Jack the Ripper

by Marilyn Bardsley

Jack the Ripper! Few names in history are as instantly recognizable. Fewer still evoke such vivid images: noisome courts and alleys, hansom cabs and gaslights, swirling fog, prostitutes decked out in the tawdriest of finery, the shrill cry of newsboys -'Whitechapel! Another 'orrible murder! Mutilation!" - and silent, cruel death personified in the cape-shrouded figure of a faceless prowler of the night, armed with a long knife and carrying a black Gladstone bag.

Philip Sugden, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper

By today's standards, Jack the Ripper would barely make the headlines, murdering a mere five prostitutes in a huge slum swarming with criminals: just one more violent creep satisfying his perverted needs on the dregs of society. No one incensed like the respectable families of the pretty college students that were Ted Bundy's victims or the children tortured and mutilated by the John Wayne Gacy. We have become a society numbed by horrible crimes inflicted upon many victims.

Why then, over a hundred years later, are there allegedly more books written on Jack than all of the American presidents combined? Why are there stories, songs, operas, movies and a never-ending stream of books on this one Victorian criminal? Why is this symbol of terror as popular a subject today as he was in Victorian London?

I share the opinion of Philip Sugden, one of the most expert of the writers on the subject: Jack the Ripper represents the classic "whodunit." Not only is the case a classic unsolved mystery that professional and amateur sleuths have tried to solve for over a hundred years, but the story has a terrifying, almost supernatural quality to it.   He comes from out of the fog, kills violently and quickly and disappears without a trace. Then for no apparent reason, he satisfies his blood lust with ever-increasing ferocity, culminating in the near destruction of his final victim, and then vanishes from the scene forever. The perfect ingredients for the perennial thriller.