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When we first crossed paths, in the depths of history, my partner was employed at a pub located on a Jack the Ripper tour route. Each evening, a group of tourists would enter and order a glass of water individually, causing the manager to roll his eyes. These visitors would then shuffle off to view another autopsy photo in an alleyway. After that, he and I resided in Whitechapel for a dozen years. From our home, I would observe the serial killer tours slowly passing through our quaint streets, amusingly respectful.
Behind the tour groups, the skyline transformed as skyscrapers emerged like architectural knotweed, while street art tours replaced the murder-themed ones, altering the neighborhood in a different manner. Both types of tours imposed an authoritative structure on places that formerly lacked it. A captivating episode of the podcast “This American Life” delved into ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, and the tales told by guides regarding enslaved individuals betraying or seducing their masters. Journalist Chenjerai Kumanyika astutely noted, “If you view these stories as moral fables, their message conveys that everything would be fine if everyone simply stayed in their assigned roles.”
The tale of Jack the Ripper constituted part of my local surroundings, but it has long been ingrained in the entire nation’s fabric as well. Since the discovery of his second victim, Annie Chapman, in 1888, a Ripper industry has thrived. Locals paid a penny to catch a glimpse of Chapman’s body, and fruit vendors set up shop nearby to cater to the crowds. Jack the Ripper has since become one of Britain’s most profitable cultural exports, a brand as recognizable and marketable as the Beatles.
While the tours persist in Whitechapel, the Jack the Ripper marketing phenomenon has grown powerful enough to no longer rely on any direct connection to East London. A few years ago, a hotel in Leeds offered guests a two-course meal followed by a display where “clinicians” would dissect the Ripper’s victims, examining their “mutilations” using “real specimens” and modern technology. The most recent entrepreneurial endeavor takes the form of a Jack the Ripper-themed “immersive horror” bar and restaurant in Southsea. Nearly 300 individuals, including a direct descendant of Chapman, have signed a letter urging the Portsmouth city council to take action against the establishment (the owner boasts how the scandal has generated thousands of bookings in local press).
What truly captivates me is how the world reconciles its abhorrence towards sexual violence with its unending fascination as a form of entertainment. We have witnessed the glamorization of serial killers like Ted Bundy, with their crimes reframed in our collective memory until they appear merely as edgy stylistic quirks, akin to earrings or ripped jeans. Going back even further than the Victorian era, we have witnessed the objectification of murder victims and, particularly if they were sex workers like the Ripper’s victims were assumed to be, the blame cast upon them for their own deaths. Historian Hallie Rubenhold remarked on Radio 4 that a bar such as this presents “a real problem” because the victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—”were real women, Jack the Ripper was a real person. It’s not Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein.” How can we derive pleasure from their demise when similar acts of violence occur daily?
A 2018 study revealed that a substantial portion of the population still harbors the belief that sex workers cannot be raped or somehow deserve it. On average, three women in this country are killed by men every week, while one in four women has experienced rape or sexual assault. Additionally, one in five schoolchildren has encountered or witnessed sexual harassment at school. Furthermore, the most comprehensive study of its kind revealed that sexually abusive language has become normalized in British classrooms. A spokesperson from East London Rape Crisis, situated in the very borough where Ripper tourism thrives, stated, “We are nearly at the point where sexual violence has been decriminalized.”
The issue with the Ripper industry lies not only in the erasure of the victims but also in the psychological distance it creates, leading us to normalize these heinous crimes. The last time I unexpectedly encountered a Jack the Ripper tour was shortly after Sarah Everard’s murder. The tourists’ joviality during their bachelorette festivities was utterly horrifying, leaving me breathless. Ripper tourism and the demand for a bar like the one in Southsea expose a grim and unsettling reality that no offer of donating cocktail profits to a “women’s rights charity” (as proposed by the owner) can conceal. They fulfill a macabre craving in a society where sexual violence is a daily occurrence. Laughing at it seems to be the only apparent means of escaping its clutches. People are desperate for further anesthesia from the knowledge that men frequently commit murder, that marginalized women remain especially vulnerable, and how rapidly an individual can be dehumanized, reduced to a Halloween costume or a mere joke.
Email Eva at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
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