Kentish Express Ashford & District
Book goes behind scenes of hunt for Jack the Ripper
A writer has penned her first nonfiction book charting the hunt to find Jack the Ripper through the eyes of the police officers investigating the case.
Amanda Harvey Purse, 32, said she has been fascinated by the Victorian serial killer since she read about the case as a child.
Now the former Towers School pupil from South Ashford has become something of an expert on the subject, with articles appearing in publications such as the Whitechapel Society Journal.
She said: “I picked up my first Jack the Ripper book at the age of eight and the case has never left me.
“From all the history of the case you learn about Victorian policing, social uproar, the difference between the rich and poor, medicine, the Royal family and everything else in between.”
She now works at the London Police Museum, where she has the opportunity to work with items belonging to the police inquiry of the day.
She added: “Most of the books on the subject focus on trying to explain who the Ripper could have been, but what about the people who had to cope with what he did and go back to work each day?
“The officers were part of history, so in my book I travel deeper into their lives and the lives of victims with the aim of making these people seem more real and more human than just characters in a play of Jack the Ripper.
“Their lives are just as interesting and mysterious as the famous unknown killer who murdered women on the streets of London 130 years ago.
“Hopefully the case would look different, feel different and be different when we look at it through different eyes, ones that were there at the time.
“This book is the policemen’s chance to shine, for their history to be told with a few surprises along the way.”
Her book will be published by Mango Books in March and is entitled Jack and Old Jewry: The City of London Policemen who Hunted the Ripper.