Police officers hardly got any training before they started work. All police officers learned the military drill before being sent out on a beat. Their inspection was on how well they could perform parades rather than police work.
Hours of work were very long. Hours could go up to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. A beat at daytime was seven and a half hours miles long. At night it was two miles long.
There were many different police forces up and down the country. Different police forces had different uniforms and roles. Some required officers to attend church on Sundays whilst others required them to wear their uniform off duty. Some of the different roles of police forces were inspecting bridges, being lifesavers and were used as school attendance officers.
In 1839 the Rural Constabulary Act was passed. This allowed magistrates to decide whether to set up police forces in each county. Twenty-two counties decided to set police forces so in 1856 the County and Borough police Act was passed which meant all counties had to create police forces. Through the Act each county received annual government grants of 25%. This was to help pay the cost of running police forces. However to get the grant the three Inspectors of Constabulary had to issue a county a certificate of efficiency before the grant was given. Chief Constables had to send an annual report to the Home Office. The report included crime rates of counties. With the County and Borough Act in place, policing became much organised.
There was very little detective work in the early nineteenth century. The first detectives were appointed in 1842 by the Metropolitan Police. The first inspectors were not very effective because the Home Office thought that detectives would become corrupt if they are too friendly with criminals. Detective work began to be more organised in 1860.
The reorganisation of the Criminal Intelligence Department now known as CID led to improvements. Figures showed that with more detectives working for the Criminal Intelligence there were more arrests.
The methods used by the Met in the early days were not very effective or fair. In 1862 photographs of criminals were taken at prisons. They were then sent to Scotland Yard where they were placed in a room. This room was called the “Rogues Gallery”. The photographs were taken because it was believed that detectives could work out the criminal type criminals were involved in by the shape of their head.
In 1879 instructions were introduced for investigating officers on a murder scene. It was said that the body of the deceased must not be moved, anything in the room must not be moved and the public must be kept away from seeing the dead victim or the crime scene. However it was difficult to keep to these rules because there were still less detectives than there were in other major cities.
The most common method used by police officers was to follow suspicious characters while on the beat. Detectives also used this method to solve crime.
The police learned how fingerprints play a major part in solving crime in the early part of the nineteenth century. The first conviction using fingerprints was in June 1902.
In the nineteenth century detectives were very limited to forensic knowledge. However in 1884 John Toms was convicted of murder using forensic evidence. But the conviction was down to luck because the same torn paper used for John’s pistol wadding was found in the wound of the victim’s head.
History Coursework: Jack The Ripper
Question Two:
“Why did the Whitechapel murders attract so much attention?”
The Ripper murders attracted a lot of attention. The Ripper murders created great fascination to people all over Britain. Even today everyone knows about the murders and talk about it. I am now going to discuss some of reasons of why the murders have become so famous.
In the nineteenth century the East End of London was the very poor. The poorest of areas was Whitechapel. The streets of Whitechapel were dark and narrow. There were many slaughter houses in Whitechapel which led to many streets being bloodstained.
Whitechapel was very crowded. The area was largely populated with Jews who had fled from Russia as well as people from different nationalities. Jews were blamed for everything that went wrong in the nineteenth century. They were stereotyped to be seen as the ones who always do wrong and never do right.
Whitechapel was very crowded. People were poor and many were forced into prostitution in order to survive. There were many lodging houses in Whitechapel which were always full.
Because everyone who lived in Whitechapel were poor and in poverty, there was a high number of criminals. People often got robbed and often got killed in the process.
Despite the terrible conditions of Whitechapel people from outside the East End were attracted to the area. Many middle class men and women came to Whitechapel from the West End in search of prostitution, alcohol and for gambling. They often gave accounts of what the area was like. One person said that Whitechapel was “evil collection of slums that hide human creeping things; where filthy men and women live on gin, where collars and clean shirts and unknown; where every citizen wears a black eye”. Another person described how they had seen a father, mother, three children and four pigs living in one cellar. All these descriptions were very gruesome but they may have been exaggerated.
One of the reasons why the Ripper murders are so famous is the choice of victims. The Ripper killed randomly but he never killed men and only killed women who were all prostitutes. The five official victims of Jack the Ripper were Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly. All the women murdered by the Ripper were innocent people who were of no problem to anyone. Some of the victims were married and had kids. There was no motive for killing these prostitutes.
All the Ripper murders that took place were fairly close to each other. All the murders happened in Whitechapel with the exception of one in Spitalfields. This caused public alarm because it was obvious that there was a killer on the loose in Whitechapel. People were scared to go out at night and more police officers were put on the streets.
The way the Ripper killed his victims was bloody and gruesome. The murders are the most horrifying murders even known. The first victim of Jack the Ripper was Polly Nicholls. She had her throat slashed ear to ear; she had been stabbed thirty-nine times on the body, neck, private parts and abdomen. The description of Polly Nicholls murders is terrifying but she had been lucky because as the murders progressed the wounds were much worse than the ones of Polly Nicholls. Ripper’s last victim was Mary Kelly. She was murdered at her lodgings. It is thought that the Ripper spend two hours to mutilate her body. This is the description of the wounds described by the police surgeon, Dr Bond. “The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the body was lying to the left side of the bed. The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs had been cut off and the internal organs removed. The breasts were cut off and the arms and face hacked beyond recognition. The tissues of the neck were slashed through to the bone. The uterus, kidneys and one breast were found under the head, the other breast by her right foot, the liver between her feet, the intestines by her right side and the spleen by her left. Her heart had been cut out and could not be found”. It is clear from the description that the Ripper had some kind of mental problem to carry out such brutal mutilations.
The local and national press took the opportunity to make a big story out of the murders. They sensationalized the murders and sold many papers because everyone likes to hear about murders. The press sparked up tension within the Jewish community by continuously hinting that the killer was Jewish. They made a strong suggestion that the killer was Jew the press nicknamed “Leather Apron”.
The press were overjoyed when the Dear Boss letter was allowed to be published. The letter was signed JACK THE RIPPER. This is where the name Jack the Ripper came from. It would be a great headline and sounded gruesome and as dreadful as the murders. The name summed up what the killer did. Rip up the bodies of his victims.
The police appealed for information from the people of Whitechapel. They distributed 80,000 hand bills to Whitechapel homes. This led to lots of people giving useless information.
Queen Victoria commented on the Ripper murders and the police investigation. She said that the lightening in the streets of Whitechapel need to be improved. The fact that a monarch commented on the case attracted a lot of attention because anything a leading monarch said was given importance.
Jack the Ripper was never captured. There were many suspects but no-one was charged. So the killer remains a mystery which leaves people to still talk about their theories of who they think the Ripper was.
History Coursework: Jack The Ripper
Question Three:
“Why were the police unable to catch Jack the Ripper?”
Jack the Ripper was never caught. There were suspects to the case but no one was charged. The police were never able to catch Jack the Ripper because of a number of reasons. In this essay I will discuss the reasons why the Ripper was never caught.
One of the reasons why the Jack the Ripper murders are so famous and known to everyone today is because the Ripper was never caught. There were suspects who were arrested but none were charged. The police were never able to catch Jack the Ripper because of a number of reasons.
One of the main reasons why the murderer was not caught was because at the time of the murders (1888) police work had just been set up and was in their infancy. The police never have had to solve crime before and were suddenly part of an investigation of a mass serial killer.
Today when a person is arrested and charged with a crime a record is made about that person stating their crime and when they were charged. This is so if the same person is caught again doing a crime they will be known to the police. Back in 1888f the police didn’t have records of serial killers or even knew what a serial killer was. This made it harder of them to catch the Ripper.
Near some of the murdered victims of Jack the Ripper personal possessions were found. Mary Ann Nichols was found in Buck’s Row. In her clothes a comb, a broken mirror and a handkerchief was found. Her murderer could have touched these possessions but because the police had no idea of DNA and had no forensic knowledge the possessions were ignored.
Before the Ripper murders the relationship between the police and the people were very poor. The people didn’t trust the police and the police didn’t trust the people. When the Ripper murders happened detectives and police surgeons were brought to the scene. They were known as the expert witnesses. Police surgeons had to confirm the time of death of the victims. The time of death they gave often didn’t support information from witnesses. For example Dr George Phillips, police surgeon, estimated the time of death for Annie Chapman was 4:30am. However Elizabeth Stride, witness, said that they saw Annie Chapman talking to a man at 5:30am. This was after the time of death given by Cr Phillips but the police took no notice of what Elizabeth had to say.
Throughout the murders of Jack the Ripper the police only listened to the expert witnesses but they faced a problem after the murder of Marry Kelly. Dr Bond and Dr Phillips disagreed about the times of death. Dr Bond believed that Mary Kelly died between 1:00am and 2:00am while Dr Phillips believed she died between 5:00am and 6:00am. The police did not know what to do. They had ever faced a situation where two expert witnesses gave different estimations.
Dr Phillips also said that he did not believe that the killer had any medical knowledge. This also surprised the police because until the murder of Mary Kelly everyone believed the killer had medical knowledge.
The local press didn’t help matters. They found the murders an opportunity to write good articles and sell big. The murders were all everyone spoke about. The press were very biased and made strong suggestions that the killer was Jewish. They were many Jews living in Whitechapel in the nineteenth century and were blamed for many things that happened.
The press made a strong suggestion that the killer was a Jewish man called John Pizer. The press gave him the nickname of Leather Apron. He had a conviction for stabbing a few years before the murders of Jack the Ripper. The press made such a strong suggestion that Leather Apron was the Ripper that the police were forced to investigate. It turned out that he had many alibis that he was hiding in relatives’ house at the time of the murders. He was cleared from the case and lots of police time was wasted.
The police took a lot of time wondering whether the killer was local or not. Whitechapel was a very poverty driven area but many working men from the outside came to Whitechapel to rest in Pubs. Could the Ripper be someone from outside? The police could not decide.
After the murders many witnesses came forward. A very interesting and detailed description was given after the murder of Mary Kelly from George Hutchinson. He described a man talking to Mary Kelly the night she was murdered. Here is the description he gave: “age about thirty-our or thirty-five, height five feet six inches, dark eyes and dark eye lashes, slight moustache curled up at the end, hair dark; dress, long dark coat, collar and cuffs trimmed astrakhan and a dark jacket underneath light waistcoat, dark trousers, dark hat, button boots and gaiters, with white buttons, black tie with horseshoe pin, respectable appearance, Jewish appearance”. The streets of Whitechapel were very narrow and dark in the eighteenth century. How could someone give such a detailed description? Was the man covering up something? Did he know the Ripper? He needed to be questioned by the police. However the police noted down his description and did nothing more about it.
The police started to show signs up panic when they couldn’t catch the Ripper. They distributed eighty thousand hand bills and allowed the publication of the Dear Boss letter. This led to lots of people giving information which was mostly false but the police had to investigate. Lots of police time was wasted again.
When some one gets murdered they are normally murdered by someone who knows them or are murdered because the killer wants something from them. However the Ripper murders were random and the only connection between the victims was that they were prostitutes. The Ripper appeared to have no motive and there no evidence that anything was stolen from the victims. This made it all the harder for police to catch the killer.