“The first thing I noticed was that she was ripped up like a pig in the market,” her entrails “flung in a heap about her neck.” Thus the account in London’s Star newspaper of the policeman who found the body of Catherine Eddowes, a prostitute murdered in the autumn of 1888 by the serial killer the media dubbed “Jack the Ripper.” But if the Ripper’s notoriety was fueled by a fiercely competitive media market with newspapers trying to outdo one another in relaying gory details of the crimes, unearthing clues, floating theories and taunting the police, his killing spree remains an object of fascination more than a century later — not least because it was the exploits of “The Ripper” that first acquainted comfortable middle-class London with life on the city’s dark underside.
