Copyright © 1997, 2004 Gene Michael Stover. All rights reserved. Permission to copy, store, & view this document unmodified & in its entirety is granted.
I recently read The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, second edition, by Philip Sugden. It's a fascinating, non-sensational account of the well-known murders in Whitechapel, London, in 1888. By ``non-sensational'', I mean that Mr Sugden doesn't suggest that the royal surgeon did it, or that there was a cover-up police, or that aliens needed organ samples of humans. He gives the case an objective, factual treatment. He even spends time pointing out the errors in sensational books on the subject.
The book disturbed me, & that's saying quite a lot about it, as I tend to be immune to all horror, fear, & gore as expressed in cinema & fictional literature. For the three weeks that I read the book, I didn't sleep very well, & when I did, I had nightmares.
What interested me the most was the psychology of the murderer-his motivations for killing the women & how much thought he put into executing his crimes. Evidence suggests that he was methodical & cool-headed, even while committing his murders. I wonder how he kept his cool head when he was working.
Mr Sugden details 11 cases, not all murders, that each bare some possible hallmark of Jack the Ripper:
Not all of these cases were murders, & not all of them were even knife-assaults. It's even fairly certain that Jack the Ripper didn't do some of them; for example, Emma Smith saw all three of her attackers, & they used a club of some sort. Nevertheless, each of these cases deserves consideration in the book in light of Jack the Ripper if only because they occurred near or in Whitechapel & around the time that Jack the Ripper worked.
Polly Nichols is generally considered the first victim of Jack the Ripper. Mr Sugden believes that she was the second or even later victim Jack the Ripper. He believes that Jack the Ripper's last victim was Mary Kelly, but others disagree. After considering all the evidence & opinions of which victims were actually victims of Jack the Ripper, Mr Sugden concludes
So how many women did Jack the Ripper strike down? There is no simple answer. In a sentence: at least four, probably six, just possibly eight. - page 359
Jack the Ripper was the first modern serial killer. According to The Maul & the Pear Tree, there was only one previous set of murders which would qualify as proto-serial killings, & those murders were also in Whitechapel, the same neighborhood of London. Those murders occurred in 1811, seventy years before the Ripper murders. A Mister John Williams was hung for committing them, but P.D. James & T.A. Critchley make a convincing case that he did none of the killing.
The modern serial killer was created within a century, &
all of mankind's experiments do so occurred in the same
neighborhood. Why? What conditions caused this? What
conditions were in Whitechapel in the 
century
that became common enough North America in the 
century when serial killers became a bigger problem?