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Abstract

This dissertation uses the media frenzy surrounding the Whitechapel murders of 1888 as an entry-point into wider analysis of the Victorian Press, and how a consumerist re-focusing of the industry would eventually produce the character of Jack the Ripper. Specific attention is paid to the role of The Times – a paper traditionally viewed as exempt from the consumerism, and subsequent sensationalism, adopted by many papers in this period.

Analysis of historiography will demonstrate how the rise of Jack the Ripper in popular culture has been traditionally attributed to the role of penny-papers in the period. Subsequent primary source analysis will challenge this, ultimately demonstrating how The Times also contributed to the Ripper myth; yet in such a way that facilitated fears surrounding the poor and foreign (the “Other”) in society. This will illustrate how the character of Jack the Ripper was envisioned by the paper as a vampiric, monstrous entity intrinsic to the presumed social conditions of London’s East-End.

The research presented within will ultimately demonstrate how even Britain’s most respected paper would adopt the same style of fictionalised, speculatory journalism as the cheaper papers it tried to distance itself from through price and presentation. In turn, this will reveal how the distinctions made between The Times and other contemporary papers, in terms of reliability or respectability, are arguably superficial.

This leads us into the greater significance of these findings: how pre-conceived notions of The Times’ journalistic integrity in the Victorian period need to be fundamentally re-evaluated, and how primary sources should be treated with the same amount of objectivity regardless of reputation and/or presumed respectability.

Course: History - BA (Hons) - C1087

Date Deposited: 2024-01-23

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14311.html