Author: Richard Jones

The Victorian newspapers were sometimes very quick off the mark to name suspects in murder cases, often on very spurious grounds. Often, those suspects could do little but try and live with the sudden notoriety that the press […]

Reading the reports of the exchanges that took place in the Victorian police courts can prove both a fascinating and tedious exercise. Some cases are gripping, and you really do want to learn more about the various protagonists […]

Since the inception of the Metropolitan police force in 1829, by the then Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, a major fear was that the force itself might become a government force that would be used against the interest […]

In the days before fingerprinting became an established method for identifying perpetrators of crimes, anthropometry was the scientific system used by police to identify criminals. Prior to that, criminals could only be identified by name or photograph. LAXITY […]

On Monday, March 31st 1845, Mary Brothers was murdered by a client in a room at a house of ill-repute in George Street, in the St Giles district of West London. Early in April, a suspect was arrested […]

On Monday, March 31st, 1845, a savage murder occurred in the St Giles quarter of west London in which the victim’s life prior to her demise bore chilling similarities to the Jack the Ripper murders that would occur […]

Although the Jack the Ripper murders were shocking, they were just a series of murders that took place in an area where numerous shocking homicides occurred on an alarmingly regular basis. Take, for example, the following story that […]

In March, 1931, residents  the hamlet of Gipsey Bridge, near Boston, in Lincolnshire, began receiving letters that purported to come from Jack the Ripper. In a previous article, we told the story of the letter sent to Mr […]

Today we bring you one of our in-depth videos that takes a closer look at the actual Whitechapel murders victims. In this episode we take a look at the life and the death of Martha Tabram (1849 – […]

Well, as we emerge from the wild winter, or wildish winter, into the sunny (hey, I’m an optimist if nothing else!) days of spring, it is time for another of our fiendishly cunning Jack the Ripper quizzes, TAKE […]