Kelly's mutilated body was discovered in her small room on Dorset Street by her landlord's assistant, in by far the most savage of the Ripper murders. The killing effectively ended the string of at least five unsolved murders that had gripped London in terror since August. Despite an intense police investigation, the killer's identity was never conclusively established, and the case remains one of history's most enduring mysteries.
Mary Jane Kelly, around 25 years old, was the youngest and by most accounts the most severely mutilated of the canonical Jack the Ripper victims. Her landlord's assistant, sent to collect overdue rent, peered through a broken windowpane at her tiny room on Miller's Court and found a scene so horrific that police photographs of it remain difficult to view even today.
Unlike previous victims killed in the open street, Kelly was murdered indoors, giving her attacker the privacy and time to inflict extensive mutilation over a period possibly lasting hours. The scale of violence suggested to investigators, and to the generations of historians and amateur sleuths who followed, an escalation in the killer's rage or confidence.
Scotland Yard, under intense public and press pressure, pursued dozens of suspects, from a Polish immigrant to a barrister to members of the royal household, but conclusively identified none. The murders stopped after Kelly's death, feeding endless speculation, and 'Ripperology' remains a thriving field of amateur and professional investigation into one of criminal history's coldest cases.
Key people: Mary Jane Kelly