Jack the Ripper is the pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area of London in the second half of 1888. Victims were women earning income as casual prostitutes. Typical Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the cadaver was subjected to abdominal and sometimes other mutilations. Many now believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them. Due to the nature of the wounds on some presumed Ripper victims, several of whom had internal organs removed, it has been proposed that the killer had a degree of surgical or medical skill, or was perhaps a butcher, although this point, like most of the beliefs about the killer and facts in the case, is in dispute. nobledeath-stock is where the stock image is from The fog is a spiritsighs brush