section E

• the ripper murders in 1888:

  -31 August Nichols

  -8 September Chapman

  -30 September Stride and Eddowes

  -9 November Kelley

  -inspector Frank Abberline and his CID team were assigned to the murders to help H division
• the problem of the police and media:

  -more than 300 letter and postcards were sent in by men claiming to be the Jack the Ripper

  -press were very critical of police methods especially after the double murder

  -press published stories based on guesswork and unreliable interviews with locals

  -this all made the polices job harder
• need for cooperation between police forces:

  -needed cooperation between the metropolitan police, city of London police, and Scotland yard but this did not always happen

  -H division discovered an antisemitic message on a wall inside the boundaries of city of London police, but the metropolitan police ordered it to be scrubbed off to stop the city of London polices getting involved
• developing police techniques:

  -used evidence of post mortems like when a doctor suggested the cut marks on a victim indicated the ripper was left handed and had dissection experience

  -this meant thr police could narrow down their search by looking at slaughter houses or hospitals

  -the police followed up leads from articles by investigative journalists

  -they followed up clues in the victims possession

  -they visited lunatic asylums

  -followed up coroners reports

  -interveiwed key witnesses like Elizabeth Long who claimed to have seen Annie Chapman taking to a man minutes before she was found dead

  -they set up soup kitchens to encourage poor people to come forward

  -conducted house to house searches as criticism mounted and distributed 80000 handballs

  -had almost no scientific forensic techniques
• improvements made to 1900:

  -failure to catch the ripper led to the Bertillion system in 1894, where measurements of suspects and mugshots were taken

  -records became stored centrally

  -more awareness of the link between poor living conditions and crime

  -houses of the working class act of 1890 started the process of replacing slums with low cost housing

  -the public health ammendments act of 1890 gave local councils more power to improve toilets, rubbish collection, and other sanitary services