Whitechapel murders
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The Whitechapel murders were committed in London's poverty-stricken Whitechapel district in the East End between August and November 1888.[1] Because of when the killings began, civilians also referred to them as happening in the Autumn of Terror.[2]
To the public eye, all five victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—were local prostitutes whom the serial killer Jack the Ripper murdered. In truth, all but Kelly were undercover British Assassins tasked by the Master Assassin Jacob Frye with killing Jack, who was a fellow Assassin that had adopted a twisted version of the Creed and turned rogue after years of unresolved and improperly-treated childhood trauma.
Despite police from the Metropolitan and City of London forces as well as the volunteer Whitechapel Vigilance Committee conducting enquiries and searching for Jack, their efforts proved fruitless and he evaded capture. Only Inspector Frederick Abberline recognized Jack's aptitude for targeted killings and ability to avoid detection as skills he had seen decades before when Jacob and Evie Frye helped break the British Templars' centuries-old stranglehold over the city. When Evie was summoned home from India, Abberline enlisted her expertise in capturing Jack. Ultimately, Evie confronted and killed the rogue Assassin beneath Lambeth Asylum and requested that Abberline keep Jack's identity and former allegiance a secret.
In the immediate years after, the murders highlighted the East End's destitute nature that municipal legislation ordered be improved.[1] Because Jack's name was never officially recorded, he remained an anonymous figure whose mystery and brutal acts continued to occupy public imagination for centuries and into the present.
History[edit | edit source]
Initial murders[edit | edit source]
After the Frye twins defeated the British Templar Grand Master Crawford Starrick's schemes to control the British Empire in 1868,[3] London enjoyed 20 years of peace and stability.[2] Sometime after Jacob and his orphaned[4] apprentice Jack returned from training with the Indian Assassins,[5] Jack usurped control of the Rooks in pursuit of his own idealized version of the Creed and extremist view of the Assassins' mission. The Whitechapel murders of 1888 were a direct result of Jacob opposing his renegade apprentice.[6]
In an attempt to bring an end to Jack's plans, Jacob sent Assassins stop his former student as undercover prostitutes[7] by adopting the aliases of Mary Ann Nichols,[8] Annie Chapman,[9] Elizabeth Stride,[10] and Catherine Eddowes.[11] However, Jack brutally killed them all—first slashing the throat of "Nichols", disemboweling "Chapman", and then repeating these acts with "Eddowes" and "Stride", respectively[1]—and thereafter began going by the pseudonym "Jack the Ripper."[7][4] To London, these murders marked the extent of Whitechapel's widespread moral decay while also starting the dispersion of terror in the city.[2][7]
Assassin intervention[edit | edit source]
Media coverage of the murders eventually increased, with Jack capitalizing on it by kidnapping the publisher Arthur Weaversbrook's son and coercing Arthur into mass-publishing copies of his "Dear Boss" letter to further spread his name and terror.[12] Jacob picked up on Jack's intentions and confronted Weaversbrook on the night that "Eddowes" and "Stride" were murdered, demanding that Weaversbrook stop publicizing the Ripper's letters and turning him into a legend.[2] Jack, having anticipated Jacob's meeting, chased his former mentor to his lodgings, where Jacob was overpowered,[2] kidnapped, and locked up beneath Lambeth Asylum.[13]
Before his abduction, Jacob had requested that his sister Evie return to London from India to help apprehend Jack. Evie, with the assistance of the Metropolitan Police Inspector Frederick Abberline, eventually brought about the end of the Ripper murders.[7] She first killed Jack's right-hand woman and intelligence operative Olwyn Owers,[14] and then John Billingsworth, the chief warder of decommissioned ships in Deptford repurposed as prison hulks for Jack's hostages.[15]
With Evie having foiled his plans, Jack responded by eliminating any witnesses and evidence at Deptford that could link him to the Assassins.[16] He then lured Evie into a reunion with her brother at Lambeth, where he killed Doctor Archer, nurse Whitney, and Director Bradford, all staff members who had abused him and had memory of his childhood internment there.[17]
Aware that she was being led into a trap, Evie went to the asylum and fought through many inmates that Jack had released to delay her. Beneath the asylum, she fought Jack and more inmates under his command, defeating them all in combat and ending the Whitechapel murders by killing the Assassin deserter.[13]
Aftermath[edit | edit source]
Following Jack's death, Evie rescued Jacob from Lambeth just as Abberline arrived on the scene with journalists not far behind. Evie informed him of Jack's Assassin allegiance and asked that he help her in keeping it a secret. Though discomforted at the idea, he called off the journalists, and Jack's identity was forever rendered a mystery to the public.[13]
Although Jack's murders were ultimately brought to an end before they could escalate further, his legacy of terror remained a dark chapter in both London's and the Brotherhood's history. In 2016, when the former Templar Sebastian Monroe observed that Jack, as a former Assassin, held the dubious honor of being history's most infamous serial killer, the Assassin Griffin angrily stated that Jack had never been a true Assassin and that it was the Brotherhood that had stopped him.[18]
Gallery[edit | edit source]
-
The first victim, "Mary Ann Nichols" -
The second victim, "Annie Chapman" -
The third victim, "Elizabeth Stride" -
The fourth victim, "Catherine Eddowes" -
The last victim, Mary Jane Kelly
Appearances[edit | edit source]
- Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper (first appearance)
- Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods (indirect mention only)
- Echoes of History – Behind the Legends (mentioned only)
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2
Whitechapel murders on Wikipedia
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Prologue
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – A Night to Remember
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – The Mother of All Crimes
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – The Unfortunates
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Database: Jack's Gang: The Rooks
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Autumn of Terror
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Database: Mary Ann Nichols
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Database: Annie Chapman
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Database: Elizabeth Stride
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Database: Catherine Eddowes
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Letters of Intent
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Live by the Creed, Die by the Creed
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – The Lady Talks
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Prisoners
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Loose Ends
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Syndicate – Jack the Ripper – Family Reunion
- ↑ Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods – Chapter 23
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