Compare and contrast the following two images. What impression do you get of life in 1850? Jack the Ripper enquiry Source 1 Source 2 Source 1 - By Rawdingc (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26578 Page 1 of 5
Task: A. Read the information about the life of Polly Nichols. Plot her life story on to the graph below. Polly Nichols: 1. Polly married William Nichols on 16 January 1864. She would have been about 22 years old. The couple had five children. 2. Polly separated from William in 1881. 3. In 1882, William found out that his wife was living as a prostitute and stopped his support payments to her. After the separation, Polly began moving from workhouse to workhouse. 4. In 1885 she was living with her father in Camberwell, south London. He claimed that she was a drunkard who would come to a bad end. 5. On 12 May 1887 she got a job as a servant in the home of Samuel and Sarah Cowdry. 6. She worked for two months and then was sacked after stealing clothing worth three pounds, ten shillings. 7. She spent the rest of 1887 either living in workhouses or sleeping rough. 8. In 1888 Polly moved to a lodging house known as the White House at 56 Flower and Dean Street, Whitechapel, London. The area was described as perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis. She worked again as a prostitute. Good OK Bad 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 B. Summarise in 10 words what Polly s life was like. www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26578 Page 2 of 5
The murder of Polly Nichols was linked to at least four other murders (and possibly as many as 11) between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. The dots on Source 3 show the location of the victims. All were female and worked as prostitutes. The murders became known as the Whitechapel murders and their murderer identified as Jack the Ripper in sensationalist newspaper reports of the crimes. Source 3: Map of Whitechapel in London, showing the location of the victims What do we know about Jack the Ripper? Eyewitness accounts suggest: white male 20-40 years old possibly foreign. Medical information from the autopsies of the victims reveal that he: was probably right handed must have had medical knowledge killed prostitutes but did not sexually assault them. www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26578 Page 3 of 5
The main suspects Aaron Kosminski (1865 1919) A Polish Jew, who lived in the Whitechapel district when the murders were committed. He was known to have a great hatred for women and murderous tendencies. He was admitted to a lunatic asylum in March 1889. The only evidence against Kosminski was a positive identification by an eyewitness to one of the Ripper s murders. At the time of the murder this witness declared that he could not identify the murderer again, and then two years later he claimed that Kosminski was indeed the man who committed the crime. Many ripper investigators do not believe that this evidence holds enough weight to point the finger at Kosminski, claiming he may simply have been an insane man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Montague John Druitt (1857 1888) He was born in Dorset to a well-off family, and became a teacher. Druitt s father, who was a surgeon, died in 1885 and his mother was institutionalized for depression. He became depressed and committed suicide a little more than a month after the last ripper victim, Mary Kelly, was found. A suicide note discovered by his brother stated, Since Friday I felt I was going to be like mother, and the best thing for me was to die. No hard evidence exists that Druitt was Jack the Ripper with the exception of the commissioner s statement: From private information I have little doubt but that his own family believed him to have been the murderer." Michael Ostrog (1833-1904). A supposed Russian doctor, Ostrog spent the majority of his life in prison for theft and was eventually transferred to a lunatic asylum where he registered himself as a Jewish doctor. Why was Ostrog a suspect? He claimed to be a doctor, he was a well-known criminal, and he had spent time in a lunatic asylum, however, no evidence exists that he was even in the Whitechapel area during the time of the murders. Ostrog was not a violent criminal, he was much too tall (5 ft 11 inches) and too old (in his fifties or sixties) to fit the eyewitness descriptions of the killer. www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26578 Page 4 of 5
George Chapman (1865 1903) His real name was Severin Klosowski, he was born in Poland in 1865 and was a surgeon. He immigrated to London in 1887 and found work as a barber s assistant in the Whitechapel district, close to where the murders were committed. Chapman was a lady s man, often living with one woman while he was still married to another and was known to have been abusive to his wives. Chapman lived in the Whitechapel district during the time of the murders. It cannot be ignored that he arrived in London shortly before the murders began and the murders ceased when he travelled to America, where another prostitute was killed in a similar fashion. He also had experience as a surgeon and was obviously violent and homicidal towards women. Prince Albert (1864-1892) He was the grandson of Queen Victoria. He was not a suspect until 1962 when it was claimed that syphilis caused him to go insane and commit the murders. It was also put forward that it was well known that he used prostitutes and that one of them may have had his child. Hence the murders were to cover up the scandal. However, Prince Albert was in Scotland at the time of two of the murders, he did not possess any medical knowledge, and he was not a violent man. There is also a theory that he may have paid one of the other suspects to commit the murders on his behalf. Task: Write a letter to Inspector Abeline (who is in charge of the case) persuading him to agree with who you think Jack the Ripper was. You must You could You might give some information about Jack the Ripper, his victims and the suspects and start to describe who you think the main suspect is. explain why you don t think it was any of the other suspects. argue why your suspect is the most likely but take into account why other suspects have been considered. You could also analyse why it was difficult to catch Jack the Ripper. www.teachithistory.co.uk 2016 26578 Page 5 of 5