Jack the Ripper (Historical Essays Book 1)

Jack the Ripper: Media, Culture, History

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While many in the West End viewed the crimes as a logical result of conditions in East London, the reaction of the East End was marked by anti-semitism, xenophobia, and hostility towards the police, intensifying social divisions which already existed. The Metropolitan Police had vast powers available to solve the Whitechapel murders.

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By an examination of the sorts of people who were suspected of committing the Whitechapel murders, one can get a sense of the racial prejudices and class tensions that were very much a part of Victorian life. The police and press exhibited a strong suspicion of foreigners and Jews from the beginning of the investigation.

The London Times published several articles from their Vienna correspondent during the first week of October on the trial of a Galician Jew charged with the mutilation of a woman near Cracow. On 2 October another report from Vienna stated that one method for a Jewish man to atone for the sin of sexual relations with a Christian woman was to kill and mutilate her.

Nor is there any record. I was apprehensive that if the writing were left it would be the means of causing a riot. Jews were not the only ones to be suspected or arrested. A number of non-Jewish foreigners also fell under suspicion. Some detectives felt that anarchists or nihilists in the East End were behind the killings.

Media, culture, history

Another man, with an American accent, was arrested because his features supposedly matched the admittedly vague police description. Even more exotic suspects were found in the Malays and Lascars of east London. Chief Inspector Abberline felt that the murders were neither typically British nor Jewish. The mentally ill were naturally suspected.

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The suspicion of lunatics followed from the common belief that no sane Englishman would commit such brutal crimes. If the murders could not be tied to a foreigner, then the guilty Englishman must be insane.

Those whose stories were due to alcohol were often fined; others with more serious psychological problems were placed under restraint in an asylum. The police rigorously attempted to clear east London of anyone who seemed unbalanced. Some suspects brought in for questioning were determined to be insane and were also placed into confinement. Theories that the killer did not come from the poverty-stricken East End were neither common nor popular in the West during the autumn of The belief that the Ripper belonged to a higher class of society than both his victims and the usual suspects, however, found greater resonance among the less prosperous and educated in the East.

The two main theories were that the killer was either a religious fanatic intent on ridding the world of prostitution or a medical doctor. Winslow early in the investigation. The theory that the Ripper was a doctor was more widely respected. In essence, the case against the medical profession revolved around the question of whether the killer needed to possess surgical skills and instruments to have performed his grisly dissections. Some believed, as Dr.

At the close of the inquest for Anne Chapman on 26 September, Dr.

Jack the Ripper

For instance, no mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations. It must have been someone accustomed to the post-mortem room. Debate also raged about what sort of weapon the Ripper used to kill and mutilate his victims. The discovery or accurate description of this instrument might have given a clue as to the class or profession of the murderer. As early as the second week in September, the coroner stated that a surgical knife might have been used.

By mid-October, anyone carrying a small black bag, one of the symbols of the medical profession, in east London was suspected of being the killer.

It was commonly believed that there was a market for such organs. Bennett, in a letter to the Times in late September, exclaimed that such theories were just an attempt to defame the medical profession and should not be believed. To this day, however, many suspect that a doctor was, in fact, involved in the murders. Members of a number of other occupations were suspected of being involved in the Whitechapel horrors.

Men with such diverse livelihoods as bootmakers, cork-cutters, butchers, slaughterers, sailors and servicemen on leave attracted the attention of the police.

During the inquest for Catherine Eddowes in mid-October , Drs. George Sequeira and William Saunders stated that the killer did not possess medical skills or knowledge of anatomy. At the same time, Drs. There has been nothing done to these poor women that an expert butcher could not do almost in the dark.

Since the police had no witnesses to the murders and few leads to follow, it cast a wide dragnet in the hopes that the killer would fortuitously fall into their hands.

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Whitechapel was densely populated with foreigners, Jews, and drifters of one sort or another; thus, these were obvious groups to target. The attaching of suspicion to butchers, slaughterhouse workers, and boot-makers, because of their proficiency with knives,also seemed to be reasonable. The attempt to round up all the mentally unbalanced of Whitechapel may well have been a sensible precaution. The suspects taken together, however, produce not a portrait of one killer, but a catalogue of those considered by the West End to be brutal and callous enough to perform such deeds.

Much as in the East End, the police and press revealed their xenophobia and anti-semitism.

There is a third element which enters the West End equation—that of class. The brutality exhibited by the Whitechapel murderer was felt to be confined to the lower classes. Few in the West would have argued with the following logic: For most middle and upper class Victorians, the relationships between poverty, poor sanitation, immorality, and crime were too strongly entrenched to be challenged. Examples of this phenomenon are numerous. The reaction of the East End reflected a different tone entirely. From the first, there seems to have been a genuine desire on the part of the vast majority of those living in the East to aid in the capture of the Ripper.

Local tradesmen formed vigilance committees and helped to patrol the streets at night.

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