Jack the Ripper: The Murders, the Mystery, the Myth

It has been over one hundred years since Jack the Ripper spread death and terror through the streets of Whitechapel, but time has done little to unwrap the mystery behind the murders. If anything, the story of Jack is now more confusing, obscure, and mysterious than ever. With every passing generation, new theories and new suspects have sprung up, each adding another piece to the legend.

Within these pages, Victor Stapleton examines the entire legend of Jack the Ripper. He opens with an explanation of the original murders, the investigation that followed, and the various copycat killings and scares that occurred in the direct aftermath. He then explores the cases of all of the primary suspects, both those that were part of the original police investigation, and those that have been named by later writers and theorists. From there, Stapleton maps the transition of Jack from a historical figure into a character of folklore, literature, and cinema.

This is the true history of Jack the Ripper.

Victor Stapleton has studied Victorian criminology and the Whitechapel Murders for 30 years, first visiting the crime scenes during the centenary of the murders in 1988. As an English literature scholar he has a particular interest in how the Ripper story relates tragic true crimes through the lens of late Gothic fiction and sensation literature. The author lives in Oxford, England.