Reply #16: I'd agree with that

[Prophet 451]

There's a distinct tendancy among Ripperologists to pick someone famous. I suspect it's left over from the "Champagne Charlie" images of upper-class decadance that have been part of the British class struggle for centuries.

Working class is almost certain. Unemployed is more difficult since being unemployed in Victorian London meant you starved. He was almost certainly mentally ill in some fashion although it's difficult to say whether he was legally insane without a suspect. Sadly, that gives us too many suspects. Bedlam and Colney Hatch would have been full of people who matched that description although there is one man that I suspect that show may have been talking about. The McNaughten memo lists him as Aaron Kosminski but Kosminski was never violent. It seems that Macnaughten got the name confused and was actually referring to a different Polish Jew, also incarcerated at Colney Hatch who was extremely violent and is listed as "David Cohen" (common police name for Jews at the time, roughly equivelent to "John Doe").