Jack The Ripper
- Source A can teach us a number of things about the murder of Polly Nichols and Martha Tabram, but it is hard to determine whether this information is entirely factual or just information that the newspaper has exaggerated to sell. Victorians liked to be shocked so maybe the newspaper wanted to make the article as horrifying as possible. Despite all this the article still tells you that people were taking these murders very seriously. The murder of Polly Nichols was unusual as the killer appeared to have no motive “No adequate motive in the shape of plunder can be traced.” In those times most people were murdered for money, yet at the time of her death Polly Nichols had no money with her. The people of London were shocked because the murders of Polly Nichols and Martha Tabram were so peculiar; neither of them were mugged or raped but mutilated. People felt insecure and scared by these unusual killings, the fact that already the murders of these two women had been linked shows that there was a complex investigation. Out of many murders in the east end of London Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols stood out from the others.
- Source B and C are alike in the way that they are both telling formal facts about the death of Polly Nichols, whereas source A is possibly a more exaggerated version of the death because Victorians liked gory, shocking stories and the newspaper wanted to sell as many copies as possible. Source C agrees with source A when saying that the bodies had no money with them when they were killed, this suggests that both sources noticed this because it was unusual. Although they are written in different ways all three sources inmply how violent and unusual the murders were. The details of the murders in sources B and C were much more accurate than soruce A when explaining the murder. The reason sources B and C are so formal is because they are reports than will be used for evidence and information so they cannot be exaggerated or glorified. The words “Demented” and “Extrodianry Violence” were used in soruce A whereas more formal and factual statements were used in Sources B and C such as “Considerable anatomical skill”. The phrase “Demented” is used in source A when describing the murderer, this is an almost complete opposite view to souces B and C. Source A is saying that he is unstable whereas source B is saying that anyone who carried out this type of muder was very skilled and knowlagable. Source A neither agrees nor disagrees on the fact that the murders were carried out by someone who had the knowlage and skill to comit this type of murder.
- Sources D and E are both useful when trying to understand why the ripper was able to avoid capture, but neither of the sources are entirely trustworthy. Source D is Elizabeth Long describing the man seen talking to Annie Chapman before she was killed. This souce may not be completely accurate information, Long could have mistaken vital details or seen a different man or maybe even lied to protect herself or the Ripper. Elizabeth Long may even have been under the influence of alcohol which may have blurred her memories of what she actually saw that night. On the other hand this souce was one of very few eye witness accounts on Jack the Ripper. Therefore the police would take any evidence they could get very seriously. The fact that the police went out searching for a forieghn looking man suggests that they believed Long’s story so to them it must have been very usefull and convincing evidence. Souce D tells us that if the Ripper had a dark comlexion and could have been a forighner it may have made it herder for the police because he may not have any police records. Souce D also states that the man Elizabeth Long saw was wearing a dearstalker hat, this would have been shadowing his face and his features. For example people wouldn’t be able to see his hair colour and his face would be darkened. He was wearing a long coat, this would have helped him to blend in with other perople when walking around the streets and could easily not be noticed on a dark night and could get away from a murder scene quickly and unnoticed.
