London's Shadows

1. Creating the 'Myth' of Jack the Ripper2. Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London: The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 in Context3. East Meets West: The Contrasting Nature of Victorian London and the Mixed Community of the East End4. Read All About It! Ripper News and Sensation in Victorian Society5. The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: Poverty, Charity and the Fear of Revolution6. City of Dreadful Delights: Vice, Prostitution and Victorian Society7. Crime and the Criminal Class in Late Victorian London8. Watching the Detectives: The Police and the Hunt for Jack the Ripper9. London's Shadows: The Darker Side of the Victorian CapitalBibliographyIndex

Drew D. Gray is Senior Lecturer in the History of Crime at the University of Northampton, UK. He is the author of Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations (2009) and London's Shadows (2010).

Drew Gray's book is a fine addition to the literature on urban history at a time when we were learning to live in large communities and experimenting with different ways of doing so. -- History Today A scholarly work, drawing on a wide range of sources, but it's also very readable. It provides a welcome and sensible counterbalance to the endless titles about 'ripperology' with its focus on the grim realities of life in London's poorer quarters at the time. -- Your Family Tree [London's Shadows] is well-researched and accessible, making it a welcome addition to this existing historiography. Both Gray and Faber highlight the tremendous social cost of industry that contemporaries recognised but could not remedy. Though the streets of London may be cleaner and the slums replaced by modern redevelopments, the then-and-now approach of London's Shadows offers a stark reminder that poverty, deprivation and inequality are as problematic today as they were in the 1880s. -- Kaye Jones, Reviews in History Wisely, however, Gray does not attempt to solve this most famous of all cold cases. But he does illuminate the shadows of Victorian London by placing the murders into a fascinating historical context of sensationalist newspaper reporting, social problems and inadequate policing. The result exemplifies the best kind of academic publishing: authoritative, intelligent, and well-written. -- PD Smith The Guardian