Jack the Ripper : “Dear Boss” letter

In autumn 1888 a still-unidentified killer murdered at least five adult women in Whitechapel; the police files, press letters and later historiography created the modern true-crime myth. Between 31 August and 9 November 1888, five adult women — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly — were murdered in Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Later writers call them the “canonical five,” a grouping popularised by Sir Melville Macnaghten’s 1894 memorandum, which stated that the Whitechapel murderer had five victims and five only. A wider Metropolitan Police file on Whitechapel murders runs from 1888 into 1891 and was never closed by a conviction.

Two forces worked the ground: the Metropolitan Police (H Division and CID) and, for the Mitre Square killing of Catherine Eddowes, the City of London Police. Named investigators include Inspector Frederick Abberline and, in later paperwork, Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten. Commissioner Sir Charles Warren resigned on 8 November 1888. The killer was never identified. Letters that gave the case its trade name — especially the “Dear Boss” letter of late September 1888 — are of disputed authenticity.

This page is an investigation and historiography file. It does not describe wounds, does not sexualise the dead and does not offer theories that could be read as a method. The victims were adult women living in East End poverty; several sold sex to survive. English-language culture later turned their deaths into a tourist brand. The public record is thinner than the brand.