Solidly researched and profusely illustrated, collated from all the known official records and supplemented by contemporary press reports, it presents for the first time, in one volume, a prime-source reference book on the eleven shocking prostitute murders that took place in the East End of London between 1888 and 1891. While there is no doubt that the Whitechapel Murders, as they were classified by Scotland Yard, were committed by more than one person, no one knows how many of the killings can be attributed to a single culprit. More than one murderer wore the guise of Jack the Ripper, and the certain identities of all suspects to this day remain unknown.Divorcing the facts of the Ripper case from the myths that have proliferated in myriad books and film, this painstakingly compiled sourcebook offers a factual, documented narrative of the entire series of crimes, their forensic evidence, the official suspects and possible accomplices, police reports, and inquests. Any historian or crime fan researching the world's most notorious serial murders, as well as general readers interested in the true facts of the case, will find this book as invaluable as it is affordable.

    They were responsible for one of the most evocative legends in English folk history - Jack the Ripper. Best of all - for the myth-makers, that is - he was never caught, and there has never been a convincing identification of this man or, as some suggest, woman, who stabbed and disembowelled a succession of East End prostitutes, and left them bleeding in the gaslit streets of Victorian London. This book now lays out all the known evidence in a sumary of the facts and theories that have been written and spoken about the Ripper.

    Giving fresh and unbiased accounts of all the many theories as to the Ripper's identity, it includes: The latest on Dr. Tumblety, the subject of the 'Littlechild letter,' which discosed the astonishing information that the head of Special Branch's preferred suspect was arrested but escaped to the United States The theory of Joseph Barnett, the lover of the last victim, who closely matches the FBI's psychological profile of the Ripper The sensational ongoing story of the alleged diary confession of James Maybrick

    Not only does he build a powerful case against his suspect, Joseph Barnett, but Paley probably did more research than anyone else, with the result that his depiction of the East End of London c. 1888 is second to none, and has been singled out for its unrivalled richness and vividness. Paley has also been praised for his studious, unsensational account of the crimes, and his compassionate portraits of the Ripper’s victims. This is what some of the critics had to say. Writing in The Daily Mail (25/11/95), Val Hennessy wrote: "Bruce Paley's excellent book convinces me, for one, that Jack the Ripper has at last been nailed…Apart from convincingly identifying the Ripper, Paley's book paints an extraordinarily vivid picture of late 19th century London. It opens your eyes to the hopeless, harsh lives endured by single and deserted women, especially those with children, in the days before job opportunities and full time education." As such, Hennessey echoes the words of the esteemed writer Colin Wilson, who wrote in the foreword to Paley's book: "If I had to recommend a single book on Jack the Ripper to someone who knew nothing about the subject, I would unhesitatingly choose this one. Bruce Paley has captured the atmosphere of Whitechapel at the time of the murders - and indeed, London in the late 19th century - with a sense of living reality that no other writer on the case has achieved…[It is] the most evocative book on the period that I have ever read." Writing in the Guardian (22/11/06), Nancy Banks-Smith wrote: "[Jack the Ripper] was almost certainly Joseph Barnett, the live-in lover of the last victim, Mary Kelly, a theory convincingly argued by Bruce Paley in his book Jack the Ripper: The Simple Truth." Some years later, Adrian Morris, the editor of The Journal of the Whitechapel Society, declared Paley's book to be the best Jack the Ripper book of them all. "The immense strength of Paley's book," Morris wrote in February, 2010, "is that his suspect Barnett is perfectly placed to act as an almost unknowing device to explore the milieu of the East End with its poverty, exploitation and vice, whilst also drawing the reader into the soulless world of the victim...This Paley does brilliantly. His prose is powerful and, dare I say it beautiful. In Paley's words the Nietzschian hordes that are measured and understood as a value of history become material to act within a story that explores the full tragedy of the East End. Paley really does understand the East End A.D.1888, his words map out its DNA, his sentences tap out the arithmetic of existence. For one to understand the Whitechapel murders, one must understand the times. Nowhere can one do this better than in the chapters Paley devotes to this historical sociology. For Paley understands that while the Ripper was killing its womenfolk (albeit destitutes), the East End itself was eating its children in the jaws of poverty. Paley's excellent and wide ranging research underpins his descriptions. This is history with a poetical syncopation that adds to the subject matter in the mind of the reader. Paley describes the environs of Dorset Street and Miller's Court that takes some beating and is redolent of an informed approach that makes you feel he must have known the old place…I can only amplify [Colin Wilson's] endorsement uttered on the book's 1995 release by adding, without wishing to seem overly unctuous, that when compiling a booklist of authors that one would like to proffer to the uninitiated, soon-to-be initiated or just plain curious on the subject of the Whitechapel murders, I would advise that the list starts wit

    The murders in London between 1888-91 attributed to Jack the Ripper constitute one of the most mysterious unsolved criminal cases. This story is the result of many years meticulous research. The author reassesses all the evidence and challenges everything we thought we knew about the Victorian serial killer and the vanished East End he terrorized.

    Casting aside the rumors, fantasies, and urban legends which have haunted this case for so long, Trevor Marriott produces some startling results—while it has long been accepted that Jack the Ripper killed only five women, Marriott believes there were up to nine victims. Most astonishingly of all, a previously unconsidered suspect who also committed murders in America and Germany has been firmly put in the frame. All previous theories are refuted in what may possibly be the final word on the Ripper murders.

    But most killers are not shadowy figures stalking the streets with a lust for blood. Many are ordinary citizens driven to the ultimate crime by circumstance, a fit of anger or a desire for revenge. Their crimes, overshadowed by the few, sensational cases, are ignored, forgotten or written off.This book examines all the known murders in London in 1888 to build a picture of society. Who were the victims? How did they live, and how did they die? Why did a husband batter his wife to death after she failed to get him a cup of tea? How many died under the wheels of a horse-driven cab? Just how dangerous was London in 1888?

    One by one the murder victims are revealed, the circumstances of their killings investigated, and the suspects analyzed. What amateur sleuths will find most fascinating here are the many facsimiles of contemporary documents, including letters allegedly sent by Jack the Ripper to police and elsewhere, police reports, press articles, and personal correspondence. These facsimiles provide readers with access to all the available information so they, too, can try to unravel this century-old mystery.

    But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama—even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other—the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell.In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare’s bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London’s East End.Through these stories of murder—from the brutal to the pathetic—Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain.  With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.

    Written by one of the world's foremost authorities on the case, this is a completely rewritten and fully updated edition of Begg's classic title Jack the Ripper. It follows the crimes chronologically and records the most significant events, witness testimonies and aspects of the police investigation. As well as objectively examining the primary police suspects, Begg provides a fascinating and authoritative insight into related political issues and background events.

    However, the grisly ripping of Polly Nichols on August 31st was not the first unsolved murder of the year. The April murder of Emma Smith and the August murder of Martha Tabram both occurred on bank holidays. They baffled the police and press alike and were assumed by the original investigators to have been the first murders in the series. Where they correct?In this provocative work of literary archeology, author Tom Wescott places these early murders in their proper historical context and digs to unearth new evidence and hard facts not seen in over 125 years.The Bank Holiday Murders is the only book of its kind. It eschews the tired approach of unsatisfying ‘final solutions’ in favor of solid research, logical reasoning and new information. The clues followed are not drawn from imagination but from the actual police reports and press accounts of the time. The questions asked by Wescott are ones first suggested by the original investigators but lost to time until now. The answers provided are compelling and sometimes explosive.Among the revelations are: • New information linking the murders of Smith & Tabram to the same killer(s).• Proof that the police did not believe key witnesses in either case.• Proof that at least one of these witnesses was working with the murderer.• New evidence connecting many of the victims that may lead to their actual slayers.• Information on Emily Horsnell, the ACTUAL first Whitechapel murder victim.• The hidden truth of ‘Leather Apron’ and its role in unraveling the Ripper mystery.• Proof of a corrupt police sergeant who thwarted the investigation. Was he protecting the Ripper?• Much more.The Bank Holiday Murders: The True Story of the First Whitechapel Murders brings us closer than ever to the actual truth behind the Jack the Ripper story and is sure to appeal to fans of Paul Begg, Stewart P. Evans, Philip Sugden, Donald Rumbelow, Ann Rule, Patricia Cornwell as well as readers of Victorian true crime, true life mysteries and historical cold cases in general.

    Thompson and Errol Morris, Bruce Robinson offers a radical reinterpretation of Jack the Ripper, contending that he was not the madman of common legend, but the vile manifestation of the Victorian Age's moral bankruptcy.In exploring the case of Jack the Ripper, Robison goes beyond the who that has obsessed countless others and focuses on the why. He asserts that any "gentlemen" that walked above the fetid gutters of London, the nineteenth century's most depraved city, often harbored proclivities both violent and taboo—yearnings that went entirely unpunished, especially if he also bore royal connections. The story of Jack the Ripper hinges on accounts that were printed and distributed throughout history by the same murderous miscreants who frequented the East End of her Majesty's London, wiping the fetid muck from their boots when they once again reached the marble floors of society's finest homes.Supported by primary sources and illustrated with 75 to 100 black and white photographs, this breathtaking work of cultural history dismisses the theories of previous "Ripperologists." A Robinson persuasively makes clear with his unique brilliance, The Ripper was far from a poor resident of Whitechapel . . . he was a way of life.

    The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. In 1897, an elderly widow asked the court to exhume the grave of her late father-in-law, T. C. Druce, under the suspicion that he’d led a double life as the 5th Duke. The eccentric duke, Anna Maria contended, had faked his death as Druce, and her son should inherit the Portland millions. Revealing a dark underbelly of Victorian society, Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.

    Enlisting in the hundred-year-old debate about the identity of the world's first serial killer, this Mammoth investigation introduces the facts of the famous case and presents some of the most convincing, if conflicting, theories of the murderer's identity.

    Indeed. A century before Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London, another predator held sway: a "vulgar-looking man" who slashed at female pedestrians with a knife while uttering profanities with a "tremulous eagerness" -- over fifty victims during a two-year crime spree. The city was gripped with fear, outrage, and "Monster mania." The latter was abetted by a -- reward and by the circulation of bawdy prints that capitalized on the Monster's tendency to slash his victims' buttocks. Armed vigilantes roamed the streets, and fashionable ladies dared not walk outdoors without first strategically placing cooking pots under their dresses. Finally, in June 1790, one Rhynwick Williams was arrested. After two long and ludicrous trials (at one of which he was defended energetically by the eccentric Irish poet Theophilus Swift), Williams was convicted. Was he guilty? Or just unlucky enough to fall into the hands of authorities when they needed someone to pay? Drawing on contemporary evidence and reinterpreting Monster mania in the light of historical and modern instances of mass hysteria, Jan Bondeson recounts with dry wit a tale that occupies a unique place in criminal history and imagination.