Module: Feminism, Politics, and Social Change in Modern Britain (HI31X)

Date Due: 09/03/2022

Title: Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend, women secretly armed’, Illustrated Police News: A source analysis

Word Count: 2,956

NB Please follow the formatting/ referencing instructions provided in the UG handbook rather than directly copying what you see here.

NB There are many different ways to write a first class essay, so please see this is just an example rather than a model to mechanically follow.

A group of women stand at the corner of a street, ‘secretly armed’ against the ‘Whitechapel fiend’.^[1] The image featured on the cover of the 1,284th issue of The Illustrated Police News.^[2] Published on the 22nd September 1888, the source was produced amidst the Jack the Ripper murders; the brutal killings of five prostitutes in Victorian London’s East End.^[3] Analysis of the ‘secretly armed’ women illustration presents how the contemporary reading public simultaneously supported and suffered from the Jack the Ripper ‘myth’.^[4] The first section of this essay contextualises the illustration of the ‘secretly armed’ women.^[5] Beginning by situating Police News within the nineteenth century ‘Age of Sensation’, the essay addresses the contemporary debates which influenced the ‘penny newspapers’.^[6] Consequently, the essay considers the condemnation of the police force, class conflict, the Victorian ‘moral codes’ and prostitution in the East End.^[7] The essay’s first section ends by situating the illustration within the cultural conversation concerning women’s presence in the public sphere.[8] The following section of the essay provides a detailed analysis of the illustration. After analysing the variety of messages which underlie the image, the essay examines the source as a material object. An understanding of who, why and how the illustration was read explains the deliberate inconclusivity of the source.^[9] Whilst the ‘secretly armed’ women image does not provide an ‘“objective” truth’ about Jack the Ripper as ‘an historical person’, it reveals the fears and concerns of London’s inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century.^[10] The deliberate ‘breaks’ and ‘ruptures’ within the image reveal the origins of the mythologised figure, Jack the Ripper.^[11]

In order to understand the illustration, Police News must be recognised as a cultural product of the ‘Age of Sensation’.^[12] Sensationalism represented the new approach to journalism which originated in the 1880s.^[13] There was a decisive shift in the purpose of journalism; newspapers no longer aimed “to inform” but “to Interest”.^[14] Technological advances in the production process, making printing newspapers cheaper and quicker, prepared the sensationalist press to create a ‘media frenzy’ around the horrific Whitechapel murders.^[15] As events unfolded, the press capitalised on the ‘enormous gap’ of knowledge surrounding the ‘identity’ and ‘motivations’ of the anonymous killer.^[16] The absence of ‘supported facts’ allowed the sensationalist press to narrate events like the ‘literature of the fantastic’.^[17] Martin Willis and John Paul Green have likened the writing style of the sensationalist media to the ‘narrative of crime fiction’.^[18] Green argues further in stating that the sensationalist reports of the Whitechapel murders prompted Arthur Conan Doyle to write his famous Sherlock Holmes’ novels.^[19] Unlike crime fiction novels, however, the sensationalist press failed to ‘project a conclusion’ on the Jack the Ripper attacks.^[20] ‘Penny newspapers’ deliberately contained ‘breaks or ruptures’ to further unsettle their readership.^[21] Police News particularly shocked contemporaries through explicit, vulgar illustrations uncharacteristic of ‘polite society’.^[22] Nonetheless, contemporaries were fascinated by crime and brutality.^[23] Although the ‘penny press’ thrived on the ‘“Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest”’, mainstream newspapers, such as The Observer, also featured explicit descriptions of Jack the Ripper’s mutilated victims.^[24] New Journalism established an alternate style of reporting which prioritised ‘entertainment and curiosity value’.^[25] The image should therefore not be used to understand Jack the Ripper as ‘an historical person’ but as a product of the ‘Age of Sensation’.^[26]

The ‘secretly armed’ women illustration raises questions about ‘public safety’ and the role of the police in protecting London against the ‘Whitechapel fiend’.^[27] The police’s failure to capture the killer was a great concern for the inhabitants of Victorian London; without Jack the Ripper’s arrest, ‘there would be no end to fears that he would strike again’.^[28] Contemporaries removed their trust in ‘Scotland Yard to safeguard their property or their lives’.^[29] Condemnation of the police had been growing since the end of the 1870s.^[30] Both ‘revelations of collusion between senior detectives at Scotland Yard’ and Charles Warren’s poor handling of the Bloody Sunday demonstration prompted further criticism of the police force amidst the Jack the Ripper attacks.^[31] At the time when ‘Outcast London’ ‘became the killing ground of Jack the Ripper’, the police’s ineptitude during Bloody Sunday remained at the forefront of contemporary’s minds.^[32] 

Although gender is a key aspect of the illustration, class conflict greatly influenced contemporary responses to Jack the Ripper.^[33] Despite attempts by the middle classes to isolate the ‘impoverished parts of London’, the Whitechapel murders rendered the attempt impossible.^[34] Whitechapel connected East and West London due to its close ‘proximity and social’ significance.^[35] Rather than drawing the classes ‘together by a common danger’, the murders ‘fed the flames of class hatred and distrust’.^[36] The middle classes believed that the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ symbolised the ‘urban degeneracy' of ‘Outcast London’.^[37] Simultaneously, the East End cast middle class figureheads, ‘doctors’ and ‘“toffs”’, in the role of Jack the Ripper.^[38] Class conflict was closely linked to Victorian ‘moral codes’.^[39] Middle classes, in particular, used a moral discourse to condemn the East End for creating the evil environment from which Jack the Ripper emerged.^[40] Despite fears of the killer, the West End heralded the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ for contributing to “the problem of clearing the East-end of its vicious inhabitants”.^[41] The sensationalist media championed a moralistic interpretation of the Whitechapel murders.^[42] Contemporary journalists lamented the ‘failings’ of Jack the Ripper’s victims in order to sell the stories as ‘moral anecdotes to uphold middle-class gender values’.^[43]

 Police News’ focus on four women can allude to Jack the Ripper’s victims: the prostitutes working in London’s East End.^[44] Prostitution was a major point of contention within the nineteenth century.[45] Following the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, brothels were closed and prostitutes were forced ‘into the streets with nowhere to go’.^[46] Feminists, such as Josephine Butler, campaigned for the act to be repealed.^[47] Despite this, ‘respectable working class women’ failed to offer ‘collective resistance’ against the brutal attacks on prostitutes by Jack the Ripper.^[48] Walkowitz claims that the victims’ ‘older age’ and ‘apparent culpability’ prevented feminists from sympathising with the victims.^[49] The unsympathetic response towards the canonical five affirmed the ‘moral codes’ which dominated Victorian society.^[50] There were two categories of women: ‘madonnas and whores’; the immorality of the latter warranted their unfortunate fates.^[51]

Although Jack the Ripper targetted prostitutes his actions had repurcussions for the entire female population of Victorian London.^[52] The ‘secretly armed’ women represent how the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ convinced ‘women that they are helpless victims’.^[53] Florence Fenwick Miller’s condemnation of the Whitechapel murder as ‘“womenkilling”’ addressed the impact of the events on contemporary women.^[54] Jack the Ripper symbolised the continued domination of male authority.^[55] Amidst the murders the gendered divide between the private and public sphere was reasserted.^[56] Middle class women were sequestered from public life by being effectively placed under ‘house arrest’.^[57] Although working class women still traversed the streets, they armed themselves and walked in ‘groups of two or three’.^[58] Jack the Ripper was not the only threat, there were also numerous instances of men mimicking the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ to take advantage of ‘female terror’.^[59] The Whitechapel murders successfully reasserted male dominance in the public sphere.^[60] The threat of murder characterised Victorian women as ‘helpless victims’; this frames the cultural conversation in which the ‘secretly armed’ women belong.^[61]

The 1,284th issue of Police News was published in a period of ‘female terror’.^[62] Annie Chapman’s murder, the last attack by the ‘Whitechapel fiend’ before the issue’s publication, was the ‘most violent’ of the killings.^[63] The illustration of the ‘secretly armed’ women is one of eleven images included on the front page of Police News.^[64] Although the illustration is not the main focus of the cover, due to its smaller size and less centralised location, it is significant.^[65] By including the image on the front page, Police News believed the image had a ‘curiosity value’ and moral message which would appeal to its readers.^[66]

A group of four women stand at the forefront of the image.^[67] One woman has a knife raised, whilst a second appears to hold a gun.^[68] The likeness of their outfits suggest the women are of the same age and class. By acknowledging that the majority of middle class women were under ‘house arrest’, it is most likely that the women come from the East End.^[69] The image illustrates Walkowitz’ claim that working class women walked the streets in groups, unified ’by a common danger’ and the desire to ‘help each other all they can’.^[70] The women’s ‘finery’, their adorned hats and the ruching of their skirts, resemble the outfit worn by Annie Chapman on the same front cover of Police News.^[71] The outfits, which allude to the women’s occupation as prostitutes, render the women vulnerbale to the ‘Whitechapel fiend’.^[72] Prostitutes were often identified by their ‘showy dress’.^[73] Unlike the ‘plain dress’ of middle class women, ‘finery’ was associated with ‘more vice’.^[74] In addition to their dresses, the illustrated women appear to be wearing corsets.[75] Although corsets were often disassociated with the working class, there was no ‘barrier to purchase’.^[76] As an undergarment, working class women could buy a ‘one-off-the peg model, to be worn year-in year-out’.^[77] The overall appearance of the ‘secretly armed’ women suggests a deliberate attempt to look appealing.^[78] As prostitutes, they needed to attract the male gaze and their outfits was one way of doing that.^[79] The women, however, are ‘secretly armed’ as they have the potential to attract the wrong customer: Jack the Ripper.^[80] The illustration shows the way in which prostitutes attempted to protect themselves.^[81] Unlike their middle class counterparts, economic desperation prevented the women from staying inside.^[82] Prostitutes still needed to make money to pay for lodging houses^[83]. By ‘secretly’ arming themselves, the women would not repel potential customers but would be somewhat protected from the ‘Whitechapel’ fiend.^[84]

Contemporary women were cast in the role of ‘helpless victims’; it is worth considering to what extent the ‘secretly armed’ women support or subvert this.^[85] It is likely that Police News did not intend the image to evoke sympathy for prostitutes.[86] It could, instead, be a deliberate attempt to allude to the next chapter in the Jack the Ripper tale. Although the sensationalist press could not predict when the next murder would occur, they could ‘invite more speculation’.^[87] By showing prostitutes walking the streets of London, Police News invites readers to guess the next passive victim of Jack the Ripper.^[88] In contrast, however, Judith Walkowitz regards the illustration as ‘an optimistic view of the power held by East End women’.^[89] In opposition to ‘male dominance’, the women are subverting the concept of ‘female passivity’.^[90] There are examples of these women having counterparts in reality.^[91] A group of market women were recorded demonstrating against ‘Leather Apron’ and defending Mary Ann Perry when she was molested by a Jack the Ripper impersonator.^[92] The illustration, and its display of agency, can allude to an alternate event.^[93] Police News may have deliberately depicted the women as powerful, a characteristic associated with men, in reference to the ‘amateur detectives’ who would, in extremes, dress up as women.^[94] The desperation to catch the killer prompted some men to don women’s clothes and patrol ‘every end of every street in the ‘danger zone’’.^[95] As men, there would be no doubt of their masculine power, especially as they bravely became bate for the notorious woman-killer.^[96] The numerous ways of interpreting the source reiterates the purpose of the ‘penny press’: to ‘invite more speculation’.^[97]

Standing on the opposite street corner from the women, is a man.^[98] One interpretation identifies the figure as a policeman.^[99] The figure’s apparent ignorance of the actions of the women ascribes to the critical contemporary perception of the police.^[100] The policeman’s presence does nothing to dispel the ‘female terror’ which has driven the women to arm themselves.^[101] Similarly, the male figure could represent the vigilance committees that sent out ‘male patrols’ through the East End.^[102] Both interpretations reaffirm the danger of the public sphere for women.^[103] Rather than establishing a safe environment, the masculine presence fails to dispel the ‘fears and vulnerabilities’ of the female inhabitants of Victorian London.^[104] Police News may have placed the male figure in the background as a direct reference to the ‘Whitechapel fiend’.^[105] Similar to the contemporary Madame Tussauds exhibit of the ‘notorious Ripper’, the killer is portrayed as a ‘shadow’.^[106] The technique reasserts the ‘most terrifying’ aspect of the Whitechapel murders: Jack the Ripper’s unknown identity.^[107] The ‘could-be-anyone killer’ made every man a threat to the female population.^[108] The streets would never be safe for women whilst an unidentifiable man amplified ‘the terror of male violence’.^[109]

Like the image itself, the short caption is inconclusive, as was characteristic of contemporary media.^[110] Ambiguity dominated both the ‘penny press’ and more reputable newspapers as evidenced by The Daily Telegraph’s reference to the ‘secret known only’ to the murderer.^[111] ‘Ready’ could suggest that the women are undermining the ‘male dominance’ of the public sphere by mobilising against the killer.^[112] In contrast, ‘ready’ can allude to the East End prostitutes who were aware that they could be ‘next for Jack’.^[113] Whether acting out of fear or courage, these women reference the threat of ‘male violence’ which reclaimed the public sphere as a masculine domain.^[114] The threat was particularly fervent when the ‘secretly armed’ women image was produced.^[115] At the time of publication, Jack the Ripper had not assumed his ‘trade name’.^[116] The ‘Whitechapel fiend’ is not used as a synonym.^[117] The ‘penny press’ did not use the name ‘Jack the Ripper’ until after the infamous “Dear Boss” letter emerged on the 29th September.^[118] Between Annie Chapman’s murder and the publication of the letter, little occurred to expand the Ripper narrative. As shown on Police News’ cover page, the sensationalist press had to supplement the story by reporting on seemingly unrelated events, such as the ‘exciting scenes’ in the ‘menagerie’.^[119] Despite Jack the Ripper’s inactivity, the ‘secretly armed’ women image references how the female population were still gripped by the ‘terror of male violence’.^[120] The image illustrates how the Whitechapel murders had a long-lasting effect on contemporary women.^[121]

The ‘silences’ and ‘countless breaks or ruptures’ within Police News do not render the source as invaluable.^[122] George Purkess, the newspaper’s founder, deliberately forsook ‘concrete news’ in favour of speculation and entertainment.^[123] By combining the Victorian’s favoured ‘police newspaper and the illustrated journey’, Police News proved particularly popular.^[124] Its cheap price and episodic manner acquired a large readership who were desperate for ‘clues to solve the mystery’ of the Whitechapel murders.^[125] Police News simultaneously satiated the curiosity of the middle classes and provided news to the East End population who could not afford ‘“a one-penny outlay for the newspaper”’.^[126] The ‘penny press’ was not, however, only consumed through purchase.^[127] As Ludmilla Jordanova asserts, the ‘penny press’ would have an audience of ‘those who only see it’, as the front cover was waved on the streets by ‘newspaper boys’, and ‘those who have purchased and hence both own and see’.^[128] Due to its affordability and ‘curiosity value’, the latter would have made up the majority of Police News’ readership.^[129]

Contemporaries of all ages, gender and class read the ‘penny newspapers’.^[130] The easy accessibility of Police News, however, was problematic.^[131] The ‘pictorial sensationalism’ of the newspaper allowed illiterate contemporaries to access news of the Whitechapel murders.^[132] The potential for ‘maidservants and nannies’ to leave ‘penny newspapers’ ‘across the nursery table’ meant the horrific crimes of Jack the Ripper became known to the children of Victorian London.^[133] The ‘Whitechapel fiend’ featured within children’s ‘nightly “fears and fantasies”’.^[134] Children were also not immune to the ‘moral’ messages ‘lurking somewhere inside murder news’.^[135] The sensationalist media influenced contemporary reactions to the Whitechapel murders; every reader of Police News would have been influenced by the ‘codes of right or wrong’ and ‘gender values’ which shaped the murders as ‘moral anecdotes’.^[136]

 Police News is a cultural product of the ‘moral panic’ which gripped Victorian London in 1888.^[137] The image of the ‘secretly armed’ women, like other forms of ‘pictorial sensationalism’, does not provide information about the Ripper as an ‘historical person’.^[138] More importantly, it explains the role of ‘penny newspapers’ in establishing the killer’s legendary status.^[139] The ‘curiosity value’ of the cheap penny press attracted a large reading public.^[140] The ‘silences’ characteristic of sensationalist media were subjectively filled by the reading public; Jack the Ripper, therefore, represented the fears and concerns of the entire population of Victorian London.^[141]

The ‘women secretly armed’ illustration captures the atmosphere of Victorian London amidst the ‘sexual tyranny’ of Jack the Ripper.^[142] The first section of this essay contextualised the image within the contemporary issues which influenced the public response to the Whitechapel murders. Beginning with a study of the ‘Age of Sensation’, the essay discussed the messages which lurked ‘somewhere inside murder news’.^[143] Condemnation of the police force, class conflict, Victorian moral code and gender conventions are all alluded to within Police News’ illustration.^[144] Although the source belongs to a variety of contemporary conversations, it is most closely linked to the effect of the Whitechapel murders on the public role of Victorian women.^[145] Jack the Ripper established a ‘terror of male violence’ which reasserted the strict divide between the male public and female private spheres.^[146] The second section of the essay closely analysed the content of the image and its significance as a material object. The Illustrated Police News appealed to a wide reading public.^[147] As a result the predominant message of the ‘secretly armed’ women image, that women were the ‘helpless victims’ of ‘male dominance’, influenced numerous contemporary readers.^[148] The source proves most valuable when one recognises that it lacks the ‘“objective” truth’.^[149] Only by accepting and interpreting the deliberate ‘silences’ of the illustration can one truly understand how Victorian society both created and cowered from the now eternalised ‘serial killer of women’, Jack the Ripper.^[150]

Bibliography:

Anon, ‘East End Outrages’, The Observer (London, 1888), p.5 <https://www.newspapers.com/topics/famous-people/jack-the-ripper/> [Accessed 3 March 2022].

Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’ <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/illustrated-police-news?ds_kid=39700054727872890&gclid=CjwKCAiAlrSPBhBaEiwAuLSDUGBgVkenNfDKp7dRPrF6jhwam04V9crQzLcfFxC4wMvG3BNMXXLVHxoCEdcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds> [Accessed 2 March 2022].

Anon, ‘Jack the Ripper murders’, British Library <https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107586.html>[Accessed 2 March 2022].

Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend, women secretly armed’ Illustrated Police News, 1284,  (London, 1888), p.1 <https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107586.html> [Accessed 03 March 2022].

Anon, ‘The Daily Telegraph’, in Casebook: Jack the Ripper (London, 1888) <https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_telegraph/dt880922.html> [Accessed 3 March 2020].

<https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large107586.html> [Accessed 2 March 2022].

Anon, ‘“Whitechapel murders” from the Illustrated Police News’, British Library <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/whitechapel-murders-from-the-illustrated-police-news> [Accessed 2 March].

Begg, Paul and Bennett, John, Jack the Ripper: the forgotten victims, (New Haven, Connecticut ; London : Yale University Press, 2013), Proquest ebook.

Bland, Lucy, Banishing the beast: English feminism and sexual morality, 1885-1914 (London: Penguin, 1995).

Curtis, L.Perry, Jack the Ripper and the London Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

Davies, Mel, ‘Corsets and Conception: Fashion and Demographic Trends in the Nineteenth Century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, (24:4), pp.611-41.

Engel, Mathew, Tickle the public: one hundred years of the popular press (London : Victor Gollancz, 1996).

Green, John Paul ‘Ripping yarns: capturing (not capturing) and constructing the myth of Jack the Ripper in nineteenth-century London’ in The making of English popular culture, ed.By John Storey (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2016), pp.213-224.

Jordanova, Ludmilla, The look of the past: visual and material evidence in historical practice (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Lee, Alan J., The origins of the popular press (London : Croom Helm ; Totowa, N.J. : Rowman and Littlefield, 1976).

Mishou, A. Luxx ‘“Murder for a Penny: Jack the Ripper and the Structural Impact of Sensational Reporting”’, The Wilkie Collins Journal, 16 (2019), pp.1- 21. <https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/large107586.html> [Accessed 2 March 2022].

Rubenhold, Hallie, The five: the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper (London: Doubleday, 2019).

Schwartz, Laura, ’Women, Religion and Agency in Modern British History’, Women’s History Review, 2 (2012), pp. 317-323.

Shpayer-Makov, Haia, ‘Journalists and Police Detectives in Victorian and Edwardian England: An Uneasy Reciprocal Relationship’, Journal of Social History, 42:4 (2009), pp. 963-987.

Storey, John, ‘Introduction: Making popular culture’ in The making of English popular culture, ed.By John Storey (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2016), pp.1-13.

Valverde, Mariana, ‘The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse’, Victorian Studies, 32:2 (1989), pp.168-88.

Walkowitz, Judith, ‘Narratives of sexual danger’ in Jack the Ripper, media, culture, history, ed. By Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis, (Manchester, UK; New York : Manchester University Press; Palgrave, 2007) pp. 179-96.

Walkowitz, Judith, City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London, (London : Virago, 1992)

Walkowitz, Judith, ‘Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence’, Feminist Studies, 8:3 (1982), pp. 542-574.

Willis, Martin, ‘Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes and the narrative of detection’ in Jack the Ripper, media, culture, history, ed. By Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis, (Manchester, UK; New York : Manchester University Press; Palgrave, 2007) pp.144-58.

Footnotes

^[1] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend, women secretly armed’, Illustrated Police News, 1284, (London, 1888), p.1 <https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107586.html> [Accessed 03 March 2022].

^[2] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[3] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Judith Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence’, Feminist Studies, 8:3 (1982), p.547.

^[4] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Judith Walkowitz, ‘Narratives of sexual danger’ in Jack the Ripper, media, culture, history, ed. By Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis, (Manchester, UK; New York : Manchester University Press; Palgrave, 2007), p.193; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.544.

^[5] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[6] A. Luxx Mishou, ‘“Murder for a Penny: Jack the Ripper and the Structural Impact of Sensational Reporting”’, The Wilkie Collins Journal, 16 (2019), p.1.

^[7] Hallie Rubenhold, The five: the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper (London: Doubleday, 2019), p.141.

[8] Laura Schwartz, ’Women, Religion and Agency in Modern British History’, Women’s History Review, 2 (2012), p.320.

^[9] L.Perry Curtis, Jack the Ripper and the London Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p.9.

^[10] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; John Storey, ‘Introduction: Making popular culture’ in The making of English popular culture, ed.By John Storey (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2016), p.12; John Paul Green, ‘Ripping yarns: capturing (not capturing) and constructing the myth of Jack the Ripper in nineteenth-century London’ in The making of English popular culture, ed.By John Storey (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2016), p.215; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.557.

^[11] Curtis, p.9; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546.

^[12] Curtis, p.5; Mischou.

^[13] Mathew Engel, Tickle the public: one hundred years of the popular press (London : Victor Gollancz, 1996), p.44; Alan J. Lee, The origins of the popular press (London : Croom Helm ; Totowa, N.J. : Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), p.117.

^[14] Ibid, p.130.

^[15] Haia Shpayer-Makov, ‘Journalists and Police Detectives in Victorian and Edwardian England: An Uneasy Reciprocal Relationship’, Journal of Social History, 42:4 (2009), p.965; Anon, ‘Jack the Ripper murders’, British Library <https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107586.html>[Accessed 2 March 2022].

^[16] Martin Willis, ‘Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes and the narrative of detection’ in Jack the Ripper, media, culture, history, ed. By Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis, (Manchester, UK; New York : Manchester University Press; Palgrave, 2007), p.153.

^[17] Ibid; Mishou, p.2; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.550

^[18] Willis, p.153; Green, p.221; Willis, p.153

^[19] Green, p.221.

^[20] Curtis, p.9; Mishou, p.4.

^[21] Mishou, p.2; Curtis, p.9; Lee, p.121.

^[22] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.551

^[23] Mishou, p.1

^[24] Mishou, p.1; Curtis, pp.65-5; Anon, ‘East End Outrages’, The Observer (London, 1888), p.5 <https://www.newspapers.com/topics/famous-people/jack-the-ripper/> [Accessed 3 March 2022].

^[25] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Lee, p.130; Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’ <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/illustrated-police-news?ds_kid=39700054727872890&gclid=CjwKCAiAlrSPBhBaEiwAuLSDUGBgVkenNfDKp7dRPrF6jhwam04V9crQzLcfFxC4wMvG3BNMXXLVHxoCEdcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds> [Accessed 2 March 2022].

^[26] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Green, p.213; Mishou, p.1.

^[27] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Curtis, p.133; Willis, p.149.

^[28] Curtis, p.266.

^[29] Ibid, p.257.

^[30] Shpayer-Makov, p.970.

^[31] Ibid; Paul Begg and John Bennett, Jack the Ripper: the forgotten victims, (New Haven, Connecticut ; London : Yale University Press, 2013) p.9. Proquest ebook.

^[32] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.545; Begg and Bennett, p.16.

^[33] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.190.

^[34] Begg and Bennett, p.10; Rubenhold, p.8; Judith Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London, (London : Virago, 1992), p. 195.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] Ibid, p.221; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’,p.545.

^[37] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.544; Ibid, p.545.

^[38] Ibid, p.558.

^[39] Mishou, p.16; Rubenhold, p.141.

^[40] Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.195.

^[41] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Rubenhold, p.337.

^[42] Mishou, p.16.

^[43] Ibid.

^[44] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.547.

[45] Ibid, p.567.

^[46] Rubenhold, p.12; Lucy Bland, Banishing the beast: English feminism and sexual morality, 1885-1914 (London: Penguin, 1995), p.102.

^[47] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.567.

^[48] Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.186; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.547.

^[49] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.552.

^[50] Rubenhold, p.141.

^[51] Ibid, p.345; Ibid, pp. 347-8.

^[52] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.547; Ibid, p.569.

^[53] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569.

^[54] Ibid, p.567.

^[55] Ibid, p.546.

^[56] Schwartz, p.320.

^[57] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.566.

^[58] Ibid, p.564.

^[59] Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.182; Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.561.

^[60] Ibid, p.546.

^[61] Ibid, p.569; Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[62] Ibid; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.561.

^[63] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Anon, ‘“Whitechapel murders” from the Illustrated Police News’, British Library <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/whitechapel-murders-from-the-illustrated-police-news> [Accessed 2 March].

^[64] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’

^[65] Ibid.

^[66] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Mishou, p.16.

^[67] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[68] Ibid.

^[69] Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.187.

^[70] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.564; Ibid, p.563.

^[71] Mariana Valverde, ‘The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse’, Victorian Studies, 32:2 (1989), p.168; Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[72] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.547; Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[73] Valverde, p.179.

^[74] Ibid; Ibid, p.168; Ibid, p.179.

[75] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[76] Mel Davies, ‘Corsets and Conception: Fashion and Demographic Trends in the Nineteenth Century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, (24:4), p.620; Ibid, p.624.

^[77] Ibid.

^[78] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[79] Curtis, p.108.

^[80] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Curtis, p.108.

^[81] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[82] Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.186; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.552.

^[83] Ibid.

^[84] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[85] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569.

[86] Rubenhold, pp.347-8.

^[87] Curtis, p.9.

^[88] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569.

^[89] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.186.

^[90] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546.

^[91] Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.186.

^[92] Ibid.

^[93] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.557.

^[94] Ibid.

^[95] Ibid.

^[96] Curtis, p.108.

^[97] Ibid, p.65; Ibid, p.9.

^[98] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’

^[99] Ibid.

^[100] Ibid; Curtis, p.266.

^[101] Ibid; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.561.

^[102] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.213.

^[103] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.544.

^[104] Willis, p.155; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.561.

^[105] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’

^[106] Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p. 2; Ibid, p.3.

^[107] Ibid, p.4.

^[108] Ibid; Green, p.219.

^[109] Curtis, p.266; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546.

^[110] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend

^[111] Mishou, p.2; Anon, ‘The Daily Telegraph’, in Casebook: Jack the Ripper (London, 1888) <https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/daily_telegraph/dt880922.html> [Accessed 3 March 2020].

^[112] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, Schwartz, p.320; ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546; Walkowitz, ‘Narratives’, p.186.

^[113] Ibid.

^[114] Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569; Schwartz, p.320.

^[115] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[116] Ibid; Mishou, p.16.

^[117] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[118] Curtis, p.65; Mishou, p.16.

^[119] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Willis, p.153.

^[120] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546.

^[121] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.563.

^[122] Curtis, p.9; Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’.

^[123] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Anon, ‘Jack the Ripper murders’.

^[124] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Anon, ‘Jack the Ripper murders’.

^[125] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Mishou, p.4; Jordanova, p.169; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546.

^[126] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Mishou, p.7.

^[127] Curtis, p.65; Ludmilla Jordanova, The look of the past: visual and material evidence in historical practice (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012), p.169.

^[128] Mishou, p.1; Jordanov, p.169; Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.221.

^[129] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’.

^[130] Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.221; Curtis, p.65.

^[131] Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.221.

^[132] Curtis, p.68.

^[133] Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.221.

^[134] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, City of dreadful delight, p.221.

^[135] Bland, p.118; Curtis, p.84.

^[136] Green, p.21; Rubenhold, p.141; Mishou, p.16.

^[137] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Green, p.217.

^[138] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Curtis, p.68; Green, p.215.

^[139] Mishou, p.2; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.544.

^[140] Anon, ‘Illustrated Police News’; Jordanova, p.169.

^[141] Curtis, p.9; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.557.

^[142] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.545.

^[143] Mishou, p.2; Curtis, p.84.

^[144] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’

^[145] Ibid; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569.

^[146] Ibid, p.546; Schwartz, p.320.

^[147] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Jordanova, p.169.

^[148] Anon, ‘Ready for the Whitechapel fiend’; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.569; Ibid, p.546; Shpayer-Makov, p.967.

^[149] Storey, p.12.

^[150] Curtis, p.9; Walkowitz, ‘Jack the Ripper’, p.546; Curtis, p.258