Police time is autumn 1888. Historians’ time is still going.
Dates below prefer inquests and official paper over folklore birthdays.
Timeline
- Mary Ann Nichols
The first of the later canonical five. An inquest opens the public file on an unidentified killer of an adult woman in Whitechapel.
- Annie Chapman
A second inquest in the same district. Press intensity and the “Leather Apron” scare rise.
- “Dear Boss” letter dated
A letter to the Central News Agency, published days later, supplies the name Jack the Ripper. Authenticity remains disputed.
- Stride and Eddowes
Two murders on one date. Eddowes, killed in the City, brings the City of London Police into a shared investigation.
- Lusk letter
The “From Hell” letter reaches George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Its status is separately debated.
- Warren resigns
The Metropolitan Police commissioner leaves office amid political and press pressure, the day before the last canonical murder.
- Mary Jane Kelly
The last of Macnaghten’s five. Extra patrols do not produce an arrest that holds.
- Wider Whitechapel file
Further murders are recorded in the district. Officers disagreed then, and historians disagree now, about which belong with 1888.
- Macnaghten memorandum
An internal memo names three men as likelier than Thomas Cutbush and fixes the five-victim claim.
- Disputed DNA claim
A mitochondrial-DNA argument around a shawl and Aaron Kosminski is published and widely challenged. No court reopens.
After 1894 the official paper thins and the bookshop thickens.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.