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In offering a holistic analysis of the vast array of evidence and literature pertaining to the Whitechapel Murders committed in London's East End in the Autumn of 1888, this volume offers a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional consideration of the entirety of the most infamous of crimes and their legacy for the first time.
Interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper has barely dissipated over the numerous decades since their perpetration but has grown significantly in recent years.
The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies provides a solid reference point for understanding and evaluating the significance of the murders across a range of different perspectives, both past and present, and through a myriad of different disciplinary frameworks and approaches. This vital resource is split into eight thematic sections, each containing a brief, orientating introduction:
1 Introduction and Victorian Context
2 The Murders and the Victims
3 The Evidence and the Investigation
4 The Suspects and Conspiracy Theories
5 Press Reaction and Public Outcry
6 Official Responses
7 The Legacy of the Ripper: Media and Culture
8 Ripperology and Ripper Scholarship: Past, Present and Future
Providing both a rigorous, consolidated appreciation of the voluminous scholarship and setting a dynamic and expansive research agenda for the future, this handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars of history, criminology, social justice, cultural studies, and gender studies.
List of contents
Jack the Ripper Studies: Introduction and Context
SECTION I Introduction and Victorian Context 1. Victorian Contrasts: Competing Classes and Public and Private 2. Jack the Ripper and Outcast London 3. Jack the Ripper and Moral Panics 4. Victorian Experiences of Violence 5. Policing Victorian London
SECTION II The Murders and the Victims 6. Jack the Ripper: How Many Victims? 7. Jack the Ripper: Serial Killer? 8. Selling Sex in the Victorian Era 9. Jack the Ripper: Victim Histories 10. Jack the Ripper: Copycat and Legacy Killings
SECTION III The Evidence and the Investigation 11. Jack the Ripper and Forensic/Medical Evidence 12. Jack the Ripper and Witness Testimony 13. Vigilante Groups and Jack the Ripper 14. Policing Jack the Ripper 15. Profiling Jack the Ripper
SECTION IV The Suspects and Conspiracy Theories 16. Jack the Ripper and Conspiracy 17. Jack the Ripper and Medical Men 18. Jack the Ripper as Manifestation of the Residuum 19. Jack the Ripper and Ethnicity/Racism 20. The Monster Inside: Jack the Ripper and Violence
SECTION V Press Reaction and Public Outcry 21. 'The Lust of the Savage': Evolution, the Press, and the Whitechapel Murders 22. Reporting the Ripper: A Global News Story 23. The Press and the Ripper Investigations: Help or Hindrance? 24. Reforming the Ripper: Possibilities and Impossibilities 25. Popular Victorian Views on the Jack the Ripper Case
SECTION VI Official Responses 26. Royalty and the Ripper 27. The Politics of Jack the Ripper 28. Police Perspectives on Jack the Ripper: Past and Present 29. Jack the Ripper and the Transformation of London's East End 30. The Legal Legacy of Jack the Ripper
SECTION VII The Legacy of the Ripper: Media and Culture 31. Jack the Ripper as a Publishing Phenomenon 32. Jack the Ripper on Film 33. Jack the Ripper in Television 34. Reconstructing the Jack the Ripper Case: TV Documentaries 35. The Material Culture of Jack the Ripper
SECTION VIII Ripperology and Ripper Scholarship: Past, Present and Future 36. The Construction and Influence of Ripperology 37. Celebrity Sleuths of Jack the Ripper 38. The Sources: An Experienced Writer Reflects 39. The Historiography of Jack the Ripper 40. Jack the Ripper: Feminist Approaches
About the author
Anne-Marie Kilday is Professor of Crime History at the University of Northampton. She writes and researches on various aspects of criminal history, particularly focusing on violent behaviour and gendered criminality. Anne-Marie is currently completing a handbook for Routledge on European serial killing.
David Nash is Professor of History and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is an internationally acknowledged expert on the history of blasphemy and the history of secularisation. He has also written extensively on the socio-cultural history of crime and shame using a microhistory approach, with several books on these subjects jointly authored with Professor Anne-Marie Kilday.
Katherine D. Watson is Professor of Criminal Justice History at Oxford Brookes University, specialising in the history of forensic medicine and crime in Britain between 1700 and the Second World War. She recently published
Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700-1914 (Routledge, 2020) and is currently working on a book-length study of poisoning crimes in the West.
