Inquest testimony by John Reeves, Police Constable (PC) Thomas Barret, and Dr. Timothy Killeen. Dr. Killeen's name is spelled "Keeling". The spelling of names can vary greatly between sources.

Inquest testimony by John Reeves, PC Thomas Barret, and Dr. Timothy Killeen. While this reference covers the same event as reference #4, the two articles differ in quality and scope. This is true of most references on this page. As such, it is often necessary to consult multiple reports of the same event to get as close to the truth as possible.

Many case files, contemporary newspaper reports, and other primary- and secondary sources have been compiled into this indispensable reference work. This book was also published under the title "The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook".

A brief press interview with Francis- and Amy Hewitt. Francis was the superintendent of George Yard Buildings and, along with his wife, occupied a dwelling only a few meters from where the body of Martha Tabram was found. While the given name of Francis's wife was not disclosed by the press, reference #8 reveals that it was Amy.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Francis- and Amy Hewitt. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Martha Tabram. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through. While a post-mortem photograph of Tabram is readily available online, it did not seem appropriate to include it in the video. There will always be a fine line between exploration and exploitation when discussing tragedy, and using this photograph felt unnecessarily morbid. Instead, I opted for a contemporary sketch. The same is true of the other victims. Except for Annie Chapman, who is the only victim for whom a photograph from when they were still alive has been recovered.

Inquest testimony by Mary Ann Connelly. She was also known by the alias "Pearly Poll".

Inquest testimony by PC John Thain and Robert Paul. Thain's surname is spelled Phail while Paul's surname is spelled Baul.

Inquest testimony by PC John Thain and Robert Paul. Thain's surname is spelled Thail while Paul's surname is spelled Baul.

Inquest testimony by Charles "Cross" Lechmere and Ellen Holland. Holland's forename is not entirely clear. She is referred to as Ellen, Emily, Nelly, or Jane in various press reports. I opted for Ellen as it was the name used by investigators.

Inquest testimony by PC John Neil, Dr. Rees Llewellyn, Charles "Cross" Lechmere, and Ellen Holland.

Inquest testimony by PC John Neil and Dr. Rees Llewellyn. Llewellyn's forename is given as Henry.

This article provides us with the exact routes taken by PC John Neil and PC John Thain on the night when Mary Ann Nichols was murdered.

One of the few books which explores the lives of the five canonical victims. A similar but less recent book is "The Victims of Jack the Ripper" by Neal Stubbings Shelden.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Mary Ann Nichols. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Inquest testimony by John Davis, John Evans (nightwatchman), Amelia Richardson, John Richardson, John Pizer, Detective Inspector (DI) Joseph Chandler, and Dr. George Phillips. Davis's surname is spelled Davies while Pizer's surname is spelled Piser.

Inquest testimony by Amelia Richardson, John Richardson, and John Pizer. Pizer's surname is spelled Piser.

Inquest testimony by John Davis and John Evans.

Many newspapers deemed the gruesome mutilations inflicted upon the body of Annie Chapman unfit for publication. This article by The Lancet is one of the few which did not withhold that information.

Inquest testimony by DI Joseph Chandler and Dr. George Phillips.

Inquest testimony by DI Joseph Chandler and Dr. George Phillips.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Annie Chapman. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Inquest testimony by Dr. George Phillips, Elizabeth Long, and Albert Cadosch.

To read articles from Ripperologist magazine you must first download one of four ZIP files and then extract the correct issue as a PDF file.

Most issues of Ripper Notes magazine are not available online. Only a select few articles are available as digital reprints.

An article expressing frustration with the police.

Inquest testimony by Morris Eagle and Louis Diemschutz. Diemschutz's name is spelled Lewis Dienishitz.

Inquest testimony by Morris Eagle and Louis Diemschutz as well as press statements by PC Edward Watkins and Sarah Diemschutz. Eagle's surname is spelled Siegel, Louis Diemschutz's name is spelled Lewis Dienischitz, while Sarah Diemschutz's surname i spelled Deimschitz.

Press statements by Louis Diemschutz, Morris Eagle, Joseph Lave, Dr. Frederick Blackwell, and George Morris. Diemschutz's name is spelled Lewis Diemschitz. George Morris was the nightwatchman who was cleaning a warehouse in Mitre Square when Catherine Eddowes was murdered.

Inquest testimony by PC Henry Lamb and Dr. Frederick Blackwell. While not mentioned by name in the video, Lamb was the first officer to arrive at the Elizabeth Stride crime scene.

Inquest testimony by PC Edward Watkins and Dr. Frederick Brown. Watkins's surname is spelled Watkin.

Inquest testimony by Dr. George Phillips.

This is often regarded as the definitive book on Jack the Ripper. It is more or less required reading for anyone interested in the case.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Elizabeth Stride. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Press interview with J. Best and John Gardner. Their account is labeled "Possible Sighting #1" in the video. Best's forename is unknown but it was likely shortened to "J." because it was a common name like John or James.

Inquest testimony by Dr. George Phillips, Dr. Frederick Blackwell, William Marshall, and PC William Smith. Marshall's account is labeled "Possible Sighting #2" in the video while PC Smith's account is labeled "Possible Sighting #3".

Press interviews with Israel Schwartz, PC Edward Watkins, George Morris, and PC Richard Pearce. Schwartz is not named in the article. PC Pearce was the officer who lived in Mitre Square and slept through the murder of Catherine Eddowes.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Catherine Eddowes. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Inquest testimony by Dr. George Sequeira, George Morris, PC James Harvey, PC Richard Pearce, and Joseph Lawende.

Some issues of Ripperologist magazine are only available as digital reprints. The backlog on the website only goes back to Vol. 62 from December 2005.

Author Andrew Cook argues that an American journalist working for The Star newspaper named Frederick Best was the author of the Dear Boss letter and others. Also published under the title Jack the Ripper: Case Closed.

Authors Paul Begg and Christopher George explores the possibility that an American journalist named Henry Dam was the author of not only the Dear Boss letter but also the story of Leather Apron.

Inquest testimony by Joseph Barnett, Thomas Bowyer, John McCarthy, Mary Ann Cox, Elizabeth Prater, Caroline Maxwell, Sarah Lewis, Dr. George Phillips, and Maria Harvey. Prater and Lewis were the two witnesses who heard cries of murder. Maxwell was one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen and spoken to Mary Jane Kelly long after the estimated time of death. Harvey was one of two witnesses who claimed to have been in the room with Kelly when Barnett payed a visit. The other was Lizzie Albrook, see reference #68.

Inquest testimony by Joseph Barnett, Thomas Bowyer, John McCarthy, Mary Ann Cox, Elizabeth Prater, Caroline Maxwell, Sarah Lewis, Dr. George Phillips, and Maria Harvey.

Press statements by John McCarthy, Joseph Barnett, Lizzie Albrock, Maurice Lewis, Caroline Maxwell, and Maria Harvey. Albrock was one of two witnesses who claimed to have been in the room with Mary Jane Kelly when Barnett payed a visit. The other was Harvey. Lewis was one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen Mary Jane Kelly long after the estimated time of death.

Press statements by Joseph Barnett and Lizzie Albrook as well as inquest testimony by Mary Anne Cox and Elizabeth Prater.

Press statement by George Hutchinson.

This memorandum written by Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten in 1894 established that only five victims should be ascribed to Jack the Ripper; Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. These five victims would later become known as the "canonical five". However, there was no consensus amongst the police at the time nor does one exist today. Stride and Kelly are especially controversial and are often disregarded as victims of the Ripper. Martha Tabram, Frances Coles, and others are sometimes added to the list. In short, it is not know how many victims should be ascribed to the Ripper and the canonical five is nothing more than a well-established canon.

One of the earliest mentions of the Leather Apron story. As mentioned in the video, Leather Apron was eventually identified as John Pizer, but no one knows if that identification was correct. There are those who believe the story was nothing but a folktale, possibly invented by a journalist to drum up newspaper sales. See reference #64 for a version of this theory.

I have compiled this table of eyewitness accounts to make them easier to compare. The accounts have been trimmed down to their bare essentials. The table displayed in the video had to be trimmed down even further due to the limited screen space. The witnesses included in this table are Elizabeth Long, J. Best and John Gardner, Matthew Packer, William Marshall, James Brown, William Smith, Israel Schwartz, Joseph Lawende, Mary Cox, and George Hutchinson. Note how the majority of witnesses are from the Elizabeth Stride case. A case which many believe should not even be ascribed to Jack the Ripper.

According to this paper, the average height of British men in the late 1880s was 168.85 cm (5 ft 6.5 in).

The Jill- or Jackie the Ripper theory has existed since the time of the murders. Former DI Edmund Reid even acknowledged the fact that Jack the Ripper could have been a woman in reference #113.

William Stewart is among the few authors who have lent credence to the Jill- or Jackie the Ripper theory.

An analysis of the Jack the Ripper case by FBI criminal profiler and Special Agent John Douglas. As an aside, the popular TV series Mindhunter is based on a true-crime book written by Douglas.

Author Melvyn Fairclough interviewed a man named Reginald Hutchinson in May 1992 who claimed that his father, George Hutchinson, was the man who knew Mary Jane Kelly. But this identification is dubious and has never been verified. It doesn't help that this revelation stems from a book which promotes the long-debunked Royal Conspiracy Theory.

Author Michael Connor was among the first (the first?) to propose Charles "Cross" Lechmere as a candidate for Jack the Ripper. Note that, at the time of this article's publication, the connection between Cross and Lechmere had yet to be uncovered.

Author Christer Holmgren expounds the theory proposed in reference #89 that Charles "Cross" Lechmere was Jack the Ripper. This book was preceded by a TV documentary from 2014 in which Holmgren presented much of the same information, albeit in a summarized format. While I do think this theory has a lot going for it, it is not without its fair share of problems. For instance, I find Holmgren's arguments regarding time unconvincing. Inconsistencies between witness accounts makes it impossible to know exactly when someone left home, arrived at a crime scene, or clocked in at work. At least down to the minute mark. In my opinion, one must allow for at least five or even ten minutes of error whenever time is mentioned by contemporary sources.

During the inquest into the death of Mary Ann Nichols, the press failed to mention the home address of Charles "Cross" Lechmere. The only known exception is this article from The Star in which his address is given as 22 Doveton Street. Some have interpreted this as a deliberate attempt by Lechmere to conceal his identity. But his address was not kept from the police and press coverage of inquest statements are often incomplete. It's possible that Lechmere did provide his address but The Star was the only newspaper who bothered to write it down. Even if Lechmere did withhold his address at the inquest, and The Star uncovered his address by some other means, it tells us nothing about his motives. Not wanting to broadcast your address to the world when there's a deranged killer on the lose can hardly be cause for suspicion.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Charles "Cross" Lechmere. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

Users Kattrup and David Orsam on Casebook Forums have compiled numerous examples of people appearing before a court of law under a "false" name. That "false" name being the adopted surname of their stepfather.

In 2012, a descendant of Charles "Cross" Lechmere unsuccessfully attempted to track down his employment records at Pickfords.

According to a now deleted article from the Metropolitan Police, many case files have either been destroyed or disappeared over the past century. As an aside, this is also the article from which I got the title of the video. This article, in turn, appears to have lifted the title from an article in the June 1973 issue of Reader's Digest. A reprint of which can be found in the January 2009 issue of Ripperologist magazine in case anyone should be interested.

Author Bruce Paley tries to build a case against Joseph Barnett in this book. Whether he succeeds, you'll have to decide for yourself.

Birth, death, marriage, census, and other records concerning Joseph Barnett. I have compiled these records into a simple family tree to make them easier to sift through.

The page numbers here refer to the preface of the book which was written by former Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson.

Prior to the publication of reference #61, former Assistant Commissioner Sir Robert Anderson published an excerpt from his memoirs in Blackwood's Magazine. The text is slightly different from the book and some portions have been relegated to a footnote.

The Swanson Marginalia is generally accepted to have been written by Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Donald Swanson at some point between the publication of the book in 1910 and his death in 1924. While the provenance and handwriting checks out, there is no way to know with absolute certainty that DCI Swanson was the author.

The surname of Aaron Kosminski is variably spelled Kosminski, Kozminski, Kosminsky, and Kozminsky.

Author Martin Fido was the first to discover the asylum records of Aaron Kosminski. However, Fido does not recognize Aaron as the man suspected by Sir Robert Anderson. Instead, Fido identifies a different asylum patient, named David Cohen, as the suspect. According to Fido, David Cohen was merely a placeholder name (akin to John Doe) and his real name was allegedly Nathan Kaminski. While there are notable parallels between the suspect Kosminski and Kaminski, there is no documentary evidence to suggest Cohen and Kaminski were the same person.

Press interview with former DI Edmund Reid in which he criticizes the revelatory claims made by his former superior Sir Robert Anderson.

The shawl has been known to students of the Jack the Ripper case for quite some time and has been tested for DNA on multiple occasions. Each time, the results were inconclusive. Author Russel Edwards then acquired the shawl at an auction and performed a more extensive series of tests, beginning in 2011. The results were first published in this book and later in reference #115.

The first half of this episode of BBC Inside Science is about the shawl. Two forensic geneticists are interviewed. The first one is Jari Louhelainen who conducted the DNA analysis on the shawl.

According to this record, Francis Tumblety was arrested on November 7 and released on bail on November 16. If that's true, Tumblety would have been in custody at the time of Mary Jane Kelly's murder on the morning of November 9. However, this alibi might not be as solid as it first appears. See reference #133 for a detailed breakdown of the issues.

Author Timothy Riordan attempts to make sense of the strange, eccentric, and often obscure life of Francis Tumblety. Riordan does not believe Tumblety was Jack the Ripper and goes to great lengths to dispel his candidacy as a suspect. Tumblety's date of birth is not entirely clear. Riordan states that he was born in 1830 while Tumblety's encyclopedia entry in reference #139 estimates it to 1833. I opted for the latter in this case.

In an interview with Charles Dunham, Francis Tumblety is alleged to have hosted an all-male dinner party in Washington during which he expressed misogynistic views and showcased a cabinet of jars filled with anatomical specimens.

Press interview with Francis Tumblety in which he talks about his arrest in London on November 7, 1888. See reference #129 for an analysis of this interview.

Originally published in 1995 under the title "The Lodger: The Arrest and Escape of Jack the Ripper". This revised edition includes a few significant addenda.

Author Carman Cumming unveils the secretive and unscrupulous life of Charles Dunham. His alleged encounter with Francis Tumblety is only briefly mentioned on pages 29-30 but the book is worth reading in its entirety.

A highly skeptical article on Francis Tumblety and his candidacy as a suspect. Pages 13-16 concern the interview with Charles Dunham from reference #127.

For some reason, this article is not included in the October 2012 issue of Ripperologist magazine available for download on the magazine's official website. In fact, that issue ends on page 58 while this article begins on page 64. Nevertheless, the article is available on the authors personal website which is the link provided here.

This encyclopedia includes entries on almost every person involved with the case. It was an invaluable resource when making this video.

The Jack the Ripper wiki over on Casebook is also a great resource if you don't have access to reference #139.

These fire insurance maps of London from c. 1890 feature tons of useful information that, along with reference #143, allowed me to verify the location of many events described in contemporary press- and police reports. For the map seen in the video, see reference #144.

A modern reconstruction of late-Victorian Whitechapel along with toponyms, house numbers, and other useful details.

This is the map used throughout the video and it took forever to assemble. The original map consists of 729 individual sheets. I only needed 20 of these sheets to cover the whole of Whitechapel and surrounding districts. For each of these 20 sheets I had to crop out the border and painstakingly align each of the four sides to any adjacent sheets. Every street, building, and border had to be individually aligned. I also had to clean up certain regions of the map to prevent any irrelevant text or lines from distracting the viewer's attention. The final image clocks in at 71680x38576 pixels and weighs a cool 33.4 GB. Lastly, I wrote a script to divide the image into thousands of 256x256 tiles. These tiles were then loaded into After Effects using the amazing GeoLayers plugin to create an interactive tilemap. All in all, it took about three weeks of fiddling to make it work. Keep in mind that this map was created in the early to mid-1890s. This means that some roads and buildings which did- or did not exist back in 1888 will- or will not be present on this map.