The Jack the Ripper murders and women's lives in Whitechapel

The Jack the Ripper murders were attacks ascribed to an unidentified serial killer active in and around London's impoverished Whitechapel district in 1888, typically involving women working as prostitutes who lived in the East End slums.

2 articles, 1 book · about 54 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   the jack the ripper murders · Wikipedia · 51 min read

   The Jack the Ripper murders took place in increasingly overcrowded Whitechapel, whose population rose to approximately 80,000 inhabitants by 1888. Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved women working as prostitutes who lived in the East End slums, where poverty drove many women to prostitution to survive. Annie Chapman was the first of five murder victims attributed to Jack the Ripper, and her body was discovered at approximately 6 am on Saturday 8 September 1888 near the steps to the doorway of the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. In September 1888, volunteer citizens in London's East End formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee in response to the Jack the Ripper murders. The Committee offered £50 for information leading to the killer's capture and hired private detectives to question witnesses independently.

2. Read
   

   How Jack the Ripper Became a Legend - JSTOR Daily · JSTOR Daily · 3 min read

   Whitechapel, the setting of the Jack the Ripper murders, was already notorious for crime and misery, but it was also a place of strong community.

3. Book
   

   The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper · Bookshop.org

   The Five by Hallie Rubenhold examines the lives of the five women largely believed to have been killed by Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold claims that only two were sex workers and that some may have been targeted because they were homeless.

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