Why Were The Metropolitan Police Unable To Catch

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124031.doc “Jack The Ripper”?

Why Were The Metropolitan Police Unable To Catch “Jack The Ripper”?

It was 1888, and “Jack The Ripper” had just claimed the life of his fifth “Ripper” victim. Mary Kelly. Mary Kelly was the fifth and final victim of the Whitechapel murders, they were a chain of horrific murders each more horrific than the next. The “Ripper” murders all took place during the ten weeks succeeding the 31st of August 1888, the victims of these murders were five poor East End prostitutes that were brutally murdered at night. Not only did they had their throats been cut, but also in the case of four of the victims, their bodies had been horrifically mutilated, or in some cases some of the body parts of the victims had been taken away.

The question on everybody’s mind was, who was this “Jack The Ripper”? He had committed five horrific murders, had left no evidence or clues at the scene to who he was or how he worked. He just seemed to have vanished into thin air.

One of the reasons that the Police of London found it hard to catch “Jack” was because of the large sum of contradicting eyewitness accounts. The Metropolitan received hundreds of details from the public who they thought was “Jack”. The Metropolitan also received eyewitness accounts from people claiming that they saw “Jack”. All of these eyewitness accounts however were too vague, and not accurate enough for the police to make a detailed profile on Jack’s character.

The witnesses’ testimonies in relationship to the suspect’s age must be taken with caution. The suspect seen with Annie Chapman (by Elizabeth Long) was said to be in his 40’s. Then the suspect who was seen with Mary Kelly was put at around 35 years of age. However man who was seen with Elizabeth Stride the night of her murder was said to be in his 30’s. The two witnesses who “saw” Catherine Eddowes’s murderer (standing about 18inches away from him) said that they got a clear look of the suspects face and placed him in that age range of 25-30 years of age. From all of these eyewitness accounts the age of the “Ripper” was anywhere between 25-40, this is a very large gap between the ages and therefore an rough estimate age of the “Ripper” was never given. From our modern perspective some witness testimonies can be notorious for inaccuracy. Many people have been hanged or imprisoned on faulty witness evidence.

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One thing that all the witness testimonies agree with is that the “Ripper” was well dresses, and maybe a foreigner or Jew. “Foreigner, aged 37, dark beard and moustache. Wearing a short dark jacket, dark vest and trousers, a black scarf and felt hat.” (Emily Walter’s testimony). What we have to keep in mind is that there was a population of 900,000 people in London and nearly 3/4s of them were foreigners and Jews that had fled persecution from Europe. This was very hard for the police, because they didn’t have a valuable and accurate description of “Jack”.

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