London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City (2 page)

STRUCTURE AND SOURCES

It is over 120 years since the investigation into the series of homicides in East London known as the Whitechapel murders was brought to a close. In that time dozens if not hundreds of suspects have been presented to the public for consideration by a growing number of `experts' who have been given the name of `ripperologists' This in itself is an interesting development in the history of crime and criminology - a subgenre of investigation has emerged from the slaying of five or more women in the late nineteenth century. If you have selected this book because you want to know who Jack the Ripper was then I must advise you that you may well be disappointed by it. I am not a ripperologist and it is not my intention to offer up my own solution to the mystery. Nor is the identity of the murderer the most interesting thing about the case - arguably his anonymity has allowed legions of investigators to delve into the archives in the hope of uncovering something fresh to say about the murders. While there are some excellent histories, notably the work of Donald Rumbelow and Paul Begg in particular, the genre is bedevilled with poorly researched and badly written studies that simply repeat the work of previous histories. Worse still some recent books have attempted to fit the facts of the case, such as they are, to suit their own favourite suspect.

In this opening chapter we will meet some of these `suspects' and attempt to refute the allegations aimed at them. I am aware that most volumes do this the other way around but then this does not purport to be another Ripper book. Instead this is a book about the London in which the killings took place and will hopefully provide a deeper context for those interested in the murderer and his victims. The Whitechapel murders have so far attracted little real interest from academic historians although there are some notable exceptions. In 1988, Christopher Frayling wrote an important essay and scripted perhaps the most thoughtful television documentary that has been made about the murders. Frayling's article has recently been included in a collection edited by Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis. While some of the essays have been in circulation for some time (notably one chapter of L. Perry Curtis' most excellent monograph, Jack the Ripper and the London Press) there are several new entries and Warwick and Willis are to be warmly congratulated for bringing them to a new audience. In addition, the recent Museum of London Docklands' exhibition produced a well-illustrated volume containing a number of intelligent essays on a range of subjects such as the police, immigrant communities and poverty. However, while there are these few examples the field has largely been left to the ripperologists and amateur historians.'

This study has used much of the historiography concerned with crime, the Ripper and London that has been produced over the past 20 or more years and there is a considerable amount of it. Naturally it cannot hope to cover all the work that has been published and so I apologize in advance for any omissions that have been made. Where possible I have tried to return to the original sources for the history of the Whitechapel murders and have used the records of trials at the Old Bailey and of hearings before the Thames Police Court to study the related area of crime and criminality in the period. The chief sources for much of this book have been the contemporary London newspapers that have recently become available via the British Library's internet portal. Newspapers are not without their weaknesses: the presentation of news is often determined by editorial style and the choice of subject by fashion, newsworthiness and contemporary concerns. Despite their protestations to the contrary, newspaper editors are in the business of selling papers. Crime, sexual scandal and sensation are the staple of good copy in the modern newspaper industry and the same was true in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Thus, we should be warned not to believe everything we read in the newspapers. Despite this caveat the nineteenth-century press does offer us an important window into attitudes towards a whole raft of social issues in the period. Therefore I have used them extensively in this book alongside the reports of parliamentary committees, the works of social reformers, police officials, correspondents to the newspapers and other private individuals.

In this introductory chapter we will look at the Ripper story as the creation of a modern myth, a theme I will return to when considering the role of the press in the late nineteenth century. There is something in the Ripper story that lends itself to the falsification of history - the interplay of popular culture, press reportage and fiction - and what we think of as history. To some extent this has to do with how we envisage the past and how we use history to unravel some of the problems of the present.

I will then go on to look at the suspects in the Ripper case and at how, almost from the moment the first murder occurred, writers have used them to say things about the society in which they were living. In doing so I will start with Frayling's useful thesis that the killer fitted into three archetypes of late Victorian culture: the mad doctor, foreign Jew and the decadent aristocrat. To some extent these tropes have persisted and we will consider why this has been the case. Finally, in discussing those suspected of being the Whitechapel murderer this opening section will offer a critique of the work of some more recent writers who have offered us up both famous and unknown suspects to be tried by the court of public opinion and then executed - as the Ripper would certainly have been had he been caught. In particular I would like to reexamine the work of the American crime writer Patricia Cornwell who had the temerity to declare the case `closed' when she exposed the painter Walter Sickert as being responsible for the murders. However, those proposing a Royal conspiracy or the founder of the National Archives of Wales, will not escape scrutiny here. This may not be a book about who Jack the Ripper was, but it is certainly partly about who he was not.

Chapter 2 will contextualize murder in the nineteenth century so that the Whitechapel murders can be more properly understood for what they were: extreme examples of sexual homicide almost without precedent in Victorian Britain. However, they were not the first or only examples in Europe, and the work of contemporary and more modern criminologists and psychoanalysts will be used to explore the crimes of the Ripper and those who attacked in similar ways. It will also look at the sorts of murders that made the newspapers in the late Victorian period before going on to examine the file on the Whitechapel murders in some detail. This is necessary for two reasons. First, while many readers may be familiar with the case others may be coming to the story for the first time. Second, so much of what we have learned about the `Ripper' has been presented in half truths, theories and fiction and so in this section I have returned to the police files and contemporary newspapers to try and reconstruct the pattern of events as closely and accurately as possible. However, it is not the intention of this book to reopen the case and I would refer readers who wish to take an even more in-depth look at the murders to consult the works of Begg and Rumbelow who know so much more than myself.

In Chapter 3 the focus of attention moves away from the murders and to the nature of Whitechapel and how it was envisaged by contemporaries. The Victorians had a problematic relationship with urban environments: to some they represented the sheer magnificence of Victorian culture and economic success while to others they were cesspools of vice and poverty that shamed the Empire. This dichotomy was never more apparent than in the contrasts between East and West London. This chapter will explore these contrasts before going on to examine exactly where and what the East End was and is. Having set out to explore the East End I will then concentrate on its inhabitants, both indigenous and foreign immigrants and the problems that these divergent racial groups experienced. Once again this chapter will be partly concerned with overturning contemporary and more recent myths and stereotypes, to reach a more balanced picture of the East End.

Chapter 4 concentrates on the social problems associated with the East End and with those Victorians who believed it was their mission to bring comfort, relief and civilization to this seemingly neglected area of the Empire. It has been argued that the Ripper murders spotlighted the problems of poor housing conditions and poverty and impelled local authorities to take action to improve the situation. However, as this chapter shows, there had been attempts at reform and improvement long before `Jack' started his reign of terror. That many of these attempts either failed or simply moved the problem elsewhere was perhaps a reflection of a lack of a unified municipal authority in London. After 1888 the creation of the London County Council went some way to addressing this issue but it was not until the Edwardian and postwar period that real tangible reform began to benefit the poorest inhabitants of East London. This chapter will look at the realities of housing in the district in which the murders took place and at legislation designed to improve it.

Chapter 4 will also examine the underlying philosophies of two of the period's most prominent female philanthropists: Beatrice Webb and Helen Bosanquet. These women, both of whom worked with Octavia Hill in the COS, held strong opinions about the best methods of helping the poor. At times they were in agreement but it is in their disagreements that we can usefully explore the emergence of distinct policies aimed at poverty and dependence that came to affect social reform in the twentieth century and still echo in our current society.

In Chapter 5 we turn our attention to the Victorian press and in particular examine the relationship between the newspapers and other forms of popular culture. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the newspapers enjoyed a steady growth, encouraged in part by greater literacy and improvements in production techniques. During this period newspapers became cheaper to produce and many more people had access to them. This led to greater numbers of papers and periodicals and increased competition for audiences. In this chapter the development of investigative reporting and the so-called `new journalism' (as expounded by editors such as the Pall Mall Gazette's William T. Stead) will be analysed. It will also consider the extent to which the press used the Whitechapel murders to create a `moral panic' for their own purposes. The relationship between the public, popular culture and the newspapers of the late nineteenth century is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Ripper case and, leaving aside Perry Curtis' seminal work, has too often been neglected.

All of the Ripper's victims were street prostitutes and prostitution and its control is the subject of Chapter 6. Using contemporary accounts and more recent historiography this section will attempt to understand Victorian conceptions of, and attitudes towards, prostitution. Using a well-documented newspaper expose of child prostitution it will also consider the problem of people trafficking in the late 1800s. Much of this sadly makes for comparisons with the present day and the reality of the vice trade in Britain. This chapter will also attempt to look at the women who were forced into prostituting themselves and at how this affected their lives and their families. We cannot consider the problem of prostitution in the Victorian age without looking at the attempts of the authorities to deal with the related issue of venereal disease and its affect on the armed forces. Therefore, this chapter will analyse the Contagious Diseases Acts, the reasons for their implementation, the campaign against them (orchestrated by Josephine Butler) and their eventual repeal in 1884.

This is, of course, a book about crime and criminality, even if the awful events of 1888 are far removed from most murders let alone most criminal activity. In Chapter 7 it is crime and those who committed crime that is the focus of attention. The nineteenth century saw the new social science of criminology develop from its early roots in the eighteenth century and the work of Cesare Lombroso and others drew the attention of the press and public. The notion that a 'criminal class' existed in mid- to late Victorian Britain gained ground and served as a useful tool for those wishing to justify the introduction of more draconian punishments or increased expenditure on professional policing. Thus, Chapter 7 will look at these ideas and how they affected policy-making. It will then explore the nature of crime as it was prosecuted at police courts and the Old Bailey in London using court records and the reporting of events in the newspapers. In this there will be a necessary concentration on property crimes such as burglary and robbery because these were the offences that contemporaries believed were most often committed by the criminal class. However, the work of the police courts was largely involved with policing petty theft, disorderly drunken behaviour and interpersonal violence - this will be covered in some detail here. Finally, Chapter 7 will look at the ways in which those convicted of offences were dealt with. The justice system of the late nineteenth century was dominated by the prison, and commentators and administrators alike debated the most effective and appropriate ways in which to treat those who arrived within the gates of Pentonville and similar institutions. The treatment of prisoners and the state of the prison system is still a matter of intense debate in the twenty-first century and we might remind ourselves that these arguments have been going on for over 200 years.

In Chapter 8 we turn to the police who failed to catch the `Whitechapel fiend' The Metropolitan police had suffered a few years of criticism in the wake of a series of events that culminated in the Whitechapel murders. This chapter will look at the way in which the police handled the demonstrations of the unemployed in the 1880s as well as their response to the threat of Irish terrorism during the same period. The story of Fenian outrages has been little told in recent histories and forms an interesting backdrop to the Ripper investigation. Chapter 8 will then consider how effective the police were in trying to catch `Jack; concluding that they have suffered rather unfairly from some of the brickbats thrown at them both at the time and thereafter.