Q.1. What can you learn from Source A about the murder of Polly Nicholls? [6]

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Q.1. What can you learn from Source A about the murder of Polly Nicholls? [6]

From Source A, I can learn a lot about the murder of Polly Nicholls, but I can not find out about who was responsible and their reasons for murdering Polly Nicholls. It was on the newspapers in the local area and the media were taking full advantage of it; this source that has been in the East End Observer is a good example. Most people in the East End of London were very shocked with this murder as well as the murder which took place before Polly Nicholls murder which was the one with Martha Tabram. The two murdered women had links between them; both women were prostitutes and the cutting on them was brutal and extreme. The “extraordinary violence” on the bodies’ shows that the murders were being committed by someone who knew what he was doing and who was “a demented being”. No clear motive for the murders was discovered. The only link the police could find was that both of the women that were murdered were prostitutes, but that still left many possibilities open. Since the women that were killed weren’t robbed, the evidence they had wasn’t enough to make any form of judgement.

Q.2. Does the evidence of Source C support the evidence of Sources A and B about the Ripper murders? Explain your answer. [8]

    All three sources (A, B & C) support each other to some extent, because they all tell you about murders of female prostitutes and all three sources tell us that some violence was used on the body. As far as I think Source A does not support Source C in a lot of ways. Source A is from a tabloid newspaper, which tends to exaggerate the truth, so that is probably the case here. It is also very unlikely for the reporter to have been involved in the investigation of the murders and to have even seen the body; the Doctor certainly who wrote Source C was involved in the investigation. The Sources do however support each other in another way; none of the sources suggests a possible motive for the murders. Source A, however describes the murders as being highly disgusting and using “extraordinary violence”, but Source C just describes an incision in the neck. This is obviously, because they are describing the different murders, but it still does not make any links between the two murders. Source B supports Source C a lot more than Source A does. Because it’s a coroner’s report, both the coroner and the doctor would have really been involved in the investigation. The Coroner and Doctor also state that a knife was used by the murderer and suggest that the murderer “had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge”. Source B, however tells us a more brutal murder than Source C, because in the murder of Polly Nicholls, organs had been found. Theories say that the killer was disturbed during his murder of Elizabeth Stride and hence the different between the two sources. Source A and Source B both support Source C, but Source B supports Source C more the source A. The main reason for this is probably because Source A is an article from a tabloid, exaggerates the truth.

Q.3. How useful are Sources D and E in helping you to understand why the Ripper was able to avoid capture? [10]

 Sources D and E both sources help us to understand how the Ripper was able to avoid from getting captured, however Source E is a lot more direct on addressing the topic than Source D is. Source D is the evidence given by a woman named Elizabeth Long at the murder of Annie Chapman. The evidence she gives isn’t from the highest standards and uncertain; she uses phrases like these, “I cannot be sure”, “as far as I could tell” and “as well as I could make out”. This shows she really doesn’t know much and with this evidence, the police obviously didn’t have enough evidence, but most people’s evidence was that the murderer was a foreigner, the police spent time at the docks waiting in the hope that that murderer would pass. Even Queen Victoria thought it was a foreigner as no English man could possibly have committed all the murders. All the time searching at the docks gave the Ripper lots of free time to kill prostitutes on the streets of East London and Whitechapel. Source E is slightly less helpful than Source D in helping us to understand how the Ripper was not captured, despite being a more direct source on the topic, but nevertheless explains other reasons how the Ripper was able to escape. Source E is part of an article published in a local newspaper. The article says that an “informant demanded that the police force be strengthened” warning them that murders would ensue. When Polly Nicholls was murdered the informant returned a note the police and saying the establishment of a curfew to clear the streets but they ignored him once again. Then Annie Chapman was murdered. The sequence of events that is described in the source, is unlikely to be true and more likely to be a story created to sell papers and to criticise the police force. However the source ends describing the area of Whitechapel as a “network of narrow, dark and crooked lanes”. This would mean that it was an easy place for Jack the Ripper to hide and get away from the police. Both Sources D and E are useful in helping us to understand how the Ripper didn’t get captured or avoid getting capture. Source D shows this by describing the poor quality of evidence the police had to work with and Source E by describing the area from the point of view of it being a very easy place to hide because most of the people in Whitechapel looked suspicious enough to have had killed somebody.

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Q.4. Use sources F and G, and your own knowledge, to explain how the police tried to catch Jack The Ripper. [12]

The police tried a lot of ways to catch Jack The Ripper, but were very unlucky and unsuccessful. This was mainly due to the lack of resources and techniques available to the police. These days the resources and techniques have been becoming better then more than 100 years ago.

Source F is a police leaflet, encouraging people to step forward if they had any suspicions about anyone being the person behind the murders of the ...

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