Jack the Ripper is probably history’s most famous serial killer, but could bloody Jack have actually been a bloody Jill?
That’s the intriguing new theory put forward in a groundbreaking new book about the Victorian psychopath who terrorized the streets of Whitechapel in a bloody reign of terror without equal.
Such was the brute savagery and demonic intensity with which Jack the Ripper attacked his victims, that the Ripper’s crimes continue to shock and sicken even the most modern sensibility.
Yet alongside the horror, the name Jack the Ripper courts a most morbid fascination.
There have been an abundance of books written about the real identity of the serial killer who horribly mutilated and killed five, possibly six, women between August and November 1888.
Jack’s real identity has eluded criminologists for centuries, but it hasn’t stopped hordes of Ripperologists writing books grandly proclaiming they have solved the case once and for all.
Some books on the Ripper are credible, some are frankly bizarre, and some are just outright insane, but to date, no Ripper book has dared to suggest the unthinkable – that Jack could have actually been a woman.
And not just any woman, but a woman who became a serial killer to actually help the lot of the poor and the oppressed of London’s East End. Jack the Ripper carried out his sickening mutilations with such diabolical skill that many assumed he must have been a surgeon, but according to author William J Perring, they would be wrong.
The 63-year-old native Eastender has spent five years working on a novel titled The Seduction Of Mary Kelly , which proposes that it was not Jack the Ripper but a Salvation Army soldier called Julia what done it.
And why? Because Julia knew that the unexpected outcome of Jack the Ripper’s butchery would be to focus the attention of the world on the appalling conditions endured by those forced to live in London’s slums.
Yet Perring, who has been fascinated by the Ripper killings for over three decades, insists that although a novel, his book is a possible solution to the Jack the Ripper mystery.
The Ripperologist told the Daily Mail :
“The majority of ‘factual’ books have unlikely suspects, and I don’t think in the history of serial killers there has ever been one who was famous beforehand.The most likely thing is it was somebody we’ve never heard of and certainly a woman would be ideal for this.”
As for Julia’s motive, Perring explained:
“The Ripper murders surprisingly did a lot of good for the East End. Someone had shone a light on how awful the conditions were. There were all manner of social works and good deeds afterwards.”
Although it might sound bizarre, the theory that Jack the Ripper was actually a woman has been proposed before, by none other than the Chief Inspector working on the case – Frederick Abberline.
The Inspector suggested the possibility in conversation with his mentor, Dr Thomas Dutton after the murder of Mary Kelly.
Abberline theorized that with the whole of London looking for a man, the real Jack the Ripper could stalk the streets of Whitechapel with ease.