Why Police Were Unable to Catch Jack the Ripper

Why Police Were Unable to Catch Jack the Ripper

Jack the ripper was a brutal, motiveless and the first serial murderer

who roamed the streets of East London at night preying on prostitutes

who to this day is unknown. In this essay I am going to try and

explain the factors that prevented the police from catching him.

There were general problems with policing, problems with crimes and

how they were controlled and there was a vast amount of pressure on

the police from different sources such as the general public, the

press, the government and from their own false leads.

Firstly the police held a terrible reputation with Londoners in the

East End. As they believed that the Metropolitan police who was a

fairly new organisation was more concerned in helping the high class

in the West end and ignoring the issues of the poor.

The police was also more concerned in preventing crime than in

actually solving the existing crimes. This led the people to loose

believe in the power of the police. They also had limited resources;

they did not have the right equipment as things as DNA were not know

of yet they could not find out Jack’s identity from blood left on his

victims or forensic evidence. The metropolitan police also had limited

techniques for example they would think that if they looked in the

retina of the victim they would see the face of the murderer, but of

course this never worked. In one occasion Sir Charles warren ordered

the writing on a wall made from blood to be washed off as it made a

racist remark blaming the Jews for the Ripper murders and they thought

that this remark would raise riots and conflict between the Jews and

everyone else and had this not been done they could have recognised

the ripper’s writing.

There were also certain problems with the area which allowed the

Ripper to escape easily and mislead the police. The streets were long,

narrow and poorly lighten, they were called the rookeries because they