Use sources F and G, and your own knowledge, to explain how the police tried to catch Jack the Ripper.

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Kirsty Rogers

Candidate number: 1135

Use sources F and G, and your own knowledge, to explain how the police tried to catch Jack the Ripper.

These sources are useful to some extent but a lot more detail could have been included. The metropolitan police force had only recently been developed and the force only had detectives since 1842. The methods detectives used were slowly developing, but there ideas were very basic at this stage. The basic method was simply to follow suspicious characters whilst wearing plain clothes. Other than this they were aware of footprints and some basic forensic evidence. The policeman on the beat was only trained to stop violence in rallies and major demonstrations and to keep order on the streets of London. This wasn't very useful when trying to catch a serial killer.  This was a main factor as to why they did not catch Jack the Ripper.

Source G is good evidence of the police methods.  The nature is written in the form of a letter.  The purpose was to inform the Mile End Vigilance committee that the metropolitan will not be giving a reward.  The Mile End Vigilance committee ended up clubbing together and producing their own reward in order to help the police and the Jewish reputation. The origin of the source was the Home Secretary, which were in charge of the metropolitan police.  This letter was given out on the 17 September 1888.  The metropolitan police believed that they would get too many people coming forward and too much false information if they were to give out a reward, “…to produce more harm than good…”.  We have to remember that the people in White Chapel were extremely poor and would definitely lie for money. This was already a main reason that had hindered the acceleration of the investigation.  Many people from the Whitechapel area came to police with the suggestion of ‘suspicious characters’.  This resulted in “leather Apron” being arrested, among with other suspicious characters that were arrested and released as a result of poor informant information.  This wasted a lot of police time as there were actually few police.  They needed the police to be out on the streets of White Chapel instead of interviewing informants with poor information.

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The police tried a lot of different methods; we can see one method in source G.  But due to the fact that they did not have a lot of knowledge of serial killers they were all unsuccessful.  The police first two lines of inquiry after Polly Nichols murder were; ‘Those with knowledge of dissecting’ and ‘those connected in some way with prostitutes’ These inquiries were unsuccessful as the police arrested and realest three horse slaughterers who had abilities.  They also asked questions of workers in abattoirs and slaughter houses.  

Another major disability for this investigation was that ...

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