A forensic linguistic analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters

Description

In the autumn of 1888 London was shocked by a series of murders that would be remembered for over a century. The perpetrator of these murders, known only as ‘Jack the Ripper’, was never caught, leading to numerous theories about their identity. At the time of the investigations and up until years later, more than 200 letters signed ‘Jack the Ripper’ were received across the UK. Historians agree that most if not all of these letters were certainly written by hoaxers. Among the very first letters of this kind, two of them were key in creating the ‘Jack the Ripper’ legend and historians today believe that these were fabricated by journalists to boost newspaper sales. This talk presents results of an authorship analysis of these letters aimed at identifying which were written by the same person. The analysis focuses on lexicogrammatical constructions that characterise the idiolect of ‘Jack the Ripper’. In addition to constituting new evidence in the case, these findings also lead to intriguing implications for the nature of idiolect and for modern Cognitive and Forensic Linguistics.

Period	7 Nov 2025
Event title	Forensic Linguistics and History Symposium
Event type	Other
Location	Birmingham, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International