AP European History Today

1. AP European History Today A little review… Introduction:The Whitechapel Murders Outcomes:What do the “Jack the Ripper” murders teach us about London in 1888? What good came out of these terrible murders? Begin HW: 792-95.The urban planners

2. Questions you should be able to answer about La Belle Epoque!

3. Which is Monet? Which is Renoir? Why?

4. How is this three paintings in one?

5. How are these very different paintings similar in one way?

6. Manet: Before and after he met the younger artists. How has he changed?

7. How does this ship symbolize European society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

8. Why would a modern woman object to the “Cult of Domesticity?”

9. What was the goal of groups like the “Benthamites?”

10. Why is Impressionism an appropriate kind of art for this “Age of Optimism?” Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed

11. This event ended La Belle Époque. Identify it.

12. Welcome…

13. AP European History Today Introduction: The Whitechapel Murders Outcomes: What do the “Jack the Ripper” murders teach us about London in 1888? What good came out of these terrible murders? Begin HW: 792-95. The urban planners

14. Life in Whitechapel By Mr McDonald, An English Guy Proudly plagiarized by Mr. Gregory

15. These slides… …will help you to answer the first five questions on today’s handout.

16. Whitechapel is a district in London’s “East End” where the Ripper murders occurred in the fall of 1888

17. Much of the East End was destroyed in the 1941 bombings Londoners called “the Blitz”

18. The East End was “made” for Jack—the name he gave himself in letters to London newspapers that taunted the police Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track…I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal…

19. It’s the letters… • …that make this a “modern” serial murder case. The killers—and “copycats”—enjoyed publicity and took advantage of the mass media of the late 1800s: cheap, mass-circulation newspapers.

20. What was London like in 1888?

21. London was crowded. And polluted.

22. The famous London Fog… • …isn’t. • In coal-lit and coal-heated Victorian London, it was smog; “pea-soupers” were “fogs” with a sinister green tinge.

23. But, in 1888, it allowed the “Ripper” to get away—he simply vanished. In 1952, one such smog killed 4,000 Londoners.

24. London’s intricate rabbit-warren of streets and alleys… • Were like a maze. London lacked any semblance of city planning—unlike Paris, as we’ll see tomorrow. This allowed “Jack” easy escape.

25. Jack had plenty of potential victims • Increasingly—both because of well-intentioned laws aimed at limiting the hours women worked, and because more and more men were moving to cities looking for work, women were losing their jobs. • Thousands of women—like the ones in this photograph—were unemployed and desperately poor in London in 1888.

26. So many women—and some of them were single mothers… • …Turned to prostitution to survive, as did the kindly Nancy in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. This BBC production shows Nancy with her lover, the man who will murder her, Bill Sikes.

27. And Jack’s impoverished victims didn’t have the protection of brothels—houses of prostitution. They worked the streets alone.

28. Their patrons included West End men “slumming” for adventure in the wild East End • Like Queen Victoria’s grandson (right) • How would you like to get in trouble with his grandmother?

29. Eddie’s behavior, and that of his father, King Edward VII (below) were typical… …of a sexual double standard during Victorian times. • Women were to be chaste; men were permitted to “experiment.”

30. Some of Edward’s lovers—they were usually married women. • Countess Daisy Greville • Actress Lillie Langtry • Lady Randolph Churchill—Winston’s mother • His favorite: Mrs. Alice Keppel

31. Edward’s wife, Alexandra of Denmark, (left) with her sister, and in middle age, with the King

32. Prime Minister William Gladstone was another habitual visitor to East End prostitutes.

33. When aristocrats gathered at an English mansion for hunts or celebrations… • A butler would walk down the halls early in the morning, ringing a little bell. • That was the signal for gentlemen to leave their mistress’s room and return quietly to their assigned room, with their wives.

34. Etiquette demanded that women be treated with the utmost respect. But among rich West Enders, that seemed to omit both the poor and their own wives. So men’s attitudes toward women were ambivalent--mixed

35. And many of the women they sought out in the East End were alcoholics

36. So East End life, combined with the Ripper’s motivation—a psychotic hatred for women—doomed five women--all poor and all prostitutes--beginning at the end of August, 1888

37. Three of the victims: Annie Chapman, Polly Nicholls, Elizabeth Stride

38. How poor were these women? The pockets of the first victim, Annie Chapman, contained: • (Right: Chapman in 1880, with her husband, before she fell on hard times) • A comb • A white pocket handkerchief • A broken piece of mirror

39. As the murders progressed… • The mutilation of the victims’ bodies grew worse—the last credited victim, Mary Jane Kelly, and the only one killed in her rooms, was barely recognizable. • “No relatives,” local newspapers commented, “could be found to come to her funeral.” • The murders stopped after Kelly’s, in November 1888.

40. Some of the suspects, according to “Ripperologists”…

41. Montagu John Druitt • He made himself look suspicious by committing suicide after Mary Jane Kelly’s death. However, he allegedly was out of London playing cricket at the time of one of the murders.

42. George Chapman • Polish immigrant, hated women. Murdered three of his wives—but by poisoning. Not the Ripper’s method.

43. Francis Tumblety • Irish-American “quack” doctor who hated women--his wife betrayed him—he was living in Whitechapel during the murders and his handwriting is a match for the one authenticated Ripper letter.

44. Sir William Withey Gull • The suspect in the Johnny Depp film From Hell; one of Queen Victoria’s physicians, supposedly involved in some kind of dark Masonic plot. Not a likely suspect today.

45. Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence • “Eddy;” the Queen’s grandson. Not too bright, and even less stable. He liked to visit East End brothels. He was engaged to Princess Mary of Teck—the future Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother, but he died of influenza at 28 before the marriage could take place.

46. Lewis Carroll • Just on the grounds of General Weirdness.

47. Aaron Kosminski • Lived in Whitechapel, allegedly named by another resident; he later went insane after the murders and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. A Jewish immigrant from Poland.

48. A suspect like Kosminsky troubled Metropolitan police in 1888. The East End—crowded, filthy, bleak--seemed ready to explode.

49. And this is why: East End Jewish Immigrants, fleeing from pogroms—terrible persecutions—in Russia

50. Dickens and the image of Jews: Oliver Twist’s Fagin in jail; Fagin as played by Alec Guinness in film