Author: Richard Jones

By the 10th of August, 1888, the woman who had been found murdered in George Yard, Whitechapel, had been identified as Martha Turner. The previous day, the inquest into her death had been opened, with Mr. George Collier […]

By choosing as his victims the prostitutes who roamed the night hours of the streets of Spitalfields and Whitechapel, Jack the Ripper confronted the Victorians with a side of society that many of the more “respectable” citizens of […]

On the 7th August 1888, the people of Whitechapel and Spitalfields awoke to news that a mysterious murder had taken place in George Yard, a nondescript turning off Whitechapel High Street. Earlier that day a man leaving his […]

As regular readers of this blog will know, it is my belief that in order to gain a full understanding of the Jack the Ripper crimes you must put them into the context of the era and the […]

Harold Brust was working as the personal attendant to Sir Francis Villiers, British Ambassador to Portugal, when, on 1st February 1908, he witnesses the assassination of King Carlos of Portugal. At the subsequent funeral in Lisbon, he met […]

In 1877 John Thomson (1837 – 1921) began publishing a monthly journal that provided his readers with a vivid insight into how the lower classes lived on, in and around the streets of Victorian London. Entitled Street Life in London, the […]

Today’s blog features another case that took place in London in 1888, the same year as the Jack the Ripper murders, but which was not related. On the 21st of July, 1888, 22 year old Mrs. Annie French, […]

In mid November 1888, with London still reeling from the gruesome details concerning the recent Jack the Ripper murder of Mary Kelly, which had taken place on the 9th November 1888, an attack took place in South London […]

As the newspaper coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders increased, and as it became more than apparent that the police were no nearer to catching the perpetrator than they had been when the crimes began; some ordinary […]

Horace Thorogood (1891 – 1963), was a journalist who covered several well known criminal and historically interesting cases, most notably the trial of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen and the Siege of Sidney Street. He also worked with cartoonist […]