What happened?
In 1888, at least 5 women were brutally murdered in the White Chapel, East End of London. During this period, the British law enforcement and news agency had received several letters purporting to come from the killer. One of the letters received by the Central News Agency on 27 September 1888 was signed "Jack the Ripper". Subsequently, with the dissemination of the name in media and the failure of the police to identify the killer, the White Chapel murders were believed to be committed by this single murderer "Jack the Ripper", and the legend of the most notorious serial killer in the Victorian period began.
Public Reaction
The serial killings were mostly targeted at the female prostitutes and happened in or around the White Chapel area. What is more, the victims were all gutted with their throat cut. The brutality of the murders and the inability of the police to catch the killer prompted the public concern on security and the emergence of vigilantism. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was established at this time by George Lusk, a local builder, and constituted by a group of local shopkeepers and property owners. The Committee acted as vigilantes, patrolling streets at night in the East End of London, looking for suspects. However, neither the police nor the vigilantes solved the case at last.
When the case becomes a mystery...
While the contemporaries were under the horror of the White Chapel Murders and the unknown killer, the late 1880s Britain saw the emerging imagination about Jack the Ripper as well as the fascination of murder among the mass. The Ripper gained its publicity through mass-circulation newspapers, which also generated public speculations around the identity about Jack the Ripper and the fantasy about his image which closely related to some well-known characters of horror fictions: Dr. Jekyll, Dracula, Frankenstein, et cetera. Today the identity of Jack the Ripper remains vague, furthermore, the mystery of the case passed by along with the thrill and interest in the case, intriguing the mass continuously.
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