Women, Murder and Poverty in 1880s Whitechapel

The notes cover the background and context of the murders of five women in Whitechapel in 1888, usually known as the ‘Ripper Murders’. However, drawing on Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Five, these notes offer a focus on the women who were murdered rather than the murderer as well as contextual information about Whitechapel in the 1880s.

These notes give further information to teachers / people supporting learning on the primary source documents - photographs, posters and maps - in the powerpoint. The documents can be used to support historical enquiry into poverty, social structures, women and crime in the late Victorian period. Discussion questions and some activities are provided.

The primary evidence includes photographs by John Thomson and descriptions by Adolphe Smith from their 1877 Street Life in London and the maps produced by Charles Booth in 1898-99. It refers to notebooks of interviews made by Booth’s volunteers in the collections of the Library of the London School of Economics (LSE) – for more information see https://booth.lse.ac.uk. It also draws on archives from the Campaign Against the Contagious Diseases Act.