‘Two More Whitechapel Horrors’ by an anonymous artist

[Victorian Web Home —> Illustration —> Social History —> Crime —> Jack the Ripper —> The Illustrated Police News —> Next]

Two More Whitechapel Horrors

1888

Wood engraving, by an unknown engraver

The Illustrated Police News (13 September, 1888): front cover

This front cover typifies the newspaper’s visual reporting of the Whitechapel murders, which are presented in a montage of interlocked panels with lettering inserted into the scenes to provide further information. [Commentary continues below.]

Image scan and text by Simon Cooke

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the site and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

The montage reports on the ‘duel event’ murders; Elizabeth Stride is represented as she was in life in the topmost mandorla, and the other scenes at the bottom of the page visualize the finding of the body of Catherine Eddowes. The melodramatic focus, however, is PC Watkins’s ‘signalling for assistance.’ Other details – such as the inclusion of an arrow pointing to ‘the fatal spot’ – add to the effect, which is both sensational and painfully banal, reducing horrible events to the level of a comic-strip.

Victorian
Web

Crime

Periodicals

Created 30 May 2025