Author: Richard Jones

Sir Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson (1821 – 1896) was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner from 1869 to 1886. On his appointment to the post, he instantly won over the rank and file officers of the force by abolishing many of […]

The Miss Cass case of 1887, and the subsequent trial of the police officer who had arrested her on suspicion of soliciting for purposes of prostitution on Regent Street, on the evening of the 28th of June 1887, had […]

There can be little doubt that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, began 1888, the year of the Jack the Ripper murders, with an awful lot on his plate! The ramifications of “Bloody Sunday” – November 13th, […]

One of the establishments that crop up time and time again as you research the social history of Victorian London and the plight of the poor in the Metropolis around the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, […]

Although the officers of the Victorian Metropolitan Police Force were expected to adhere to the highest standards of behaviour every so often a police constable appears in the newspapers of the age for having succumbed to temptation; and, in so […]

A question I get asked time and time again in the interviews that I give on the Whitechapel murders is, why is interest in the Jack the Ripper case still so prevalent? It is an intriguing question. If […]

Lady Henry Somerset (1851-1921) was a major campaigner for women’s rights, and a leading exponent of the temperance movement in Victorian England. Her interest in temperance was born of a personal tragedy when a close friend of hers […]

Although, with hindsight, we can now look back and declare that the Jack the Ripper murders had ended by January, 1889 – the Victorian public were unable to enjoy the luxury, not to mention the relief, of such […]

It is always intriguing to catch, possible, glimpses of the victims of Jack the Ripper, prior to their acquiring a tragic immortality by being slain by the perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. Aside from the brutal manner of […]

In December, 1910, the people of London were shocked by the murder of three policemen in what became known as the Houndsditch murders. The murderers were a gang of anarchist Latvian immigrants. The leader of the gang, George Gardstein, […]