The Disappointing Truth of Jack the Ripper

It never occurred to any of them that it might have been a woman. 

Even long after my death, in your books and your films filled with more inaccuracies and twists of artistic license than I can keep track of, it's never a woman. Not that I mind the anonymity. I had more than enough opportunities to show myself to my adoring public and they are adoring. Why else would they continue to visit the sights of my crimes, hoping to catch a glimpse of my ghost? It isn't because they loathe me for the things that I've done, it's because they wish they could feel the freedom of the things that I have done.

Is that cynical of me? Or just terribly arrogant? Of course, a few of my visitors have seen me there, but they ignore me. After all, I am but a woman. No one is looking for me. They're looking for a staggeringly handsome, tall, dark, mysterious man in a top hat, possibly with a cane. Not a slim, tall, fair haired, young woman in a grey dress and a trench coat. Until you.

You were staring right at me as the tour guide waffled on about my last victim. You weren't afraid. You are not one of mine. You don't see yourself reflected in my ghostly eyes. You're not a fan either. You are the kind of person who understands how to search for the unexpected. You are one of the rare ones that comes to these places to show respect for the souls lost. The kind that weeps at the thought of time lost and lives left unlived.

I always had fans you know. That's how I got my name. I met him once, he who wished to be me. Funny little man. Jack Feathers. Balding, meek and had an appalling case of what I now understand to be halitosis. There wasn't much left of him when I finished. I took those crooked fingertips, with grubby black nails first. I found it to be the perfect justice. I never liked the name Jack. It made me sound common and I was far from common. I was exceptional.

After the Who, comes the why. Why did I do it? I suppose given the fact it was decided that I was male, the general assumption was that I hated women. There were no signs that would indicate the violence was sexually motivated, so therefore I must have been a man that hated women, prostitutes in particular, or perhaps they were just an easier target to take on. A true misogynist. Known to the women as an experienced John. Well, they had one part right, I was known to them, but I don't hate women, nor do I particularly hate prostitutes. Quite the opposite. Especially in my day, prostitutes did only what they had to in a world that forced them into that position, and we could place the blame squarely at the feet of those who would keep us under their boot.

I was more than a little ahead of my time in terms of my belief in the emancipation of the female race. I saw, and still see as I have yet to witness any evidence that would advise me differently, them as the superior race. The idea that we're physically inferior is ridiculous to me. We routinely willingly engage in the truest physical pain the human form can bear and we do it out of love.

So; why then? Why did I murder those who have come to be known as the 'canonical five?' Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. I don't believe any answer I give you will satisfy you. There are all of those wonderful and fantastical theories involving grand conspiracies some of which even involve the Royal Families. Tales of coverups and Satanic Cults. The truth in comparison is quite banal and yet if the world had any sense, would be seen as far more ominous and devilish than any of their grim fairy tales of Jack The Ripper. I killed them because I could and because their lives did not mean more to me than my own.

I think if they were to catch me now, they would call me a ‘textbook psychopath.’ Not a title synonymous with the fairer sex as I understand it but we do exist. I was not as was so often theorised officially trained in any type of medicine or butchery. I was a woman. I was however well educated, in possession of keen intellectual abilities and a true and unreserved arrogance. I liked to read. I liked to learn and so I did. I retained the necessary information to hone my skills which would later become, in a way, my craft.

I preferred the company of men. Not as we have now firmly established, because I hated women but rather because they rather seemed to dislike me. Women sensed my strangeness better than men. I was not one of their kind. My Father had no desire to push me into an unnatural marriage. We had money. I had brothers who married well. My Mother had died giving me life and I resembled her almost as closely as if I had been her twin. My Father was content to keep me close. I did not need to smile demurely like they did or engage in idle conversation. I tried to fit in, of course I did, but their behaviour seemed even more unnatural to me than even my general pretence.

I made merry with men and they made merry with me and they kept quiet because I could manipulate almost anyone into anything and because the nature of some of our more intimate encounters would have done irrevocable damage to their precious reputations and I had the protection of a very rich Father meaning I had little reason to rush into a marriage the poor bugger would never survive. My gentlemen friends were generous with their money when they found they had need of my unique services and company of an evening.

You see? I did not hate prostitutes.

Then my Father died quite unexpectedly when I turned twenty three. If I were capable of love or of grief that was the only time when I felt close to that capability. As I stood at the side of his grave, though my brother's tried to keep me from it for decorum's sake, I shed real tears. I felt their wetness and their weakness as they ran down my face. It was the one and only time.

This left me in a terrible predicament. My dear older brother's Harry and Thomas were not nearly as content to have me around to share their inherited wealth with as my Father had been. They wanted me married and gone and at that time they could have forced me into it. That is how the world worked in the 19th Century.

I could not have gone on with the current method of financial gain without the protection of my Father. I was alone and my brother's brought forward many 'suitors' none of whom were at all suitable. I rejected all of them. I would rather have taken to the streets. Then almost six months to the day after we put Father's body in the ground, they brought a woman to the house they were attempting to sell out from under me.

I was brought into the drawing room for afternoon tea and presented to an aging widow who did not dress in black, but sweeping crushed velvet, that was always a striking deep violet in colour to match her unusual eyes that had no doubt given birth to her name. The Lady Violet Grey. It was easy to tell that she had been astonishingly beautiful in her youth, as astonishingly wealthy as her husband had left her. I imagine what I felt is somewhat similar to what you might feel when you first meet someone you think has the potential to be a friend.

There was a unspoken connection. I instantly recognised myself in her, as she saw herself in me. I had met men who were similar to me, but never women. She nodded her head at me in silent acknowledgement that only I could have understood, as my oldest brother Harry explained that Lady Grey was seeking a female companion to come and live with her. I would have my own rooms, I would be respected by society as more than a simple orphaned spinster and she, having no children of her own, was more than willing to generously support me and I found myself more than willing to accept her very generous offer.

Lady Grey was quite insistent that we had met before, though I did not recall her. She, at one of my Father's various soirees when I was a child, set eyes upon me and knowing what I was felt it was her duty to reach out to me after my Father's death. Rather than to leave me to the care of two inept boys that were frightened of me and desperate to see me gone.

I won't bore you with the details of my daily life. We have only a short time together and that's not what you're here for. Lady Grey like many of the so-called aristocracy was bored. She certainly required that I as her companion, provided entertainment for her and Lady Grey had conceived the greatest form of all. Murder. Being too old and frail now to kill for herself as she once had (like her dear departed husband for example. Such a tragedy his untimely demise. An unfortunate addiction to what Lady Grey revealed to me to be poison in his Brandy) she needed a younger pair of hands. She needed me.

Luckily Lady Grey provided aid through her church for the Fallen Women of Whitechapel and I in turn helped her in this work. Our work gave us an endless stream of potential victims that were relatively easy to pick off. She chose the victims one by one (except for Jack Feathers, that was personal) writing their names in her little black pocketbook she carried with her everywhere and I obliged. They knew my face. They trusted me. They were simple little lambs to the slaughter. Lady Grey herself was most assuredly coming to the end of her natural life and would therefore be unable to support me for long, and so she offered me money, for each one I killed I would receive the appropriate financial compensation. Something I could take with me into the world to make a life for myself, however I wanted. The more imaginative their death, the more I earned, though she would keep the money until our time together was at an end to ensure I kept entertaining her until she was quite finished with the game, or until I was caught removing the need to pass along the funds to me. Whichever came first.

Did their deaths effect me? No. I felt nothing for them. They were a simple means to an end. A path to freedom. Cutting into them, meant nothing. I'm sure that's not what you wanted to hear is it? You wanted me to have at least felt some kind of remorse or inner turmoil at what I did? The truth is often disappointing.

You know how I did it. It's well documented. Sliced throats and mutilated bodies strewn across Whitechapel. I dressed as a man because dresses are cumbersome. It really is that ordinary of an explanation.

I amassed a great wealth for a woman and planned to retire to New York. If I remember correctly it would have been close to twenty thousand US dollars. Which would still equate to a small fortune in your lifetime. I would have liked a little more, but Mary Kelly's death was to herald my own. Though I could not have known it when I watched the life leave her own eyes.

I returned to Lady Grey when I had finished with the red head in relatively high spirits. Having deviated from my usual pattern by killing her inside her own home I had hoped that would raise the price on her head. I sat by Lady Grey's bed and recounted my success to her excited claps. She appeared a child on Christmas morning growing ever more excited as the details sprung from my lips, like lovingly wrapped gifts to her aged ears. It should have been at the very least a pleasant early morning. She had her servant bring me tea and I drank it as I had time and time before. When I began to feel my throat closing, I did not even wonder why. She had been looking especially frail in the last few weeks and her time was almost up. She had another week left to breathe at most and she could not resist one more kill of her very own.

I did not believe in God when I was alive. I am not sure what I believe in now. It is a common misconception that when you die the secrets of the eternal universe are revealed to you. I haunt the same streets I did in life. If this is supposed to be my punishment, I find it a strange one. Death has proven as disappointing as my revelations.

What's that you ask? Ah. My name.

What does it matter now? The truth would only disappoint you.