u/Artistic_Bee341

Hi all

I had the thought that the census might be a good place to look for leads on JtR. Searching this sub for posts about the census, the general opinion here seems to be that this is a non-starter because there are tens of thousands of names on the census for Whitechapel alone, as well as the fact that the censuses at the time were not exhaustive lists of residents. These things are both totally true and I understand why people have dismissed the censuses as useful sources of information on JtR. But I think they can still offer us a starting point in terms of possible suspects.

Tens of thousands of names on a list are not that useful, but if we thought of some likely characteristics of JtR then we could narrow it down to a manageable number of names to focus on for a bit more in depth research as possible suspects. Again, this would absolutely not be an exhaustive list of suspects, just some new names that we could look into a bit further as possibilities.

So what are the likely characteristics to search by?

I think most people would say JtR was most likely a male between say 20 and 40.

Many people think he was removed from Whitechapel for whatever reason, which led to an end in the murders, so people present on both 1881 and 1891 could be excluded.

And most narrowing probably would be occupation, which is listed on the census a lot of the time. The anatomical knowledge debate is active, I know, but many people think JtR was probably some sort of butcher/knackerer/slaughterer.

So that main point is, I think electronically searchable versions of the censuses exist, why don't we apply these as filters and come up with a small list of names to have a closer look at? I know there are some real researchers in this community who could dig into the suspects once found!

Again, just to stress, I don't claim to have made a major breakthrough or a way to come up with a complete list which we can narrow down to a definite murderer. I just had a thought about a new avenue for looking for suspects. What do you guys think?

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