Why Were Police Unable To Catch Jack The Ripper?

Authors Avatar

Douglas Glenn Conley Jr./ Junior/ II/ the second/ etc.

Course Work Question Three: Why Were Police Unable To Catch Jack The Ripper?

Following the 10th November 1888, the five brutal, apparently motiveless prostitute murderers accredited to the infamous Jack the Ripper that had swept London’s East End since the late August mysteriously stopped. But not because the police had finally caught up with him. He simply vanished, after eluding police capture several times with apparent ease. In fact, the principal reason that this 19th century serial killer is so legendary is that the mystery of his identity remains unsolved to this day because police never captured him. The police were unsuccessful in their attempts to catch the Ripper for several key reasons.

The first and foremost reason for was the very nature and behaviour of Jack himself.

The Ripper was the first of a new breed: serial killers. English police forces had no experience whatsoever in dealing with this new strain of murderer. However, they could hardly be expected to: as previously mentioned, he was the pioneer of serial killing. The fundamental concept of a serial killer is that there is no motive. This fact makes it very complicated to determine the murderer’s identity with out clear evidence indicating him. In 1888, there was no such thing as a forensic investigation. For police to trace the ripper through evidence, there is little he could have done short of leaving his wallet at the crime scene that would have led the police to identify and catch him. Even now, with advanced forensic techniques such as DNA matching, it can be extremely difficult to carry out a serial killer investigation – it is hard to imagine the obstacles that police would need to overcome without these tools.

Join now!

Another reason the police failed to catch the Ripper was that the Metropolitan Police Force (MPF) was a juvenile organisation. The police were not particularly well trained. Its Detective Branch was especially underdeveloped as the majority of cases the detectives investigated were petty theft, though in worst cases murders occasionally occurred, but the motives generally were crystal clear and the perpetrator was soon brought to justice. Though Police methods were limited to catching criminals in the act, even this might have worked, if only they had sooner set up a grid of policemen to close in around the crime ...

This is a preview of the whole essay