Now, to my opinions and thoughts regarding this thread. I know you're all *dying* to hear them,
At any rate, some personal info first. I first became interested in Jack the Ripper when I was around 6. Yes, I was a morbid kid.
The thing that interested me at the time, and continues to do so the most, is the mystery. Yes, we'll probably never know who committed these crimes, but it's the mystery that first draws us in. That we learn, by extension, about the horrible conditions in Victorian times is a bonus. That we learn how hard things were for poor women, (and really, how little that has changed,) is a bonus. But you do come to know about, and care about, Catherine Eddowes, Liz Stride, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, and Mary Kelly. You learn about their lives, and the conditions they lived in. It takes away all the 'romantic' veneer of that time, and that place.
Having said that, almost since the crimes actually took place, there's been far more ficticious about Jack The Ripper than there has been fact. This figure has become a pop culture icon, a figure that's much more fantasy than reality in the vast majority of peoples' eyes. Yes, there was this real case, but when you have the evil spirit that made the Ripper and others trying to take over Scotty in Star Trek in the 60's, then you're a figure more of myth than of reality.
People use the Ripper as allegory all the time, as in the excellent graphic novel and film, 'From Hell', where the aim was not to be historically accurate, etc, but to use this figure to point out flaws in society, in humanity, and in that time and place. Or the awesome 'Time After Time', which pitted David Warner's Ripper against Malcolm McDowell's H. G. Wells, using the Ripper in that film to reflect how violent our society has become. I'm betting that, given my experience, there's as many, if not more, fictional accounts of Jack The Ripper vs. Sherlock Holmes than there are of Holmes vs. Dracula. I'm betting that there's more fiction about Jack The Ripper than there is fiction about almost any other historical figure.
This mysterious figure has become a modern boogeyman. A boogeyman we think of as a well-dressed, almost certainly wealthy man in a black Victorian suit of some sort, with a top hat and large billowing cape. This popular vision is pure conjecture and fiction. We can make educated guesses about what Jack may have looked like, but we really haven't a clue, and probably never will, and it's not important. When people see that visual image, they connect it to this modern boogeyman, and to the fiction surrounding it. That it's 'true' just makes it more of a draw, but in fact, most of what is in popular culture about Jack is about as 'based on reality' as Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Psycho were based on their actual inspiration of Ed Gein, which is to say, not very rooted in fact at all.
Therefore, I submit that a figure based on this romantic (definitions: without a basis in fact; fanciful, fictitious, or fabulous, not practical; visionary or quixotic) notion of Jack The Ripper is no more offensive than figures based on Norman Bates, Leatherface, or Dracula. The popular image of The Ripper is so far removed from fact, that it has very little to do with the actual case at this point. It's exactly because we don't, and probably never will, know for certain who this murderer was, that he lends himself so well to ficticious retellings of the story, and to becoming the pop culture icon he has, in fact, become.
