First Draft

Below is a first draft of my final research paper:

In the fall of 1888, five prostitutes were found brutally murdered—some disemboweled—in the East End of London. The discovery of each new murder throughout a three-month time period eventually gave way to the anonymous villain “Jack the Ripper,” an unidentifiable fiend who operated in the slums of London with no known opus memorandi. The London media was quick to sensationalize the events, which inadvertently brought widespread attention and concern for the poor living conditions of the East End. Playwright and social activist George Bernard Shaw was the first to acknowledge this connection by writing, “Whilst we conventional Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation, and organisation, some independent genius has taken the matter [urban and social reform] in hand, and by simply murdering and disemboweling four women” (Shaw, The Star, September 24 1888). While the villain “Jack the Ripper” earned his place in criminal history, this paper seeks to explore the effects his crimes had in London. By tracking subsequent social reform movements and government action, this paper argue that the Ripper murders served as an impetus for urban reform by attracting the first wave of progressive social workers to the East End of London.

Enclosure and urbanization

The rapid urbanization of London in the mid-19^th century was accompanied by a disproportionate growth of the working and lower classes; this disenfranchised group struggled to find both labor and basic needs security in the East End slums. Throughout the previous century, farmlands were converted from public ownership to private ownership via capital acquisition. Heeding the demands of the land-owning gentry, Parliament began to pass a series of “Inclosure Acts” in the 19^th century to reorganize common land and profit from increased land sales. These pieces of legislation were specific to territorial regions, so enclosure happened gradually over a long period of time. Thus, there was no way for landless farmers to prepare in advance because they did not know when the land-owning proprietors in their parish or county would appeal to Parliament for enclosure.

Enclosed land reduced labor opportunities in the countryside, forcing those without property to move into the cities for work. This occurred at a time of mass industrialization, combining together to produce an era of rapid urbanization. The development of city centers can best be seen by analyzing the growth of London in the 19^th century. In the beginning of the century, the city was mainly confined to the banks of the Thames River (1801,  http://mapco.net/wallis/wallis.htm). By the mid-century, after Parliament issued numerous Inclosure Acts, the city grew to include boroughs on both sides of the Thames and well into counties that bordered previous urban areas (1868, http://london1868.com). This meant that city planning was focused in new areas to accommodate the population influx, while infrastructure in the old areas was left unattended. One of these areas was Whitechapel, London.

The Whitechapel Jack the Ripper operated in was a Whitechapel slowly crumbling under civic neglect while struggling to accommodate an influx of landless poor and foreign immigrants. Whitechapel could arguably be categorized as a “slum” by the time the canonical murders were committed: it was a dense district with poverty, outdated infrastructure, and limited public facilities. A noteworthy component of Victorian Whitechapel’s urban planning were the many common lodging facilities. Dr. Andrzej Diniejko of Warsaw University estimates that “There were over 200 common lodging houses which provided shelter for some 8,000 homeless and destitute people per night” (Diniejko, “Slums and Slumming in Late-Victorian London”). Whitechapel was thus a community on the move; it lacked the permanence and stability for elsewhere in the suburbs.

Poverty was rampant in the Victorian slums, and many struggled to find a steady source of income. Unemployed citizens could also receive assistance from the local parish, but the demographic influx and rising cost of living put economic stress on taxpaying church members. This led Parliament to institute a series of reforms that significantly altered the urban landscape of London and its surrounding districts. For instance, workhouses were constructed by the government to ensure that those receiving welfare had to contribute back to society first through labor. These workhouses doubled as both lodging and labor facilities, and were massive buildings set into the city plan themselves. But workhouse conditions were miserable, so many of the slum’s unskilled residents earned an income by working in crime rackets (for men) and prostitution (for women). This encouraged the demonization of East End districts like Whitechapel, and may explain why these neighborhoods were neglected by the local government.

Early social reformers

The urban conditions of Victorian London provided the perfect case study for aspiring social reformers who needed data and first-hand testimony. With its high density of working poor citizens, advocates of change published many reports using East End slums as their case studies. While it can not be definitively proved that these treatises are directly correlated to the Ripper murders, a strong argument exists that the crime raised consciousness of the East End’s existence. Negligence and poverty were the previous culprits of these slums; Jack the Ripper just gave a face to them.

Charles Booth was an English social reformer whose work received critical acclaim in the last decade of the 19^th century. Booth, educated at the Liverpool Royal Institution, challenged government census records on poverty and sought to conduct a more accurate study himself. In 1885, the Pall Mall Gazette reported that “25% of Londoners lived in abject poverty” (Fried & Ellman, Charles Booth’s London, p. 28), but Booth worked with several associates to prove that this number was too small. Instead, they found that in the East End alone 35% of residents lived below a “poverty line.”

The team’s data and conclusions were published in an 1889 book titled Life and Labor of the People in London (1889, https://archive.org/details/lifelabourofpeop07bootiala). Booth’s most important contributions to the issue were his illustrated maps of the East End. These diagrams, outlined by district, were color coded to show the socioeconomic generalization of every street. The team traveled entire neighborhoods door to door, and published three visual graphics that “represented a combination of factors such as regularity of income, work status and industrial occupation (because some occupations were seasonal and thus irregular)” (Vaughan, Jack the Ripper and the East End Labyrinth, p. 1).  Booth used red to denote “well-to-do” urban zones and black to denote “lowest class.” The Whitechapel map (1889, http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/maxzooms/ne/nej56.html) is particularly interesting because there appears to be no homogenous income level, suggesting a wide income gap between rich and poor.

Of course, these maps were created after the Ripper murders, so the serial killer would not have been aware of the quantitative data. But because the canonical murder victims were all found in “chronic want” and “semi-criminal” areas, this paper argues that this prevailing sense of urban stratification was common knowledge. Additionally, some scholars have noted that the physical makeup of the neighborhoods may have enabled the killer to get away and escape discovery. Even Booth recognized in Life and Labor that “physical boundaries such as railways had the effect of isolating areas, walling off their inhabitants and isolating them” (Vaughan, Jack the Ripper and the East End Labyrinth, p. 2). This may explain why three of the five canonical murder victims were found in alleyways.

The Ripper murders also represented an extreme manifestation of gender inequality in London during the late 19^th century. But this “Age of Reform” was not only limited to men’s issues, and reformer Clara Collet contributed significantly to women’s issues during this time. Collet was an associate of Charles Booth and assisted him with his census research in the East End of London. She lived in the East End for three months while conducting her research, in which she surveyed prostitutes and discussed their concerns about the Ripper murders. It was Collet herself who first articulated the relationship between low-income women and prostitution, noting “it was because of the seasonal nature and poor pay of the work that many of these East End girls were forced to supplement their incomes by working as prostitutes” (McDonald, “Clara Collet and Jack the Ripper,” 2003). Collet’s research was so indicative of wage inequality that her work was published within Booth’s Life and Labour of the People of London.

Collet also spoke to the housing insecurity of working women in the East End. In Life and Labour, she describes a common lodging-house but concludes her observations with “These people were frequently on the move” (Collet, Life and Labour of the People of London, p. 64). This is an interesting observation in the context of the Ripper murders, because if the victims struggled to find permanent residence, then they must have also struggled to keep their friends and families updated. For example, Mary Ann Nicholas sent her father a letter on April 17^th, 1888 from a Rose Hill address, but her father never heard from again (Begg, Definitive History of Jack the Ripper, p. 108). She moved three times after, meaning that her father could not correspond with her—or provide financial assistance—unless she stayed in one place. Thus, housing insecurity played a part in the Ripper murders because women were primarily working as prostitutes to supplement housing income in the first place.

Public perception

The sociologic studies published in the early 20^th century were accompanied by a shift in the public perception of the working and lower classes living in the East End slums. Beatrice Webb was the third investigator in Charles Booth’s East End census project. She was his cousin by marriage, and is not typically associated with Life and Labour of the People in London because her interviews were never formally published in the volumes. Webb did not publish conclusive data during the East End census project like Booth and Clara Collet did, but the investigation provided her with experience in social reform and critique.

The East End census project challenged Webb’s understanding of philanthropy and provoked to approach the concept critically. Her diary entries at the time allude that it was this “stage in her life where she rejected Charity Organization Society-style philanthropy in favor of social investigation” (O’Day, “Before the Webbs: Beatrice Potter’s Early Investigations for Charles Booth’s Inquiry,” p. 218-219). The British Charity Organization Society (COS) was a network of charitable groups who did not support government intervention in social welfare. In advocating for limited control, the COS became very bureaucratic and difficult to navigate. A satirical illustration by English artist Henry Tonks mocks the irony of the organization (unknown, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tonks-charity-organization-society-t11004). The COS charity model expected citizens to come to them, rather than welfare services being brought to citizens in need. When Webb joined Booth and Collet on their research project, she witnessed first-hand the urban areas of neglect and started to challenge the concept of third-party institutional philanthropy.

Webb later served on the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of the Distress. She authored the infamous “minority report,” which called for an abolition of the current welfare state in favor of one that “secure[d] a national minimum of civilised life … open to all alike, of both sexes and all classes, by which we meant sufficient nourishment and training when young, a living wage when able-bodied, treatment when sick, and modest but secure livelihood when disabled or aged” (Riggulsford, Health and Medical Public Relations, p. 176). This was an innovative idea at the time because the system would be intended to meet the needs of everybody irrespective of their ability to pay. The “minority report” (1909, https://archive.org/details/b28061068 ) reflects the aforementioned change in philanthropy philosophy because it advocates for government intervention in preventative social welfare.

The Metropolitan Body of Works (MBW) was the primary institution of local governance for the city of London until 1889. After a series of scandals, the MBW lost its jurisdiction and was replaced by the London County Council (LCC). This new body inherited the responsibilities and power of its predecessor, and was also expanded to hold jurisdiction over education and urban development. It would later also absorb the London School Board; the same body that popularized Charles Booth’s “poverty line” concept. This over-arching council would lead the way in late 19^th century housing reform and slum clearance.

The composition of the LCC enabled these urban renewal programs to finally come to fruition in the East End, previously, MBW commissioners were appointed to the board and had no incentive to appeal to the needs of the people. But, LCC councilmembers were directly elected; so representatives from the slum areas now had a reason to prioritize equitable city planning. By the council’s creation, public opinion from had accepted that “although philanthropy might be helpful in some areas it was an inadequate solution for the housing problem” (Steffel, “The Slum Question: The London County Council and Decent Dwellings for the Working Classes,” p. 315). This may help to explain why the LCC was established without significant opposition from those in positions of privilege and power. Accordingly, the devolution of responsibilities to a local governance board meant that wealthy members of Parliament or CSOs could no longer be blamed.

The establishment of the LCC represents a shift in the public perception and welfare strategy for London. It is interesting to note that the date of creation was after the publication of Booth’s Life and Labour and the circulation of Webb’s social welfare theories. Booth’s census maps (1889, http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/maxzooms/ne/nej56.html) allowed civic servants to now have concrete data on specific urban areas, which is a possible explanation for why local governance became more efficient and sympathetic to poverty in the last decade of the 19^th century. Politicians and civic servants now had a better understanding of the districts they were supposed to serve.

Case study: Old Nichol

The aforementioned momentum was eventually manifested into actual slum reform, with the Old Nichol clearance project serving as the best example of the tangible change the shift in public perception initiated. The “Old Nichol” was considered to be one of the worst slums in the East End of London, where Charles Booth indicated that a majority of the blocks were of the “lowest class…occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals” (1889, http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/maxzooms/ne/nej56.html). Compounded by poor living conditions, this was one of the first neighborhoods to be declared a “slum” by the London County Council and demolished in the early 20^th century.

In order for the neighborhood to be cleared and redeveloped, the London County Council arranged for a parliamentary devolution. In 1890, Parliament passed the Housing of the Working Class Act (1890, https://archive.org/details/housingworkingc00morggoog). The previous “Housing and Working Class Act” passed in 1885 allowed local government bodies to designate areas as slums, but did not give them the authority to legally demolish and renovate the areas. The London County Council used the provisions set forth in the 1890 Act to clear the Old Nichol; by destroying the worst slum in the East End, the newly-formed council demonstrated their power and efficiency.

The group tasked Owen Fleming with the renovation plans for the area. Fleming was a leading architect at the time and “believed the poor could appreciate beauty in architecture as much as the well-educated middle class” (Haines, “Boundary of Old Nichol’s Vice, Filth, and Death”, 2008). This explains why the new urban design replicated many features of suburban communities: tree-lined streets, radial planning, and public gathering areas. As the London County Council’s first major renovation project, the finished “Boundary Estate” complex was intended to rejuvenate life in the area. This is symbolically represented in the neighborhood’s grandstand, built with rubble from the Old Nichol neighborhood itself (1903, https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2015/02/i875/boundary-estate-arnold-circus-1903.jpg).

Ironically, the “Boundary Estate” project exacerbated the city’s slum problem by displacing the originally inhabitants who could not afford rent in the new housing complex. The neighborhoods to the east of Old Nichol, Green Benthal and Dalston soon suffered from overcrowding and the public health problems associated with high demographic density. Thus began the cycle of early 20^th century slum renovation in the city of London.