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This page is focused on the women who were brutally murdered in 19th-century Whitechapel, a district in East London, possibly all by the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. A London Metropolitan Police Service investigation known collectively as the ‘Whitechapel murders’ covered the murder of 11 women from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891.
The women's occupations include domestic servants, laundresses, business owners and sex workers, but more importantly they were daughters, wives and mothers and the focus on the details of their horrific murders rather than their lives has somehow rendered them less than human.
The rights and privileges of Victorian women were extremely limited. When they married they became the property of their husband, as did their physical property and any wages or other income. The could not vote, sue, or own property.
Homelessness too was a huge problem in 19th-century London, with an estimated 70,000 in London not knowing where they could sleep each night and several hundred people having no choice but to sleep in Trafalgar Square.
Most of the victims had brutally hard lives and nowhere to turn, they were failed by society back then, much like many are today. They were the victims of violent crime and to see the post-mortem pictures of their bodies so casually strewn across the internet reflects a systemic misogyny that saw police investigations fail to catch the murderer at the time.
Rest in Peace:
- Emma Elizabeth Smith
- Martha Tabram
- Mary Ann Nichols
- Annie Chapman
- Elizabeth Stride
- Catherine Eddowes
- Mary Jane Kelly
- Rose Mylett
- Alice McKenzie
- Pinchin Street torso (A woman's torso was found at 5:15 a.m. on Tuesday 10 September 1889 under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel)
- Frances Coles