JACK THE RIPPER AT LOOSE IN LONDON

The savagely gruesome murders of five women, all prostitutes, committed over three months in the Whitechapel slums, spread shock and fear across London. The police were bewildered. Door-to-door inquiries, thousands of interviews, dozens of suspects detained (butchers and surgeons were investigated due to the nature of the mutilations) and taunting letters purportedly from the killer left detectives no nearer to the identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’. All the while, the growth of cheap, mass-circulated newspapers turned the case into an international sensation as readers, disturbed and morbidly enraptured in equal measure, pored over the grisly details.

HIT THE ROAD JACK Most of the Ripper’s victims were discovered in the street, starting with Mary Ann Nichols – whose death made the front page of The Illustrated Police News