Jack the Ripper's Provocative Victims

  Jack the Ripper, having killed as few as five women in late 19th century Whitechapel, has gone down as perhaps the most famous non-fictional serial killer of all time, as well as one of the most elusive cold cases in history. What is less advertised is the sexual nature of his crimes and his victims. Megha Anwer believes that the reason for these overlooked details is because of the photographs of the victims and Victorian photography customs in general. 

She describes how most of Jack the Ripper’s victims (all prostitutes) only had their faces photographed. Not only were their bodies ignored, but the images were decidedly erotic, resembling art that depicted dead women at the time. She argues that what this does is transform the victims of these crimes into objects that were waiting to be killed. They become provocations as opposed to victims. Mary Kelly, the final victim breaks this trend with a photograph that fully exposes the brutality of Jack the Ripper’s crimes. She argues that the gruesomeness and lack of identity in this photo forces the viewer to consider that this could be anybody—even the viewer themself. It is in this anonymity that the Victorian viewer can begin to identify with the victim.

I think this criticism is really poignant because it points out not only many wrongs in society, but wrongs of which I am personally guilty. Never before have I taken the time to consider the victims of Jack the Ripper, which makes me complicit in marking these women as “less dead,” the idea that their deaths were less important than someone of a higher background. What I find most fascinating though is how common this is today in a different form. The sexualizing of these victims and their transformation into provocations seems eerily similar to the idea of girls that “were asking for it” when they are raped. Obviously with one case being murders and the other being rape, there are some differences, but Anwer also points out that these photos also force us to remember that Jack the Ripper’s crimes were sexual in nature. With that in mind, I think the comparison to modern rape culture is as appropriate as it is unsettling.

Now the one part of this argument that I find to be a slippery slope is with the analysis of the Mary Kelly photograph. Anwer writes about this photograph as if it were a more ideal alternative to the more conservative facial shots of the other victims, but I think this can lead to some issues. This image is extremely graphic and if images of these sort are the standard, the line between journalism and exploitation becomes very blurry. The popularization of this method could, in my opinion, lead to much further dehumanization of victims. With that said, I do not see either method of representation to be ideal, but without this criticism, I would have never come to this conclusion. One of the things that Anwer wanted to do with this article was to shine a spotlight on the lack of criticism of the photographic evidence of Jack the Ripper’s crimes, and in this regard, I would have to agree that this is a serious injustice, as this one piece of criticism alone has seriously altered how I view these crimes.

(Note: I understand that a visual aid is an admirable part of a good blog post and the obvious image to add to this blog is the Mary Kelly photograph that is a main topic of discussion. I have seen this photograph and it is extremely gruesome, so I have decided to stay within the bounds of good taste and exclude it with this disclaimer as a placeholder.)

Works Cited

Anwer, Megha. “Murder in Black and White: Victorian Crime Scenes and the Ripper Photographs.” Victorian Studies, vol. 56, no. 3, Indiana  University Press, 2014, pp. 433-41, https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.56.3.433.