Autumn Of Terror

-The true story of Jack the Ripper.---Cover.

An innovative and powerful graphic novel which lays bare the dark, murky world of Jack the Ripper with a fear-fest that will delight true crime and comic book fans alike Whitechapel is out of control with a maniac at large. Women are being slaughtered on the streets of London's East End and, with the situation escalating, drastic action is needed. Enter Chief Inspector Abberline, called back from Scotland Yard to solve a series of murders unparalleled in the history of England.

Bringing together ground-breaking forensic discoveries – including vital DNA evidence – and gripping historical detective work, Naming Jack the Ripper constructs the first truly convincing case for identifying the world's most notorious serial killer. In 2007, businessman Russell Edwards bought a shawl believed to have been left beside the body of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. He knew that, if genuine, the shawl would be the only piece of crime scene evidence still in existence. It was the start of an extraordinary seven-year quest for Russell as he sought to authenticate the shawl and learn its secrets. He had no idea that this journey would take him so far. After undergoing extensive forensic testing by one of the country's top scientists, the shawl was not only shown to be genuine, and stained with Catherine Eddowes' blood, but in a massive breakthrough the killer's DNA was also discovered –DNA that would allow Russell to finally put a name to Jack the Ripper . . .

In 1888 Jack the Ripper made the headlines with a series of horrific murders that remain unsolved to this day. But most killers are not shadowy figures stalking the streets with a lust for blood. Many are ordinary citizens driven to the ultimate crime by circumstance, a fit of anger or a desire for revenge. Their crimes, overshadowed by the few, sensational cases, are ignored, forgotten or written off. This book examines all the known murders in London in 1888 to build a picture of society. Who were the victims? How did they live, and how did they die? Why did a husband batter his wife to death after she failed to get him a cup of tea? How many died under the wheels of a horse-driven cab? Just how dangerous was London in 1888?

This is a new take on the Jack the Ripper story. Focusing on the people who lived through the Ripper's reign of terror, it shows what happened when familiar London streets suddenly became the hunting grounds of a monster.

An in-depth look at the lives of the women murdered by the infamous, 19th-century London serial killer. Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly are inextricably linked in history. Their names might not be instantly recognizable, and the identity of their murderer may have eluded detectives and historians throughout the years, but there is no mistaking the infamy of Jack the Ripper. For nine weeks during the autumn of 1888, the Whitechapel Murderer brought terror to London’s East End, slashing women’s throats and disemboweling them. London’s most famous serial killer has been pored over time and again, yet his victims have been sorely neglected, reduced to the simple label: prostitute. The lives of these five women are rags-to-riches-to-rags stories of the most tragic kind. There was a time in each of their lives when these poor women had a job, money, a home and a family. Hardworking, determined, and fiercely independent individuals, it was bad luck or a wrong turn here or there that left them wretched and destitute. Ignored by the press and overlooked by historians, it is time their stories were told. “Hume presents us with clear and concise biographies of the Ripper’s victims, and while it is tempting to think of them as all being prostitutes . . . their backgrounds, gone into in this much detail, shows them as something completely different. You will have to, you must read this brilliant book, it puts a whole new perspective into the canon of literature about the most infamous murderer of the last two centuries.” —Books Monthly