Jack The Ripper

Jack the Ripper (1995) by Colin Wilson – Headline

ISBN: 9780747277941
Condition: Good
Published: 1995
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

There was a time when London’s East End was a place of grinding poverty, overcrowded lodging houses, gaslit streets and policemen whose principal investigative equipment consisted of a notebook, a whistle and an impressive moustache. Unfortunately, in the autumn of 1888, these resources proved spectacularly inadequate.

Welcome to Jack the Ripper, Colin Wilson’s examination of Britain’s most notorious unidentified murderer, whose brief but appalling career in Whitechapel created a mystery that has survived more than a century of investigation, speculation and increasingly imaginative attempts to identify the culprit.

Between August and November 1888, a series of brutal murders terrorised the East End of London. The victims, vulnerable women living in desperately impoverished circumstances, became the focus of a criminal investigation that captivated Victorian Britain and ultimately produced more theories than satisfactory answers.

The murderer acquired the name Jack the Ripper, an identity so enduring that it has effectively become a commercial enterprise involving books, films, television programmes, guided walks and an apparently inexhaustible supply of amateur detectives convinced that everybody else has overlooked the obvious.

Colin Wilson, a prolific author fascinated by crime, psychology, philosophy and the darker recesses of human behaviour, approaches the mystery with his characteristic enthusiasm for examining criminal personalities and the motivations behind extraordinary acts of violence.

The result is an exploration of the murders, their historical circumstances and the competing theories surrounding the elusive killer.

Naturally, the suspects form a remarkable collection. Doctors, butchers, aristocrats, foreigners and assorted suspicious individuals have all been nominated for the position, occasionally on evidence that might struggle to survive an afternoon in a modern courtroom.

Meanwhile, the actual murderer has managed the extraordinary achievement of remaining unidentified while becoming one of the most recognisable names in criminal history.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Jack the Ripper, whose identity nobody can establish, has enjoyed considerably greater posthumous celebrity than the detectives who attempted to apprehend him.

Published by Headline in 1995, this volume captures the enduring fascination with the Whitechapel murders before the modern explosion of internet speculation transformed Ripperology into an international pastime.

Condition: Good. A respectable second-hand copy showing the ordinary signs of age, handling and previous ownership. It has survived three decades without providing a definitive solution to the murders, although admittedly neither has anybody else.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where historical mysteries are appreciated, Victorian policing receives appropriate scrutiny, and customers are assured that no suspicious gentlemen in top hats are employed in the packing department.

An absorbing addition to any collection of true crime, Victorian history, criminal psychology or Jack the Ripper literature.

A reminder that while murder investigations have advanced enormously since 1888, the human appetite for an unsolved mystery remains almost inexhaustible.

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