Top 5 Student-friendly Jack the Ripper Websites.

Wanted poster 1888.

If your students are anything like my high-schoolers they're probably overly interested in all things gory.  So often mine become obsessed with conspiracy theories and in particular, the 'Jack the Ripper' murders in Whitechapel in 1888.  These crimes were so horrific that they fascinated and scared the population at the time and even heralded the growth of the tabloid press as the public pushed for more information.  The first serial killer he was not, but the first widely reported on serial killer - yes.

Is it therefore any wonder that our students want to find out more when the crimes have come such a large part of our cultural history? 

There is a great deal about the murders on the world wide web, unfortunately much of it is apocryphal and even more is too gory for our kids impressionable minds.  However as a history teacher I have had to teach what happened in Whitechapel in 1888 as a coursework unit to 14 year-olds and trying to keep off the gruesome details was hard. I did find a way though; focusing on why people were interested in the crimes at the time, why the police were unable to catch the killer and the extensive press coverage was an interesting way into the story and also allowed links to present day. 

But in the end you have to be able to explain what actually happened without freaking students out with the gore or worse still, desensitising them to the horror of what was done to the victims.  If you're setting up a web quest the last thing you want children to do is stumble (usually very quickly!) upon an autopsy photograph of Long Lizzy or the scene of Mary Kelly's murder.

Therefore I've trawled the internet to find the most student friendly Jack the Ripper websites that are also factually accurate.  This has been no mean feat so I wanted to share the results with you!



1. https://www.activehistory.co.uk/Miscellaneous/free_stuff/jack/LifeinWhitechapel.ppt 


The wonderful Russel Tarr's activehistory.co.uk set up in 1998 has some wonderful resources on Jack the Ripper.  A few of them require a log in or payment but many are free. Not least this PowerPoint presentation on Life in Whitechapel in 1888.  Made by another teacher this uses resources from Tarr's site.  It gives a nicely informative background to the conditions in the East End of London in the Victorian Era. And best of all its freely downloadable!





2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ripper_jack_the.shtml

 

This BBC page gives a very brief, easy to read overview of  some key aspects of the case, including the graffiti and possible suspects.  The BBC history site is renowned for accuracy and generally avoids sensationalism. 





3. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/jacktheripper.pdf 

I absolutely love the National Archive in Kew.  Many a happy hour did I spend there during my History degree rooting through the collections on 19th century London.  Now you can do the same from wherever you are in the world.  (The internet is amazing!)  


Our students can now access the original Jack the Ripper materials online including the 'Dear Boss' Letter and the police responses.  This link takes you to the resources used for a  workshop they held on the police methods in the case.  The materials and activities are included and can be used by your classes with very little prep.  They can dissect the original evidence individually or in groups.  A accurate and informative website.

4.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-the-Ripper 

The world renowned Encyclopaedia Britannica no longer needs to take up three shelves in your book unit.  Nowadays the internet version has all that you might need at the touch of a button.   This page has some brief details on the the murders, their context and various theories.  The best part of this page is the links to further information particularly on London and the East End. 

5.  https://www.jack-the-ripper.org/suspects.htm 

This one is slightly more risky in terms of your students finding some of the more gruesome images. But I've included it as it has some very useful and reliable information.   It may be best for you to use while planning your lessons for this reason.  This particular page covers what the police focused on when looking for suspects.  The page then goes on to list the main suspects with individual headings and pictures.    

The 'Jack the Ripper 1888' historical resource site is written and maintained by London author, historian, broadcaster and tour guide Richard Jones. He knows his stuff and is worth a look.  If you can keep your younglings off the more gruesome images its a useful site for them too.

Though this list isn't exhaustive I hope it's a starting point for you if you need one or adds to your repertoire! 

Below are some resources I love to use when teaching Jack the Ripper and Victorian London.  Take look, maybe you can use them too?

Victorianopoly - 

A play on Monopoly, history style.  This free game is a nice way to engage your students with context for the crimes.  Available for FREE at Schoolhistory.co.uk.

History Mystery - Who was Jack the Ripper?

In this lesson they will compare and evaluate 12 possible suspects before deciding on the most likely guilty person. The lesson works as a knockout tournament, comparing two suspects at a time. 

It is great for developing higher order thinking skills especially when they have to tease out the strengths and weaknesses of each suspect. It also provides me with some fabulous display ideas using the students work!

How did the press increase fascination with Jack the Ripper?


This worksheet lesson examines sensationalisation in the press at the time and compares the techniques used with more recent press examples.

'Who lived in a house like this?'

...David, its over to you.

I love local history. There I said it.  I say this to teaching colleagues and they look at me askance like I've just said I was into collecting oddly shaped rocks.   (Unless they're a geography teacher, they usually get it.) It may get me some funny looks in the staff room but I think finding out about the place in which you live and work is fascinating and offers an intriguing insight into how the community came to be what it is.

Once again Local History is back on our television screens.  BBC has been showing David Olusoga’s ‘A House Through Time’ which traces the history of one house in Liverpool and it’s surrounding area from when it was built to present day.  When I turned on the tv I was reminded of the local history lessons I taught a few years ago and wrote an article on.

I taught in a north London comprehensive school for many years and every year we would teach the Year 7 students about the history of the area.  It is an ethnically and socially diverse community and often the students we were teaching had only recently moved to the area or even the country.  Learning about the area helped these kids in particular to find their place and realise that it had always been a pretty transient population.

Wood Green had been a hamlet for hundreds of years and was mentioned in the Domesday book.  It had a couple of farms and a pub.  Farmers would drive their cattle through the village on the way to market in London.  Nothing much changed there until the 19th century and the coming of the railways.  It became an attractive place for white collar workers to live and commute in to city.    By the early 20th century the farms had gone and had been replaced with rows and rows of terraced housing.  During the war, the town suffered some bomb damage and now the terraced avenues are flecked with small 1960s blocks as replacement.  In the 1980s a massive complex was built and it became a hub for north Londoners out to do their shopping on a Saturday.

Wood Green has a great selection of housing stock to look at and study.  A few years ago we chose

The road we selected for our study. 

a street that represented this change over time.  It was two minutes away from our school gates so we could walk there with a trail of students and it had houses dating back to the 1850s right up to the 1980s.  The class was split into groups of 4 and each group was allocated a house.  The aim was to find out all they could about its past residents and how things had changed for the occupants over time.

The students LOVED it!  We provided some scaffolding and the historical materials and they were away. Using the original censuses they discovered the names and occupations of their residents, with photographs they imagined what the people may have looked like.  When visiting the street the children compared architecture and style of the buildings. In the classroom they used map layering to see how the area changed through the period and they were able to make judgements on whether they thought these changes were a good or bad thing.  Over several lessons the groups built up a picture of who lived there.  When the groups learned to decipher the copperplate writing on the oldest census reports they felt like explorers decoding a new language.  The sense of achievement in the class was palpable.

Half of a living graph. 

In the end, each group produced a house of sugar paper filled with their findings. We put them all together on the wall to build our own street and everyone gave verbal feedback on their displays. One of the most interesting things the students did was to use their imaginations to decide how happy their house would have been at different points in its history.  This was designed to get them thinking about the bigger picture of changes over time and the impact the may have had.  The children really put a lot of thought into this, evaluating how a house might feel to be empty or full or to have competition for entertainment outside the home for example. Their ideas were explained on a living graph and threw up some fascinating insights.

 





They had learned so much and been so engaged in the whole process.  Importantly they learned in a practical way that history is not the complete task, rather it’s a recreation of it from the remnants of what we have left.  The children realised that they could never know everything about their house and it’s previous tenants but by making reasoned inferences based on the evidence they could produce an idea that would stand up to scrutiny.

How to do it:

1. Make friends with your local history archivist.  They are usually found at your local library or, if you have one, the local history museum.  In my experience these people are only too happy to help.  Our local museum archivist helped me to gather the maps, photos and census materials and then rooted around for anything else she thought I could use including telephone directories, advertising pamphlets and posters! She was invaluable and pleased that local children were learning about their past.

2. Gather as many resources as you can lay your hands on.  You’ll be surprised how they can come in useful. Also generic history books to help your students put their house in a wider context.

3. Use Google Maps to scope out the potential streets in your area before you start.  The street view function is great for seeing what the area lookalike on the ground.  Google Maps is also a fabulous tool if you are unable to physically take your class out to the street.   I used it as an introduction before our visit to familiarise the children with the place and  task at hand.

4. You might consider signing up to an online ancestry website.  I did this primarily to save me more trips to the archive but it was also great for easy cross referencing and transcribed versions of original documents. I was able to see where the residents had gone to with the click of a button. I used  Find My Past and the site was easy to navigate and had all the information I needed at the touch of a button.

If you would like an in-depth explanation of how the lessons were structured and our findings you can read the full article here in Teaching History magazine.



I hope you decide to investigate the history on your doorstep and if you do, please let me know how you get on!