Religion Motivated Jack the Ripper to Kill

The Question

In 1888, the most infamous murders of all time took place in London’s East End. Five prostitutes, destitute women who knew of no other way to survive, were slaughtered and mutilated by a supposedly unknown killer who bears the nickname Jack the Ripper. If we don't know for sure who the killer was do we know that his religious faith drove him to kill those women?

Preface

There can be no doubt that the first known serial killer of modern times, Jack the Ripper, was driven by religion to commit his crimes. As we will see, the Ripper was a Jew who killed his five victims as human sacrifices to his God. It is important that religion should not be given the prestige it has so that it will never have such a dangerous influence ever again.

We may not have incontrovertible proof pertaining to the identity of the Ripper. After all he was never caught in the act. Due to press and police mishandling of the case, we may have to do without it. And though desirable it isn’t absolutely necessary. But who the Ripper was is a matter of enormous interest and determined speculation to this day. And the experts disagree sharply in trying to put a name on the monster that terrorised London in those dark days. But we do have proof that religion murdered those five women. In sifting out the truth and the possible identity of the Ripper it is important that we try to stick with what evidence we have got. Once we start getting sceptical without proper reason about anything witnesses say we can make the evidence mean anything. However if a report or testimony is clearly tainted by errors there is nothing wrong with trying to weed out the errors.

What is aimed for in this study, is finding the facts about the Ripper. None of its conclusions or assertions are intended to justify the anti-Semitic fondness for spreading rumour and slander on the Jews that they like to commit ritual murder for instance. Though much religion is harmful that is not to say that its members are dangerous and should be hated. Most Jews today are true humanitarians and a Jew can do wrong like an atheist or anybody else can. One cannot stigmatise a whole section of society because of the crimes of a few. Judaism of the three world religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, is the one that has caused the least religious wars and the least mental illnesses and its misogynistic tendencies are weak in comparison to its sister faiths. Above all Judaism has learned more from humanitarian theological liberalism than any other faith and many of the Jews ignore the nastier commandments of God in the Old Testament. This must be remembered and the Jewish people must be applauded for that.

Someone is better positioned than us to see Ripper's faith

Dr Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow spent “day after day and night after night-in the Whitechapel slums” looking for clues about the Ripper. He decided that the Ripper had to be “a homicidal lunatic goaded on to his dreadful work by a sense of duty” and “possibly imagined that he received his commands from God. After each murder had been carried out and the lust for blood appeased, the lunatic changed at once from a homicidal religious maniac into a quiet man with a perfect knowledge of what he was doing.” He added that he felt the killer was a young well-off man.

Dr Bond who saw the injuries inflicted on some of the Ripper victims said that the killer’s “homicidal impulse may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of the mind, or that Religious Mania may have been the original disease, but I do not think either hypothesis is likely”. It is interesting though that he saw things that made it look like a religious nutter was at work.

Sir Robert Anderson who was head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the London Metropolitan Police in 1888 wrote, "When the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him, but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him." Because of religion, justice couldn’t be done for the five murdered women. Religion not only took their lives but it sought to protect the murderer.

Those who knew more about the murders than we ever will stated that the Ripper was possibly - and a strong possibly - a Jew. Swanson and Anderson the detectives said it was certain he was a Jew. In 1910, Anderson wrote concerning the Ripper, “In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute."

Study that declaration. He writes that he cannot say the Ripper had a religion though he calls him a Jew. He says he means to specify the race of the Ripper not his religion as if he doesn’t want to insult the Jewish religion by saying the Ripper was a Jew. Now why would it be an insult to Jews to say the Ripper was a Jew and not an insult to Polish people to say the Ripper was Polish? He doesn’t want to speak of the Ripper as religious because the Ripper had depraved religious beliefs. It would be stupid to think the Ripper had no religious beliefs. Anderson felt that to say that a Jewish fanatic who lived as if brutally killing prostitutes were a Jewish religious duty was a Jew is to insult the Jewish faith. That is where he was coming from. He was not necessarily hinting that the Ripper suffered from a religious mania. The killer could have been a religious extremist and the way Anderson speaks of him shows that the killer was considered evil rather than insane.

No Ripper candidate shows signs of religious extremism. The only thing we have is Kosminski worrying about breaking the Jewish sabbath. It is something to go on.

Why was no money found on the victims who certainly would have got paid in advance? However it is felt that the Ripper robbed Annie Chapman and there was a leather apron in the yard where she was found. The Ripper if he did not need to rob her might have been aware that John Pizer, Leather Apron, was accused of the murders so far. Pizer was a Jew who loved to batter prostitutes into giving him their money. Did the Ripper rob Annie to create a false trail? If so, did the Ripper know John Pizer?

Some surmise that murders however were not about money. The effort the Ripper went and the risk he put himself in by taking time to take any money from them speaks of somebody who did not want others to think he went with prostitutes. The murders gave a message: not about money, not about sex, nothing personal - I just have to be God's instrument against prostitutes.

But simple robbery is a more sensible idea. The victims had other clients so did he take their money? It would be strange to take such immoral earnings away with him if he was that virtuous!

It is thought the killer got the women to empty their pockets before he slew them. That would explain why no blood was found on the objects lying around or found inside the pockets.  The idea that he held them at knifepoint and robbed them is improbable.  It was easy to attack when they were trying to poke around in their own pockets when being threatened with a knife.

The Ripper wrote a message blaming the Jews in chalk on a wall. It is too much of a coincidence that this message was written where the Ripper discarded a tiny piece of apron that he did not really need. It was made to appear that he needed it to wipe his hands and knife but that is hard to believe! The Ripper probably did not clean up but just put a coat over the mess on his clothes - not that there would have been a huge mess. The message certainly suggests the Ripper was being protected by Jews.

Remember too that even when there were only two recognised victims Nichols and Chapman the people were convinced that Jew John Pizer was the killer. Even worse, the rumour had started with the killing of Nichols! When Polly Nichols died the people had already pointed the finger at a Jew specifically this John Pizer. The rumour could have started through people seeing a Jew who seemed to be responsible and feeling they had not enough to go to the police with.

The man seen with some of the women just before they died had a Jewish appearance. The man seen with Annie Chapman was described as a foreigner meaning a Jew by Mrs Long. Mrs Long must have been talking to the gossips and the man must have looked as Jewish as John Pizer!! The rumour would not have been fueled otherwise.

Possible Ripper witness Israel Schwartz saw a man in the presence of Elizabeth Stride who was called Lipski by a man attacking her. The attacker was not the killer and she was found dead later. The name Lipski was a form of abuse against Jewish males for Lipski had been a murderer. Lipski by the way had been a Polish Jew. So a Polish Jew could be called a Polish Jew in insult. There was a Polish Jew there!

The Ripper should have been caught so the Ripper had to have been protected by his family and people. Jews were against handing their own up to Gentile justice.

The best suspects are Jews. Especially Aaron Kosminski and David Cohen.

The Ripper's pious hatred of female sexuality

Religious faith is always chiefly characterised by a desire to control and maybe mock sexuality. Sexual sins get terrible penalties. Jesus wants those who commit them damned forever in Hell while Moses wants them stoned to death for God says so.

The Ripper was not killing the prostitutes for sexual perversion. He never had sex with them and no semen from masturbation was found at the crime scenes. His frenzy was hatred not of women in general but of fallen women - prostitutes. It is said that the suspect Aaron Kosminski can be eliminated for he suffered from compulsive masturbation in public. He would have been found masturbating over the bodies had he been the killer. That is nonsense for he knew the danger of being caught.

The Ripper showed signs of anger against female genitalia. He performed mutilations in the genital area of four of his victims - he may not have had a chance to do this with Catherine Eddowes the exception in the sense that though he attacked her uterus he did not attack the vagina with his knife. This is most probably a sign of a man who contracted syphilis from prostitutes and attacked the genitals of prostitutes to release his anger. It is not known if Kosminski had syphilis but it is clear that people at the time surmised that he did.

The Ripper took trophies – parts of the bodies of these women to satisfy his feeling that he was stronger than these women, that he was in control. There is no evidence that the Ripper got any sexual enjoyment out of doing this. The fact that he took Eddowes’ kidney – an organ nobody would associate with sex - and engaged in abdominal mutilations and ripped intestines out shows that the crimes were motivated by anger not perverted sexuality. This man was not a sex killer of any description.

The killer was angry with the bodies of prostitutes and his attacks on the genitals suggest that the basis of his anger was something that happened to him as a result of sex with prostitutes. The Ripper would certainly have felt anger against prostitutes if sex with them had given him syphilis. For those who question that that was how he got the disease they must remember that syphilis was caught mostly by men who went with prostitutes.

Ripper victims were displayed with legs apart in a mock sexual position. The Ripper wanted to mock their sexuality and make a display of them. This could be interpreted as, “Here they are ready for sex but I want to put you off the idea of having sex with them”. This interpretation would surely indicate that the Ripper considered prostitutes dangerous and to be objects not people.

The attacks on the womb especially with Annie Chapman suggest a desire to punish the womb for being the source of life. The Ripper removed her uterus and the top of her vagina and took them away. He removed the uterus when he killed Catherine Eddowes as well. The Ripper did not hate his own life – he didn’t want to end up hanged.

This is best seen as pure religious misogyny. Religion always hated the womb and his biblical faith told him childbirth and sex were dirty.