Contemporaneous Press and Public Opinion
The Whitechapel murders were featured heavily in the media, and attracted the attention of Victorian society at large. Journalists, letter writers, and amateur detectives all suggested names either in press or to the police. Most were not and could not be taken seriously. For example, at the time of the murders Richard Mansfield, a famous actor, starred in a theatrical version of Robert Louis Stevenson's book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The subject matter of horrific murder in the London streets and Mansfield's convincing portrayal led letter writers to accuse him of being the Ripper.
Read more about this topic: Jack The Ripper Suspects
Famous quotes containing the words press, public and/or opinion:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)
“And when we get too far apart in wealth,
‘Twas his idea that for the public health,
So that the poor won’t have to steal by stealth,
We now and then should take an equalizer.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)