The writer of the diary is james may Brick, a Liverpool businessman.

1 10 years later, the answer was finally revealed? No-some "Ripper Scholars" say that some of their questions still can't get satisfactory answers. The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity seems to have been solved in Liverpool, but like many answers in 1 10 years, this answer is still not recognized as the correct answer. Jack the Ripper, a mystery novel written by many people for more than 100 years, seems to continue to be written: solving a classic mystery in the history of world crime and finding a mystery that may never be determined.

Jack the Ripper is actually a famous painter (Figure).

Xinhuanet (2003-05-22 13:55:23) Source: People's Daily Online

There are many movies and TV works based on Jack the Ripper, the latest one is From Hell starring Johnny Depp and heather graham.

From August 3rd1889 to October 9th/KLOC-0, five prostitutes were killed in Whitechapel, London. The murderer who committed the crime in the foggy night called himself "Jack the Ripper". For more than a century, this historical mystery that once shocked Britain has aroused great interest from many criminologists, policemen, politicians and writers, who have painstakingly searched for the real criminals.

Since 1970, nearly 100 books on this case have been published, mentioning the names of dozens of suspects, the most famous of which are lewis carroll, Prince Albert Victor and Randolph Churchill, the father of British Prime Minister Churchill. However, there is no irrefutable evidence in these works. Patricia Cornwall, an American woman writer, wrote a novel called Mystery-A Portrait of a Black Man after more than a year of detailed investigation and study, and preliminarily concluded that Walter Richard Sickert, an English impressionist painter, was the "Ripper" named Jack. This book became a best seller as soon as it was published in the United States in June 2002. In the United States alone, 750,000 copies were sold, and the French translation of the novel also sold 6,543,800+0,500 copies in France.

Walter Richard Sickert (1860- 1942) is a disciple of Whistler and a friend of Degas. He was greatly influenced by Degas, and The Dutch Woman written by 19 12 was praised as a masterpiece. He is mysterious and likes to disguise himself. He often rents a studio in Whitechapel, London, where murders are frequent. As early as 1970s, it was written that sickert was regarded as the accomplice of Sir William Gill, the doctor of Queen Victoria, and participated in the criminal activities of killing these prostitutes, but no strong evidence was provided. Gail was suspected of killing these prostitutes to cover up a scandal in the royal family, because Albert Victor, the grandson of Queen Victoria, had an illegitimate child with one of them. Before the novel was published in Cornwall, an Englishman named Jean overton also accused sickert of having an affair with this case in her book Art and Murder, but her inference did not attract people's attention.

During the period of 200 1, Cornwall hired a forensic doctor named Kay Scatchard, and found a retired prosecutor, John Griff, who was very good at solving difficult cases. It is he who guides female writers to pay attention to sickert. Griff became suspicious of a famous painting by sickert. The name of this oil painting is "Black Boy Camden Soup", in which a man is sitting on the edge of the bed and a prostitute is lying on her back. The scene on the screen is very similar to one of the five murdered prostitutes recorded in the police file.

Cornwall was originally a detective novelist, and this discovery made her creative enthusiasm even higher. Her careful study of the painter's works further confirmed Griff's hunch. Cornwall also studied all the photos taken by the police at the scene of the murder of five prostitutes and the morgue. Almost all these photos can be found in sickert's paintings. She said, "I saw a terrible ghost and the shadow of a devil."

In order to further reveal the secret of this case, Cornwall spent 6 million euros to buy 32 oil paintings by sickert, as well as his work clothes, brushes, drawing tables and most letters. She and her experts traveled to Britain and France by private jet for dozens of investigations. In order to support her inference, she needs to find more evidence. With the consent of the British government, she invited relevant experts to identify sickert's DNA. They carefully examined his letters, scraped some oil paintings with a knife, obtained evidence in the armpit area and genital area of his work clothes, and found Cirkel's DNA samples. They also found a letter from a man calling himself "Jack the Ripper" to Dr. Oppenhower, and the stamp on the envelope was stained with the murderer's blood. After testing, the DNA of blood is completely consistent with that of sickert. They also found this sample on a stamp that Sikh wrote a letter to his wife.

Cornwall also found another coincidence. The paper used by the painter is the same brand as that used by Jack the Ripper to write letters. In some letters, the murderer signed "Nemo", which was a stage name used by sickert. Before painting, he worked as an actor for a while. Cornwall made a systematic and scientific investigation of sickert, and also studied his biography, from which we also saw a character who was eccentric, overbearing and possessed peculiar manipulation ability. She also found a very important detail. When sickert was a child, he underwent three surgeries because of a penile fistula, which may lead to his impotence and inability to have a normal sex life. He probably had the idea of killing prostitutes out of sexual perversion.

However, some people question Cornwall's conclusion. One is that an artist like sickert can't be a serial killer; Second, during the case, sickert was living in France, and someone wrote in the letter that he had seen him; Others said that sickert died in 1942, but the serial killings in London stopped at 189 1. No serial killer ever said, "I'm tired of it, I quit." However, Cornwall still insists on his own judgment. She said that the letter said that she had seen sickert in France, but it was not dated. Besides, there is only one strait between Britain and France, so it is very convenient to travel. Even if he lived in France at that time, he might return to England to commit crimes at any time.

The publication of Cornwall's novels further enhanced sickert's popularity, and the price of his oil paintings soared. An oil painting by sickert was sold at an auction in new york in June 65438+February last year at a price several times higher than in the past. (Text/Yang Rusheng)