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Jack the Ripper is the name given to a serial murderer of prostitutes who was active in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London, England, United Kingdom, in the Fall of 1888. He was never captured or positively identified, and his true identity and motives are a tantalizing mystery to this day.
The five "canonical" victims of the Ripper were Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Kelly. However, some experts widen the net to include as many as six additional murders, most of whom were also prostitutes. Others believe the additional murders to be the work of a "copycat," as their methods lacked the "signature" elements of the Ripper.
Jack the Ripper in "Gentlemen of the Shade"[]
The Nemesis of Neglect, an apt symbolic portrait of the unidentified Jack the Ripper.
Jack was the chosen name of a vampire who resided in Victorian London. He was of the lower classes, speaking with a pronounced cockney accent. The Sanguine Club, an elite group of vampires, became aware of Jack in the fall of 1888. In encounters with various members, Jack confessed responsibility for the recent murders of two Whitechapel prostitutes, Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman. The Sanguine Club, although rather snobbish, decided to invite Jack to join, in part because they felt they owed a duty to their fellow vampires, but also in an attempt to rein Jack in. The murders had been particularly brutal; Jack had not simply fed on the women's blood, but he has butchered them as well, and the Club feared that Jack's activities would reveal that vampires still walked among humans.
Jack arrived at the meeting, but was affronted by the airs the Sanguine Club put on. He refused to stop his actions. Indeed he seemed to revel in the notoriety his actions brought him. He even began writing to the press, signing his letters "Jack the Ripper".
The Sanguine Club's other members united to stop Jack, although they were unable to prevent him from murdering two more women in September, they were able to thwart him throughout October 1888. In November, they caught Jack in the act of dismembering a prostitute in her rooms. Horrified by what they saw, they bricked him in the foundation of the half-finished Tower Bridge, burying him alive for the foreseeable future.
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