The Bank Holiday Murders

"Emma Smith and Martha Tabram were once considered the first victims of Jack the Ripper. Accepted wisdom changed over time and they're now little more than footnotes to the Ripper mystery. But could it be that these early murders are in fact the key to unlocking the secret history of the Whitechapel murders? With new evidence and a fresh evaluation of the facts, we now find ourselves closer than ever to the answers that have eluded historians and criminologists for well over a century."-- From back cover.

Using contemporary sources and modern profiling techniques, the authors flag-up a hitherto little-known suspect as London’s most infamous mass-murderer.

Who were the victims of Jack the Ripper? And what was the impact of his killings on women at the time, and over the last 150 years?

The crime, the criminals, the victims and their families. And the biggest manhunt by British police... The establishment, press and public reaction, the trial, and the aftermath are all set out in compelling narrative detail. Jack Witney served twenty-five years in prison although he shot no one and was released on appeal, only to be murdered in his Bristol flat a few years later. John Duddy died in Parkhurst after fifteen years. But Harry Roberts, by his own admission the instigator of the crime and the most notorious, was released from prison after forty-eight years in 2015 making national front page news. What could possess an apparently rational and sane man, albeit an habitual criminal, to commit such a callous and ruthless act? What kind of a man is he? How can an ordinary person understand what he did? Should he be forgiven? 50 years later, the full story for the first time.

Stewart Evans is a policeman whose hobby is collecting true crime ephemera. When a second hand bookseller rang to ask him if he would be interested in a collection of letters from the Special Branch, he had no idea of the sensational revelation they would contain. One of these letters supplied an astonishing piece of infomation not contained in the decimated Scotland Yard files. The police had actually arrested and charged an American with the Ripper murders, but he escaped and disappeared in America. The Ripper murders ceased. The book reveals for the first time the identity of Jack the Ripper.

A fascinating account of the five most toxic elements describes the lethal chemical properties of arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury, and thallium, as well as their use in some of the most famous murder cases in history, with profiles of such deadly poisoners as Mary Ann Cotton, Michael Swango, and Saddam Hussein and a look at modern-day environmental catastrophes.

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Katherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly--the five known victims of Jack the Ripper--are among the most written-about women in history. Hundreds of books on the Ripper murders describe their deaths in detail. Yet they themselves remain as mysterious as their murderer. This first ever study of the victims surveys the Ripper literature to reveal what is known about their lives, how society viewed them at the time of their deaths, and how attitudes and perceptions of them have (or have not) changed since the Victorian era.

Andrew Cook goes in search of the real story of Jack the Ripper - and this story isn't set in the brothels of the East End but in the boardrooms of Fleet Street. This is a tale of hysteria whipped up by competing tabloid editors and publishers.