Overview

For nearly 100 years, the question has repeatedly been asked: who was 'Jack the Ripper'? The real question that should be answered, however, is why? Why were five poor, defenceless women savagely murdered in the slums of Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888? Credible Victorian sources including an Old Etonian police chief (Sir Melville Macnaghten), a famous writer on true crime (George R. Sims), a Conservative MP (Henry Farquharson) and, most incriminatingly, members of the killer's own family knew that 'Jack the Ripper' was Montague John Druitt. He escaped earthly justice by drowning himself in the Thames. This book answers the question of why in 1888 Druitt, a barrister, part-time teacher and first-class cricketer, killed and mutilated women driven into prostitution through social neglect. Compiled from years of meticulous research, The Escape of Jack the Ripper moves from the suffering of impoverished Whitechapel to genteel London society, picturesque Dorset, the Inner Temple and the anonymity of the private asylums of France and England. The struggle of Druitt's desperate, respectable family to cover up for their dead Montie, whilst preventing any innocent person being hanged for his crimes, is told here. In the Edwardian era, Sir Melville and G. R. Sims ensured that the public understood that the long-deceased Whitechapel fiend was neither poor nor an immigrant, but rather a product of the British establishment. The photographs include the newly discovered last known image of Druitt.

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9781398109629

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Jonathan Hainsworth is a teacher of social history whose research on Jack the Ripper found that a Metropolitan Police chief had solved the case, posthumously. Hainsworth wrote a biography of this police chief, 'Jack the Ripper: Case Solved, 1891' (2015). Christine Ward-Agius has researched the Druitt family archives, newspaper articles in the British Library and the records of English public schools.

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