III. The Legacy of Jack the Ripper in Literature
Although the Ripper’s identity is still unknown, the legacy of Jack the Ripper remains prevalent in literature emerging in the last two centuries. The Ripper appeared in fiction as early as 1897, when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published. Many of the themes in the story are thought to be inspired by the Ripper killings. Dracula is a Ripper-like character: dark, mysterious, and deadly. He turns women into vampires, similar to how the Ripper gruesomely murdered women. Dracula is also hunted down by Van Helsing, like the Ripper was hunted by the police.
The Ripper also appeared in popular fiction throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. Marie Belloc Lowndes published The Lodger
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Yet still, after over a hundred years, contemporary observers are enthralled with all the possibilities of who the Ripper was. Seven women (and presumably more) were brutally mutilated in the streets of Whitechapel in 1888. They were all women of the lower class, and prostitutes who found themselves alone at night when the Ripper chose them as his victims. According to Dew, “it will never be known just what were the powers of fascination Jack the Ripper held over women. There must have been something about him that inspired immediate confidence in those he selected as his victims.”
These gruesome killings took place in a short eight-month period. The case was almost forgotten by the press by the beginning of 1889. In the Whitechapel murders file, the last report was written on October 18, 1896, by Detective Chief Inspector Henry Moore. The report regarded the reception of another letter supposedly written by the Ripper, claiming Jack would return. Based on his investigation of the correspondence, Moore did not believe the letter had any connection to the previous letters nor any merit regarding the Ripper