Jack The Ripper and the East End

Jan 11, 2025 4:49 AM

Author:Various,Peter Ackroyd,Alex Werner

In 1888, Whitechapel - at the heart of the inner East End - was the most (in)famous place in the country, widely imagined as a site of the blackest and deepest horror. Its streets and alleys were seen as violent and dangerous, overflowing with poverty and depravity. This book aims to uncover the reality of East End life. Sections look at slum housing, immigration, attitudes to women, poverty, violence and crime. The book examines how the brutal killings were reported and how the police tried to identify the murderer. A final section shows how Jack the Ripper has shaped our vision of London, and influenced our popular culture.

Jack the Ripper and the East End coincides with an exhibition organised by the Museum of London at their Museum in Docklands. Key surviving documents from the National Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives will be on display - in addition to material from the collections of the Museum of London such as photographs of the Whitechapel Mission. The illustrations for the book will include rare and unpublished photographs, sections of the 'master' Booth Map of Poverty, detectives' reports and original letters.

The introduction will be written by Peter Ackroyd, who is the acknowledged expert on London, its darker aspects and how its history has seeped into its very stones. Leading historians and curators will provide additional insights. This is a book which will be valued for years to come for its enduring and important portrait of the Victorian East End.

Reviews

Vivid and absorbing...like all good history, it leaves the reader wanting to know more

—— Peter Wilby , New Statesman

Intelligent, instructive and brightly funny

—— Iain Finlayson , The Times

A lively study of neighbourly relations.

—— Philippa Stockley , Sunday Telegraph

A fine book packed with generosity, rivalry, misbehaviour, snobbery, love, murder and politics.

—— Alistair Mabbott , The Herald

I enjoyed Cockayne's book immediately

—— Rebecca Armstrong , Independent

This curtain-twitching account is bottom-up history at its breezy best

—— Michael Kerrigan , Scotsman

A great read

—— Penelope Lively , Spectator

An entirely delightful history of neighbour relations since the Middle Ages

—— Rupert Uloth , Country Life

A brisk but impressively comprehensive survey.

—— Reader's Digest

A very detailed historical survey of the upside and the downside of neighbouring since about 1300.

—— Peter Lewis , Daily Mail

A great insight into how our homes and communities have grown and changed.

—— Kate Whiting , PA syndicated review - Manchester Evening News

Original, humorously historical and wittily anecdotal.

—— Saga Magazine

This intriguing social history charts the concept of neighbours through British history in thorough detail

—— Big Issue in the North

Informative but fun, with an important message about society, Cockayne’s history is a human one, with all the heartache and joy that entails

—— Lesley McDowell , Independent on Sunday

This lively social history documents nine centuries of disputes, noise levels, wartime camaraderie and carparking issues. Fascinating

—— The Lady

Relishable

—— Independent

The avowed aim of this fascinating history of neighbours is to explore the delicate balance between people’s determination to protect their privacy and their simultaneous wish to cultivate contact with those who live close by

—— Good Book Guide

Mishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia

—— Free Press Journal

A vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious

—— Mint

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