The Police and Jack the ripper
Question 5 I agree with ‘the police were to blame for not capturing Jack the Ripper’ because the police carried out a lot of any many faults that slowed down there investigation and brought disruptions in them. Firstly, the police were looking for the wrong person, they considered the Ripper was a human butcher rather than an educated person with medical knowledge “both crimes are the work of a demented being, as the extraordinary violence used is the peculiar feature in each instance“ this tells us that the media and possibly the police believed that the murderer was a mad man, but in other sources the murders of the Ripper seemed more like a operation made by a doctor, and educated person like a doctor wouldn’t do such killings. However the serial killer was reported as a “skilful person” with a lot of medical knowledge who knew about each organ and were it was situated, source B; part of the Coroner’s report of the death of Polly Nicholls, “the injuries have been made by someone who had considerable anatomical skill and knowledge…no unskilled person could have known where to find the organs, or to have recognized them when they were found. No mere slaughterer of animals could have carried out these operations” this was a very reliable report, it gives us the idea that the butcher was very clever, the police should have looked through the doctors residents in
Whitechapel, this information could have maybe caused the police to narrow the search down to doctors, but they didn’t do so. The police also looked fro the wrong person, again and again because they were told the murderer was a foreigner or a Jew, they didn’t believe he was a Englishman, which was obvious at that time as people used Jews and foreigners as scapegoats and the people were illiterate to understand that it could be anyone “he looked to me like a foreigner” this also wasted a lot of the polices time suspecting foreigners when the Ripper could have ...
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Whitechapel, this information could have maybe caused the police to narrow the search down to doctors, but they didn’t do so. The police also looked fro the wrong person, again and again because they were told the murderer was a foreigner or a Jew, they didn’t believe he was a Englishman, which was obvious at that time as people used Jews and foreigners as scapegoats and the people were illiterate to understand that it could be anyone “he looked to me like a foreigner” this also wasted a lot of the polices time suspecting foreigners when the Ripper could have been someone else, this may have also been useful as it but light on their racism. The police didn’t respond to public fears that any murder would occur or circumstances would get worse for them, they should have sent out information to the public or media about how much they have learnt through their investigation and who the suspects could be, description of the murderer should be told to the public, this would have helped a lot. Source E; part of an article published in a local newspaper after the murders of Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman, “he was referred from one police office to another, but without making any impression” this source tells us that the police didn’t care much about the case and they didn’t care about the public fears, it seems like they just saw it as a normal case and didn’t pay much attention to it. The police used a lot of useless methods that slowed down their investigation, they used the method of dressing up as prostitutes, this did not help because the Ripper was very cunning and wouldn’t fall for this, nor would any other man looking for a prostitute, this was a waste of time. The police didn’t use any rewards, which would have helped them get some information of the Ripper. The police also lacked a lot of training, they didn’t use the methods they had properly to go through their investigation, like the bloodhounds, they should have had bloodhounds on the beat with the police officers. If they didn’t have any CCTV cameras they could have visited places were murders were most likely to happen, they could stay at lodging houses and secretly follow suspicious people and search through peoples houses, but they didn’t have the knowledge to do so as they were not properly trained. Not offering any rewards was a bad idea, in Whitechapel the police had a bad reputation “he was referred from one police office to another, but without making any impression” so the public didn’t inform the police anything, if they were offered rewards they would probably do so. The police only had a very small area to investigate as seen in source I which is a map of the East End in 1888 showing the sites of the murders, having a small place for the police to investigate would be much easier, if they put more police on the beat at all times in a small area like this the Ripper would have been captured, it would also help if the police if they dressed up as normal citizens while on the beat. I disagree with ’the police were to blame for not capturing Jack the Ripper’ because the police were tracking a very cunning and clever serial killer “no adequate motive in the shape of plunder can be traced” this gives us the idea that the murderer was so sly that he didn’t leave any clue to give the police an idea about his motive or why he was doing the killings, the police didn’t have much evidence to work with, this is clearly illustrated in source H; part of an article published in the times after the murder of Mary Kelly “not a trace is left of the murderer, and there is no purpose in the crime to afford the slightest clue”. The Ripper was very devious and left no clues for the police to work on and give them an idea of the Ripper, the police had hardly any identity of the killer, as he was so quick-witted. There was a great public interest in the cases “the two murders which have so startled London”. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the East End and the police had to go through a difficult case like this for the first time. There was mounting pressure to arrest someone for these crimes, the police tried their best but the public and media didn’t help, they constantly blamed the police which lowered the moral and self esteem of the officers, the police arrested a lot of innocent suspects due to the media and witnesses stereotyping, this wasted the polices time “he looked to me like a foreigner”. It wasn’t entirely the polices fault for not capturing the Ripper, it was also down to the appalling social conditions in Whitechapel that allowed the Ripper to avoid capture this is evident in source E which is part of an article in a local newspaper after the murders of Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman “the main thoroughfares of Whitechapel are connected by a network of narrow, dark and crooked lanes. Every one apparently containing some headquarters of infamy. The streets were also filled with smog, which, made it harder for police to the ripper. The sights and sounds are a apocalypse of evil”. This helps us understand that it wasn’t fully the polices fault, the lanes of Whitechapel made it hard for the police to capture the ripper, and nobody could be trusted as everyone in Whitechapel had done some sort of crime as they had a bad name for something, so basically everyone in Whitechapel was a suspect. The lack of training of the police was completely not the polices fault, it was down to the lack of government funding for the police and its refusal to increase taxes. The police did their very best with all the techniques they had available at that time, they did pretty well without all the technologies of today like CCTV cameras, DNA identification, finger printing or national, organized police force. A murderer who targets complete strangers with no motive at all is still very rare even by today’s standards with all the technology.
