Here Are Some Great Jack the Ripper Theories to Consider Until the Mystery Is Actually Solved
Was Jack the Ripper obsessed with wombs because he couldn't have a child of his own? That's just one theory.
Published July 27 2024, 9:14 a.m. ET
For two months in 1888, a murderer terrorized a small section of London. The residents of Whitechapel lived in fear as five women were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, who would later call himself Jack the Ripper.
These women had a few things in common. They were all sex workers whose throats were slashed — sometimes worse — and their deaths remain unsolved to this day.
Since that time, numerous Jack the Ripper theories have cropped up. Some were put forth as the crimes were happening, while others were conceived of long after they ended. While it sounds strange to have favorite theories regarding a serial killer's identity, here are the ones we find the most intriguing. Make yourself a cuppa, and let's get to it.
Buckle up, these Jack the Ripper theories are wild.
According to The News-Press, the great-great-grandson of American serial killer H.H. Holmes thinks his relative was pulling double duty as the British murderer. Jeff Mudgett is basing his theory entirely on handwriting analysis he did using Jack the Ripper's infamous "Dear Boss" letter.
He was not the first person to posit this, but he urged experts to compare the handwriting of Holmes with that in the letter. Evidently, it's pretty strong.
Perhaps Jack the Ripper didn't go on to own a murder castle, but maybe he was a famous French Impressionist painter. Some people think Edgar Degas, the guy fascinated by ballerinas, was also obsessed with ending the lives of sex workers.
This comes from TikTok, so take it with a massive grain of salt. There is a lot to it but essentially @schirrgenius suggests Degas might have done this because he hated women and was in London around the same time. We need something more concrete than that.
This next theory is almost romantic — and involves Queen Victoria's surgeon.
Per the Daily Mail, a descendant of Jack the Ripper's final victim believes Queen Victoria's surgeon was the man behind the murders. Family lore suggests that Mary Kelly had an affair with a mysterious doctor but the two married other people.
When she died, it was discovered that the photo of the man in a locket she wore, was that of Sir John Williams who "founded the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth, and acted as surgeon for the royal family."
Apparently, Williams and his wife could never conceive, which might explain the Ripper's fascination with removing the uteruses of some of his victims.
Williams allegedly performed an abortion on the Ripper's first victim and it's long been suggested that Jack the Ripper was a surgeon based on how a few of the victims were basically dissected.
It's certainly something to think about, though why would he kill his first love?
In 1970, an article written by a surgeon named Thomas EA Stowell was published in The Criminologist, via the Royal College of Physicians. This was the second time someone had the nerve to suggest that yet another royal doctor was Jack the Ripper. Stowell believed it could have been Sir William Withey Gull, the Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1887.
He thought Gull was murdering sex workers to cover up a secret affair one of them had with the Prince of Wales’s eldest son. While it sounds good on paper, this was simply not possible. Gull had a stroke in October 1887, from which he never fully recovered. It stands to reason he couldn't have been running around Whitechapel, killing women all willy-nilly.
Perhaps we'll never who Jack the Ripper was. Personally, it's probably better that way. After all, nothing gets the blood going like a little mystery.
