In the Victorian Era, there were many criminals. The Victorian Era played host to a number of unusual figures, not to forget brutal murderers. It is said that during this time period, crime and mortality rates saw a spike, making the streets of Britain unsafe to say the least. Louis James said, “crime was the best seller”. Victorians had begun to think that their criminal policies had failed, and that crimes were, despite the annual publication of criminal statistics that indicated otherwise, increasing (“Common Misperceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime”). One of those notorious criminals to suggest the increase was Jack the Ripper. Renowned for his mysterious killings, Jack the Ripper was never caught for his crimes. At the time of his murders he left behind nothing, not even a slither of a trace which coupled with a lack of today’s technology made it increasingly difficult for …show more content…
The murders were very thought out it is suggested that Jack the Ripper was a doctor or a butcher based on the evidence of weapon and the mutilations that occurred, which showed knowledge of human anatomy (“BBC-History-Historic Figures: Jack the Ripper”). Jack the Ripper thought out his killings. He waited until the victims lifted their skirts. This meant that the victims hands were occupied and they were defenseless. He then seized his victims by the throat and strangled them until they were unconscious. He lowered his victims to the ground, their heads tilted to his left. At this point he cut their throats and other organs. He only did this once the women were on the ground (Barbee “Casebook: Jack the
There was very little structure to the justice system and due to it being so punitive, juries were reluctant to find people guilty of offences (Bentley, 1998). This period of time became known as ‘The Bloody Code’. Throughout The Bloody Code policing was entirely a local initiative, there was not a centralised police force. Constables, Watchmen and Amateur Justices were tasked with crime prevention, crime detection, and general public safety (Reiner, 2000). However, the Watchmen were branded ineffective and there was little to no public confidence in their use, they were ‘scarcely removed from idiotism’ (Critchley, 1978: 18) this view would makeweight of the orthodox perspective suggesting that the New Police were to bring competency and professionalism, attributes which clearly lacked within the private system. Another major issue that affected the public opinion of the private system was the employment of thief-takers. For example, Jonathan Wild, a private detective who was extremely corrupt. Wild stole items from individuals, and then took it upon himself to return these items for a large reward. The revisionist view is that corruption was not an
From 1888-1891 a portion of London England known as Whitechapel was terrorized by a rash of murders. In total eleven women were murdered, five of those are thought to be the victim of one of the most well-known serial killers whom was never identified, Jack the Ripper. Out of the murders committed in the two year period, the five had like backgrounds, they lived in boarding houses and were prostitutes, alcoholics, or both. The women were found with their bodies lying on their backs with the legs spread apart. The victims were also found to have been murdered in like fashion with their throats had been slit and their bodies mutilated. This gave Jack the Ripper a specific modus operandi narrowing down the field of likely victims from the original total. Those five murders also took place in a time span of ten months.
Almost everyone knows Jack The Ripper to be skilled with a knife, but what most people do not know about The Ripper was that he was just as skilled in the media. This idea of The Ripper being a public relations specialist is made evident in “Ripped Straight From the Headlines: Jack the Ripper 's Public Relations.” by Devon Armijo, Shannon Guess, and Jacquelyn Jizno when it was published through Public Relation Quarterly in 2009. Throughout this article the writers are often writing about the possibility that it could have just been luck the way things worked out for The Ripper or did he maneuvered his way through the media and play with the minds of the people and police.
Murder is murder, or taking the life of another person. Repeatedly taking the life of other people is killing in a serial way. Serial killers are those individuals who repeatedly murder other people. There have been thousands of nameless serial killers, but none more famous than Jack the Ripper. The 1888 maliciousness of Jack the Ripper became one of the very first investigated, and most widely studied, serial murder cases, that established the protocols that are still used today to investigate these heinous crimes. The name Jack the Ripper has instilled fear in the public since 1888, and is a name that is synonymous with serial killing. Jack the Ripper set the bar by which all other serial killers are judged, studied, and
In 1761, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, England’s population consisted of 6.3 million inhabitants whereas 80 years later the population rose to 14.9 million, rising even with war and emigration transpiring. 1 The industrial revolution was a big step for Great Britain but not all benefitted, especially the poor and working class. One of the biggest negative side effects was poverty which increased the amount of street peddlers in the city streets. As that number grew many people grew upset complaining that they were blocking shops and taking up space, forcing street traders to move out to country borders, giving them less business and forcing them deeper into poverty. 2 With the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1700’s came the Crime Wave of the 1780’s where city prisons were filled to capacity and the amount of crime pushed forward policing levels and prosecution rates. This was only the beginning of a whole new era of criminal reform. 3 As the industrial revolution took its course throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the negative effects such as varying food prices and gruesome working and living conditions spurred rising crime rates, especially in property crime, leading to numerous police reforms and acts. Although these changes were not very effective in curbing the high crime they did end up laying a foundation for more successful reforms in the future.
Young, J. (1981). Thinking seriously about crime: Some models of criminology. In M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan, & J. Pawson (Eds.), Crime and society: Readings in history and society (pp. 248-309). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
As the killer was never truly found, the investigation turned into a historical research. It was so prominent that the research of Jack the Ripper became known as Ripperology. So whether the world will ever know the true identity of the killer of all killers, it will always be in study.
In recent years, the subject of crime has become an increasingly important theme of political, academic, and public debate. In particular, the media today is more focused on victims than it has ever been before. Through media representations of the ‘ideal victim’, this essay will subsequently show how the media are able to construct and re-affirm pre-existing traditional ideologies within the public realm. In effect, this assignment will critically assess the concept of an ‘ideal victim’ and show how the media have used this when describing crime.
White, R., and Perrone, S. (2009) Crime, Criminality and Criminal Justice. Melbourne: Oxford University [Chapter 2 ‘Crime and the Media’]
"I am Jack the Ripper, catch me if you can" (Cornwell, 55) has been one of the most haunted lines of history, especially in London's Whitechapel area from August 1888 to November of that same year. Jack the Ripper was the mystery everyone wanted to solve, but not everyone was as determined as Patricia Cornwell. Throughout her series of all her Ripper investigations, she was destined to prove once and for all that Jack the Ripper wasn't just any man, but Walter Richard Sickert himself. In her book Portrait of a Killer Jack the Ripper Case Closed, she discusses and confirms that everyone had known the Ripper all along, just fell for his act. The author wasn't going down without a chance to prove to the world that Walter was the evil serial killer
In order to find out what caused crime rates to rise; one must first determine whether or not crime actually rose during the time period. Manuel Eisner in his Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime claims that by using homicides as an indicator one can opt that crime actually showed a downward trend during the second industrial revolution (Eisner 85). But Eisner fault lies in the fact that his work only looks at violent crime. David Philips claims this may appear to be because of lack of “full-time paid uniformed police forces” thus the inaccurate, “uncoordinated” system, “contained apparent contradictions” (O'Brien and Quinault 156). Philips goes on to plot an upward trend in crime using committals and not just violent crime like Eisner; Philips plot shows a “very clear and rapid increase” in crime, one that was larger that could be accounted for by population increase alone (O'Brien and Quinault 158). Phi...
In general, official statistics of crime recorded by the police and surveys of the public such as victim surveys and self-report studies are the three main measures of the extent of crime in Britain. The oldest method is to rely on official data collected by criminal justice agencies, such as data on arrests or convictions. The other two rely on social surveys. In one case, individuals are asked if they have been victims of crime; in the other, they are asked to self-report their own criminal activity. (Terence P. Thornberry and Marvin D. Krohn) Although these are a main secondary source of quantitative data, each of them may contain some drawbacks. Thus, this essay will introduce these three methods and demonstrates their disadvantages, such as the police crime statistics exclude the unreported and unrecorded crime;
Crime is a highly complex and important problem that changes across cultures and across time. This briefing provides a summary of some of the key explanations that try to explain the causes of crime. It is by no means a thorough list. Each of the explanations covered has its own strengths and weaknesses, has gaps and may only be related to certain types of crime, and not others. There is no “right” or “wrong” explanation to justify it.
Jack the Ripper murdered five women between the time of 31st of August 1888 and the 9th of November 1888. They were murdered within Whitechapel and Spitalfields in the East End areas of London, England. He was never caught, and because he was not there are hundreds on his personality and motives. There has been no other killers in the British history that rivaled the gruesome, disrespectful, utterly superior Jack the Ripper, a multiple murderer whose arrogance and self-assurance defied the entire police department within London and held in a great terror in a great city for as long as he cared to roam its streets and slay at will.
It all started in the East End of London in 1888, from August 7 till November 10.