Welcome to Unexplained Extra, with me Richard McLean Smith, where for the weeks in

between episodes we look at the stories that for one reason or other didn't make it into

the show. In the last episode the square we stepped into the dimly lit streets and

alleyways of London's white chapel district, bearing witness to a horrifically brutal

and misogynistic series of murders. The killer of Martha Tabrum, Polly Nichols,

Catherine Edo's, Elizabeth Stride, Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly and perhaps others

was never caught. Some have even speculated that there was more than one perpetrator.

All, however, will forever be associated with the name Jack the Ripper.

It is only too common that perpetrators of such acts achieve a certain level of notoriety

indirectly proportional to the memory of their victims. This has perhaps never been

more the case than with the figure known as Jack the Ripper. A situation all the more ironic

since and truth, no such person ever existed. There is of course no doubt that the crimes

were committed. Jack the Ripper, however, is merely a pseudonym at best, with some believing

it to have in fact been entirely fabricated by central news agency journalist Thomas

Bulling. Whether true or not, there is certainly no doubting the significant role that the

press played in terms of elevating the image of this particular serial killer into something

approaching almost mythological proportions. That this occurred was due largely to the

changing landscape of the British print industry at the time, specifically the birth of tabloid

journalism. As a result, the type of acts perpetrated by the so-called Jack were not

only the first in British history to receive daily almost real-time coverage, but they

were also among the first to be subjected to the lurid and sensationalist manner of reporting

that would come to define tabloid journalism. And there was one among all in the industry

...