Jack the Ripper, a sadistic gruesome madam, went on a murderous killing spree, though he was never caught, his actions are still felt to this day. In the late 1880's, around the period in English history known as the Victorian period, while industrialization grew and the population was rapidly increasing, a huge poverty problem arose. The East End, Whitechapel, was a small area in London crowded with ninety thousand people with no sanitation. It was a perfect breeding ground for disease and pollution (Colby-.
Newton 14).
The police commissioner, General Charles Warren was about to face his largest challenge in trying to solve the Ripper murders (Eddleston 132). The first murder committed by Jack the Ripper was on August 31, 1888 in a side street in Whitechapel called Bucks Row. The victim was Mary Nichols; a forty-two year old prostitute was discovered at 3:40 a.m. with her throat slashed to the bone and several deep incisions in her abdomen (Colby-Newton 22). .
The next victim was discovered on Saturday, September 8, 1888. Annie Chapman, known as "Dark Annie", was a forty-seven year old alcoholic prostitute. She was killed in the backyard of a busy rooming house with evident savagery. She was strangled and then her throat was cut and some of her organs were missing. The examining doctor felt the precision cuts could only have been performed by someone with medical experience (Eddleston 27).
The two following murders occurred on the same night. On September 30, 1888 Elizabeth Stride was found murdered in a passageway outside a Socialist club of Russians and Jews, yet nobody heard or saw anything (Eddleston 36). Her throat was slashed and she eventually bled to death. Soon the second murder was committed, only fifteen minutes after the previous one. Kate Conway was killed in Mitre Square, later her real name was discovered to be Catharine Eddowes. Both she and Elisabeth Stride were prostitutes in their mid forties.