What insights into late Victorian gender and social relations can be gleaned from a study of the press coverage of the 'Jack the Ripper' murders?

One of the more notorious areas of the East End was that of Whitechapel. It was well known as an area of high immigration for Jewish refugees of European Pogrom’s and from the 1850s Irish immigrants after the great potato famine. Whitechapel was synonymous with crowded, squalid housing conditions and a haunt for those engaged in prostitution and crime. In the autumn of 1888, this notoriety for violence and danger was greatly enhanced by the ‘Whitechapel murders’ and by the emergence of the first known serial killer (a term not used at the time) who was given the name of ‘Jack the Ripper’ by the British press. Between August 31st and November 9th, the Ripper was attributed with five murders of those who were termed ‘unfortunates’, women who had to sell their bodies for sex to be able to afford lodgings and food. The press sensationalised the murders by releasing their newspaper editions emblazoned with the woodcut engravings of the ‘latest ‘orrible murder’. An examination of the illustrated police news over a period from September 8th to November 17th 1888 shows an increase in column inch coverage given to the Whitechapel murders, rising from one third of the front page on September 8th to total coverage by the November 17th issue. This rise in coverage was gradual to start with, but it was the event known as the ‘double murders’ of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes and a letter and postcard signed by ‘Jack the Ripper’ for the first time,  being received by a leading news agency. This chain of events provided a windfall for Fleet Street and it ‘vastly increased the public’s alarm over the predatory ‘fiend’ on the loose in Whitechapel.’ Two previous murders of these ‘unfortunates’ were now roped into the catalogue of murders supposedly committed by the Ripper, so as to heighten the feeling that this was the work of a highly deranged serial killer who was ‘down on whores’. As public alarm increased, so would newspaper sales. Murder stories in the press at this time ‘contained ingredients of a novel or short story’. These short stories were effectively a serialisation of real events and reports would either raise or allay fears for the reader and would enhance the appeal of the next days edition. This meant good business and excellent profits by the boosting of newspaper sales.

The traditional married woman’s work in the East End was as an outworker for the various manufacturing trades that were a part of the highly industrialised East End. The manufacturing was usually of clothing or footwear, matchbox, brush-, basket-, or sack making. Single women most often worked in factory jobs such as making jam, matches or confectionary. Many women from the East End turned to prostitution on a casual or part-time basis, as were necessitated by slumps in employment, which if happened for prolonged periods would end up causing situations of poverty. William Booth calculated in 1886 that ‘inadequate employment (no work or low wages) was the reason for poverty in 55 percent of all ‘very poor’ families and in 68 percent of the ‘poor’ families.’ However, although many women took to prostitution on a casual basis many more were career prostitutes. Donald Thomas states that in 1861 at least 80,000 women out of a population of 2,800,000 London residents were reliant on prostitution as a means of generating some income. Although a number of these would be part time or casual, it would still ‘give a ratio of one woman…for every ten adult males.’ Working on this percentage that would mean in 1880s London there would be approximately 125,000 women engaged in some form of prostitution. However, this figure is hard to substantiate as the medical journal ‘the Lancet’ stated in 1888 that ‘1 in 16 women are prepared to prostitute. This figure, if correct, would mean that nearly 250,000 London women were prepared to consider prostitution as a viable means of earning a living and the majority of these women would be living the East End. Out of a given population of one million and given a roughly 50:50 split between males and females and that fifty percent again were of working age. This would mean that possibly anywhere around ninety-five percent of East End women were at least ready to consider prostitution.

The press portrayed these ‘unfortunates’ as ‘fallen’ women, as ‘soiled doves’that should be pitied for their unfortunate circumstances, but were also to be reviled for the immorality that they brought to society. They were seen as objects of pity, but also of contagion. The contagious diseases act had been brought in by 1864, with revisions in 1868 and 1869. These acts ensured that prostitutes had to submit to regular medical examination. If infected they would be hospitalised until free of disease. However this act was repealed in 1886 as it was seen to be unfair to women. This in turn created concerns in Victorian Britain about the rise again in venereal diseases through prostitution, heightened by the writings of the press. These women were seen as indicative of the division that was evident between the two parts of the metropolis. R L Stevenson’s 1896 book Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, said they were characteristic of the dark side of womanhood, the Mr Hyde of the city versus the stylised ‘angel of the house’, the embodiment of domestic virtue. The newspaper coverage also exposed ‘the deep-seated sexual antagonism most frequently expressed by men to women’ according to Judith Walkowitz and ‘aided and abetted by sensational newspaper coverage that blamed ‘women of evil life’ for bringing the murders on themselves.’ This is effectively another way of saying ‘ for the wages of sin are death’ (Romans 6:23). Stay on the moral path of virtue and stay alive, stray from the path of righteousness and possibly die.

Although murders occurred in Victorian Britain, it was in reality quite a rare event. Between 1861 and 1891 the population of England and Wales rose from twenty to twenty-nine million. In this period the average annual homicide rate was only 369 per annum, which equates to around 12 per million of population. When compared with the figure from 1998 – 2000 of 14 per million of population it shows that Victorian society as a whole was no more violent than today’s, if anything, it can be seen as marginally less violent overall. However, even though the annual homicide rate was not high, it was not the norm to have so many concentrated murders of a specific social group, that of prostitutes, in such a short period of time. As Ted Remington states ‘while the murder of prostitutes was not novel in London's East End, it was unusual to have this number of murders committed over a relatively short time span. Over the course of barely more than ten weeks, five grisly murders were committed. Even when set against the nearly daily violence in a place such as Whitechapel …this constituted a crime spree that would grab the attention of even the most jaded resident of Victorian London.’ So although the numbers of murders were relatively low, Fleet Street newspapers targeted ‘quality’ stories that would ensure high circulation figures and therefore high revenue returns from their publication.

The number of newspapers had steadily risen throughout the course of the nineteenth-century. Stamp duty was abolished on newspapers in 1855 and this combined with advances in the technical developments of printing presses from the late 1850s onwards meant that newspapers expanded from 14 publications to 168 publications in a thirty-five year period as it became a more profitable enterprise. This meant that more newspapers were available, and to more people than ever before. It is hard to verify a rise in circulation of half- penny publications and the well known ‘penny dreadfuls’ as between 1855 when the stamp duty was abolished, and the years to 1914, there is ‘no reliable external evidence’ of circulation figures. However, It is reasonable to assume that in a society with rising wealth and more disposable capital, and the lower costs of the newspapers themselves, that the pursuit of reading and consequently the rise of newspaper purchasing would have occurred.

So it can be seen that the rise of the press enabled those with wealth, those who owned or controlled newspapers, to be able, by way of heightening fears, to instil fears in the general populace about how to live ones life ‘correctly’. In a letter supposedly written by Jack the Ripper dated October 5th 1888, the writer talks of their denial of a murder and how if the person murdered was not a prostitute then he himself, the butcher of Whitechapel would hunt them down. He wrote ‘ I swear I did not kill the female whose body was found at Whitehall. If she was an honest woman I will hunt down and destroy her murderer. If she was a whore God will bless the hand that slew her, for the women of Moab and Midian shall die…’ Even if not written by the Ripper, this statement shows how some men expected women to be; chaste and virtuous and in the home. This was seen as the woman’s proper place. However, with no other alternatives, women of the East End of London were left with little or no choice. With no unemployment benefits and few social care institutions other than the local workhouse, women were effectively forced to take up prostitution as a means of survival. If the chance of death at the hands of a homicidal maniac were a reason to not be a ‘whore’, the reality of death from starvation was a much more compelling reason as to why one should.

Bibliography

Books

Brodie, Marc, The politics of the poor, the east end of London 1885-1914, (Oxford: Clarendon press, 2004)

Brown, Lucy, Victorian news and newspapers, (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1985)

Curtis, L. Perry Jr, Jack the Ripper & the London press, (London & New Haven: Yale university press, 2001)

Evans, Stewart P & Skinner, Keith, The ultimate Jack the Ripper sourcebook, (London: Robinson, 2000)

Thomas, Donald, The Victorian underworld, (London: John Murray publishers, 1998)

Walkowitz, Judith R, City of dreadful delight, (Chicago: university of Chicago press, 1992)

Newspapers

The illustrated police news, Issues no. 1282,Sept 8th11888, 1284,Sept 22nd 1888, 1292, Nov 17th 1888

Video

Secret history: The Whitechapel murders (1996), Channel 4, 05/04/06

Websites

 

 

 

 

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