Jack The Ripper Research Paper

The victorian era was a time in which many great people were brought into this world including wonderful authors like Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as strong leaders like Queen Elizabeth and Benjamin Disraeli. However, in many people's eyes, these public figures and their achievements are shadowed by their criminal counterparts, most notably Jack the Ripper (Emsley). Jack the Ripper was a murderer who violated and killed prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of London from August 7th to September 10th, 1888. Even though his killing zone resided in a small suburb, he became a notorious figure through the media's continuous coverage of his bloody killings (Emsley). Adding to his fame is the fact that he

Since the most common crimes were things like prostitution, petty theft, domestic violence, and drunkenness, the police mostly acted as mediators and enforcers, not investigators (Emsley). For those types of crimes, the enforcement agency was known as the Metropolitan Police Force which was enacted in 1829. Prior to that, the police force was a solely a group of volunteer basis constables that watched over their parish (Picard). However, with the enactment of the Metropolitan Police Force, all these parishes were combined and the constables became professional officers who were being paid by the government (Picard). Yet, once they began to be payed, a lot of the officers started to use their power excessively, beating up untried suspects (Victorian Era). Although this did establish their dominance over the youth, it also caused a further rise in petty crimes as people felt that this was a way to revolt against the police's show of power (Victorian Era) (Picard). On the other hand, many people also think that this rise in petty offenses is merely an image painted by the 1800s newspapers as much like today, the media would hype every little crime story (Emsley). For example, in the early 1860s the media wrote about a surge in robberies when in reality, this just seemed to be the case because of the non-stop news articles being printed about the robbery of a parliament member