Jack the Ripper, Part 2: The Letters and the Evidence

on

Victorian-era letter and writing desk evoking the Jack the Ripper correspondence.

In Part 1 of this series, we covered the Whitechapel murders themselves, the five women killed between August and November 1888, and the panic that spread through London's East End as the killings continued without an arrest. This part turns to the evidence investigators actually had to work with, starting with the single piece of correspondence that gave the killer his enduring name, and the flood of imitation letters that followed it.

How Many Letters Did Police Receive?

During the autumn of 1888, London's Metropolitan Police and the Central News Agency received hundreds of letters claiming to be from the Whitechapel murderer. The overwhelming majority are now considered hoaxes, written either by newspapermen chasing a sensational story or by members of the public hoping to add to the terror gripping the city. Separating any potentially genuine correspondence from that flood of noise became one of the investigation's earliest and most persistent problems, and it's a problem that Ripper researchers, sometimes called Ripperologists, are still arguing over today. Of the entire pile, three letters in particular have remained at the center of debate for over a century.

What Was the "Dear Boss" Letter?

The most famous of the three arrived at the Central News Agency on September 27, 1888, postmarked two days earlier. Addressed informally to "the Boss," the letter taunted police over their inability to catch the writer, referenced an earlier suspect nicknamed "Leather Apron" who had already been questioned and released, and promised further violence against the women of Whitechapel, including a specific threat to mutilate a future victim's ears. The agency initially treated it as just another prank and didn't forward it to Scotland Yard until September 29.

Three days after that, everything changed. On September 30, Catherine Eddowes was murdered as part of the "double event" covered in Part 1, and her body was found with part of one earlobe severed, a detail that lined up unsettlingly well with the letter's earlier threat. Police found the coincidence significant enough to publish the letter's contents in newspapers and on public notices, hoping someone might recognize the handwriting. That publication is also, indirectly, why the world knows this case by the name it does: the letter was signed "Jack the Ripper," and once that signature went public, it stuck permanently.

What Was the "Saucy Jacky" Postcard?

Four days after the double murder, on October 1, the Central News Agency received a postcard written in handwriting closely resembling the "Dear Boss" letter. It referenced the double event specifically and offered a darkly casual excuse for why the writer hadn't managed to remove an ear from one of that night's victims, echoing the same threat made in the earlier letter almost precisely.

The postcard's authenticity has been argued both ways ever since. Researchers who consider it genuine point out that it referenced the double murder before full details had been reported in the morning papers, evidence, in their view, that the writer had firsthand knowledge. Skeptics counter that an early edition of the morning paper had already covered the basic outline of the murders by the time the postcard was likely written, meaning a hoaxer working quickly could plausibly have picked up enough detail to fake it convincingly.

What Was the "From Hell" Letter?

The most disturbing piece of correspondence connected to the case arrived on October 16, addressed not to police or the press but to George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, a group of local citizens who had organized to patrol the streets after the earlier murders. Enclosed with the letter was half of a human kidney, preserved and accompanied by a note claiming it had been taken from one of the victims and that the other half had already been consumed.

Unlike the two earlier letters, which many researchers dismiss as opportunistic hoaxes, the "From Hell" letter has drawn more serious consideration from some investigators, partly because of the physical evidence enclosed with it. A doctor who examined the kidney at the time noted it showed signs consistent with a kidney removed from Catherine Eddowes, whose autopsy had found one of her kidneys missing, though contemporary medical technology couldn't confirm this with anything close to certainty, and the claim has remained genuinely unresolved ever since.

What Was the Goulston Street Graffito?

Not all of the case's key evidence came in the form of letters. In the early hours of September 30, following the double murder, a police constable discovered a blood-stained fragment of apron in a doorway on Goulston Street, later confirmed to have come from Catherine Eddowes. Chalked on the wall directly above it was a partial sentence, roughly rendered, referencing Jewish people in an accusatory and semi-literate way.

What happened next has been debated by historians for well over a century. The senior officer at the scene, concerned the message might trigger antisemitic violence in an already tense district with a large Jewish population, ordered it photographed if possible and then washed off the wall before dawn, rather than risk it inflaming public anger once crowds gathered. Officers from the City of London Police, whose jurisdiction the writing technically fell under, objected to erasing it before it could be properly documented, a genuine procedural dispute in the middle of an active murder investigation. Whether the graffito was written by the killer at all, or was simply unrelated local graffiti that happened to sit near the discarded apron fragment, has never been settled, and the message itself was destroyed before modern analysis could ever be applied to it.

Were Any of the Letters Actually Genuine?

Here's the honest, somewhat unsatisfying answer: nobody knows for certain, and it's unlikely anyone ever will. Even among researchers who've spent entire careers on this case, opinion remains split. Some believe all three of the letters covered here, "Dear Boss," "Saucy Jacky," and "From Hell," were the genuine work of the killer. Others argue none of them were, and that the entire "Jack the Ripper" persona might have originated as a journalist's invention rather than the murderer's own words. A middle position, held by a significant number of researchers, treats the "From Hell" letter as the most credible of the three specifically because of the physical evidence that accompanied it, while dismissing the two Central News Agency letters as opportunistic hoaxes written after the fact by someone chasing a story.

What's certain is that the letters, genuine or not, permanently shaped how this case would be remembered. Without them, there's a real chance the killer would be known today only by an official police case file number, rather than by a name that's remained instantly recognizable for over 130 years.

In the next part of this series, we'll turn to the suspects themselves, the men Victorian police actually investigated, the ones later researchers have proposed since, and how each candidate holds up against the actual evidence covered so far in this series.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Jack the Ripper really write the "Dear Boss" letter? It's disputed. Some researchers believe the letter was genuine, partly because Catherine Eddowes was later found with a severed earlobe matching a threat in the letter. Many others believe it was written by a journalist seeking to create a sensational story.

What was inside the "From Hell" letter? The "From Hell" letter, received by Whitechapel Vigilance Committee head George Lusk on October 16, 1888, was accompanied by half of a preserved human kidney. A contemporary doctor noted it showed features consistent with one of Catherine Eddowes's missing kidneys, though this couldn't be confirmed with certainty at the time.

What was the Goulston Street graffito? It was a partial, semi-literate message chalked on a wall near a blood-stained apron fragment linked to victim Catherine Eddowes, found on September 30, 1888. Police erased it before dawn out of concern it could incite antisemitic violence, and it was never conclusively linked to the killer.

How many Jack the Ripper letters were sent to police? Police and the press received hundreds of letters claiming to be from the killer during autumn 1888. The vast majority are considered hoaxes, written by journalists or members of the public, and only a small handful are still debated as potentially genuine.

Was Jack the Ripper invented by journalists? Some researchers believe the name and persona originated largely from press invention rather than the killer's own communications, particularly since the "Dear Boss" letter that introduced the name is widely suspected to have been written by a journalist rather than the murderer.

Read the Full Jack the Ripper Investigation Series


Comments

Post a Comment