Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History Paperback - 2004 - 1st Edition

From the rear cover

'A must-have addition to the shelves of anyone interested in this iconic Victorian mystery.' Gilda O'Neill, author of My East End

'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.' William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

One of the most important Ripper releases of the past several years... one of the best overarching accounts of social conditions in London's East End, as well as the history and internal politics of both the police, government and press organizations of the time. Casebook: Jack the Ripper

England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear.

The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was fear in a human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill.

Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, the book sets the murders in their historical context, examining in depth what East London was like in 1888, how it came to be that way, and how events led to one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era.

Paul Begg is one of the world's foremost experts on the case of Jack the Ripper. He is the author of Jack the Ripper: The Facts, and co-author of The Jack the Ripper A to Z. He is the Editor of the Ripperologist magazine.