Thursday, January 15, 2015

Jack the Ripper: CSI: Whitechapel - review

Amazingly this is the first non-fiction Jack the Ripper I have ever bought, despite an interst in the Whitechapel Murders that go back almost 20 years.



Over the years I have watched and sometimes cringed (Patricia Cornwell, Trevor Marriott takes top billing for the worst documentaries) almost all the Jack the Ripper documentaries that have been made. On YouTube they are almost all available, but the best and most recommendable is:

Jack the Ripper - The Definate Story
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuGMtMIbrTU
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBlOujlMmkU

This documentary is made by the same authors as Jack the Ripper: CSI: Whitechapel Paul Begg and John Bennett, both are highly respected Ripperologists (the term used for Crime Historians specialising in the Whitechapel Murders). Paul Begg has had numerous books on Jack the Ripper published over the last 30 years, while John Bennett has specialised more in the world of Jack the Ripper - namely Whitechapel and Spitalfields in the late Victorian Era. Their talents combined has created an extremely good book, where there is no focus on twisting and turning facts to fit a certain subject. Instead the book only lists facts and witness statements, while also providing background information on several different aspects of the case.

The book is filled with many good pictures, some are CGI constructed of how the streets looked at the time and they are excellent, giving a superb insight into how dark the streets were.

I highly recommend this book and while I consider myself well versed in the Whitechapel Murders the book was still a page turner for me. Forget about the identity of Jack the Ripper having recently been discovered by DNA, it is nothing more than a stunt to sell books, there was no evidence that could prove the idenity.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Whitechapel Murders, I cannot recommend enough the vast casebook.org website. This is the place where serious researchers share their information and where you can find information about everything.

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