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Why did the Whitechapel murders attract so much attention in 1888?
There are a number of reasons that the Whitechapel murders attracted so much attention. One of them was the nature of the attacks. No one had ever seen or heard about such violent and gruesome attacks so everyone wanted to know more. The middle class had to take an interest because of the threat of disorder and a possible revolt by the poor. So for this reason they wanted to see the murderer caught as soon as possible for their own safety not the prostitutes.
The interest in the murders grew with each attack. This was because of the regular continuation of the killings and the failure of the police catching him. Another reason interest grew with every attack was because of the amount of women that were killed, there had not really been any serial killers recorded before in history so this was all new to everyone.
As well as the nature of the crimes, the nature of the victims caused a lot of people to give some attention. All the victims were prostitutes, this made other prostitutes scared for their own safety therefore they would have paid a lot of attention to whether Jack had been caught yet so they could get back to business normally. The fact that they were all poor along with being prostitutes made richer people have sympathy for them as they thought they suffered enough for being poor. For this reason they would want to find out what was going on and if Jack The Ripper had been caught yet. The upper class was also very surprised that it was the poor being attacked and not them being attacked for their money.
The main factor that attracted so much attention towards the murderers though was the press at the time. The murders coincided with the beginning of the rise from the tabloid press. As they were just starting they needed to attract new readers this means that they were all describing the attacks in graphic detail as this sold papers. The Star August 31st 1888 wrote ‘a woman with…. her throat cut from ear to ear…the wound was about two inches wide and blood was flowing profusely…as the corpse lies in the mortuary it presents a ghastly sight.’ Another article in the same paper said ‘The throat is cut in two gashes….the instrument having been a sharp one but used in the most ferocious and reckless way…making a wide and horrible hole nearly severing the head from the body…no murder was ever more ferociously and brutally done.’ The need for the papers to attract readers leads to sensationalism to the extreme.
There were a lot of hoax letters sent to liven up the story if it was dying down, most of these were sent by the press themselves. A couple of examples of possible fake letters were the [next page]