Split of personality: Multiple personality disorder, a neurosis in which the personality becomes dissociated into two or more distinct parts each of which becomes dominant and controls behavior from time to time to the exclusion of the other parts. A modern name for this condition is dissociative identity disorder.

Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. In both the criminal case files and contemporary journalistic accounts, the killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

In the mid-19th century, Britain experienced an influx of Irish immigrants who swelled the populations of the major cities, including the East End of London. From 1882, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Tsarist Russia and other areas of Eastern Europe emigrated into the same area.[2] The parish of Whitechapel in London’s East End became increasingly overcrowded, with the population increasing to approximately 80,000 inhabitants by 1888.[3] Work and housing conditions worsened, and a significant economic underclass developed.[4] Fifty-five percent of children born in the East End died before they were five years old.[5] Robbery, violence, and alcohol dependency were commonplace,[3] and the endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution to survive on a daily basis.[6]

In October 1888, London’s Metropolitan Police Service estimated that there were 62 brothels and 1,200 women working as prostitutes in Whitechapel,[7] with approximately 8,500 people residing in the 233 common lodging-houses within Whitechapel every night,[3] with the nightly price of a single bed being 4d[8] and the cost of sleeping upon a “lean-to” rope stretched across the bedrooms of these houses being 2d for adults or children.[9]

The economic problems in Whitechapel were accompanied by a steady rise in social tensions. Between 1886 and 1889, frequent demonstrations led to police intervention and public unrest, such as Bloody Sunday (1887).[10] Anti-semitism, crime, nativism, racism, social disturbance, and severe deprivation influenced public perceptions that Whitechapel was a notorious den of immorality.[11] Such perceptions were strengthened in the autumn of 1888 when the series of vicious and grotesque murders attributed to “Jack the Ripper” received unprecedented coverage in the media