4) Use sources F, G, and your own knowledge to explain how the police tried to catch Jack the Ripper.
In the 1880s, the police were very different from the police of today. Their main propose was crime prevention and their methods their methods were very primitive
Source F is a police leaflet, which was published after the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Kate Eddowes; it was written to aid the police in their investigation it was also written in a factual tone, it suggests that the police were appealing for any information regarding suspicious characters. Because of the timing of this leaflet shows the desperation faced by the police but for because of the many defects reasons the leaflet was not successful: The first being that they did not offer any description of the murderer at all, ‘person to whom suspicion was attached’. The second being that they still assumed that the person was living in Whitechapel, when there was a large amount of evidence suggested that the murderer wasn’t from Whitechapel (the fact that the murders were all done on the weekends or on Friday nights, which suggests that he had a job and came into Whitechapel to murder). The third reason being that they did not offer any rewards to the public but it must be taken into account that the police were not responsible for handing out rewards- the home sectary was the one who decided against it. In addition, there is no information on the mutilations to the bodies, it just gives the dates, which would not have encouraged anyone to come forward as it could have been thought that they were just non-violent attacks, and it would have persuaded people to come forward. The leaflet also suggests that the police had run out of all possible leads and were using this leaflet as a last attempt. To sum up source F shows us that that the police methods were very much reliant on witnesses and help from the public.
