Month: June 2017

There can be no doubt that London in the 1880’s was in the grip of an, all too familiar, gang problem. The so-called “fighting gangs of London” were, very much, a blight on Victorian society – so much […]

When studying newspaper accounts of the Jack the Ripper crimes – and, for that matter, of other crimes that took place in London during the 1880’s – one often comes across references to police procedure and how an […]

It is a well-known fact that two police forces investigated the Jack the Ripper crimes of 1888 – The Metropolitan Police (on whose territory the majority of the victims were murdered) and The City of London Police (on […]

On August 31st, 1888, Mary Nichols became the first victim of the killer who would become known as “Jack the Ripper.” The lack of motive, coupled with the sheer brutality of the mutilations inflicted on her body led […]

As I have mentioned in several previous blogs, the reputation of Whitechapel as an abyss of vice, villainy and poverty had been firmly established in the public consciousness long before the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 drew […]