Jack the Ripper blame game: Jew, toff or medic?

Jack the Ripper: Tabloid Killer, channel five

So I just watched a documentary on Jack the Ripper (this is fast becoming a film/tv blog, I realise) and I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to choose it for my dissertation topic! Suddenly punk seems so tame...

I've always had a strange fascination with the Jack the Ripper killings, and the Victorian East End as a whole. I think it's a culmination of feeling some sort of connection, due to my mum being from that neck of the woods (we found out recently that her great great great grandfather was a constable on the Jack the Ripper case!), and loving the London Dungeons and the 1968 Oliver! musical as a kid. Whatever the reasons, there's definitely a sense of romanticism that we attach to these parts of history (weird, considering what they actually entail).

Below: Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes in the 1968 Oliver! musical

Anyway, although I wasn't expecting to find out much new - it has been more than 120 years since the murders after all - the documentary's focus on the journalism aspect of the case was particularly fascinating.

Eight years before Lord Northcliffe had set up the Daily Mail and discovered the profits of sensational tabloid style news - along with the uttering of his immortal phrase, "Get me a murder a day!" - it was in fact the editor of the Daily Star (no, not that one) who began to reap the benefits of 'bloody' news.

In 1888, the ability to read was no longer just the privilege of the upper classes in Britain; what with education and tax reforms (the latter making newspapers cheaper and more readily available), literacy was rapidly on the rise. With a growing population of working class readers, journalism was changing, and needed to satisfy the interests of its expanding readerships.

The birth of 'New Journalism', saw a shift towards simplified, to-the-point language, alongside dramatic and/or human interest stories with sensational headlines; essentially, what we now call tabloid journalism.

Around the same time, the fledgling Daily Star picked up - seemingly by chance - on the murder of a young woman, and found that the gritty details of her death boosted their sales. When they linked her death to another murder (commonly regarded as being totally inaccurate and unrelated), bingo! They sold more.

The paper had successfully kick-started a serial killer 'panic'. The question nowadays when looking to the whole debacle, is whether this early coverage unwittingly spurred on the Ripper.

Fast forward to the five gruesome killings that followed (all widely believed to be the work of one man - Jack the Ripper) and the newspapers were full of accusations.

Drawing parallels with today's tabloids that often attribute society's 'ills' to minority groups, the coverage of Jack the Ripper at first stated, entirely on speculation, that he was a Jew, as no English man could be "capable" of such a gruesome crime.

Below: grim image of the Ripper's first victim

This was followed by the 'toff': another great figure of hate masterminded by the editors (the toff being the enemy, because the readers, like the victims of the Ripper, were vastly from the lower classes), and lastly the popularised image of a high society doctor, complete with hat and brief case.

The key aspect however, in the level of notoriety that the Jack the Ripper killings have achieved, is all down to the name: a perfect mix of normality (the very name 'Jack') and brutality. A headline writer's wet dream you might say.

How the name came about, says even more about the influence of the press in cementing the Ripper's status forever more. The name 'Jack the Ripper' was first used in the "Dear Boss" letter, which was sent conveniently to the Central News Agency, and signed off politely with, "Yours truly, Jack the Ripper".

It was none other than a journalist who is said to have written the hoax; the perfect way to drum up more interest - and profit - in the story. Convincing evidence revealed in the documentary points to one particular hack, and a letter suggests that the corporation knew fully well that it was his doing.

As presenter Kelvin Mackenzie (former editor of The Sun) points out, this man would have inevitably been protected - and more possibly, instructed - by higher powers to write the letter. The ultimate person, he says, who has the power to do so, is the editor. Takes one to know one...

Putting aside the questionable aspects to this documentary (at one stage, some sort of scientist man demonstrates where precisely, one of the victims was cut, by drawing on a woman lying on the operating table in her bra. Not sure that was necessary, but hey - it's channel Five), it's interesting to see where the serial killer phenomena really all kicked off.

The irony of Mackenzie discussing the underhand tactics employed by the newspapers to create a stir surrounding the killings is quite funny when you consider that The Daily Star was basically the 19th century equivalent to The Sun.

Add to that Mackenzie's own shady past (he alienated a generation of Liverpudlian Sun readers over the false reporting of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, which blamed Liverpool fans and included allegations of fans stealing from/urinating over the dead bodies) and it's easy to see that he belongs to the same "drama before accuracy" school of thought.

Below: Mackenzie. A quick Google search brings you to his Wikipedia page which contains the message: "the neutrality of this article is disputed". Tee hee, more irony...

Whether it's down to the romanticism of Victorian East London, or the brilliantly catchy 'Jack the Ripper' name daubed with the killings (and arguably, without this 'catchy' tag, the murders would have been confined to a forgotten chapter of history) more than a century later, the presence of the case is still plain to see, in everything from new conspiracy theories, to Jack the Ripper tours.

As one editor in the documentary points out (his name escapes me), it is quite simply the most famous of all murders, because it has never been solved.

On that note, I shall leave you with some immature Jack the Ripper cartoon parodies. My particular favourite is Jack as a child.