What does Whitechapel reveal to us about the
What does Whitechapel reveal to us about the difficulties of policing? Story Create a title for each paragraph. This is an extract taken from Hallie Rubenhold’s 2019 book, ‘The Five’ Summarise each paragraph in one or two bullet points. Whitechapel's reputation trumped even that Bermondsey, Lambeth, Southwick, and St Pancras as being the most sordid. By the end of the 19 th century, 78, 000 souls were packed in this quarter of warehouses, lodging houses, factories, sweatshops, abattoirs, pubs, and markets. Whitechapel was also spiritually and culturally diverse, as well as multilingual. For at least two centuries, Whitechapel had been a focus for immigrants around Europe, especially Ireland. Some of the worst streets in London were situated in Whitechapel - Dorset St, Thrawl St, Flower and Dean St, and the smaller thoroughfares contiguous to them, were feared even by the police. Lined primarily with cheap vice-riddled lodging houses and decrepit dwellings, their desperate inhabitants became the embodiment of all that was rotten in Britain. Those who strayed into this abyss from the safety of middle-class Victorian world were struck dumb by what they encountered. The broken pavements, dim gas lights, slicks of sewage, stagnant pools of disease-breeding water, and the rubbish filled roadways foretold the physical horrors of what laid within the buildings. A horrific example of a health inspectors who found five children sharing a bed alongside a dead sibling awaiting burial illustrates this. Alcoholism, malnutrition, and disease was rife in this inner circle of hell, as was domestic violence. It appeared to moral. middle class England that in the face of this level of brutal, crippling want, every good and righteous instinct that would normally govern human relations have been completely eroded. Task 1 Read through the Story of Whitechapel. For each paragraph, you need to create a ‘title’ on one side, and a short summary (two bullet points maximum) on the other. C Source “Now, you know, I might put two regiments of police in this half-mile of district and half of them would be as completely out of sight and hearing of the others as though they were in separate cells of a prison. ” Inspector Henry Moore, describing the difficulties of policing Whitechapel, 1889 A B “The main streets of Whitechapel are connected by a network of narrow, dark and crooked lanes. Every one containing some headquarters of infamy. The sights and sounds are an apocalypse of evil. ” Part of an article published in a local newspaper after the murders of Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman Charles Booth’s map of poverty, Whitechapel 1889 “To give you an idea of it, my men formed a circle around the spot where one of the murders took place, guarding, they thought, every entrance and approach, and within a few minutes they found fifty people inside the lines. They had come in through two passageways which my men could not find. ” Inspector Henry Moore, describing the difficulties of policing Whitechapel, 1888 D Scholarship Hallie Rubenhold 2019 The Whitechapel based H-Division of the metropolitan Police did the best they could with their resources, but having never faced a murder case of this scale and magnitude, they quickly found themselves overwhelmed. House-to-House enquiries were conducted throughout the area and a wide variety of forensic materials were gathered analysed. The police were besieged with statements and letters from those who claimed to be witnesses, those offering assistance, and others who just liked spinning tales. In all, more than two thousand people were interviewed and more than three hundred were interviewed as potential suspects. Even with additional assistance from Scotland Yard and the City of London police, none of this yielded anything useful. Genuine leas were certain to have been lost among the swirling wash of paper they were forced to process. In the meantime, as constables scribbled into their notebooks and followed potential malefactors down dark alleys, the Ripper continued to kill. Task 2 Look at source A, B, and C. In your book, write a short description of the message of each source. Then answer the question “What do these sources tell you about the difficulties of policing Whitechapel? ” Task 3 Read through Rubenhold’s scholarship about policing Whitechapel. Highlight what you think are three most important sentences. In your book, answer the question ‘What does Whitechapel reveal to us about the difficulties of policing? ’ Include references to sources and scholarship.
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