In autumn 1888, five women in east London slums died at the hands of an unknown man. The murderer became known as ‘Jack the Ripper’. The police failed to identify the murderer, much to the ridicule of the satirical press.
The Ripper’s mystique made him the first ‘media serial killer’, and in September 1889 he was still front page news. Puck was a humorous weekly magazine published in the US between 1871 and 1918; this front cover comes from its London edition, which ran briefly from January 1889 to June 1890.
The drawing – of a puzzled man trying to identify the culprit, captioned ‘Who is he? What is he? Where is he?’ – was the work of William Mecham (1853 – 1902), under his professional name Tom Merry. He performed as a lightning cartoonist on the music hall stage in the 1890s, and his technique was featured in four short films.
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