The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Victims

Author/Guide: Robert Hume

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1888: The untold stories of Jack the Ripper’s victims

ISBN: 978-1526738608
Genre: Non-Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly are inextricably linked in history. Their names might not be instantly recognisable, and the identity of their murderer may have eluded detectives and historians throughout the years, but there is no mistaking the infamy of Jack the Ripper. For nine weeks during the autumn of 1888, the Whitechapel Murderer brought terror to London s East End, slashing women s throats and disembowelling them. London s most famous serial killer has been pored over time and again, yet his victims have been sorely neglected, reduced to the simple label: prostitute. The lives of these five women are rags-to-riches-to-rags stories of the most tragic kind. There was a time in each of their lives when these poor women had a job, money, a home and a family. Hardworking, determined and fiercely independent individuals, it was bad luck, or a wrong turn here or there, that left them wretched and destitute. Ignored by the press and overlooked by historians, it is time their stories were told.

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Discover the stories of Jack the Ripper’s victims

Jack the Ripper is perhaps the most well-known murderer of all times. However the stories of his victims are less well known and this book aims to put that right.

This book delves into the background and lives of the five canonical victims. Their stories are told from their early days, or as early as records exist for. There are also pictures and drawings from police drawings and photos of the time and the pictures especially are hard to look at even so many years later. The hardest part of all however, is perhaps looking into the stories of these women before their death and see what the conditions were at that time and how ‘women of the street’ were viewed by many.

The sad thing is that most of these women had good lives before fortune and luck abandoned them for one reason or another. Events which could happen to anyone. Events which did, but then the biggest tragedy of all, the one which they all share despite never having met each other – they all crossed the path of Jack the Ripper.