The News from Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper in The Daily Telegraph

by Alexander Chisholm

"Early yesterday morning a horrible murder was discovered in Buck's-row, a narrow passage running out of Thames-street, Whitechapel."-- The Daily Telegraph, Saturday, 1 September 1888. This text is an annotated transcription of the articles that detailed the Jack the Ripper murders as they were reported by The Daily Telegraph, the world's largest-selling daily newspaper in 1888. Providing explanations where needed, each chapter is devoted to one of the Ripper's victims through transcripts of The Daily Telegraph coverage of her murder, its investigation and subsequent inquest. Interspersed with the transcripts are footnotes (the contents of these are drawn from Home Office and Metropolitan Police files, past and present Ripper books, other contemporary newspaper reports, and the authors' research) that serve to correct what the newspapers got wrong, expand on certain points, or explain to the reader things that were common knowledge during this time period. Also included are rare illustrations including a previously unpublished photograph of victim Annie Chapman prior to her death.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for you if you want primary sources and you are either:

(A) interested in Jack the Ripper
(B) interested in Victorian journalism.

Otherwise, this book is probably NOT for you, since it is a compilation of the Daily Telegraph's coverage of the five canonical murders of Jack the Ripper (Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly). The editors have included commentaries about each murder, which I found to be little more than a distraction, but might be helpful for someone just getting their feet wet in Ripperology.

I gave this book five stars because it is an AWESOME primary source for both Jack the Ripper and late-Victorian journalism and I deeply appreciate the work the editors did to put it together, but this is very much a YMMV kind of review. If you aren't the target audience in a very small niche market, it's probably not going to be your cup of tea.

I loved it.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

In recent years the market has been glutted by books that claim to be the final word on Jack the Ripper’s identity. (I haven’t been convinced by any of them yet.) Once in awhile, however, we get a rare gem that just presents the known facts, without the author’s pet theory ebbing below the surface. The News from Whitechapel is one of these.

You won’t find any whispers of murderous Freemasons, homicidal artists, or syphilitic princes in this volume. The News from Whitechapel is a transcription of the Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Ripper crimes, accompanied by footnotes that cross-reference official sources such as Metropolitan Police files, explain terms that might not make sense to post-Victorian readers, and in some cases correct statements later found to be untrue. Each chapter ends in thoughtful commentary from the authors, but because these opinion pieces are separate from the newspaper transcripts, they do not detract from the unique experience of reading about the Whitechapel murders as our forefathers did- provided that they were regular readers of the Daily Telegraph.

Those who lived in Jack the Ripper’s London are all dead now. But thanks to The News from Whitechapel, twenty-first century students of the Ripper crimes can obtain some sense of what it was like to open your morning paper and read about “another horrible murder” in the downtrodden East End.

[Ingrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

FABULOUS theory...FA-BU-LOUS

[Alexia McCabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at Victorian London.

[Mina]

the complete history of jack the ripper book