cartoon

Jack the Ripper – what did Londoners make of him?

In recent years we’ve had endless theories about WHO Jack the Ripper was and even a commendable in-depth look at this victims – but I’m curious to know what contemporary Londoners made of Jack the Ripper.

So I’ve dipped into my huge collection of old newspapers and publications going back centuries and found a copy of The Times and Punch magazine from the year 1888. This was at the time that the Ripper was at his peak of horror.

Londoners lived in fear of this ghoul stalking the Whitechapel area of the city. But on reading The Times and Punch, I found that Victorians spent most of their time moaning about the police. They viewed the forces of law and order as completely hopeless. The boys in blue were caricatured as bumbling idiots outwitted at every turn by the criminals.

Far from being lauded for their forensic skills or ability to protect Londoners, the police were seen as next to useless. Jack the Ripper was getting away with one brutal slaying after another. And there was no sign of a conviction.

DISCOVER: A horrific day trip to Georgian London!

Indeed, as one cartoon intimates, the police were severely stretched and out of their depth. A letter to The Times has a young parson appalled that his house was burgled in broad daylight even though he lived right next to a police station. Where were the constables? Down in Whitechapel of course!

Watch my vlog above to see the reaction of Victorian Londoners to Jack the Ripper. Two weeks ago, I walked down Hanbury Street in London’s East End to see where Annie Chapman, one of the Ripper’s victims, came to a very grisly end. Today, it’s a post-war building covered in graffiti. Hard to even visualise what happened there.

DISCOVER: Movies that promote conspiracy theories

Below is a photo below of me trying to use my imagination!

London hated the French long before Brexit

If you think Brexit is making Britain more xenophobic, then you need to get a time machine and go back to Georgian London. Because two hundred years ago, a French person walking around London might not only endure abuse but come to an unfortunate end!

Eighteenth century London was a dangerous place to walk around if you were French. As England was in an almost constant state of war with France, Londoners often sought out a Frenchman in the city to pick on or worse.

FIND OUT MORE: The urban gang that terrorised Georgian London

London abuse against the French long before Brexit

There are several accounts of unpleasant abuse meted out by London folk against the French in the 1940 history book The Streets of London by Thomas Burke. He details one appalling incident where a French servant went to see a public hanging at Tyburn and nearly got executed himself!

British and French

The hanging of two criminals had just finished when three people in the crowd, realising the servant was French, began pulling at his coat-tails and powdered wig (this is the 18th century after all).

At which point the hangman was going past in the cart, in which he’d brought the condemned in to die, and began joining in the harassment by taking to the French servant with his whip.

He began to wonder if his time was up when three other Frenchmen came to his rescue. They beat the English thugs back and got him into a nearby tavern.

The narrator of this story then pointed out that should a Frenchman find himself in this predicament, he should single out one of his assailants and fight him with his fists.

If he wins, the typical English crowd would then declare him a good sport and parade him around in a chair!