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In 1888 London was the capital of the most powerful empire the world had ever known, and the largest city in Europe. In the west a new city was growing, populated by the middle classes, the epitome of ''Victorian values''. Across the city the situation was very different. The East End of London had long been considered a nether world, a dark and dangerous region outside the symbolic ''walls'' of the original City.Using the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper as a focal point, this book explores prostitution, poverty, revolutionary politics, immigration, the creation of a criminal underclass and the development of policing. It also considers how the sensationalist ''new journalism'' took the news of the Ripper murders to all corners of the Empire and to the United States. This is an important book for those interested in the history of Victorian Britain.>
List of contents
1. Creating the 'Myth' of Jack the Ripper
2. Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London: The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 in Context
3. East Meets West: The Contrasting Nature of Victorian London and the Mixed Community of the East End
4. Read All About It! Ripper News and Sensation in Victorian Society
5. The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: Poverty, Charity and the Fear of Revolution
6. City of Dreadful Delights: Vice, Prostitution and Victorian Society
7. Crime and the Criminal Class in Late Victorian London
8. Watching the Detectives: The Police and the Hunt for Jack the Ripper
9. London's Shadows: The Darker Side of the Victorian Capital
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Drew D. Gray is Senior Lecturer in the History of Crime at the University of Northampton, UK. He is the author of Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations (2009) and London's Shadows (2010).
Report
Drew Gray's book is a fine addition to the literature on urban history at a time when we were learning to live in large communities and experimenting with different ways of doing so. History Today
