50 Fun Facts About Jack the Ripper

Who directed the 1927 Ripper-inspired film The Lodger?

Alfred Hitchcock. His film came from a 1913 novel in which a couple begin to suspect their quiet lodger of a string of killings, a story filmed several more times since.

In which part of London did the Ripper operate?

The East End. All the killings fell within about a mile of one another around Whitechapel and Spitalfields, which is one reason many think the killer lived locally.

Besides Jack the Ripper, what other nickname did the police files and press give the killer?

Leather Apron. Police arrested John Pizer, a local bootmaker known by the name, but his alibis held, and he then appeared at an inquest to clear himself in public.

Who is widely believed to have written the letter that coined the name 'Jack the Ripper'?

A journalist. Two police chiefs later wrote that they saw a newspaperman's hand in it, one claiming to know exactly who, and most researchers still treat the letter as a hoax to sell papers.

Which woman stabbed 39 times do some count as the Ripper's first victim?

Martha Tabram. Police at the time counted her in the series, but she was stabbed rather than slashed across the throat, so many later writers leave her out.

What term is used for the group of victims widely believed to be the Ripper's work?

The canonical five. The grouping goes back to a police chief's 1894 memo insisting on 'five victims and five victims only', yet writers still argue for as few as three or four, or for six or more.

Who was the first of the five widely accepted victims, found in Buck's Row on 31 August?

Mary Ann Nichols. Turned out of her lodging house for want of fourpence, 'Polly' told the deputy she would soon earn it: 'See what a jolly bonnet I've got now.'

Who first came upon the first accepted Ripper victim's body in Buck's Row?

A cart driver heading to work. Charles Cross called over a second carman, Robert Paul; in the dark neither noticed her wounds, and they walked on to tell the first policeman they met.

Annie Chapman was found on 8 September in the back yard of number 29 on which road?

Hanbury Street. That morning a neighbour in the next yard heard a woman say 'No' and something fall against the fence, but he did not look over.

What did the press call the two murders committed in the early hours of 30 September?

The double event. The phrase was lifted from a taunting postcard sent to the press the next day; Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes had been found three-quarters of an hour apart.

Catherine Eddowes was killed in Mitre Square, which lay in whose jurisdiction rather than the Met's?

The City of London force. The square mile kept its own police, so from that night two forces were hunting one killer, and most of the City's files on the case were later lost in the Blitz.

Why is there doubt over whether Elizabeth Stride was a Ripper victim?

Her body bore no further mutilations, only a single cut to the throat. One theory is that the killer was disturbed by a hawker driving his pony and cart into the yard, where the pony shied in the dark.

A chalk message about 'the Juwes' was found above a piece of bloodied apron on which road?

Goulston Street. The constable who found the apron piece at 2.55 am swore it was not there 35 minutes earlier, but he could not say whether the chalked words were new.

Which Police Commissioner had the chalked 'Juwes' message washed off a wall before dawn?

Sir Charles Warren. With Sunday market crowds minutes away he feared attacks on Jewish residents, so he had the words sponged off before they could be photographed; within six weeks he had resigned.

Which victim was killed indoors, in her room at 13 Miller's Court, on 9 November?

Mary Jane Kelly. She was found by a man sent to collect her overdue rent, who got no answer at the door and pushed aside the curtain at a broken window pane.

Which cry did two women in Miller's Court hear and ignore?

Oh, murder! The cry was so common in the district that neither woman stirred, though one had just been woken by her kitten walking across her neck.

At Miller's Court, the fire in the grate had burned fiercely enough to melt part of what?

A kettle. Its spout had melted off, and police concluded the killer had fed the fire with women's clothing to see by, since the only other light in the room was one small candle.

Which police official wrote in 1894 that the Ripper had 'five victims and five victims only'?

Melville Macnaghten. He joined Scotland Yard only after the murders, and wrote the memo to rebut a newspaper's claim that a man named Cutbush was the killer, offering three likelier suspects of his own.

Which Scotland Yard inspector on the Ripper case has been played on screen by Michael Caine and Johnny Depp?

Frederick Abberline. He had spent years as the local inspector in Whitechapel before moving to Scotland Yard, so he was sent back to lead the detectives on the ground because he knew the district.

Which hanged suspect did the Ripper inquiry's lead detective favour?

George Chapman. Born Seweryn Kłosowski, a London barber in 1888, he was hanged in 1903 after poisoning three wives; the detective is said to have told the arresting officer, 'You've got Jack the Ripper at last!'

Where was the head of the CID, Robert Anderson, during the September murders?

On leave in Switzerland. Anderson took over the CID and left on doctor's orders within days; he was called back a month later, after three more murders and a storm of bad press.

Police surgeon Thomas Bond's 1888 report on the Ripper is regarded as an early example of what?

Offender profile. Asked only about the killer's surgical skill, Bond went further: he pictured a solitary man given to bouts of homicidal mania, with no medical or even butcher's knowledge.

Catherine Eddowes was murdered less than an hour after being let out of where?

A police cell. Picked up drunk in Aldgate, she slept it off at a police station and left at about 1 am with a cheery 'Good night, old cock'; her body was found in Mitre Square at 1.45.

Which prominent person asked the government whether the cattle boats had been searched for the Ripper?

Queen Victoria. She told her ministers she feared the detective department was 'not as efficient as it might be'; police did check the cattle boats, but no vessel's sailings fitted the murder dates.

Which minister refused repeated pleas to offer a government reward for the Ripper's capture?

Home Secretary Henry Matthews turned down the pleas, among them a petition from Whitechapel traders, so every reward on offer was put up locally or privately, never by the government.

Who led the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee?

George Lusk. A local builder, he was posted a small box with a letter headed 'From hell'; he took it for a practical joke and left it in a drawer until fellow members talked him into having it examined.

What was preserved in the box that came with the From Hell letter?

Half a human kidney. The writer claimed to have fried and eaten the other half; a hospital doctor could confirm only that it was human and from the left side, the side taken from Catherine Eddowes.

Which organisation received the Dear Boss letter in September 1888?

The Central News Agency. Its staff treated the letter as a joke for two days before passing it to Scotland Yard, which then had facsimiles posted up in the hope that someone would know the handwriting.

Which postcard, postmarked 1 October 1888, referred to the two killings of 30 September?

Saucy Jacky. Its boast that 'number one squealed a bit' once looked like inside knowledge, but the card was posted a full day after the killings, when the details were already street gossip.

What did the Dear Boss writer promise to do to the next victim, seemingly borne out with Eddowes?

Clip her ears off. He promised to send them to the police 'just for jolly'; part of Catherine Eddowes's ear was indeed cut, but nothing was ever posted, and the wound is thought to be incidental.

Which writer's graphic novel From Hell, filmed in 2001 with Johnny Depp, turns the Ripper murders into a royal cover-up?

Alan Moore. He and artist Eddie Campbell took their title from the opening words of one of the Ripper letters and built the plot on a 1976 conspiracy theory that historians reject.

Which Polish-born barber, sent to an asylum in 1891, was named as a Ripper suspect by two senior policemen?

Aaron Kosminski. A 2014 book claimed that DNA on a shawl proved his guilt, but the shawl's link to any murder is unproven, the study could not be replicated and its publisher issued a formal warning.

Which barrister and schoolmaster suspect drowned himself in the Thames in December 1888?

Montague Druitt. He went into the river with stones in his pockets about three weeks after the last murder; that timing, and a report that his own family suspected him, put him on a police chief's list.

Michael Ostrog, the third suspect in an 1894 police memo, falsely claimed to have been what?

A Russian naval surgeon. It was one of many inventions by a career thief and swindler with a string of aliases, and French prison records found in 2001 show he was locked up there during the murders.

Which American quack doctor suspect had once been arrested over the Lincoln assassination?

Francis Tumblety. Arrested in London on indecency charges in November 1888, he jumped bail and fled to America under a false name; the case against him rests on a detective's letter that turned up only in 1993.

Which royal was first floated as a Ripper suspect in a 1962 biography of his father?

Prince Albert Victor. Second in line to the throne, he has a solid alibi: court records place him in northern England, in Scotland or at Sandringham, far from Whitechapel, on the night of each murder.

Sir William Gull, named in the royal conspiracy theory, held which position?

Physician-in-ordinary to the Queen. The theory has him killing from a royal coach, but in 1888 Gull was 71 and had suffered a stroke the year before, which makes him an unlikely prowler of alleys.

Which crime novelist declared the painter Walter Sickert to be the Ripper in a 2002 book?

Patricia Cornwell. She claimed DNA from a stamp on a Ripper letter pointed to Sickert, but most such letters are thought to be hoaxes, and the painter was probably in France for most of the murders.

Which children's author has been named as a Ripper suspect despite never featuring in the police inquiry?

Lewis Carroll. The charge comes from a 1996 book whose author rearranged passages of his writing into anagrams that supposedly confess to the murders, a method scholars do not take seriously.

Which press nickname, borrowed from Jack the Ripper, was given to Peter Sutcliffe, convicted of 13 murders in 1981?

The Yorkshire Ripper. The echo went further: hoax letters and a taped voice saying 'I'm Jack' sent detectives off on a false trail to Wearside while the killings went on.

Why did police hold back for two hours before forcing the door of the Miller's Court murder room?

Waiting for bloodhounds. The dogs had been tried out in London parks a month earlier, but they never came: at 1.30 pm word arrived that the order had been cancelled, and the door was forced.

Which fabled attacker of Victorian London already bore the first name later given to the Ripper?

Spring-heeled Jack. From the late 1830s Londoners told of a clawed figure who sprang out at women and escaped by bounding over walls; like the Ripper, he was never identified.

Hallie Rubenhold's 2019 book The Five challenged which long-held assumption about the Ripper's victims?

That all were prostitutes. Rubenhold found no evidence of sex work for three of the five and argued that the label reflected Victorian prejudice against poor, homeless women.

Which pub in Commercial Street long served as the focus of Ripper walking tours?

The Ten Bells. From 1976 to 1988 the pub actually traded as 'The Jack the Ripper', with case memorabilia on show in its bars, before going back to its old name.

In a 2006 BBC History magazine poll, Jack the Ripper was voted what?

Worst Briton ever. Historians had named one villain for each of the last ten centuries; readers put the Ripper far ahead of Thomas Becket, and the editor's guess was that he is seen as the first of the modern serial killers.

Which Ripper-themed takeaway name drew boycott threats when a second branch opened in Greenwich in 2021?

Jack the Chipper. The owner, whose first shop was in Whitechapel itself, answered his critics by offering women half-price meals, which only made them angrier.

What kind of document surfaced in the 1990s as Liverpool merchant James Maybrick's supposed Ripper confession?

A diary. The man who brought it forward later swore that he had forged it, a claim he went on to retract and restate, and document experts have judged it a fake.

Who was the last victim in the Whitechapel murders file, found under a railway arch in February 1891?

Frances Coles. The young constable who found her, on his first night alone on the beat, heard footsteps walking away but had to stay with her because she was still alive.

Which 1979 film sends Sherlock Holmes on the trail of Jack the Ripper?

Murder by Decree. Christopher Plummer's Holmes and James Mason's Watson uncover a Masonic cover-up, a plot the film took from a conspiracy book published three years earlier.

Which verdict did the inquest jury return on Rose Mylett's 1888 death, though police saw no foul play?

Wilful murder. Four of the five doctors who saw her blamed a cord pulled tight round her neck, while the fifth thought she had choked on her own collar as she collapsed drunk, and the jury went with the four.