Jack the Ripper is one of the most notorious yet romanticized characters in modern history. His gruesome prostitute murder rampage of 1888 in Whitechapel, a poor district on the East Side of London, shocked Victorian society and fascinated the world for over a century. Jack the Ripper is not the first serial killer in history, but he is the first greatly publicized killer of the modern age. It is generally accepted among 'Ripperologists' that he had five victims, all prostitutes, between August 31st and November 9th 1888. Almost everyone has heard of Jack the Ripper, but who was he? Well, no one knows for certain but there are over fifty theories regarding his identity ranging from a would-be King of England to a murderous Polish Jew. We may never discover who he was, but we must analyze some of these theories and form our own conclusion on the identity of this most "fascinating individual" (Wilson & Odell 163).

A few things must be said about Jack the Ripper and his murders before one can review the suspects. Jack the Ripper committed five gruesome murders in the autumn of 1888. All victims except one were disemboweled, severely mutilated, and some even had organs removed.

The tale was drastically romanticized when it was suggested that the Duke of Clarence, Grandson of Queen Victoria, and would-be King of England was Jack the Ripper (TIME, "Who was Jack the Ripper?"). Stephen Knight writes that Clarence or a group of Freemasons (which included the Royal physician Sir William Gull) killed the prostitutes because they were blackmailing the Prince (Knight 284). According to Knight the Prince had secretly married a catholic commoner, Annie Elizabeth Crook. He goes on to say that Mary Jane Kelly (the Ripper's last victim) had been one of the witnesses. She supposedly told fellow prostitutes Mary Nichols, Annie Chapman, and Katherine Eddowes (Elizabeth Stride who also went by the name of Mary Kelly was killed by accident) who then decided to blackmail the Prince. Either Clarence himself or a group of Freemasons killed the prostitutes to silence them (Knight 284). The fact that there is no evidence to prove this secret wedding, the gruesome nature of the crimes and the thought of the future King of England or the Royal physician roaming the streets of Whitechapel in search of prostitutes to disembowel makes this theory quite disturbing and not believable.

All of the Ripper's victims were prostitutes. Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were killed about a week apart, and both had been severely mutilated. Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddowes were killed less than two hours apart on September 30th; an ordeal that would be dubbed a 'double event'. Elizabeth Stride's throat was cut deeply from left to right; as was the Ripper's modus operandis, but her body had not been mutilated. Most suspect this was so because someone must have accidentally stumbled upon the murder and frightened the killer away. Unsatisfied due to an unfinished job, the Ripper walked three quarters of a mile and found Katherine Eddowes, another prostitute, whom he murdered and severely mutilated (he even removed her left kidney). The Ripper's last victim was Mary Jane Kelly, the only victim found indoors, in her 'doss' in Miller's Court. Her body was also the most severely mutilated; most likely due to the fact that the killer

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