WHITECHAPEL MURDERS.

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Pall Mall Budget. A continuous run of 75 issues, several containing contemporary source materials for the Whitechapel Murders. Detailed descriptions of the crimes are accompanied by interviews with witnesses and theories regarding the identity of "Jack the Ripper". The newspaper also criticizes the police's failure to solve the case. This copy is from the crime library of Patricia Cornwell.The violent deaths of Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddows, and Mary Jane Kelly left London "convulsed with horror" (No. 1051, p. 25). Public attention in the case was immense, as demonstrated by the coverage in the Pall Mall Budget. Four covers make direct reference to the murders and the police investigation, and several articles concerning the murders extend over two pages and include illustrations of the crime scenes. The newspaper treated the victims sympathetically in general, although it mourned the "lamentable conditions of human existence" (No. 1042, p. 27) in which they resided.On 6 December 1888, the Pall Mall Budget published an article titled "Who is the Whitechapel Demon?", which was penned anonymously by Robert Donston Stephenson, himself a potential Ripper suspect. Stephenson suggested that the murders were committed by a practitioner of black magic, who needed human body parts for ritual purposes. In other issues, the newspaper theorized that the murderer was the individual nicknamed "Leather Apron", or that the crimes were committed by a vi

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