Why We Still Talk About Jack the Ripper: Serial Murder, Spectacle, and the Origins of True Crime Obsession
It’s been a productive summer. Not quite as productive as I had hoped (how summers go, right?), but enough that I’ve made meaningful progress on a few writing and research projects. Right now, I’m waist-deep in a section of my manuscript that explores crime in 19th-century England. Naturally, that means I’ve been thinking a lot about Jack the Ripper.
It’s impossible to discuss 19th-century crime, or really public fascination with crime in general, without bringing up the Ripper. He’s become a symbol, a recurring ghost in our cultural imagination. Despite the fact that there have been far more prolific or destructive serial killers in history, something about the Ripper case has embedded itself into how we understand serial murder, criminality, and justice. I’m not the first person to call him the “first modern serial killer,” and I certainly won’t be the last.
So, while I wasn’t planning to write a post about the Ripper, I found myself drifting into those musings anyway. And since many of you likely already know a good deal about the case, especially if you’ve found your way here through shared interest in true crime or forensic psychology, I thought it would be worth unpacking some thoughts about the cultural legacy of the Ripper killings and why, over 135 years later, this case still grips the collective imagination.
Canonical Crimes and Cultural Crises
The Jack the Ripper murders refer to a series of brutal killings that took place in the autumn of 1888 in the East End of London, specifically the Whitechapel district. The five generally accepted victims, known as the "Canonical Five", were all women: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. All were working-class, all were believed to be sex workers, and all were murdered and mutilated with chilling precision.
The violence was grotesque. Victims were not only killed but desecrated. At least one had internal organs removed and the disfiguring injuries were extensive. The crimes occurred within a few streets of each other, over a relatively short period, and in a part of London already associated with poverty, disease, and danger.
Almost immediately, the murders sparked moral panic, tabloid frenzy, and speculative obsession. And crucially, they also spurred unprecedented public engagement with criminal investigation. These weren’t just crimes, they were events, spectacles, moral stories, cautionary tales, political talking points.
This wasn’t the first time the public had obsessed over violent crime, of course. England had a long history of public executions, penny dreadfuls, broadsheets, and "murder ballads." But the Ripper case arrived during a specific cultural moment: the dawn of mass print journalism. It’s no accident that the first murderer to be labeled with a media-created nickname “Jack the Ripper” emerged in the very era when daily newspapers were becoming part of everyday life. It was a media phenomenon as much as it was a criminal one.
The police never caught the killer. No one was charged. This open ending has fueled over a century of speculation. Even now, over 130 years later, people are still trying to figure out who Jack the Ripper really was.
The Crime That Changed Everything
So why has this case endured for so long?
Part of it is the mystery itself. Unsolved cases leave space for imagination, conspiracy, and obsession. But there’s more to it. The Ripper case coincided with a cultural shift. Advances in printing and literacy allowed for widespread distribution of crime-focused media. What had once been limited to execution sermons and pamphlets evolved into mass-market newspapers and sensational literature (Punnett, 2018). Jack the Ripper became the centerpiece of a public spectacle, part criminal inquiry, part social commentary, part gothic horror show.
Writers like Charles Dickens and William Thackeray had already introduced crime as a lens through which to examine Victorian society. The Ripper case amplified that lens, merging entertainment, journalism, and moral panic. It was modern crime reporting before there was a formal field of criminology.
The media frenzy created a blueprint for what would eventually become true crime: a mix of forensic intrigue, social narrative, and emotional drama. The public wasn't just interested in what had happened, they also wanted to know why. They wanted a story. They wanted to make sense of the horror.
Who Was the Ripper? (Spoiler: We Still Don’t Know)
If you’ve spent any time in the true crime world, you know that every armchair detective, former FBI profiler, and crime podcast host seems to have their own pet theory about who the Ripper was. Over the past century, more than 200 different suspects have been proposed—including painters, barbers, butchers, and even Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame. (Yes, really.)
Among the most frequently mentioned suspects is Aaron Kosminski, a Polish barber who was institutionalized shortly after the murders. Some believe his confinement explains why the killings stopped. There’s also Walter Sickert, a moody artist with macabre tastes. In recent years, both men have been “linked” to the crimes through supposed DNA evidence on an old shawl that may or may not have belonged to the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. But the chain of custody on that shawl is so weak and contaminated its essentially forensic folklore.
The problem is that we don’t have reliable evidence, just layers upon layers of speculation. Most suspect profiles are based on hindsight, guesswork, and circumstantial detail. Records from the time are incomplete, often contradictory, and highly speculative.
Even the letters supposedly written by the Ripper are now widely believed to be hoaxes—possibly fabricated by journalists hoping to sell more papers. One particularly infamous hoax is the so-called “Ripper Diary,” allegedly written by James Maybrick, a cotton merchant. It was later exposed as a modern forgery. But not before making headlines and spawning an entire cottage industry of “Maybrick truthers.”
The Legacy of the Ripper
Despite all this, people continue to search for answers. It’s not just morbid curiosity. The Ripper represents something bigger than the murders themselves. He embodies the public’s ongoing struggle to understand the roots of violent crime and the cultural conditions that allow it to thrive. The case has become its own kind of folklore. It morphs over time, taking on new meanings, adapting to cultural anxieties, and reflecting the era in which it's being discussed. In the Victorian period, it was about moral decay and urban squalor. In the 1970s, it was about psychological profiling and emerging forensic science. Today, it’s entangled with questions of media responsibility, victim-blaming, and the ethics of true crime.
The idea that the Ripper is both historical figure and mythological archetype isn’t new. Cultural theorists like Judith Walkowitz (1992) and more recently Paul Begg (2013) have argued that the Ripper functions as a repository for all kinds of cultural fears: about gender, class, urban life, and the unknowability of human cruelty.
The case also shows how society frames victims, especially women. The Ripper victims were often dismissed or judged because of their poverty or alleged sex work. Their lives were reduced to footnotes in someone else’s mystery. As Hallie Rubenhold (2019) argues in The Five, these women deserve more than just a role in a killer’s legend, they deserve to be remembered as people and the lives they lived are often forgotten in the Ripper’s shadow.
A Personal Note: That Time I Stalked the Streets of Whitechapel
This fascination with crime isn’t limited to history books or detective novels. It’s part of our culture. You can see it in documentaries, and dramatizations, and even walking tours! Cities like New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles offer crime-themed tours that visit the scenes of infamous murders, often given by local community theater artists and history enthusiasts. These tours aren’t simply about the murders, they are entertainment… storytelling offers thrills related to dark crimes.
A quick story. Back when I was an undergraduate, I spent a winter term studying at the University of London. The course I took was on creativity and madness, an incredible class that ultimately informed a paper I wrote almost two decades later (topic for a future blog). And, this experience allowed me to be a tourist in a new city and I took ready advantage of it. While in London, I of course took a Jack the Ripper walking tour, led by none other than Donald Rumbelow, one of the most respected Ripper historians. His book The Complete Jack the Ripper is still considered a seminal work. My professor at the time had actually known him from years prior, and they reconnected right in front of us, leading to us have an extra in-depth tour.
The tour itself was fascinating. We walked the same narrow streets that existed in 1888. Many of the buildings are still there. The cobblestones. The gaslights. It’s eerie. Rumbelow gave us the extended, behind-the-scenes version of the tour, and I got my copy of his book signed. That signed book still sits on my desk today, and I’ve been using it as a reference for the piece I’m currently writing. It’s strange and oddly comforting to have a little memento from that night, tied to such a dark chapter of crime history.
Ripper Tourism and the Ethics of Crime Entertainment
One of the more bizarre aspects of the Ripper legacy is how thoroughly it’s been commodified. In fiction, Jack the Ripper is practically a stock villain appearing in hundreds of books, plays, and movies. In addition to this, Ripper-themed merchandise, escape rooms, films, and walking tours all continue to profit off the murders of real women. It’s something I think about a lot, especially as someone who teaches forensic psychology and writes about true crime.
There’s a line between historical analysis and voyeurism. Are we honoring the victims, or exploiting their deaths for entertainment? Can we engage with crime ethically, or are we inevitably part of the problem? Largely, I think we are….
These questions are at the heart of much of my research. I’ve studied the ethics of true crime media, interviewed podcasters and victim advocates, and explored how crime narratives shape public policy. But it all started, at least for me, with Jack the Ripper. I still remember the frightening Sightings episode that had a segment on the Whitechapel murders, that featured the famous Nemesis of Neglect drawing. It still freaks me out!
Nemesis of Neglect drawing that was published during the Whitechapel crimes
Final Thoughts
We may never know who Jack the Ripper was. The trail is too cold, the evidence too thin. But the impact of the case endures, not just in how we understand crime, but in how we tell stories about crime.
In many ways, the Ripper killings helped define the rules of modern crime reporting. They set the stage for forensic fascination, victim blaming, criminal mythologizing, and public obsession. They gave us the first real taste of what true crime would become: a complex blend of horror, intrigue, justice, and cultural commentary.
And as I work on this next chapter, I can’t help but think about that signed copy of Rumbelow’s book, sitting on my desk. A relic of a tour I took 20 years ago. A reminder that while the case remains unsolved, the conversation is far from over.
References and Further Reading
Begg, P., & Bennett, J. (2013). The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper. Peguin.
Punnett, I.C. (2018). Toward a Theory of True Crime Narratives: A Textual Analysis (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351180481
Rumbelow, D. (1988). The Complete Jack the Ripper. Penguin Books.
Rubenhold, H. (2019). The Five: The untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Walkowitz, J. R. (1992). City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. University of Chicago Press.
