JACK THE RIPPER 1888
The Jack the Ripper murders occurred in the East End of London in 1888, and, although
the ripper was only a threat to a very small section
of the community in a relatively small part of London, the murders had a huge impact on society as a whole.
Despite the fact that no-one was ever brought to justice or charged for the crimes there have, over the years, been more than a hundred named suspects who may or may not have been Jack the Ripper. Some of those suspects are fascinating.
Others are down right ridiculous. Yet one thing is certain. No matter how unlikely the names of those that appear on the ever expanding list of suspects might be, the on going challenge of "nailing" the ripper has helped keep this series of crimes at the forefront of criminal and social history for almost 120 years. But the Jack the Ripper murders also serve as a reminder of a not too distant past when a whole section of London society fought a daily battle against poverty and starvation.
Jack-the-ripper.org will look closely at the fascinating social history that the Whitechapel murders enable us to delve in to. Of course the murders were also the focus of a huge criminal
investigation that saw the Victorian police pit there wits against a lone assassin who was perpetrating his crimes in one of London's most densely populated and crime ridden quarters.
As such the murders also provide a window through which we can watch that investigation as it unfolded. We will look at the methods the police used to try and track the killer and compare them with the methods that the police would use today. We will ask, and hopefully answer, the question why didn't the police catch Jack the Ripper?
But we will also discuss the restrictions that hampered the detectives who hunted the killer. One of the more intriguing aspects of the Jack the Ripper murders is the amount of worldwide newspaper coverage that they generated. Journalists converged on the streets of the east End to report on the killings and were often appalled by the diabolical living conditions that they encountered. But they also realised that these murders sold newspapers, and so they attempted to bring as much salacious detail as possible to the reading public. In so doing they turned five sordid East End murders into an international phenomena and catapulted the unknown miscreant responsible into the realm of legend.
So please enjoy the site and use it in any way that you see fit. It is our intention that the site will grow and increase as a valuable resource that can be used by teachers, students and anyone who is simply interested in either the Jack the Ripper murders or Victorian social history.
