TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS BRING ABOUT CHANGE TO THE LOCAL AREA?

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TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS BRING ABOUT CHANGE TO THE LOCAL AREA?

Introduction

The story of Jack the Ripper spread all across the United Kingdom in 18881. The story was about a serial killer who was never identified, and the murders took place in the Whitechapel district of London. In some accounts in the contemporary world and criminal files, the killer is known as Leather Apron or The Whitechapel Murderer2. The attacks that were associated with Jack the Ripper usually targeted female sex workers who worked or lived in Whitechapel slums of the East End of London. The murdered people had their throats cut and the abdomen mutilated. The local newspapers suggested the removal of the organs such as kidney could be linked to surgical or anatomical knowledge of the suspect. The interest with the story intensified in September of 1888 after media houses received several letters from an anonymous person who claimed to be Jack the Ripper. In the letter, there was half of a well-preserved kidney that the writer purported was from one of the murdered people1. The people become intrigued by the nature of the killings since they were brutal and extraordinary. The story also spread very quickly with the media giving it a lot of attention. Jack the Ripper got a wide recognition due to the extensive coverage of the story by the newspapers that led to enduring worldwide notoriety. Although the police inquiry could not accurately link all the killings that happened in Whitechapel from 1888 to 1891, there was a strong belief that they were done by the same person or people. The investigators believed that the murders were related due to the nature in which they were conducted. The murders cases have never been solved up to the present date. The legends that are associated with it have since then become a combination of folklore, pseudohistory, and historical studies. The story is also surrounded by myths, cultural issues, and reality. There are hundreds of hypotheses that seek to explain Jack the Ripper’s identify and the story has inspired numerous literature and movies of fiction2. Although there have been other murder cases in the past, Jack the Ripper story is a classic example of killings in the early metropolis that drew much attention due to the intriguing nature of how the killer did it.

Whitechapel in the 1880s

In the 19th century, the city of London was rapidly growing. Some parts such as London West End were undergoing different constructions and renovation. On the other side in the East, a well-established region existed, and it was associated with a luxurious kind of living. The West End stretched from Aldgate to Spitalfields. Whitechapel was one of the worst regions in London, and many people from other parts of the city feared to visit the district.

In the late 1800s, there were about 900,000 inhabitants of London’s East End. About 250,000 people lived in the Whitechapel. The general characteristics of the area were overcrowding, crime, poor living and working conditions. The lives of the people in the region were, therefore, horrendous. Whitechapel was seen as the center of crime in London including murders. Thus, living in the area was a risk for both visitors and the inhabitants. Insecurity was so much of a concern in the area even the local police officers could not walk along the streets unless they were in a group of four. The story of Jack the Ripper worsened the situation and people in the streets kept a keen eye over the shoulders as well as on the people who walked past them.

The streets of Whitechapel were dark, the roads had mazes, and the courtyards and alleyways were light by one gas lamp. During the daytime, there was livestock all along the street which left excrement trails along the streets. The residents also had raw sewage in the areas, and thus the streets were smelly and unbearable. The social characteristics of the population were poor, and most of the people who were immigrants had no money3. They also had no formal education, and they often worked for long hours so that they could put food on the table. Life was not easy for the few people who found casual work at the docks, factories, and shops as the had to work for extended hours with low pay.Some parts of the Whitechapel were free from the crimes. However, the living conditions in the areas were the worst within the city. There was a high number of residents who had no employment home, or money. They thus became drunkards and spend a lot of their time drinking in the local pubs to bury their sorrows. In some cases, more than one family were living in one room since they could not afford to pay for bigger houses around or in other parts of the city. In other parts of Whitechapel, there were rooms with open floors which accommodated up to 80 people3.

The houses in the London’s East End were damp. They also had little or no ventilation, and thus, they were inhabited by rodents and insects3. The houses did not also have good sewage systems. Diseases and malnutrition were a common occurrence in the area, and about half of all the babies born in Whitechapel lived to the age of five years.

Prostitution in Whitechapel

The social conditions for the women living the Whitechapel were even worse. Although men struggled to find jobs in the area, women had a tougher task since the majority of them could not find any form of employment in the late 1800s. To make ends meet, the majority of them resulted in prostitution.

It is estimated that up to 1200 women worked as prostitutes in the Whitechapel during the Victorian ages4. However, due to lack of any formal records of the commercial sex workers, the figures could have been higher. The women thus underwent through trying times, and they would trade their bodies for a stale of bread or three pence. Majority of the women were also alcoholic and mostly spend the better part of the night around the local pubs. Most of the women appeared older than their actual age because of the heavy drinking habits and physical injuries. There was also less reporting of the prostitutes’ murder with countless of them taking place. Physical assault was also common, and the culprits walked free. The physical injuries among the prostitutes could be the underlying reason why Jack the Ripper got away with the crimes since the officials took a lot of time before they could understand the weight of the atrocities.

Murders as a force of change

Killings that were committed by Jack the Ripper have been seen as a force for a change in the areas that they were committed as well as in the neighboring areas. Because Jack the Ripper murders were conducted in Whitechapel area that was one of the undeveloped and poorest regions of Victoria London the story drew much attention. For about fifteen weeks from September of 1888 to the late months of the year, the plight of the poor people in the city got a wide reporting in different parts of the world6.

The news coverage can be seen as the catalyst for the change that came to Whitechapel in the following years. The media houses wanted to sell as many papers as they could. Other news coverage was motivated by the conditions of the region along the streets where they went to get the reports about the murders. Due to this reason, the coverage by the press went an extra mile to look at the lives of the ordinary habitats of the place. The news coverage was wide and lasted all through the autumn of 18885.

The nomadic lives that the inhabitants of Whitechapel were not left out in the media reporting. Via the lens of the news reports, people across the world could see that the majority of them had been excluded from the Victorian community and lived in the Streets of East London without favorable living conditions. Most of the victims were alcoholics, and as a result, their lives had fallen apart. They grew fond of drinking and prostitution due to the living conditions that they went through. The news coverage, therefore, was the catalyst for change in the area.

Jack the Ripper killings drew a lot of recognition towards the living conditions of the people in the Whitechapel5. By doing so, there was a call for a social change in the region. The social change was triggered by philanthropists who saw a need for a change in the region. The underlying idea was to ease the terrible social and living conditions among the community of the Whitechapel. Some theorists about the Jack the Ripper murder argue that the motive behind the killing was to draw the attention of the leaders so that they could see the poor living conditions of the community members in the region. The attention would lead to their interventions which brought about the much-needed social change.

The actions of Jack the Ripper can be seen as a way through which the veil before the Whitechapel community was pulled aside. The fact that the murders brought about a social change cannot be disputed. The killings alerted the entire society about the horrific living conditions of the inhabitants of the district. The authorities had allowed the poor social conditions to exist due to the social and economic imbalances in the country. The other parts of the city such as the eastern had one square mile of the world’s richest people.

There were reports before 1888 about the deplorable living conditions of the people in the East End of the Victorian Metropolis. For instance, Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew reported about the poor social conditions in 1812 to 1870 and 1812 to 1887 respectively6. Since then, social reformers and philanthropists had been warning about the dangers of letting a big number of people to live in extreme depravity and poverty around and in the street of Spitalfields and Whitechapel. The society living in the Eastern sides of the city did not take up the warning seriously, and a majority of them had never even crossed the streets to see how the life in the Whitechapel and its surrounding appeared.

The gruesome killings by Jack the Ripper was a reminder to the society that they needed to turn their heads towards the east to see the nature of the social lives of the people who lived there2. Generally, the murders reminded the people who were advocating for change to look further into the lives of neglected people in the slums. The events, therefore, were successful in linking the squalid conditions of the Whitechapel to the eyes of the society in general. It can be argued that Jack the Ripper was successful towards provoking a movement which later saw a social reform. The events that followed the killings have seen the agitators and reformers taking a growing consideration of the underclass that was developing in the areas around the Whitechapel.

Different authors have supported the theory that Jack the Ripper motives for the killing was to bring social changes in Whitechapel. In his letter ‘Blood Money to Whitechapel, George Bernard Shaw holds that the actions of the killer were a call for social reform. He further writes about the horrendous conditions that the people in the area lived. His argument inspired the famous Jack the Ripper story, ‘Punch’s cartoon, The Nemesis of Neglect.’

The aftermath of the murders by Jack the Ripper especially that of Annie Chapman on the 8th September 1888 along Hanbury Street saw a majority of the local dailies reporting about the social conditions of Whitechapel. The description of her death came along with the reporting about the sordid social situation in the region. The report was mainly described in precise details during the immediate aftermath of her murder. In other related inquests such as the murders of Mary Nichols and Martha Tabram, different stories that appeared in the newspapers effectively depicted Annie Chapman as the redeemer of the community living in the slums of East End of London.

In an article that was featured in ‘The Morning Post’ on Wednesday 12th September 1888, there was an insight into the different aspects that the Whitechapel murders wanted the world to see7. The daily termed it as a domestic aspect that drew the veil aside for the larger society to see the poor living conditions for the tens of thousands of the people who lived in the East End of London. The shocking atrocities exposed the suffering of such a large population right at the heart of the healthiest, civilized, and wealthiest city in the globe.

The newspaper went ahead to report that ‘The deplorable misery can be linked to crime in different parts of the world and metropolis which harbor slums undergo through sins during the day and agonies during the night.’ The article wrote about the everyday sorrows that haunt and corrupt the tenants of the homes in Whitechapel. The newspaper also reported about the diseases and degradation that influenced crime in the region. Worthy to note, different articles hold that other writers had given their account about the truths and realities in the East End of London. The account about the Whitechapel and the cells which the inhabitants called their homes had both men and women brutalized. The children also underwent a lot of suffering due to terror, punishment, shame, hopelessness, hunger, and diseases.

The earlier arguments by Dickens and Mayhew means that the society knew that the people in the East End of London needed much more than just living, suffering, and dying. The clergy and the doctors ignored the plight of these people knowing well that the deplorable conditions had so many shortcomings and the social conditions made the life unbearable. Jack the Ripper, therefore, did the terrible crimes that brought the revelations through the sorrows and horror that triggered the much-needed social change with the community of the Whitechapel.

A wretched and crowded back street which was crowded with structures where people lived was miserable. Almost all the structures let out part of the room, lodgings, or a single room. The houses where Jack the Ripper drew the victims had more than six families whose sobriety was questionable.

The incident and the story triggered a social change by ensuring that the conditions in the Whitechapel improved. People realized that they should not forget to help the others who were languishing in poverty, hopelessness, and suffering. The need for change was triggered by the worldwide recognition that all was not well in one of the most developed cities in the world. The political, social, and economic situation played a vital role in this change. The wages among the people living in the regions increased, they were educated, and above all, the housing conditions improved over the period after the murders by Jack the Ripper. There was a wide recognition of the importance to establish economic laws that stipulated different forms of equality in sharing of the country’s wealth through jobs and access to the quality education. Through the time people realized that people fear to take charge of the problems that they create themselves. The events following the murders of Jack the Ripper also highlighted the grief and misery that the working poor underwent while their counterparts lived in luxurious lives. The events demonstrated the need for a combination of different faces within the city to ensure equality and a similar social and economic situation.

While the media coverage of the events of Jack the Ripper events led to the creation of a legend, the social reform that followed was intriguing. It is important to recognize that beneath the legend and the veil of the myths there were people who needed elevation, so as to match the lives of others in a civilized society.

Before the murders, there were concerns of acceptability of some population subsets within the city. There were also sediments of racism. The Whitechapel murders created a platform through which the people were able to express their views about suffering, racism, and social injustices. Before the murders, there were fewer people who could stand out and justify the needs for social reforms. The anti-Semitic feeling was also sweeping through the city due to the compensation for employment where the Jews were deducting rates from the few people who had been given jobs.

Conclusion

There have been murder cases in the past. However, the story of Jack the Ripper is a classic example of how an event can draw much attention due to the intriguing way in which it is done. The idea of the social reform following the murders by Jack the Ripper is clear. Both the socialists and conservationists had different take depending on their political agendas. Whether the middle class was viewed as a threat to the working class or not, the need for social reform was imminent. People who advocated for social reforms were able to justify their course through the wide media coverage and limelight about the living conditions in the Whitechapel. The wide recognition about the plight of the people in the East End of London became an important agenda for the Victorians. Jack the Ripper, therefore, became a horrible hero and a reformer since it is through the murders that the media houses reported the poor living conditions in the regions which saw the actions that followed to bring about social change.

Bibliography

Begg, Paul. Jack the Ripper: The definitive history. Routledge, 2013.

Hall, Lesley A. Sex, gender and social change in Britain since 1880. Macmillan International Higher Education, 2012.Hood, Roger, and Kate Joyce. “Three generations: oral testimonies on crime and social change in London’s East End.” British journal of criminology 39, no. 1 (1999): 136-160.

Jenkins, Philip. Using murder: The social construction of serial homicide. Routledge, 2017.

Walkowitz, Judith R. “Jack the Ripper and the myth of male violence.” Feminist Studies 8, no. 3 (1982): 543-574.