Author: Richard Jones

The summer of 1888 was a total wash out. and by the August if that year people were beginning to wonder if they would actually get to see any semblance of summer. The Edinburgh Evening News,  on Thursday, […]

Whitechapel could be a violent place in the 19th century. All manner of crimes took place there, and some of them were as brutal as those perpetrated by the murderer who would come to be known as Jack […]

Poverty was endemic in the Victorian East End of London. In fact, it was endemic all across London. If there was one thing that the Jack the Ripper murders did, it was attract press attention to the plight […]

The year is six months old – can you believe it! But. through thick and thin, rain or shine, the one constant has been our Jack the Ripper quizzes. Month after month we put out these challenges to […]

Leonard Matters book The Mystery of Jack The Ripper was published in May 1929, and is now acknowledged as the first major study dedicated to the Whitechapel Murders. Today the book is a must-have on a shelf on […]

It is incredible how many letters purporting to have been written by “Jack the Ripper” were being written and circulated in the aftermath of the receipt of the original “Dear Boss” letter in September, 1888. Indeed, the letter-writers, […]

People have always argued over, what to the World outside can seem minor or even inappropriate things. Take, for example, the following “row” that occurred at a funeral, and which was reported by The North Briton on Saturday, […]

Jack London’s book The People of the Abyss, was first published in November, 1903, and, even today, separated as we are by 118 years from the pictures he portrays of East End poverty, it makes for uncomfortable reading. […]

In 1914, Sir Melville Macnaghten, the retired former chief of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, published his memoirs, which he titled Days Of My Years. Although he wasn’t actually a member of the Metropolitan Police at […]

The Victorian East End of London could be a brutal place, and nobody was safe from random attacks as they walked the streets of the district at any time of the day or night. Gangs of ruffians, were […]