Every few years, a strange historical rumor resurfaces: that José Rizal might have been the infamous killer known as Jack the Ripper.
The theory usually rests on a few coincidences. Rizal lived in London around the time the murders occurred. He was a trained physician familiar with anatomy. And both names share the initials “J.R.” These coincidences have fueled speculation in books, blogs, and internet discussions.
But one of the strongest pieces of evidence against this theory appears in Rizal’s own writing.
In the April 30, 1890 issue of La Solidaridad, Rizal wrote an article about a controversial incident in Negros involving the Civil Guard and the killing of a prisoner who had already surrendered to authorities.
In the middle of that essay, Rizal made a passing reference to the London murders that had shocked the world two years earlier.
He wrote:
“In London we saw in the case of Jack the Ripper more than ten people suspected…”
Rizal was referring to the intense investigation that took place in London after the Whitechapel murders. Police pursued numerous suspects, but authorities did not simply execute them.
Rizal continued with biting irony:
“If the policemen in charge of him had complied with his duty like the civil guard did in his… but no, there in Europe the police never comply with their duty; here there is Providence.”
The sarcasm was deliberate. Rizal was criticizing colonial authorities in the Philippines who justified the killing of suspects without trial.
The case he described involved a tenant who had killed his landlord but then voluntarily surrendered to the authorities.
Rizal recounts the incident clearly:
“A tenant killed his landlord and immediately presented himself to the authorities, giving an account of what he had done.”
This article is important not only because of what Rizal said about justice in colonial Philippines. It is also important because of how he referred to Jack the Ripper.
Rizal clearly discussed the case as a public observer, someone reading about the investigation in the newspapers and using it as a comparison in his argument.
His statement—“In London we saw in the case of Jack the Ripper more than ten people suspected…”—shows that he was commenting on the investigation just as other writers and readers were doing at the time.
If Rizal had secretly been the killer himself, it would be extraordinarily unlikely that he would publicly analyze the investigation of his own crimes in a political essay.
Rizal’s brief reference to Jack the Ripper therefore reveals something ironic about the conspiracy theory linking him to the murders.
Far from hiding his involvement in the crimes, Rizal treated the case as a well-known public scandal and used it as an example in his critique of colonial injustice.
