The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies

In offering a holistic analysis of the vast array of evidence and literature pertaining to the Whitechapel Murders committed in London’s East End in the Autumn of 1888, this volume offers a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional consideration of the entirety of the most infamous of crimes and their legacy for the first time.

Interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper has barely dissipated over the numerous decades since their perpetration but has grown significantly in recent years. The Routledge Handbook of Jack the Ripper Studies provides a solid reference point for understanding and evaluating the significance of the murders across a range of different perspectives, both past and present, and through a myriad of different disciplinary frameworks and approaches. This vital resource is split into eight thematic sections, each containing a brief, orientating introduction:

1 Introduction and Victorian Context

2 The Murders and the Victims

3 The Evidence and the Investigation

4 The Suspects and Conspiracy Theories

5 Press Reaction and Public Outcry

6 Official Responses

7 The Legacy of the Ripper: Media and Culture

8 Ripperology and Ripper Scholarship: Past, Present and Future

Providing both a rigorous, consolidated appreciation of the voluminous scholarship and setting a dynamic and expansive research agenda for the future, this handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars of history, criminology, social justice, cultural studies, and gender studies.

Anne-Marie Kilday is Professor of Crime History at the University of Northampton. She writes and researches on various aspects of criminal history, particularly focusing on violent behaviour and gendered criminality. Anne-Marie is currently completing a handbook for Routledge on European serial killing.

David Nash is Professor of History and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is an internationally acknowledged expert on the history of blasphemy and the history of secularisation. He has also written extensively on the socio-cultural history of crime and shame using a microhistory approach, with several books on these subjects jointly authored with Professor Anne-Marie Kilday.

Katherine D. Watson is Professor of Criminal Justice History at Oxford Brookes University, specialising in the history of forensic medicine and crime in Britain between 1700 and the Second World War. She recently published Medicine and Justice: Medico-Legal Practice in England and Wales, 1700–1914 (Routledge, 2020) and is currently working on a book-length study of poisoning crimes in the West.