What social class did Jack the Ripper belong to?

[mpriestnall]

Working class, middle class, or upper class?

Just for the sake of this poll I've cobbled, I mean carefully crafted, the following rough definitions from the t'internet:

Working Class:
The social group that consists of people who earn little money, often being paid only for the hours or days that they work, and who usually do
manual work or industrial work.

Middle Class:
The social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business people and their families.
Consists of people well-educated people, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers, who have good jobs and are not poor, but are not very rich.

Upper Class:
The group of people who have the highest position and the most social and economic influence in a society, especially the aristocracy.
"it is important that the children of the upper class attend the ‘right’ school".

Martyn

[Abby Normal]

upper working class. steady job

[DJA]

Physician and Lecturer on Pathology London Hospital. MB London, FRCP.

Middle class.

[Scott Nelson]

Wasn't Sutton considered Upper Class?

[DJA]

Voted and commented as per OP.

He resided in a cottage at Sevenoaks,Kent. Previously next door to Gull in Finsbury Square.
Did employ a maid for himself,wife and a daughter.
Meh, upper middle class.

[Sam Flynn]

upper working class. steady job

How so? There's nothing to suggest that he couldn't have been a casual worker.

[Losmandris]

Working class local lad aged between 25 and 35. Probably working in some kind of profession on a steady basis during the day. I would be interested in what people may think what type of job he had? Butcher or slaughter man is often banded about, any credence to this theory?

[Sam Flynn]

I'd lean more towards a local working-class man in his 30s or 40s, broadly in the same age range as the victims.

I'm not so sure that he would have been steadily employed, because at least 3 out of 5 canonical victims were killed in the early hours of what would have been working days. No doubt he was prowling the streets on other days of the week too, but without success.

[Harry D]

Local(ish) guy, lower/working class. Probably frustrated with all the immigrants flooding the neighbourhoods, hence the GSG.

[Wickerman]

I'm more inclined to see this killer as belonging to the same class as Dr. Neil Cream, George Chapman or Montie Druitt, so sort of or close to 'middle-class'.
For sure he was one of the many suspects described as 'respectably dressed'.
He wasn't a local as we might define the regular working class lodgers, and he almost certainly had a room to himself.
I think if the killer had been a local, given the intense interest across the East End, and the fact everyone was watching each other, and all the finger pointing going on, he would have been flushed out.
There had to be something reassuring and not alarming or suspicious about his demeanor, so someone who represented safety and respectability by his appearance and manners.

[Losmandris]

I'm more inclined to see this killer as belonging to the same class as Dr. Neil Cream, George Chapman or Montie Druitt, so sort of or close to 'middle-class'.
For sure he was one of the many suspects described as 'respectably dressed'.
He wasn't a local as we might define the regular working class lodgers, and he almost certainly had a room to himself.
I think if the killer had been a local, given the intense interest across the East End, and the fact everyone was watching each other, and all the finger pointing going on, he would have been flushed out.
There had to be something reassuring and not alarming or suspicious about his demeanor, so someone who represented safety and respectability by his appearance and manners.

Good points. Would it have been possible to have carried out these crimes and lived in a common lodging house?

[mpriestnall]

upper working class. steady job

Jack's state of employment is an interesting question. Sam raises the possiblity as Jack had casual employment.

From Bond's profile: "also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation, but with some small income or pension".

I guess Bond is saying he needed some income but was trying to explain the irregular time he was keeping, shown in the timing of the murders?

I would offer an alternative view on JTR. Jack was middle class who ran his own small business and as such didn't need to answer to anyone
as to what hours he worked. Also the nature of his business might have entailed irregular hours. Therefore he could have been just as likely in full
employment as non, or partial employment. Which I suppose doesn't get us anywhere...

Just an alternative view.

Martyn

[mpriestnall]

I'm more inclined to see this killer as belonging to the same class as Dr. Neil Cream, George Chapman or Montie Druitt, so sort of or close to 'middle-class'.
For sure he was one of the many suspects described as 'respectably dressed'.
He wasn't a local as we might define the regular working class lodgers, and he almost certainly had a room to himself.
I think if the killer had been a local, given the intense interest across the East End, and the fact everyone was watching each other, and all the finger pointing going on, he would have been flushed out.
There had to be something reassuring and not alarming or suspicious about his demeanor, so someone who represented safety and respectability by his appearance and manners.

I pretty much agree with all this.

Martyn

[APerno]

If I am making a Hollywood film he is a West End surgeon with top hat and cape, driving a black carriage through the streets of Whitechapel; clicking down the cobblestones, a giant black steed snorts steam from its nostrils. When not at his trade (of butchering whores) you can find him in Leicester Square rubbing elbows with the theater crowd.

But if I actually want to find him I am looking for a horse slaughterer or hog butcher living south of Commercial Street (I don't buy Stride as a victim; south of Commercial Street was his safe zone, he didn't kill there.) He lived a site better than the poverty to his north; employed full time he lives alone, a recent widow, or if never married, he has just lost his mother, with whom he had been living.

He was working class!

[Sam Flynn]

There had to be something reassuring and not alarming or suspicious about his demeanor...

Would not a fellow member of the working-class be less suspicious, Jon? As for respectability - you can be poor and still respectable in appearance. Besides, apart from Hutchinson's suspect, most witness descriptions paint a pcture of a rather ordinary looking Ripper. Finally, as for ruling him out as a local because everyone was watching and he'd have been flushed out... a killer who struck in the middle of the night... in Whitechapel, a neighbourhood with so many rootless lost souls?