The first highly-illustrated work to explain the full story of Jack the Ripper, including the history, the conspiracy theory, and his enduring popularity as a character in the mass media.

Over a century ago terror stalked the streets of Whitechapel. Jack the Ripper's brutal campaign of murder panicked Victorian London at the time, but his legacy reaches out to the present day. If anything the story of Jack is now more confusing, obscure and mysterious than ever.

With each passing generation, new theories and suspects spring up, adding a new page to a legend that has turned Jack from a historical figure into a mythical character who has become a star of folklore, literature and cinema.

Within these pages Victor Stapleton embarks on a quest , retracing the serial killer's bloody tracks through the foggy alleys of London to finally reveal the true story of Jack the Ripper.

Victor Stapleton has studied Victorian criminology and the Whitechapel Murders for 30 years, first visiting the crime scenes during the centenary of the murders in 1988. As an English literature scholar he has a particular interest in how the Ripper story relates tragic true crimes through the lens of late Gothic fiction and sensation literature.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Oh, Murder!
Chapter 2: The Inquests
Chapter 3: Policing Ripper Street
Chapter 4: Suspects of the Day
Chapter 5: Suspects of Today
Chapter 6: Jack in the Books
Chapter 7: Caught on Film

Further Reading and Acknowledgements