Jack the Ripper

Essay 1 - Jack The Ripper and the murders - why did they attract so much attention?

Whitechapel is an area in East London between Aldgate and Spitalfields in the west and Mile End in the east where in the late 19th century extremely poor people (mostly foreigners) lived. In 1888 it believed to have been the source of the activity of one of the first serial killers --- Jack The Ripper which murdered five prostitutes. There were other killings too (for example Martha Tabram and Marry Ann Connelly) but the police assumed it wasn’t Jack The Ripper who did them. The aim of this essay is to discuss why the Whitechapel murders of 1888 attracted so much attention. The main factors that made it so infamous were press coverage, the fact that the police were inexperienced, the way the public reacted to the murders and the mystery of who Jack the Ripper actually was.

There were several problems with the police forces. For example Thames River Police force was just two year...