Mary Kelly broke the pattern that had defined four earlier Whitechapel murders. Her killer did not strike her down on a dark street but inside her own rented room at Millers Court, a tiny space off Dorset Street where he had hours, not minutes, to work unseen. On this day in 1888, a rent collector sent to chase six weeks of unpaid arrears peered through a broken windowpane and found her body so extensively mutilated that her appearance in life could never be established.
She was identified only by her former partner, who recognised her by the ear and the eyes alone. An inquest returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown, and despite a police pardon offered to any accomplice who came forward, no one was ever charged. Kelly is widely considered the Rippers final and most savage victim, and his identity has remained one of history's most notorious unsolved mysteries ever since.
