Blockbuster Crimes Jack The Ripper

We examine the shocking real-life crimes given the Hollywood treatment

- Lianne La Borde

Jack the Ripper, Leather Apron, The Whitechapel Murderer... All are nicknames for one of the most infamous, violent serial killers in British history.

It all started in the early hours of 31 August 1888, at the end of one of the wettest spoiler alert! summers in memory.

At 3.40am, two cart drivers heading to work in Whitechapel, east London, stumbled across the body of a woman lying in the doorway of a horse stable on Bucks Row.

The victim was local prostitute Mary Ann Nichols – known to friends as Polly.

A mother-of-five who was separated from her husband, she drifted from workhouse to workhouse, drinking and often sleeping rough.

Polly’s skirts were pulled up around herwaist. She’d been stabbed, mutilated and almost decapitated, and had hideous incisions in her abdomen. She was the first known victim of the killer dubbed ‘Jack the Ripper’.

The next was Annie Chapman, whose body was discovered on 8 September at a scene even more grotesque than the first.

Annie was found in Hanbury Street at 5.30am. Her skirt was pulled up, her throat and abdomen had been slashed, her uterus removed, and her intestines pulled out.