Jack the Ripper & the London PressYale University Press, 1. nov 2001 - 363 pages “Breaks new ground in its examination of the role of newspaper reporting during the police hunt for the first notorious serial killer.”—Reviews in History Press coverage of the 1888 mutilation murders attributed to Jack the Ripper was of necessity filled with gaps and silences, for the killer remained unknown and Victorian journalists had little experience reporting serial murders and sex crimes. This engrossing book examines how fourteen London newspapers—dailies and weeklies, highbrow and lowbrow—presented the Ripper news, in the process revealing much about the social, political, and sexual anxieties of late Victorian Britain and the role of journalists in reinforcing social norms. L. Perry Curtis surveys the mass newspaper culture of the era, delving into the nature of sensationalism and the conventions of domestic murder news. Analyzing the fourteen newspapers—two of which emanated from the East End, where the murders took place—he shows how journalists played on the fears of readers about law and order by dwelling on lethal violence rather than sex, offering gruesome details about knife injuries but often withholding some of the more intimate details of the pelvic mutilations. He also considers how the Ripper news affected public perceptions of social conditions in Whitechapel. “The apparently motiveless violence of the Whitechapel killings denied journalists a structure, and it is the resulting creativity in news reporting that L Perry Curtis Jr describes. His impressive book makes a genuine contribution to 19th-century history in a way that books addressing the banal question of the identity of the Ripper do not.”—The Guardian |
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
32 | |
48 | |
65 | |
Chapter 5 Victorian Murder News | 83 |
Chapter 6 The First Two Murders | 109 |
Chapter 7 The Double Event | 140 |
Chapter 9 The Kelly Reportage | 186 |
Reporting the Female Body | 213 |
Letters to the Editor | 238 |
Chapter 12 The Cultural Politics of Ripper News | 253 |
Notes | 275 |
Acknowledgments | 343 |
Index | 345 |
Chapter 8 The Pursuit of Angles | 164 |
Common terms and phrases
abdomen Altick arrest autopsy Baxter's Begg body Chapman columns coroner crime scene criminal culprit cultural Daily Chronicle Daily Telegraph dark death detective double event East End East London Advertiser East London Observer Eddowes editors England feature female Fleet Street Gazette Oct gore headline homicidal horror images inquest Jack the Ripper Jewish Jews journalism journalists Kelly Kelly's killed knife leader writer letters lived Lloyd's lust murder Lustmord male maniac Martha Tabram Miller's Court missing organs Mitre Square monster moral Morning Post mutilations mystery newspaper Nichols October Pall Mall Gazette papers penny percent police surgeons prostitutes readers reporters Reynolds's Ripper murders Rumbelow Scotland Yard sensation sensation-horror sensationalism Sept serial killer sexual slums social Star Stead story Stride Sugden Sunday suspects Tabram theory throat tion trial victims Victorian violence Warren Weekly West End Whitechapel murders William woman women York