The Horror of 1888

Jack the Ripper? Who was he? What was his profession? How did he plan the murders and evade detection and what was going on in his sick head. Why did he stop? Some say maybe he discovered god, or someone killed him before he killed again. Who knows as it still to this day remains a mystery.

Their I was walking down the dark streets of Whitechapel London on a tour of Jack the Ripper, I must admit the atmosphere of the walk felt eerie as I walk down the dimly lit darken pathways and alleyways where he killed his innocent victims. At the time there would have been very little or no street lamps.

These murders are infamous even today because of the way he used to kill his victims, most was killed on the streets in a horrifying way and he was so secret nobody even really noticed or heard anything happening. Could he have been a ghost?

Many people were scared of reporting suspicious activities and believed in not thinking about the Ripper, police didn't have any proper technology unlike today; they would rely on witness statements. The police were also known to push or hide evidence collected about the Ripper. Could he have been a very important person? Did the government know more than we thought? Who knows.

This event must have been a frightening time for prostitutes who were unfortunately easy targets for the ripper. He was known to appear and disappear at an alarming rate through the dirty smoggy smokey fog of the backstreets of London. This story has always fascinated me to this day.

For more information visit this site http://www.walksoflondon.co.uk/28/jack-the-ripper-photos.shtml

Posted by: Marcus Curtis

The Shadow

Ah, Jack the Ripper. What a nice man. Looks like there will be a lot of interesting stuff to think about for the presentation. While we still don't really know what specifically the presentation will be about, I do hope we can mention, at least in passing, From Hell (the graphic novel, not the silly film). I know it's only a ripple in the Atlantic Ocean that is Ripper fiction, but it does have a lot of thought provoking cultural aspects to it, with which you can really see how, not just Jack the Ripper, but everything that was going on at that time helped shape the world we live in today. And it's by the lovely Alan Moore.

But I digress.

One thing that got me thinking in last week's lecture was Mark's rhetorical question of why we're so fascinated by Jack the Ripper. And I think I may have an answer. (Not the answer, just an answer.) The Ripper murders were so shocking, even by today's torture porn standards (yeah, I'm talking to you, Eli Roth), that they've come to represent the facet in all of us that we'd rather not acknowledge, what Carl Jung dubbed the Shadow. And if we can just work out why it happened, what drove a person (or persons) to commit such an atrocity, then maybe it'll be the first step to eradicating our Shadows. It's the same reason why we're fascinated by Hitler, by Stalin, and by a myriad others.

Of course, eradicating your Shadow wouldn't be a very healthy thing to do. But this isn't a psychology blog, so I'll leave it at.

Just something to think about.

Re: jack the ripper talk

Hi everyone,

In the process of doing the first assignment but on the way I have stumbled accross some articles and web sites about crime and policing in Britain. The level of generalised brutality in society in the 19th century is shocking.

Equally shocking is capital punishment, and not just from the 19th century. The last hangings in Britain took place in 1964. See http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hanging1.html for more info on british hanging.

Equally interesting is the policing. Reading the Jack the Ripper facts made me realise how difficult policing must have been, and the fact that they probably did as much as they could with the resources available to them. The metropolitan police web site has a time line which gives a reasonable idea of the type of challenges they faced.

Whilst I don't know what the title of the presentation is going to be as of yet, these might start us thinking about the subject in a bit more detail.

Pauline Gibbard (Polly)