During the nineteenth century, London was the largest city on Earth and was "the heart and brain of the greatest empire in world history". It has been described as the symbol of the successes of British imperialism; a city synonymous with wealth, prosperity and morality. Yet, in 1888, Jack the Ripper's crimes were in direct conflict with these Victorian ideals and called into question the true nature of Victorian crime, culture, and society. Between late August and early November, Jack brutally murdered and mutilated five prostitutes in the East End of the imperial capital. Despite becoming the center of an international manhunt, his true identity remains unknown to this day. Perhaps more interesting than his identity, his crimes provide an invaluable way to access and analyze the nature of Victorian society and evaluate the rhetoric of imperial London against the much darker social reality. This essay will first examine how the murders changed the role of the press and then use the media and reporting of the murders as a gateway to examine reactions to poverty, rising crime, and social fears caused by a market-driven moral panic. This essay will argue that the realities of life in the East End conflicted with Victorian notions of imperial valor. A major reason for the continued scholarly interest in the Ripper stems from the fact that his crimes provide insight into the bleak nature of crime, culture, and society in the Victorian era. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Jack the Ripper murders provide insight into the changing role of the press in Victorian society and crime reporting. The timing of the murders meant that they benefited from the abolition of stamp duty in 1855, rising literacy rates and improvements in printing presses. The arrival of halfpenny evening papers such as The Evening News in 1881 and The Star in 1888 aided the accessibility of journalism by making it affordable, but they were often ridiculed for their use of sensationalism and emotional language. Reports often provided "every grisly detail" of crime scenes to attract attention. For example, a newspaper article from The Star from October 1, 1888 describes the double murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. The headline "Murder maniac sacrifices more women to his bloodlust" and the use of phrases within the article, such as "hell demon" and "blood chiller", depicted the Ripper's crimes as a works of fiction rather than real atrocities. This sensationalism was noted by Jean Chalaby. He stated that due to the volume and nature of reporting on the Ripper, "journalists could no longer downplay the significance of the phenomenon". Despite revealing an industrializing and increasingly literate society in line with Victorian imperial rhetoric, the volume of interest in the Ripper hints at a society concerned with the misfortunes of those less fortunate than themselves. Press coverage of the killings also highlighted an interest in the truth. crime in Victorian society. This was the case before the "new journalism", with huge interest around cases such as the Red Barn murder, where plays and songs outlining the gory details of the victims' deaths were written and sold. Although "crime reporting was nothing new, what was new were those elements of quantity of coverage and distribution that naturally accompanied the growing phenomenon of the presspopular". This allowed for increased interest in the Ripper's crimes as newspapers realized that true crime created large profits. Between 1 September and 20 October 1888, the Evening News devoted 82 columns to the murders, the 12% of the entire coverage. As interest in the murders increased, tours of Dorset Street were also organized and an unsavory tourist trade was established. Society was fascinated by death and murder and the Victorian press exploited the tragedies of the victims Ripper for popular entertainment. This once again reveals a society at odds with both the prudish stereotype of Victorian sensibility and the rhetoric of the Victorian empire. Newspaper accounts of the Ripper murders provide a useful way of examining the reactions of the middle and upper class to the poor. Before the Ripper murders, the concept of the "criminal class" was increasingly discussed by contemporaries in reports, newspaper articles, and popular fiction. In 1883, Andrew Mearns had written of the East End as "a vast mass of moral corruption, heartbreaking misery and utter impiety", contributing to fears of a truly dangerous remnant of Victorian society. Perhaps this is why Jack the Ripper's crimes provided a unique opportunity for press sensationalism. The murders became synonymous with the area and the poverty in which they were committed and embodied society's existing fears. Conboy argues that this fits the definition of a market-driven moral panic. The press exploited existing fears of social unrest and revolution by providing daily installments on the state of the East End and its synonymy with Jack. Academics now view the “criminal class” as a myth created and believed by the rich to reject their responsibilities towards the poor. Jennifer Davies believes that this "class" was the result of moral panics like this. Notably, the comic "Nemesis of Neglect" was published in the wake of the double murder and suggested that the Ripper murders were a direct result of world poverty. Eastern end. John Marriott notes that this cartoon, and other sensationalism within the popular press, helped support the idea that "east London was a place of fear, disgust and moral desolation" and therefore posed a threat to society and the Victorian empire. The ability of the press to manipulate the situation to create moral panic is clear here: the Ripper was not created by the poverty of the East End, rather the environment provided him with both opportunities and victims. As social reformers attacked East End brothels, prostitutes were forced onto the streets. This provided Jack with readily available victims; it was more often the case that the poor were victims of crime. The reality is that the East End was home not to a criminal class but to a class of desperate individuals, such as the Ripper's victims, who had been left behind in a capitalist system built on Victorian notions of self-help. This illustrates a society that rejects any responsibility towards the lower classes by denouncing them as dangerous, immoral and irredeemable: they did not wish to recognize a class of people at odds with the magnificence of the empire. Despite this obvious moral panic, Drew Gray argues that many of the "new journalists" who wrote about Jack and Whitechapel had a genuine desire to alert the public to the need for intervention in the East End. It is important to note the efforts of social reformers such as Charles Booth, whose study of London presented the East End as being in desperate poverty and in need of intervention, and Jack London who went undercover to expose the houses.