A bit like the rolling news channels that we take for granted today, The Illustrated Police News was on hand throughout the Whitechapel Murders to bring its readers the latest lurid details on the crimes. The paper prided itself on the quality and accuracy of its depictions and it’s artists were on hand at the scene of virtually all the crimes to either sketch, or remember, the faces of the principal players in each drams.
As a result it is in the pages of these newspapers that we really watch the saga of the Jack the Riper atrocities as it unfolds between August and December in 1888, since the paper reported not just on the murders but on the peripheries as well, such as suspects whom the police, or the mob, had suspected of being responsible for the crimes. There is no doubt that the newspaper’s lurid drawings were, or at least could be, sensationalist, but the illustrations that appeared in its pages afford usindow to look back onto the events and people in that long ago autumn of terror.
1. THE MURDER OF MARTHA TABRAM

2. The Murder of Mary Nichols

3. The Murder of Annie Chapman
Why the fourth murder? The illustrated Police News was featuring all the Whitechapel Murder and so included the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith in April 1888.

We’ll continue our look at the murders through the eyes of The Illustrated Police News in our next blog.
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