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England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and heading towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency ... all these things combined to create a sense of uncertainty and fear.
The East End of London became the focus for that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was the fear in human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill.
Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, the book examines the facts behind one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era. It looks in depth at events around the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, and how these, in their various ways, conspired to give birth to the most enduring murder mystery in the world: who was Jack the Ripper?