Word: whitechapel
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...crimes and the killer are intertwined with London's identity and history," says Julia Hoffbrand, co-curator a new major exhibition, "Jack the Ripper and the East End," at London's Museum in Docklands. Of the many hardscrabble neighborhoods of Dickensian London, none was more blighted than Whitechapel, a grim, crowded East End hellhole, rife with poverty, disease, crime and homelessness. Prostitution was widespread; alcohol was plentiful. Whitechapel as an ominous, foggy maze of gaslit, cobbled streets, alleys and dead ends "is still very much the public image of the East End now," says Hoffbrand...
...Most middle-class and wealthy Londoners were blissfully ignorant of conditions in Whitechapel until the autumn of 1888, when Scotland Yard realized that a serial killer was loose in the area, and Fleet Street helped create the legend - and even the name - of the knife-wielding "Ripper." Until the brutal slayings ended some two and a half years later, sensationalistic coverage of the Ripper was relentless, his exploits recounted by reporters and artists in a manner that exposed the squalor of Whitechapel to a fascinated audience - and shaped London's perception of the East End. Playwright George Bernard Shaw once...
...Ripper exhibit recounts the unsolved murders through the prism of life in Victorian Whitechapel, using photographs, police files and press reports to bring the era to life. It also shows how the Ripper's 11 victims - all alcoholics who turned to prostitution - were brought down by slum life before falling prey to a murderer. A police list of Catherine Eddowes' clothing and possessions is both mundane and poignant: A gray petticoat, "a very old ragged blue skirt," and a pair of men's lace-up boots...
...those pre-forensic science days, the police could do little more than flood Whitechapel with bobbies, take witness statements and gather evidence for the coroner. Scotland Yard successfully tested a pair of bloodhounds, but never used them in the investigation. But police did make use of photography for the first time. Grisly photos of a mutilated Mary Ann Kelly were probably the first crime-scene photos ever taken...
...These days, a visitor to Whitechapel would be hard-pressed to avoid one of the myriad Jack the Ripper walking tours crisscrossing its narrow streets. One operator, London Walks, says of the 140 tours it offers, the Ripper walk "is by far the most popular," the only one scheduled seven evenings a week. "He's almost become a fictional character," Hoffbrand says. "We're obsessed with...