'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.' William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency... all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear. The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was fear in a human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, the book sets the murders in their historical context, examining in depth what East London was like in 1888, how it came to be that way, and how events led to one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era.

Mary Celeste is an iconic mystery - a perfectly seaworthy ship found wandering aimlessly at sea, her crew strangely and inexplicably missing. Paul Begg tells the story of the discovery of Mary Celeste and the people who vanished, and investigates over a century's worth of speculation and survivors' tales, searching for the facts behind one of the world's great mysteries.

Mary Celeste is an iconic mystery - a perfectly seaworthy ship found wandering aimlessly at sea, her crew strangely and inexplicably missing. Paul Begg tells the story of the discovery of Mary Celeste and the people who vanished, and investigates over a centurys worth of speculation and survivors tales, searching for the facts behind one of the worlds great mysteries.

'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.' William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, Aberystwyth England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency... all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear. The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was fear in a human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, the book sets the murders in their historical context, examining in depth what East London was like in 1888, how it came to be that way, and how events led to one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era.

Experts agree that Jack the Ripper murdered five London women, but how many others did he slaughter in Britain or across the seas? The number of women murdered and mutilated by Jack the Ripper is impossible to know, although most researchers now agree on five individuals. These five canonical cases have been examined at length in Ripper literature, but other contemporary murders and attacks bearing strong resemblance to the gruesome Ripper slayings have received scant attention. These unsolved cases are the focus of this intriguing book. The volume devotes separate chapters to a dozen female victims who were attacked during the years of Jack the Ripper's murder spree. Their terrible stories-a few survived to bear witness, but most died of their wounds-illuminate key aspects of the Ripper case and the period: the gangs of London's Whitechapel district, Victorian prostitutes, the public panic inspired by the crimes and fueled by journalists, medical practices of the day, police procedures and competency, and the probable existence of other serial killers. The book also considers crimes initially attributed to Jack the Ripper in other parts of Britain and the world, notably New York, Jamaica, and Nicaragua. In a final chapter, the drive to find the identity of the Ripper is examined, looking at contemporary and later suspects as well as several important theories, revealing the lengths to which some have gone to claim success in identifying Jack the Ripper.