Jack the Ripper - Source based Coursework

James Coleman 11DF

Jack the Ripper – Coursework

Source A tells us that the murders were so violent, “ extraordinarily violent ” to quote from the text, that they were very shocking for the time – they “ so startled London”. We can learn of the problems the police had in finding a motive for the horrific attacks, as the victims were the “poorest of the poor” so robbery could not have been a motive. Whitechapel would not have been one of the best places for a robbery to occur as it was one of the poorest areas in London. As the article shows similarities between the murders of Polly Nicholls and Martha Tabram it indicates that the police were dealing with a very violent and probably psychopathic serial killer. So therefore we can find out some useful information from the source.

Source A is aimed towards a very different audience, compared to Source B and Source C. As source A is aimed at a mass market and is quite a popular tabloid newspaper as “The Sun” or “The Star” are today, the stories in tabloids are short brief and don’t go into a lot of factual detail. Tabloid newspapers were and still are normally bought, to be read during a small interval at some point during the day. So this shows that Source C has a different intention to Source A. Sources B and C are both factual reports from Doctors. Source C agrees with Source B in the first sense, as both the sources are factual. Source B states that the murderer knew “ how he should use the knife” and this backed up by Source C with its reference to where she was killed. However Source A states how the the victims were cut such as “demented” and “extraordinary violence”. Therefore they were implying the murderer was an unskilled maniac, which is not really mentioned in sources A or B. Source C supports B to a certain extent except for the violence which doesn’t support A. There is no specific judgement about the ripper in Sources B and C. Both statements have a different approach to the readers than the paper, as they are not using sensationalist writing or trying to keep the reader interested, they are simply stating the facts to be used for investigational purposes and Source A is used for entertainment purposes.

Source D is a statement from Elizabeth Long who saw a man talking to Annie shortly before she was killed. The only part of the statement that has no contradictions is the first part where she states he was of dark complexion and was wearing a deer-stalker hat. And then she begins to give estimations and vague descriptions such as “I think he was wearing a dark coat but I cannot be sure” which doesn’t give the police much to go on. This source is helpful to us as it clearly shows the difficulties the police had ...

Source D is a statement from Elizabeth Long who saw a man talking to Annie shortly before she was killed. The only part of the statement that has no contradictions is the first part where she states he was of dark complexion and was wearing a deer-stalker hat. And then she begins to give estimations and vague descriptions such as “I think he was wearing a dark coat but I cannot be sure” which doesn’t give the police much to go on. This source is helpful to us as it clearly shows the difficulties the police had getting reliable witness statements so that they could put out a reliable description to help catch the Ripper. Source E is another part of an article in a newspaper. At the beginning of Source E a scapegoat is being searched for again, and this time it was the police. It states that the police force needs to be strengthened if they are going to catch him, there were nowhere near enough police to cover the huge area. As the police hoped to catch the ripper in the act, this would obviously help him escape capture. It was also so easy for Jack the Ripper to escape because there was no financial reward for his capture. This meant that people in Whitechapel, who were very poor, had no incentive to help the police. However, they were right not to give a reward as people would be making wild accusations just to receive the reward money. Finally, there was no forensic evidence meaning they were reliant on catching him in the act, which was always a gamble.

The police tried to help themselves catch Jack the Ripper by not offering a reward, in order to try and stop as many hoaxes as possible. Which wouldn’t have helped the police as much as wasted time as it would have been necessary to follow up all the leads. Instead they decided to try and play on people’s consciences by releasing the date and other factual information to try and pull on the heart strings of the public. But, I am sure that many of the people of Whitechapel, who were generally rather poor and living in Ramshackle houses, were withholding information. They tried to get past this problem by attempting to scare the public, telling them that they were in immediate danger. This information from Sources F and G. From my own knowledge, the police physically tried to catch Jack the Ripper in the act by crisscrossing the streets in a way so that no police officers were ever 15 minutes away from each other and so that every street was surveyed every three minutes. The police were basically working on blind luck as they must have been doing on all murder cases without a motive. Police also tried to catch him by dressing up as prostitutes as there were no women on the force. This didn’t prove to be very successful. They were also at a great disadvantage as they had none of the modern forensic techniques- such as fingerprinting / DNA / psychological profiling to help identify the killer

I believe the police weren’t completely to blame for not capturing Jack the Ripper as they got as many men on the street as they could, for it was the only way they were going to catch him in the act. Also, there was no forensic evidence so they could not pin it on anyone. As the attacks were done at night and in such a badly lit area no witnesses were able to get a clear or definite description of the killer. Furthermore, as it was such a downmarket area, the police were not best loved. So people were less inclined to help them if they needed the help, as they were normally the people the police hassled when anything went wrong. And they generally didn’t want to help unless there was a reward involved, as the people were the poorest of the poor. Also as is true nowadays a very high percentage of no motive murders go unsolved as there is no clue to why the murders actually took place making it very difficult to catch the killer, unless they caught him in the act and as his murders took place in a very short amount of time the chances of that were slim to non-existent. Also the area was full of back alleys so if they did catch him in the act he would find it very easy to make a quick escape.