Did News Coverage Die Down After MJK?

[Anna Morris]

We are told Mary Jane Kelly was JtR's last victim. Many have felt there were oddities about this murder. We have discussed and explained some of these, for instance the short inquest. Yet some things that seem peculiar still exist, IMO.

We can see in the thread "Autumn of Terror, 131 Years Later" that there continued to be a trickle of news articles and editorials through the quiet October, wondering when or if JtR would strike again. I will be curious to see what is posted on that thread after the date of Mary's burial.

I have been frustrated by the lack of news articles about JtR after Mary's burial. I have found better information in French publications of the time than I have found in English language publications. It is true my resources are somewhat limited and other than Welsh newspaper archives, not British. Even so, I would have expected the news outlets to continue to theorize about JtR, wonder if he would attack again in the new year, etc. Plus, in this time frame I would expect the news to try to keep alive the story of Mary Kelly. Between Mary's burial and Florence Maybrick's travails, the press had about six months to titillate readers.

Were the papers told to curtail information about JtR? Were the papers blamed for inciting further outrages by JtR? Or is it true that the police had good ideas about the identity of JtR and the papers were told to back off? Was there a political decision to quiet the news coverage about the murders so as to prevent civil unrest? There is that story from about March 1889 where a man was allegedly told the Ripper was dead or something. (Always sounded like Druitt was that suspect.)

It seems a job for the papers would have been to keep public thought high and vigilant about the possibility of another Ripper attack. Though French outlets described continuing vigilance committee efforts and other activities by citizens and police, I have found very little mention of anything to do with JtR after Mary's funeral and burial. Am I correct? If so, why?

[Howard Brown]

Anna:

Wynne Baxter wasn't the presiding Coroner for Kelly's murder and Roderick MacDonald was....in my opinion, this is one reason why the news coverage was diminished after her murder.
Rose Mylett's murder...or accidental death, if you prefer....received some coverage in December. Yet, the reportage is noticeably less than after, say, Chapman's murder and certainly, the Double Event.

After Mackenzie's murder 8 months later, newspapers remarked on the almost blase attitude the locals displayed shortly after it occurred.

It might be a combination of things. One, that after the Chapman, Stride, and Eddowes murders, the people weren't as agitated as we might have expected them to be. This, in turn, may be what we see reflected in the less space being devoted to the murders.

It also may be a result of the people & the press accepting that the police weren't going to find him and didn't have a clue on how to.

[Anna Morris]

How: Those are interesting ideas. Maybe too, the fear of getting ripped on the streets had lessened and lots of women and others did not have private rooms. Think of today, if street prostitutes were getting killed on the street, then there was a pause and the next one was killed in a fairly nice motel.

But still, it seems like interest could be generated wondering if the Ripper would strike in the new year, especially considering that idle tale about the first victim being killed on Boxing Day, etc.

I have also gotten the idea that the East End locals were ready to deal with JtR if he went back to killing on the streets. Women were paired up and mobs were ready to form to tear apart or lynch the killer.

On the other hand the police scaled back their presence not long after Mary's demise. Maybe the less said in the press, the better.

[Adam Went]

It's a hard one to pinpoint. Anything in the media has a use by date, no matter how hot the topic might be at the time. In the JTR case, the crescendo for the media was the Double Event and then the communications received from the "killer" very shortly afterwards (there's also the element of political agitation there as well given the IWMEC, etc). Given that Mary wasn't murdered for another month after that, it could be argued that the case was almost stale news by then.

In saying that, I don't entirely disbelieve the theory that it was 'known' that the MJK murder would be the Ripper's last, and therefore coverage of it was watered down as much as possible in order to prevent any further unnecessary backlash.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Howard Brown]

Just to illustrate the time between each murder and how that may have been the catalyst in the diminished amount of coverage :

Tabram to Nichols > 24 days =3 weeks 3 days
Nichols to Chapman > 8 days =1 week 1 day
Chapman to D.E.. > 22 days = 3 weeks 1 day
D.E. to Kelly > 40 days = 5 weeks 5 days

[Adam Went]

How, that is true, but it's worth remembering that even though there were no murders, October was the prime month for letters supposedly from Jack - From Hell, for example, was virtually right in between the Double Event and MJK. Plus the inquests. So it's not as if the press simply ran out of things to talk about regarding the case during October.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Anna Morris]

I guess my original idea was wrong. The continuing thread with day by day coverage 131 years later shows JtR was regularly discussed one way or another. Looks like journalists would have been ready to jump back in with another JtR murder.

What spurred my original thought was that in doing research I have previously found little further developments of past cases, notably, who was Mary Jane Kelly? Then I found a detailed description of police and vigilance committees working together to thwart JtR in December 1888, in a French publication which I translated. I had not read anything like that in my limited access to British or American papers of the day.

No news is good news but it doesn't sell papers so I suppose the British press was overjoyed to get the travails of Florence Maybrick in 1889.

[Cris Malone]

The inquests under Baxter being prolonged with the speculation that went along with them naturally would generate news coverage. Then after the Kelly murder they got their pound of flesh with the Warren resignation, taking away the catalyst that publications like the Star thrived upon.

[Howard Brown]

Couldn't agree more, Cris....

Then after the Kelly murder they got their pound of flesh with the Warren resignation, taking away the catalyst that publications like the Star thrived upon.

An underrated or overlooked reason for the diminishing Ripper newspaper reports. Even though the Farmer incident, the Mylett death, and numerous scares and letters made the press....the number of columns on the center page were reduced due to Warren's departure.