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Victorian Studies 45.4 (2003) 760-762



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Jack the Ripper and the London Press, by L. Perry Curtis, Jr.; pp. viii + 354. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001, $35.00, £25.00.

"LOVE, INTRIGUE, JEALOUSY, PASSION, LUST, MADNESS, MURDER, DEATH." In response to this subheading from the New York Herald, William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and well known for his own sensationalist journalism, declared, "Men and women, choking of ennui, cry for 'blood—blood—blood'" (qtd. 81). The 1888 Whitechapel murders fed this demand, resulting in more sales than ever before for some Victorian newspapers. Based on those sources, L. Perry Curtis has produced the first in- depth study of how the Victorian press reported these events. His research consists of samples from fifteen London newspapers, ranging geographically from the West to the East End and politically from the Tory Evening News to the more Liberal and Radical top- selling Lloyd's Weekly and Reynolds's Newspaper. Curtis identifies and attempts to overcome a split in the literature between the mostly male, British scholars who promise to reveal the true identity of the Whitechapel murderer and the predominantly female, American scholars inspired by cultural studies, who examine the broader misogynist implications of [End Page 760] the murders. Jack the Ripper and the London Press may not reveal any surprise twists, but this carefully researched, engagingly written book will be the essential resource for anyone wanting to understand the Whitechapel murders in their cultural context.

Connecting the 1888 Whitechapel murder reports to Victorian sensationalism and the rise of new journalism, Curtis explores the public appetite for disaster news. Headlines from the Daily Telegraph—"FELONIOUS ASSAULT ON A YOUNG FEMALE," "FIVE MEN SMOTHERED IN A GIN VAT," and "HORRIBLE ATTROCITY. A CHILD DEVOURED BY PIGS"—suggest that increasing profits went hand in hand with coverage of wars, murders, divorces, fires, train wrecks, and maritime calamities (112). One of the most interesting underlying questions of the book is why the Victorians "seemed to derive such private pleasure from reading all those texts of pain" (274). Curtis presents several possible answers, including Richard Altick's argument—similar to Stead's—that jaded Victorian readers craved murder news as a replacement for declining war reportage. Other explanations include John Cawelti's claim that Victorians projected suppressed family conflicts onto their readings of domestic murder reports and Thomas Boyle's view that sensational news distracted attention away from the more complex issues of class conflict and urban poverty. Not fully satisfied with these interpretations, Curtis emphasizes instead a sense of Schadenfreude along with the physical thrills that came with reading murder reports. By adhering to a recognizable format, Curtis suggests, murder stories allow us to analyze at a distance horrors that remain overwhelming and uncontainable in real life.

The 1888 Whitechapel murders were all the more terrifying because they defied the conventions of Victorian murder reporting. Not only was the murderer never found or brought to trial, but the murders themselves lacked a clear beginning and end. Reporters and police disagreed over who the first victim was in the case and linked killings to "Jack the Ripper" well into the 1890s. Newspapers printed conflicting reports about details as basic as the five victims' names and the nature of their injuries. The missing reproductive organs from the bodies of Annie Chapman and Catherine Eddowes raised further fears and speculation about the killer. Most of all, the unknown motive in these mutilation murders prevented reporters from drawing simple moral lessons from the story.

Curtis argues that the silences and unknowns in the press reports made "Jack the Ripper" a "floating signifier"—alternatively a "monster, madman, fiend, lust murderer, sexual maniac, 'saucy lad,' or folk-hero"—who gave voice to a spectrum of cultural narratives outlining the boundaries between "respectable" and deviant behavior (259). Curtis concentrates on the law-and-order messages in the reports, which often called not only for more policemen and streetlights, but also for a thorough reorganization of Scotland Yard. Some used the Whitechapel murders to advance the cause...

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