Rating:
3 Stars
Themes:
Non-Fiction, True Crime, History
Thoughts:
This is a very detailed and pretty insightful book. I only had a basic knowledge of the Ripper killings and am by no means an aspiring Ripperologist so the book enlightened me quite a bit. There are a few chapters at the beginning that help us to contextualise the murders and there's also a lot of direct newspaper quotes and direct quotes from trials which I found to be a great touch. It was interesting that Martha Turner was included in a chapter at first since she isn’t considered one of the canonical five today but the injuries and MO were actually similar and the police saw similarities when the canonical murders occurred. Two murders after the last accepted murder are also included but it shows how they can be seen as not related in comparison to the Turner murder which was accepted at the time. Overall, I don’t think Matthews really romanticised the crimes and Catherine Eddows or Mary Kelly’s mortuary pictures were excluded (while the others were shown) to avoid sharing such brutal and vulnerable pictures of the women. All the suspects were also included by the end with some being more detailed than others depending on the research and evidence behind them.
Favourite Quote:
“It is not the number of victims that Jack the Ripper claimed that ensure his lasting fame. Only five women were definitely killed by him, and certainly there were no more than eight victims. Other serial killers since then have murdered more. And although the horrific mutilations Jack the Ripper carried out were disturbing and violent, they too have been surpassed since. In the records of serial killers, Jack the Ripper is unexceptional in many ways. But he remains the most famous of them all.”
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