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Jack the Ripper and His Victims: Why the Prostitute Myth Is Wrong


Collage of Victorian-era women and illustrations, set against a vintage newspaper and map background. Historical theme with sepia tones.

“Jack the Ripper killed prostitutes, right?”


That’s what most of us have been told. But the truth is more complicated — and more tragic. Of the five women most commonly linked to the Ripper, at least three had no proven connection to sex work at all. Instead, they were victims of poverty, prejudice, and a society that judged them harshly for failing to conform to Victorian ideals of womanhood.


So why has the idea persisted for over 130 years that all of Jack the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes? The answer lies in Victorian morality, sensationalist newspapers, and a police force unwilling to see the women for who they truly were.


This article explores the lives of the five victims, Mary-Ann (Polly) Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, alongside the myths that have distorted their stories.


Whitechapel in 1888: A Place of Poverty and Prejudice

To understand the murders, we first need to understand the world the victims lived in.


By 1888, Whitechapel was one of the most densely populated and impoverished districts in London. Overcrowded lodging houses lined narrow streets, with dozens of people crammed into each. Disease, alcoholism, and unemployment were rampant. Homelessness was widespread: police reports noted between 200 and 600 people sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square each night, and thousands more drifted between workhouses and cheap lodging houses.


Whitechapel in the late 19th century.
Whitechapel in the late 19th century.

For women, life was especially precarious. Domestic service and factory work were the main options, but wages were low and unstable. A husband’s wages, or his absence, could mean the difference between survival and destitution. When marriages broke down, women had little recourse: divorce was expensive, remarriage difficult, and social stigma devastating.


In this environment, many women fell into cycles of poverty, addiction, and homelessness. Some turned to casual sex work to survive. Others were merely assumed to be prostitutes by virtue of being poor, homeless, or seen walking alone at night.


That assumption would shape how the victims of Jack the Ripper were remembered.



The Canonical Five Victims

Although other murders in Whitechapel at the time were attributed to the Ripper, historians generally agree on the “canonical five”:


  1. Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols (murdered 31 August 1888)

  2. Annie Chapman (murdered 8 September 1888)

  3. Elizabeth Stride (murdered 30 September 1888)

  4. Catherine “Kate” Eddowes (murdered 30 September 1888, same night as Stride)

  5. Mary Jane Kelly (murdered 9 November 1888)


Murder Timeline: The Autumn of Terror

31 August 1888 – The Death of Polly Nichols

Mary-Ann (Polly) Nichols was discovered at around 3:40am in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. Her throat had been cut and her body mutilated. Nichols, aged 43, had once lived with her husband and five children in the Peabody Buildings in Lambeth but had separated from him. On the night of her murder, she had been unable to secure a bed at a lodging house because she lacked the fourpence fee.


Brick building with barred windows and roll-up door in a deserted alley. Chalk outline on ground, suggesting past incident. Somber mood.
The Mary Nichols Murder Site In Buck's Row.

8 September 1888 – Annie Chapman

At about 6am, Annie Chapman’s body was found in the backyard of a house in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. She was 47 years old and her throat had been cut, with mutilations to her abdomen. Annie had once lived with her husband on an estate in Windsor, but her struggles with alcoholism and the breakdown of her marriage left her destitute.


A man and woman in Victorian attire pose in a vintage photo studio. The woman is seated with a book, and the man stands. Sepia tones dominate.
Wedding portrait of Annie and John Chapman, 1 May 1869

30 September 1888 – Elizabeth Stride

Stride was found at 1am in Dutfield’s Yard, Berner Street. Unlike the other victims, she had only her throat cut, with no mutilations. Some historians believe the killer was interrupted. Stride, aged 44, was Swedish-born, and had emigrated to London, where she married and later separated from a carpenter. She had run coffee houses in Poplar before falling on hard times.


30 September 1888 – Catherine Eddowes

Less than an hour after Stride’s murder, Catherine “Kate” Eddowes was found in Mitre Square. Her throat was cut and her abdomen and face mutilated. She was 46, born in Wolverhampton, and had lived a life of hardship, travelling the country with her partner, writing and selling ballads, before struggling with addiction and poverty.


Drawing of a woman in a long coat and hat standing in a doorway. Text reads "A Lost Woman Mary Kelly in Miller's Court." Somber mood.

9 November 1888 – Mary Jane Kelly

At just 25, Kelly was the youngest and the only one murdered indoors, in her room at Miller’s Court, Spitalfields. Her body was horrifically mutilated. Kelly’s origins are murky — she claimed both Welsh and Irish roots and had worked at higher levels of the sex trade in London’s West End before descending into poverty in Whitechapel.



Were They All Sex Workers? The Evidence Says No

Despite police and press insistence, evidence for sex work among three of the five women is slim to nonexistent:


  • Polly Nichols: Friends testified at her inquest that she feared “fast living” and had worked mainly as a domestic servant and charwoman.

  • Annie Chapman: Supported for years by her husband’s income as a coachman; no evidence of prostitution.

  • Catherine Eddowes: Travelled the country with her partner, selling ballads. Known more for her wit and resourcefulness than sex work.


Only:


  • Elizabeth Stride had some links to prostitution. Yet she spent much of her life in domestic service or running businesses with her husband.

  • Mary Jane Kelly was undeniably a sex worker, but one who had lived at higher levels of the trade before her decline.

Five women in historical attire, a mix of photographs and illustrations, in sepia and black-and-white tones. Serious expressions.
Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine 'Kate' Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly

Why the Police Got It Wrong

Victorian police were heavily influenced by class and gender bias. To them, any destitute woman on the street at night was automatically suspicious. A year before the murders, police had even been ordered to stop harassing lone women for prostitution after one was falsely charged while simply buying gloves.


The positioning of the bodies, reclining, with no signs of struggle, should have suggested another explanation: that the women were asleep outdoors when attacked. But this possibility was ignored. As historian Hallie Rubenhold notes,

“What I found instead was a lot of convoluted, confused definition of what prostitution was among the working classes and the poor.”

The Role of the Press

If the police planted the seed, newspapers watered it. The murders were sensational front-page news, and papers like the Illustrated Police News filled their pages with lurid illustrations of gaslit alleys and “fallen women.”


Vintage illustration from "Police Illustrated News" featuring scenes and text about the Whitechapel murders, dated September 29, 1888.

The idea that the victims were prostitutes made the story more salacious and fed middle-class fears about the “dangerous classes.” It also absolved society: if the women were already “ruined,” their deaths seemed less like tragedies and more like moral lessons.


Edward Fairfield, an official in the Colonial Office, wrote to The Times:

“The horror and excitement caused by the murder of the four Whitechapel outcasts imply a universal belief that they had a right to life … if they had, then they had the further right to hire shelter from the bitterness of the English night.”

His words reflect how the victims’ humanity was denied because of their perceived immorality.


Respectability, Morality, and Ruin

In Victorian society, a woman’s worth was tied to her respectability. Once that respectability was lost, through divorce, separation, or poverty, she was judged as morally ruined, whether or not she engaged in sex work.


  • Polly and Annie, separated from their husbands, were seen as failures.

  • Kate, living in a common-law relationship with children born out of wedlock, was scandalous to middle-class observers.

  • Elizabeth, an unmarried mother, was marked for life by Sweden’s “register of shame.”

  • Mary Jane, as a sex worker, embodied the “fallen woman” stereotype.


Though only one was definitively a prostitute, all were condemned as such in the public imagination.



The “Ripper Industry”

For over 130 years, Jack the Ripper has spawned a cultural industry: books, films, walking tours, websites, even souvenirs. These often centre on the mystery of the killer’s identity while sidelining or sensationalising the women he killed.


Tours promise to take visitors to “murder sites,” describing the deaths in gory detail. Countless books and films recycle the image of the Ripper as a demonic figure stalking prostitutes.


But as Rubenhold argues, this obsession perpetuates harmful myths. It reduces the women to their manner of death rather than acknowledging their lives. It also reinforces the idea of “good women” and “bad women,” echoing Victorian prejudices.


Why the Truth Matters

Challenging the myth isn’t just about setting the record straight. It’s about restoring dignity to women whose voices were silenced. As Rubenhold puts it:

“It is negligent of us not to tell the stories of people who had no voice. It is morally wrong, to continue excluding people and only consider the privileged. We’re lying to people when we do that.”

The truth is that the Ripper’s victims were not merely prostitutes. They were mothers, wives, partners, workers, and survivors of hardship. They lived varied lives and were more than the circumstances of their deaths.


Conclusion: Remembering the Five

Jack the Ripper’s identity may never be solved, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. What matters is remembering Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly as individuals. They were not simply “fallen women,” but human beings failed by a society that preferred to label them rather than help them.


By moving beyond the myth, we can see them not as symbols of Victorian vice, but as women whose stories still deserve to be told.

Sources

Woman smiling, white background. Pink backdrop with white text: "Words By Harriet Wilder, Time-Travel Correspondent."

 
 
 
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