Author: Richard Jones

Police Constable Ernest Thompson was the officer who found the body of Frances Coles on Friday 13th February 1892. She may, or may not, have been a victim of Jack the Ripper, but hers is the last of […]

In March 1870 the English press became most excited by suggestions from South London that an industrious Frenchman had succeeded in manufacturing butter from the mud of the River Thames at Battersea. The South London Chronicle, on the 26th […]

Every so often, whilst reading newspaper accounts from the 19th century, you come across a “character” whom the Victorian press seem to have taken to heart and whose antics were, therefore, reported in newspapers the length and breadth […]

Good heavens, it’s September already. It seems like only seconds ago that we were ushering in the New Year and 2016 was all ahead of us. Now there are a mere three months left in the year and […]

Study the plight of the Victorian poor throughout the latter years of the 19th century and the spectre of the workhouse often looms large over newspaper accounts and official reports on their everyday struggles for survival. There are […]

As is evidenced from the number of press reports in our blogs, many other murders took place in the East End of London during the latter half of the 19th century besides the Jack the Ripper atrocities. Indeed, […]

In a previous article I covered the story of the various waxworks that, even whilst the Whitechapel murders were bringing terror and panic to London, were thrilling visitors with crude depictions of the crime scenes and the victims. […]

One of the major problems that the Victorians had to face up to in the latter half of the 19th century was to provide sufficient housing for London’s ever increasing population. The districts of Spitalfields and Whitechapel were […]

A disturbing article from The Maidstone Telegraph in its edition dated Saturday 30th June 1866, demonstrates that murder in Whitechapel, even long before the Jack the Ripper murders occurred, took many forms and had many different types of […]

Since the founding of the force by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, the Metropolitan Police underwent several changes in the style of their uniform throughout the 19th century. As far as Robert Peel was concerned, it was imperative […]