Was Jack the Ripper a woman?

Jack the Ripper murdered and dismembered at least 5 women in London 135 years ago and was never found. Was it faulty profiling? There are experts with evidence who believe Jack the Ripper was actually a woman.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jack the Ripper murdered and dismembered at least five women
in London one hundred and thirty five years ago, but
was never found. But was Jack a woman? I'm Patty
Steele profiling gone wrong. Maybe that's next on the backstory.

(00:21):
We're back with the backstory. For over a century, there
have been endless stories speculating on the identity of Jack
the Ripper, who viciously murdered at least five women in
London in the late eighteen eighties. There was talk that
he was a surgeon or a butcher because of how
precisely the bodies were mutilated. There were also stories that

(00:42):
claimed he was well known artist Walter Sickert, author Lewis
Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland, or even the grandson
of Queen Victoria Prince Albert Victor. But could he have
been a she? There are experts who say the evidence
points to a female kills. It was late summer in
eighteen eighty eight. Forty three year old Polly Nichols had

(01:06):
had a rough life. Married at eighteen, she had five children,
but her husband constantly cheated on her, and she soothed
her upset with alcohol. Eventually she left, she took low
leveled temporary jobs that occasionally gave her enough money to
buy a bed for the night. Otherwise she slept on
the streets, and that's exactly where she was on her

(01:29):
last night. Her body was found at three point thirty
in the morning on August thirty first, eighteen eighty eight.
She was the first known victim of Jack the Ripper.
In the next few months, mutilated bodies turned up of
women who had a similar life story and similar deadly wounds.

(01:52):
They were Annie Chapmin, Elizabeth Stride, Katherine Edos, and Mary
Jane Kelly. As you can imagine, and folks in London
went nuts. Not only were they terrified, they were fascinated.
It was the beginning of the golden age of sensational journalism,
and newspapers sensationalized the story, saying the women were all

(02:15):
prostitutes because sex and murder cells, especially in the same story.
But actually, though only two of the women had ever
been sex workers, the rest were just down on their luck. Ironically,
when these women did have a few cents to get
a bed for the night, they stayed in what were
called coffin beds at Salvation Army shelters. These were coffin

(02:40):
like wooden boxes with a small cushion that could be
rented for about eight cents a night. The murders were
horrifying and all anybody wanted to know was who could
possibly have done this or would do such a thing
because of this sort of surgical dismemberment of the body's.
Speculation range from butchers to doctors to prominent individuals, but

(03:04):
the four main suspects were all men. A few thought
it could be a woman, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
you remember him. He created Sherlock Holmes. He said publicly
the ripper could be a woman who worked as a
midwife because she could be seen in public in bloody
clothing and no one would be suspicious. Now, something that

(03:25):
could be key to the story didn't actually see the
light of day until recently. That's when Australian forensic scientist
Ian Findley did saliva DNA testing of the stamps that
were on some of Jack the Ripper's alleged letters to
London police and newspapers. While it didn't pin down a suspect,

(03:45):
it did show the DNA very likely came from a woman.
There are arguments about whether any of the hundreds of
Ripper letters were actually written by the killer, but the
ones thought to be genuine showed some case knowledge only
the killer would know, as well as having the same handwriting.
But it was Victorian England and it was hard for

(04:07):
anybody to seriously consider that a woman could be a
serial killer, much less one with such a sadistic mo
But author John Morris, who wrote Jack the Ripper The
Hand of a Woman, says the case for a woman
murderer is overwhelming, There's absolutely no doubt. But because everyone

(04:28):
believes that the murderer was a man, all the evidence
that points to a woman has always been ignored. And
there's more, Marris says. Inspectors noted that the last victim,
Mary Kelly, was murdered in a room with a fireplace.
Women's clothing that did not belong to Mary was found
partially burned in the fireplace, maybe as a way of

(04:50):
destroying bloody evidence. Plus that person, maybe a woman would
have arrived on the scene in normal female dress, done
the deed, covering herself in blood, and then been able
to change into Mary's clothing, burn her own bloody clothing
and leave the building without being noticed, and he also

(05:10):
points out that three women's boot buttons were found near
the body of yet another victim. Now, the two most
talked about female suspects over the years that followed included
Mary Pearcy, who was convicted and executed for brutally killing
her lover's wife and child a year after the Ripper killings,

(05:32):
but her connection was sort of tenuous and mostly based
on the intense publicity surrounding her murders of her lover's
wife and child not long after the Ripper killings. But
most convincingly, there's Lizzie Williams, whose husband was not only
a surgeon and private doctor to the Royal family, but
also an abortion provider in London. Lizzie not only helped

(05:56):
him in his clinic, but she knew her way around
his surgical instruments and the female body. She would have
known how to remove the organs the victims were missing.
In addition, Lizzie was unable to have children of her own,
which almost drove her insane, and her husband, intent on
having a child with someone, had plenty of affairs, and

(06:17):
in eighteen eighty eight was sleeping with Mary Kelly, the
last Ripper victim. The pieces kind of fit. It said
that she confessed all to her husband finally, and that
he destroyed his diaries from that year and helped Lizzie
cover her tracks. So here's the thing. Just maybe the

(06:38):
closed minded Victorian sensibilities of the investigators in the case
prevented them from considering the possibility that Jack the Ripper
was a woman. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a

(07:02):
production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is
Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media.
We're out with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for
listening to The Backstory, the pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know.