Author: Richard Jones

The body of Annie Chapman was found in the backyard of number 29 Hanbury Street at 6 a.m. on September the 8th 1888, by John Davis, an elderly resident of the building. Throughout that weekend, the police presence […]

Whitechapel was widely regarded as one of the most dangerous parts of the Victorian metropolis to police. Indeed, the newspapers of the era contain numerous reports of constables and detectives being confronted by all manner of hazards as […]

On the evening of the shocking murder of Mary Kelly, which took place in Miller’s Court on Friday the 9th of November, 1888, a reporter from The Echo newspaper paid a visit to Dorset Street, the thoroughfare in […]

Conditions in Spitalfields in 1888, could be harsh, especially for the children of the district. There are numerous accounts in the newspapers of the day of children who were abused and even assaulted by their parents – albeit […]

Although the Jack the Ripper murders occurred in the autumn of 1888, there were several deaths of women in the district that, when reading about them, do have certain similarities with the Whitechapel murders victims. Indeed, there were […]

Greetings, salutations, and a very Happy New year to you all. Well, 2022 has now shuffled off this mortal coil, and a month has gone by since we last put a Jack the Ripper quiz before you. So, […]

A favourite pastime for many Victorians around the Christmas period was the telling of ghost stories. Perhaps the best example of this love of supernatural literature was Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But, many newspapers and periodicals also […]

For today’s true crime tale, we head back to January 1881, when a break-in in Battersea almost led to murder. The Diss Express covered the story in its edition of Friday the 7th of January 1881:- ATTEMPTED MURDER […]

Violence was a commonplace occurrence in the Victorian East End. Much of it was fuelled by drink, and, judging by the newspaper reports of the era, drunken brawls could easily end up in murder. Reynolds’s Newspaper, on Sunday […]

On Sunday the 24th of July 1864, Reynolds’s Newspaper published the following article about a supposed murder that had occurred in Whitechapel:- THE ALLEGED MURDER IN WHITECHAPEL On Wednesday, Mr. John Humphreys. the Middlesex coroner, held an inquiry […]