The Year 1888… Whitechapel in East London plunged into darkness when Catherine Eddowes (April 14, 1842 – September 30, 1888), a sex worker by profession, was walking down Goulston Street in the early hours of Sunday (September 30, 1888). A shadowy figure suddenly appeared in front of her, and then people heard a loud scream. They rushed to the spot to find Eddowes lying in a pool of blood! Her abdomen was exposed as the attacker cut the peritoneal lining through on the left side and carefully took out the left kidney. Four other sex workers were also murdered in a similar fashion that year.

Despite an extensive investigation, the Scotland Yard never identified the single serial killer, known as Jack the Ripper, and the crimes remained unsolved. The Scotland Yard, once, claimed that there was no killer, called Jack the Ripper! Interestingly, the identity of Jack the Ripper has been revealed 137 years after the crime was committed! Historian and author Russell Stephen Edwards recently told the British media that he used DNA evidence from the shawl of Eddowes to prove that Jack the Ripper was actually a man, called Aaron Kosminski. According to Edwards, Kosminski, the prime suspect in the serial murders, was a Polish Jew who emigrated from Congress Poland to England in the 1880s and started working as a barber in London.

The Scotland Yard initially considered Kosminski as the prime suspect in 1888. There were multiple allegations of misogyny against him. However, the Scotland Yard did not arrest him due to lack of enough evidence. Kosminski was sent to Mile End Old Town workhouse on July 12, 1890 because of his worsening mental illness. After receiving treatment for years, he passed away on March 24, 1919, aged 53.

Edwards stressed that he bought the shawl at an auction in 2007 and made an attempt to find out the identity of the Jack the Reaper. He extracted two mitochondrial DNA samples from the shawl (recovered from the scene) and matched them with the DNA of a successor of the victim. Interestingly, one DNA sample of Eddowes matched with the DNA of her successor! Edwards traced a successor of Kosminski, too, and matched the second DNA sample with the DNA of that person. They also matched! Thereafter, Edwards claimed that Kosminski was the real Jack the Ripper.

According to Edwards, the DNA samples proved that Kosminski was “definitely, categorically and absolutely” the person responsible for the Whitechapel murders committed by Jack the Ripper. He told The Independent: “I have got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I have spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitively solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt it. This is it now – we have unmasked him.“

However, leading forensic experts have rejected Edwards’ claim, stating that the shawl was not properly preserved for 137 years. Hence, no one can trace the real Jack the Ripper through DNA samples with 100% accuracy. It may be noted that the British Police had actually investigated the killings of 11 women, almost all of whom worked as sex workers, from April 1888 to February 1891. The crimes are known as the Whitechapel Murders. The Police claimed that Jack the Ripper committed the third to the seventh of those murders. His victims – Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – are known as the Canonical Five.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das