Author: Richard Jones

As November, 1888, progressed, the sensation of the Whitechapel murders had, so it seems, led to all manner of cranks, crackpots and practical jokers jumping on the bandwagon and trying to use the fear generated by the atrocities […]

In May, 1888, Samuel Smith, of the National Vigilance Society, stood up in Parliament to complain about the “immense increase of vile literature”, in particular, the works of Émile Zola (1840 – 1902), which, so Smith claimed, were […]

Following the murder of Mary Kelly – which took place in Dorset Street, Spitalfields, on 9th November, 1888, newspapers across the globe began pondering whether the London police force was up to the task of tracking and finding […]

It’s time for another Jack the Ripper Quiz. The November Victorian true crime quiz is designed to test your knowledge of the Whitechapel murders and of the history surrounding them. There are ten questions, which require you to […]

On 25th October, 1891, a prostitute by the name of Hedwig Nitsche was found murdered in the in a cellar room at number 10 Holzmarkstr, in the north quarter of the city of Berlin. The murder was a horrible […]

In 1895, several American newspapers carried a bizarre story that Jack the Ripper had, in fact, been apprehended and has been incarcerated in an Islington asylum, under the name of Thomas Mason. According to the decidedly far-fetched story, […]

In November, 1902, news broke in the British press that a French “Jack the Ripper”, by the name of Henry Vidal, was about to go on trial for his crimes. The Gloucester Echo, provided its readers with an account […]

As the frenzy over the Jack the Ripper murders increased dramatically in October and November 1888, the newspapers were awash with articles putting forward all manner of strange, bizarre and outlandish theories as to who the perpetrator of […]

The murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes took place in the early hours of Sunday, 30th September, 1888, and, the week that followed, saw an increase in police activity in the district, as the detectives on the […]

Stuart Cumberland (1857–1922) was an English “thought-reader” whose act was extremely popular at theatres all over the United Kingdom in the years around the Jack the Ripper murders. He was famed for such “impossible” acts of mentalism as identifying an […]