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Were the police to blame for not capturing Jack the Ripper
to work. This lack of resources and technology was mainly caused by the low wages of police officers and the lack of funding from the government.
The very fact that Jack was the very first savage serial killer also posed a problem for the police as they had never come across a person with that sort of mind-frame before and had no experience in dealing with the type of investigation that they came across. Therefore they found it hard to find out who was able to commit such a crime.
Journalists also ruined the Police investigation and muddled an already hard case. Evidence leaked out about the Jack the Ripper murders and was published in the newspapers. This is shown by the fact that some newspapers have information on the murders, which was released to the public, This spoilt the police investigation as any member of the public could commit a copycat murder and confuse the police by leading them to a fake Jack the Ripper. This leads us to the question whether all five murders were committed by the same person, or was each murder a copy of the previous. This publicising of material confused the police investigation and made it very hard to solve because a lot of the evidence obtained became contradictory.
On the other hand, it is possible to disagree with the statement and say that it was the Police force's fault for not capturing Jack the Ripper. One of the main arguments behind this view is that the Police forces around London did not combine for a national investigation where evidence and ideas could be shared and the probability of catching Jack would increase. This lack of sharing was mainly due to the petty competition between Police forces. An example of this is when Sir Charles Warren told the city policeman guarding the writing on the wall ("The Jews are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.") that he should rub it out. If the police forces around London were united they would have had a higher chance of catching Jack the Ripper.
The Police can also be blamed for failing to catch Jack the Ripper as they insisted on using narrow lines of questioning. For example, they only looked at certain groups of people (butchers, doctors and slaughterers) and only people in the local area of Whitechapel were questioned, "the murders are supposed to be committed by someone residing in the immediate neighbourhood." This localising of questioning went against popular opinion that the Ripper looked foreign and might have come from a different area of London, or might have even been a foreign doctor (this idea was even suggested by Queen Victoria). This narrow line of enquiring may be the reason that the Ripper was not caught.
On many occasions the police failed to take into account vital witnesses. One of the most evident of which is from the coroner’s report of the death of Polly Nichols where he says, "No mere slaughterer of animals could [next page]