NEW YORK – Was Jack the Ripper a New Yorker?

A new book theorizes the notorious London slasher was Joseph Silver, a vicious crook who did time in Sing Sing prison and earned the title “King of Pimps” in South Africa.

Historian Charles Van Onselen said he stumbled onto “intelligent speculation” about Silver’s true identity during research for a book about his exploits in Johannesburg at the close of the 19th century.

It goes a “pretty long way down the track to proving that this guy was the Ripper,” said Van Onselen, a professor at the University of Pretoria.

He said Silver, a Polish-born Jew, fits the profile of the rage-filled psychopath who terrorized Victorian England, killing at least five London hookers in 1888.

Silver left England soon after the slayings, which would explain the puzzling fact that the terror inexplicably stopped as quickly as it started.

“How many coincidences do you want to mount up in your mind simultaneously?” asked Van Onselen.

Silver spent time as a pimp in the same East London neighborhood where the Ripper roamed.

Then Silver left for New York, where he was busted for burglary and sent to Sing Sing.

He later moved to South Africa, where gold finds turned Johannesburg into a boom town awash in hookers and easy money.

He resurfaced in Europe during World War I, and was executed as a spy in Poland in 1918.

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AP-NY-05-02-07 2046EDT