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The case of Aaron Kosminski: was he Jack the Ripper?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

S. K. Lekh
Affiliation:
Senior Registrar, Charing Cross and Westminster Rotation
A. Langa
Affiliation:
Senior Registrar, Lynebank Hospital, Dunfermline, Fife KY11 4UW
P. Begg
Affiliation:
Freelance researcher and author, Leeds
B. K. Puri
Affiliation:
Senior Registrar, Charing Cross and Westminster Rotation, Department of Psychiatry, Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8RF
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The Whitechapel murders of 1888 attributed to Jack the Ripper were, like many of the crimes of multiple-victim killers, well-publicised, bizarre and dramatic (Lunde & Sigal, 1990). Although in the public mind at the time the murders of at least seven women in and around the Whitechapel district of London's East End were believed to have been carried out by Jack the Ripper. However, according to police and forensic evidence his victims, all prostitutes, numbered only five, beginning with Mary Ann Nichols, found murdered on 31 August 1888, and ending with Mary Jane Kelly, whose mutilated body was discovered on 9 November 1888.

Type
Sketches from the history of psychiatry
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1992

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