Ripper Records: An Archive of Jack the Ripper and the 1888 Whitechapel Murders

This website serves as a digital repository for records (and informative interpretations of those sources) relating to the 1888 Whitechapel murders case attributed to notorious British serial killer Jack the Ripper. It has been created as a student project for the University of Michigan School of Information's SI 580 course. We hope that this page helps you to orient yourself within the varied resources and narratives available here. 

For an introduction to the Jack the Ripper case, the Whitechapel district of London, and Victorian life in 1888, visit our Welcome page.

For access to all records included in this online repository, start on our Sources page. The search bar in the upper right corner of the website may also a useful way to navigate the records and interpretive passages by keyword. 

For information on evidence presented during investigation of the case, explore the records and interpretation on our Correspondence and Suspects pages. 

For information on the spectacle made of the Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel crimes in the late nineteenth century and how public imagination about the killer shaped and was shaped by literature of the time, tour the records and interpretation on our Correspondence, Newspapers, Political Cartoons, and Other Periodicals, and Fiction pages. 

For information on the real people involved in the case and the human context often missing from many Jack the Ripper narratives, examine the records and interpretation on our Victims, Suspects, and Vital Records pages. 

For information about the theory, goals, and intentions behind this digital archive, read our Project Description page. 

For information about our project team and members' contributions to this digital archive, click on our Authors page. 

For source information as well as scholarship related to archival science and further study of the 1888 Whitechapel murders, go to our References page.