The Inability of Police to Capturing Jack the Ripper

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The Inability of Police to Capturing Jack the Ripper

In my opinion I disagree with this statement 'The police were to blame

for not capturing Jack the Ripper. This is because we are dealing with

a nineteenth century police force and not one of the twenty- first

century. In modern times, forensic science deals with analysis of

blood samples, DNA, ballistic, fibres, glass and pain, shoe and glove

marks and many other scientific applications. The police force at the

time of the Jack the Ripper investigations did not have the benefit of

such sophisticated methods.

Firstly we know much more about the victims than the police did at

that time. Two, Mary Kelly and Francis Coles were attractive young

women in their mid - twenties. The rest were middle- aged but few

looked their years. It is interesting to note that police and press

estimates of age, based on appearance were consistently misjudged by

making them younger than they are known to have been. All the victims

came from work-class parents, virtually all the women had slipped into

destitution through failed marriage and drink. Drinking mainly was a

reason why the police were not to blame for not capturing Jack the

Ripper because when Elizabeth Long gave an inquest (in Source D) into

the death of Annie Chapman she was not quite certain of many things as

Source D mentions "…wearing a dark coat but I cannot be sure". This is

because she might have been drinking and her memory and judgement

could have been impaired.

It is probable that the victims accost or were accosted by the

murderer in thoroughfares like Whitechapel Road and Commercial Street,

and that they were conducted by h...

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... itself. At the time the central complaints of the radical and

opposition press was that under Warren the police were being

transformed from a civil into a military force primarily intended, not

for the prevention and detection of crime, but for the policing of

political rallies and demonstrations of the poor and unemployed.

In conclusion the Whitechapel murderer, however, may not have been a

professional villain and probably worked alone. With only one possible

exception there no eye-witnesses to his attacks because they were

committed at dead of night and in secluded locations. Indeed his

victims, prostitutes all, accustomed to accosting men and taking them

to dark or unfrequented byways and yards for sex, greatly facilitated

his crimes. Most baffling of all to the Victorian detective, there was

no obvious motive.

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