London's Shadows By Drew Gray: An Analysis

Upon the first glance, Drew Grey’s novel “London’s Shadows: the Dark Side of the Victorian City” would appear to be about the unfolding events of the Whitechapel murders in London during the year of 1888, but this is not the full purpose of the novel. Drew Grey; a senior lecturer in history of crime at the University of Northampton (The University of Northampton) , applies his knowledge to provide consideration of “the ways in which the killings affected attitudes towards the perceived problems of East London” (Grey, 3). Grey uses his novel to discuss in detail the struggles of many unfortunate people living in the poorest parts of London, and described in detail what these people went through to survive. Grey broke his novel into nine different
chapters, in which he discussed different aspects of people’s lives in London. The novels first chapter discusses the myth of Jack the Ripper and the people who “Ripperologists” believe Jack to have been. The second chapter looked at murders in the nineteenth century as a whole to provide a better understanding of the Whitechapel murders. Within the second chapter, through using a more modern knowledge of the psychology of murder and comparing the Whitechapel murders to other murders, Grey informs his readers that the murders that took place in 1888 where “extreme examples of sexual homicide” (Grey, 5). To conclude chapter two, Grey examines a variety of available information to find the truth amongst all the fiction. Moving to the third chapter, the “urban environment” is discussed in detail, while addressing immigration and the inhabitants. Chapter four addressed the neglect to the people of the East End, and social problems and inequality in regards to theses people. One of the more important sections of Grey’s book is chapter five. Within chapter five, Grey discusses the growth and impact of media and the effects it had on the people of 1888 and even the people of today, which will be discussed further in the second paragraph. Onward through chapters six through eight, Grey more closely examines the lives of women, who were forced into prostitution due to the harsh realities of the East End, the criminal class in chapter seven, and finally the police in chapter eight. The final chapter labelled “London’s Shadows: The Darker Side of the Victorian Capital” (Grey, 231) concludes Grey’s novel by bringing together all of the previous information from the past chapters to paint a complete picture of the life of London’s East End. Grey’s purpose of creating this novel was to inform people of the unbiased lives of the people of London and the effects the Whitechapel murders had upon all the aspects of the community and its people. Throughout Grey’s novel “London’s Shadows: the Dark Side of the Victorian City”, he continuously mentions how the story of the Whitechapel murders and furthermore Jack the Ripper are being diluted by half-truths, fiction and biases to better suit one’s own personal suspect. In regards to the dilution of the Whitechapel murders, Grey states:
I am not a ripperologist and it is not my intention to offer up my own solution to the mystery.
Nor is the identity of the murderer the most interesting thing about the case – arguably his anonymity has allowed legions of investigators to delve into the archives in the hope of uncovering something fresh to say about the murders. While there are some excellent histories, notably the work of Donald Rumbelow and Paul Begg in particular, the genre is bedevilled with poorly researched and badly written studies that simply repeat the work of previous histories. Worse still some recent books have attempted to fit the facts of the case, such they are, to suit their own favourite suspect. (Gray,
4) The attempt “to fit facts of the case” to better suit one’s own suspect does not only apply to modern literature but also to the past during the Whitechapel murders. Returning to both chapter one, four and five, Grey discussed the increase of media and the growth of the public paper. The Whitechapel murders being the spectacles they were, help increase the popularity of sources of media such as the paper. Much like modern literature, the media of the past also had their culprits. Sources of media would report that the culprit could be a doctor due to the remains of the victims or a foreigner immigrant. Like the modern theories in regards to the identity of the killer, facts were used to better suit one’s own suspect, resulting and aggression towards these group of people being blamed. The strength of Grey’s novel comes from the fact that his goal is not to identify the killer but to better understand the people of London’s East End and how the murder effected their lives. By utilizing vast range of information from a range of fields of study, Grey creates a grander picture of the struggles, hardships, racism and lack of security that the people East End London faced day to day. Grey uses his work to analyze the conclusions of the writings of others on the topic of the Whitechapel murders.
Through using the wide range of sources to try and present an unbiased description of the East End of London, Grey demonstrates that no one answer can tell who Jack the Ripper beyond a reasonable doubt. Grey states that without absolute evidence, there cannot be an identity of Jack in which everyone is satisfied. When evaluating Grey’s evidence and use of citations within his work, one can see the vast range of information he used to construct what the East End of London once was and to argue against other works claiming to have identified the Ripper. Instead of a narrow approach of accumulating information, Gray obtains knowledge in a more broad sense. Gray examined the hardships of women, who eventual turned to prostitution to survive Grey explained the racism in regards to immigrates and how they became alienated the Victorians. Gray went into detail about the poor and working classes. Gray told the struggles of the police that tried to maintain control, who received backlash from the people and the press for their inability to capture the Ripper. Grey explores many more aspects besides the few listed but that is beside the point. The point being make here is that, instead of simply trying to identify the Ripper, Grey uses a wide range of information to recreate and better understand the environment that is the East End of London during a time effected by the
events of the Whitechapel murders. In conclusion to Drew Grey’s novel “London’s Shadows: the Dark Side of the Victorian City”, he set out to reconstruct the world of East End London to better understand its people and their problems. Grey is successful in using the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper to explore “prostitution and pornography, poverty, revolutionary politics, immigration, the creation of a criminal underworld and the development of policing”. (Bloomsbury) Through using a wide range of scholarly knowledge, Drew Grey’s achieves in creating a novel telling the past lives of the people of East End London.