One of the strangest unsolved mysteries in the world started around 3.30 p.m. on August 31st 1888. The sun had yet to rise leaving only the dim street lamps to light the narrow streets of Whitechapel, London. Charles Cross was on his way to work when he noticed something in the road: he thought it was a tarp, maybe a bundle of loose cloth left behind in the night. He got a little closer and made a grisly discovery. True Crime Recaps: Jack the Ripper: The World’s Most Famous Unsolved Case, Youtube 15.20, 2023
Mary was the first in a line of dead women around Whitechapel, London, the hunting ground of the one and only Jack the Ripper. ibid.
The fall of 1888. And the London streets of London were in a frenzied terror stalked by the evil presence of a depraved monster intent upon bloody murder, stealthily scouring the cobbled streets and dark, narrow alleyways for his next victim. A serial killer was moving amongst the poverty striken folk of London’s East End. Jack the Ripper Conspiracies, 2003, viz Amazon 2024
This is one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries. ibid.
Take a look at the various suspects and you soon realise the lengths to which the theorists will go. ibid.
Jack might have been a Jill … Queen Victoria herself was considered by some. ibid.
Jack has taken on a life of his own that’s outside of what he actually did. But when you realise the full horror of his crime, your perspective changes. Unsolved Mysteries s4e1: Who Was Jack the Ripper? historian, Netflix 2024
Jack the Ripper! It’s a newsman’s dream! ibid.
[Rozzer as narrator]: In September of 1888 the streets of Whitechapel were a dark and frightening place at the best of times. The Unsolved Killings of Jack the Ripper, Amazon 2024
The hunt for one of the most elusive and mysterious killers in history. ibid.
On October 1st 1888 the Jack the Ripper letter went public. It was printed in newspapers, and a mania broke out. ibid.
On 7th October 1888 London was in the middle of a media frenzy. A tabloid newspaper had published a murder map. It showed the locations where just days earlier several women had been brutally murdered. Spectators flocked like tourists to London’s East End. Jack the Ripper: Lucy Worsley Investigates, BBC 2024
There murders are now more than 130 years old. And we’re still obsessed. ibid.
‘Dreadful murders of unfortunate women of a bad class in London’. ibid. Queen Victoria’s diary
Just how easy it was in Victorian London to fall far and fast. ibid.
It explores our deepest fears and anxieties about society. ibid.
The story of Jack the Ripper in 1888 set the template for a new kind of entertainment based on murder. How a crime story is constructed, commercialised and then consumed. ibid.