Jack the Ripper and the city of London (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Ubiquitous Absence of Jack: 'Ripper Street' and the (Neo-)Victorian Obsession
Despite the title reference, the BBC’s 'Ripper Street' 2012‒2014) was not intended as another Jack the Ripper story; the infamous killer’s absence is acutely felt in its first three seasons, though. The paper examines the way his acts are being recalled for the characters and viewers, but also reconstructed in a performance and copycat murders, and how, even though the Ripper is long gone, people may become his victims. The absence as echoed in the series plot and setting is a commentary on both the Victorian and modern fascination with the unsolved case.
Not of this earth: Jack the Ripper and the development of Gothic Whitechapel
M/C Journal, 2014
These five women, all prostitutes, were victims of an unknown assailant commonly referred to by the epithet 'Jack the Ripper', forming an official canon which excludes at least thirteen other cases around the same time. As the Ripper was never identified or caught, he has attained an almost supernatural status in London's history and literature, immortalised alongside other iconic figures such as Sherlock Holmes. And his killing ground, the East End suburb of Whitechapel, has become notorious in its own right.
Dissecting Jack-the-Ripper : An Anatomy of Murder in the Metropolis
Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 2016
murders in the light of the new medical information introduced. This, it will be argued, facilitates a cold case review. Section 4 builds on that revisionist approach by concentrating on the medical fragments of the fifth murder victim's life. It will be argued that Mary Jane Kelly's killing could have been crucial to the social camouflage of Jack. Attention is paid to her links to the others murders, including Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim, whose connection to Dorset Street was not obvious at the time and therefore requires historical scrutiny. This article's anatomy of murder in the metropolis is, hence, all about dissecting Jack-the-Ripper's medical disguise to expose his dreary but deadly cover story to public scrutiny for the first time since the late-Victorian era. Death on Dorset Street : Remapping the Medical Scenery 2 The term 'East-End', as the name implies, has been used to describe an area of the capital city that runs eastwards outside the medieval wall of the old City of London, down towards the large docks north of the River Thames. In Victorian times it became synonymous with derogative slang, 'the blackspot'. Charles Booth in in his Life and Labour of the London People called it a place of "misery, vice, and a cesspool into which the most degraded had sunk". 3 The East-End was filled with parishes in which economic deprivation was deep. 4 It was riddled with death, dearth, and disease, where criminal activities of all descriptions defied the rule of law. Popular penny-dreadful novels of the period often featured sinister characters walking its streets. These were dangerous assailants, the vicious and semi-criminal. Few denied that the dirty slums were crisscrossed by a dense network of alleyways, courtyards, and poorly constructed lodginghouses that fronted brothels. Overcrowding was common and life-expectancy low. The East-End certainly had a distinctive street-culture of bar brawls and prostitutes fighting to protect their pitches. Most nights, rough justice broke out on nearly every streetscene. The presence of so many large workhouses-at Lambeth and Whitechapel in particular-located next door to imposing infirmaries along the Mile End Roadsymbolised inescapable destitution. 5 At the life-cycle crises of birth, in pregnancy, and old age, few of the poorest had any money for basic healthcare. Poor Law institutions became a last resort call in the makeshift economy of the labouring poor. 6 For others, two doubledip recessions in 1876-1884 and again in 1893-1895 caused employment levels to plummet, cheapening piece-labour, and reducing wages below subsistence levels. During the 1880s, the East-End was not somewhere from where it was possible to work one's way out. The area was one huge poverty trap. Those who fell from relative poverty to absolute poverty could never hope to reverse their dire economic plight. If Jack-the-Ripper wanted to get away with murder, then in the East-End there were plenty of potential female victims living very vulnerable lives on the outer margins of respectable late-Victorian society. 3 All commentators on the Jack-the-Ripper case files agree with Paul Begg that : "It has to be acknowledged that Dorset Street features prominently in the story of most of the victims". 7 At least four of the five iconic fatalities known to have been brutal murders committed by the same serial killer happened along this street-scene and this is therefore a location that merits being revisited with fresh historical eyes. Before embarking on a sightseeing tour of the street-scene, there are three things that need to be kept in mind. Firstly, there was something about this street-scene that a murderer like Jack valued
From The Lodger (1913) to From Hell (2001): Uncanny Portraits of Jack the Ripper?
In this paper, the author read Henry James's The Awkward Age and Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway's Party, in order to demonstrate the dialectical moment of London's age and ageless. The age of London is in the character of literary works, as Clarissa Dalloway comes to show the reader her feelings while walking on the London street. At the gate of St James Park, she has the dialectical moment of feeling "very young; at the same time unspeakably aged" . That is a moment which represents a particular sense of personal history, when the past comes into one's own living present.
The Jack the Ripper murders of the nineteenth century elicited numerous reactions from the public at the time. While these reactions had an effect on many aspects of society, the two that were most interestingly affected were class and gender. The known Jack the Ripper murders occurred between August and November of 1888 and involved five women from Whitechapel, London. Each of these women was a member of the working class and most were prostitutes. The culture of nineteenth century London was dominated by tension between the upper/middle class and the working class. The Jack the Ripper murders created a perfect setting that heightened the already existing division. The tensions between middle class and working class extended even further into the realm of gender. The Social Purity Movement of the nineteenth century created a division between the middle class women and working class women. The Jack the Ripper murders pushed the middle class stigma of working class women even further. The middle class women already saw working class women as beneath them because of their practices and professions, but the murders added even more consequences to the lifestyle of a working class woman. To research this topic, I have looked at a number of newspapers, such as The Times, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Manchester Guardian for articles from the 1880's about Whitechapel and reports on the murders. From these newspapers, I looked for articles that covered different topics pertaining to the crimes such as possible suspects, women, and London culture. This topic is important because it shows how a series of violent murders can turn into much more than a scandalous and interesting story when the setting is right, and the setting of nineteenth century London was right. While the Jack the Ripper murders continue to be of interest to people because of the ambiguity surrounding the suspect, the people of the nineteenth century were interested in the crimes for much deeper reasons than that. The upper and middle class saw the crimes as a lens through which they viewed the working class and vice versa. The Jack the Ripper murder brought to light many of the deeper conflicts in London society.