Jack the Ripper - Source related study.

3.  Source D and E are very useful in helping me to understand why the ripper was able to avoid capture. Firstly in source D the eyewitness says the man she saw “was wearing a deer stalker hat.” Now in the time of 1888 when these murders occurred practically every man wore a deer stalker hat and knowing this the killer used it to his advantage. The killer would have known that if he wore a hat that nearly every man was wearing at the time then if someone spotted him their description of him would fit a large amount of people. Also the killer might have changed his appearance in another way. The eye witness in source D says that the man she saw was of “dark completion” and “looked like a foreigner.” This suggests to me that the killer might have done was to wear some kind of makeup. Makeup that would make him looks foreign. The killer might have done this in order to lead the police astray. The police on hearing the eyewitness’s account would probably start looking for a suspicious foreigner and if the killer was not foreign and in fact English then the police would not be looking at all in the right direction. As well as that the police and public would probably favor a foreigner as a suspect as they might have been wearier of them. All in the entire killer could have put on makeup to create an excellent red herring. Source E to me is very useful as it suggests that the killer avoided capture because of the public in White chapel. White chapel in 1888 was a mixture of thieves, prostitutes and people just living at life’s end. It wasn’t a place the police liked to go either; they often walked around in two’s as they patrolled the network of “dark and narrow lanes”. There were places they wouldn’t even dare go in two’s. I think the ripper chose White chapel for those very reasons that there were places “that police wouldn’t go”. The ripper could (after a murder) escape quickly down the network of crooked lanes and if chased loose the police in them quite easily. As well as the many narrow lanes in White chapel the killer could be sure of one other thing, crowds. People would quickly gather around a murder site thus destroying most evidence around the body. A handkerchief for instance found by the police next to the body could be thought as the killer’s. But because of crowds somebody else may have dropped it there. Also the ripper could have used these crowds as cover, maybe actually standing amongst them himself or using them to slip away without being noticed.

4.  The police tried to catch the ripper by using a number of methods first of which was an identification parade. The police used an identification parade in order to get witnesses to single out someone. This was a quick pro-active technique used by the police in which they hoped would quickly catch the killer, but unfortunately for the police the people that were pointed out were cleared. After the second murder police tried something different, they carried out house to house interrogations. The interrogations were unsuccessful but a better way to find witnesses. By the third murder witnesses came to the police voluntarily. The police collected the witness reports and evidence around the body and concluded that the time of death was most likely around 5.30am. Then the police had the body looked over by a coroner who commented that “the injuries had been done by someone with considerable anatomical skill”. With that evidence in hand the police could now change there investigations to that of someone who was educated not just some criminal off the street. About three weeks passed until the next murder and during that period the police arrested a John Pizer who was suspected for the murder of Polly Nichols. But even with their suspect in holding the police were to again find another victim of the Ripper. This time the murder was next to a working men’s club and the body was found by a club member. The police questioned the other members but they all hadn’t seen or heard anything. Again the police carried out house to house enquiries but only discovered the identity of the victim. Then much to the police aid four important witnesses came forward. They all described some sort of middle aged man who wore a hat and overcoat and who seemed to look educated. Now with these new witness accounts the police thought they might actually be getting somewhere, but even so they still tried to offer a reward for any information towards the killings. Unfortunately the Home Secretary wouldn’t allow a reward to be placed as he didn’t think that the circumstances were right. Something different came up upon the fifth murder, something that the police didn’t like. On a wall near the Body of the victim, written in white chalk, were the words “the Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing”. However before the words could be photographed the commissioner of the police ordered them to be washed off. This was a bad move for the police as the writing on the wall could have been more valuable evidence. The commissioner said he did this because if people had seen it there would have been an onslaught upon the Jewish communities and lives could have been lost. But after destroying there main piece of evidence the police only came across one witness, who said he saw a man of the same description as other witnesses (the tall hat and coat) talking to a woman around 1.35am. After the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Cathy Edowes, the police published a leaflet. It was a leaflet trying to get people to come forward if they knew anything that could help the police in their investigation. Although a good proactive way of getting people to come forward and to warn the public. I think that this was done by the police as a last resort. The police had little evidence but they still were trying to stop or warn the public of the killer.

5.  I think only a very small part of blame should have gone on the police for not capturing Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was and still is the first ever documented serial killer, the first serial killer the police of England (since their formation around 1829) ever had to deal with. The Ripper murders were a new kind of crime and because of this the police did not know how to deal with it; they didn’t know the correct methods of capturing a serial killer. The police didn’t understand that a serial killer has a “modus operandi”, a signature, which he always followed. So because they didn’t know this they couldn’t follow the killers trail. This wasn’t the police’s fault they just didn’t have the experience. Police were not to blame for the area of the killings. I think the killer chose the area of White chapel specifically to make it harder for the police. With all the narrow streets and shifty people that gathered around the murder scene the police had a lot on their hands in White chapel. On the night of the 30th of September the police (when hearing of the second murder of the night) had to run down many a network of different lanes and streets. Then by the time they arrived at the murder scene the killer had got away easily. Not because the police were slow but because the killer could just run up and around a few lanes and loose the police. Also there were places that police wouldn’t even go because it was just too dangerous. So if trying to get somewhere quickly (a crime scene) they would have to keep to the lighter streets and make sure they didn’t wander off from other police. Overall the police did everything they could. They carried out house to house interrogations, questioned witnesses, held identification parades and got medical doctors to examine the victims’ bodies. Only when it came to the fifth murder (the murder of Catherine Edowes) did the police make a mistake. At the murder scene of Catherine Edowes   on the wall just across from her body were written the words “the Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing”. Because these words were offensive to the Jewish people and could make people blame the Jews for the murders, the police immediately washed the words off the wall. As a result the police had just destroyed and maybe a vital piece of evidence. What the police could have done with the writing is of compared it to the hand-writing of one of the letters they had received claiming to be from Jack the Ripper himself. If the police had done this then they may have caught the ripper. This was an extremely big mistake for the police. One other way in which the police were slightly to blame for not capturing the Ripper was the fact that there was no cooperation between the local police force and the Metropolitan police force. The main reason for this was that both police forces wanted to capture the Ripper and claim the glory for themselves. Both police forces were working against each other which was the biggest downfall during the Jack the Ripper murders. This uncooperativeness between the forces was so extreme to the extent that there was a dividing white line in White Chapel. This line was used in the case that if a policeman on one side was chasing a criminal and the criminal crossed that line the policeman in pursuit would stop and not walk away. This was done because it was both the police forces nature that if the perpetrator crossed the line than it was the other forces problem. This was extremely bad in the case of the Ripper murders because Jack the Ripper himself probably knew this and used it to his advantage when getting away from a murder scene. Thus overall the police were weaker because they didn’t want to work together. Personally I don’t think the police were to blame for not capturing Jack the Ripper. I think it was just unfortunate circumstances and the high initiative of Jack the Ripper himself.