Jack The Ripper Research Paper

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“There was a general panic, a great many excitable people declaring that the evil one was revisiting the earth,” wrote an anonymous missionary in 1888, speaking of the infamous murders that ravaged London’s East End. The murders attributed to the well known name, Jack the Ripper—a name given to the faceless darkness that haunted the cobbled streets of Victorian England, gaining its daunting infamy through a spree of brutal killings in the then-impoverished White Chapel district of London’s East End. The identity of Jack the Ripper still remains a mystery centuries later. The murders were targeted towards women, more specifically prostitutes, and all, but one of the known murders—the murder of Elizabeth Stride—resulted in the grossly mutilated…show more content…
Komiski was linked to the murders by Edwards through DNA found on a bloody shawl taken as evidence from the fourth murder. Kominski was already known as a suspect to the police during the time of the murders. He was committed to an insane asylum in 1891 where has later suffered death at the hands of gangrene. “One of the...men...likely...to have been Jack the Ripper was ‘Kominski,’” wrote Melville Magnaghten, a police officer in White Chapel at the time as he was “a polish Jew...resident of White Chapel...he had a great hatred of women, especially the prostitute class” and, “had strong homicidal tendencies.” Aside from just Magnaghten, the two highest ranking officers, Sir Robert Anderson and Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, who both had direct responsibility over the Ripper investigation also considered Kominski a strong suspect. In Anderson’s memoirs he writes that “undiscovered murders are rare in London, and the ‘Jack the Ripper’ crimes are not in that category,” seeming that Anderson was convinced of the killer’s identity. He continues with, “In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact.” Though he does not specifically name this Polish Jew as Kominski, it is believed that he is the suspect in question, a theory which was seemingly proved when…show more content…
Sickert had once strove to be an actor before giving up to pursue art. He a painter and an etcher, taught by James McNeill Whistler and Edgar Degas. He was known draw inside a Tradesman’s book and strange scribbles were often found on the backs of those pages. These same sorts of scribbles were found on a letter that was apparently written by the Ripper himself. A strange fact about the murders was that there were never any footprints are tracks located. Cornwell writes, “It is hard...to imagine that he didn’t step in blood when pints of it were spurting...from...his victims. But these bloody foot prints would not have been visible without the aid of alternative light sources and chemicals.” Cornwell explains that trace elements would have been missed by investigators, though she believes they would have linked Sickert to the crimes. She claims he must have had a wide range of knowledge in the field of forensics science, such as handwriting comparisons and fingerprints. This seems to be a long shot however, as Sickert’s professions, both pursued and abandoned, would not have required study of such a field, leaving only that he regularly depicted violent scene against women and a few scribbles

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