jack the ripper power point/ study group work today

okay guys, the order so far for our presentation, obviously this can change round if people want.

is 1. Kate- intro
2. Catherine- figures
3. Raj - games
4. Kiri- tourism
5. Emma-literature
6. Charlene- Musicals/clips
7. To conclude- to be decided

i have emailed you all the presentation put together so far, cause im not sure everyone saved it on the usb pen etc. A few of us afterwards, changed the font in all of them, so it matches etc. Ive done a black,red and white background for now(following Catherine's section) But we can change stuff like that next week if people don't like it. Also if we want to add effects to it etc, we can sort it out next week. Emma you need to add you pictures to it, as they still not transfered or saved properly from your macbook! argh how annoying. We need to do a conclusion,so if anyone/ everyone want to start thinking what we can include. And we can do the sheet we need to hand in next week too. If everyone writes down any website and books they used so we can have a selection from all areas on the bibliography. Also Emma suggested we do a bibliography at the end of the power point, which i think is a good idea.

If you change or add to the presentation, email it to everyone if possible, so then we don't have to mess around on pc on Wednesday. We can concentrate on rehearsing it, and thinking of possible questions and answers we might be asked. We need to think of time limits, and who wants to do pc etc. Also im a bit worried that my clips etc wont work and their are important in terms of my section, plus on the presentation advice section on wolf it has a section describing the material used, it includes clips and videos etc. So if possible i think it would be good. Also i know were not going have a enough time, but i think maybe we could show an example of the games during Raj's section would be good.

Email or post on here what study room number we've got for next week

see you all soon x

The Vicitms of Mr Ripper

As I've been looking up for the facts for the introduction to our presentation I have come across a few facts that I didn't know. For starters all of his victims were strangled which was mainly to stop them from screaming out linking with the fact that on all occassions no such sounds were heard on the nights of the murders, and also there were murders that took place before which are not ruled out of the "ripper" murders. For instance the christmas of 1887 saw the murder of "Fairy Fay"(although her real name is never stated) who was found with an metal instrument forced into her body, and like the other 5 victims was brutaly mutilated she was taking a short cut home from Mitre square which also links in with Catherine Eddowes' murder. When I typed in her name on google the first link to pop up was Jack the Ripper, which shows how much she is associated with him, meaning this could of been his very first attack or even experiment. Although there is no official documentation of this apart from a newspaper article.

Annie Millwood, Ada Wilson both claimed to be stabbed by a man in the early part of 1888, these may well of been experiements of "Jack the Ripper" both women survived their attacks. Emma Smith who was attacked by a group of men, although some think it may only of been one man, later died in hospital she also like "Fairy Fay" had an object rammed into her, this time it was in ther vaginal area, and Martha Tabram, who was murdered and stabbed more than 30 times on the 6th August (not long before the murder of Mary Ann Nichols) may of been the first victims of "Jack the Ripper" along with "Fairy Fay".

Found another one!

http://www.activehistory.co.uk/fling/quizzes/yr9_jack_ripper/quiz.htm - this one is online and it has been made by a group of year 9 students. It takes the format of 'who wants to be a millionaire' and so has 15 main facts from the case and if you answer all 15 correctly then you get to shoot your teacher out of cannon!

Something that i found interesting in the online game i mentioned in my previous post is that the gamemakers have incorporated other fictional crime-related characters in the game. As i progressed in the game, i had to fight a tag-team of Sherlock Holmes and Watson and then in level to i had to fight Jekyll as in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Jekyll managed to kill me.. Jack is dressed in the traditional cloak and hat that has now become his uniform.

There are card games that can be bought and also board games. Surprisingly, most of these things appear on American sites and are fairly recently manufactured.

Moving off the game topic, I came across this when I was searching 'Jack the Ripper games' in eBay:

The description was 'The London terror, Jack the Ripper immortalized in these throwing daggers. Stainless steel and a set of three.' Seems like a weird and painful game. They're going for about a fiver if anyone is interested, by the way!!

Games and all of that...

Heya guys

Just been reading the other posts, didn't realise how interesting Jack-related things actually were!
I've spent my arvo looking at Jack the Ripper games on the net and have found quite a few...

http://www.acmewebpages.com/karen_a/ripper.htm - this video game actually won awards for gameplay and focuses on the idea of Jack in the future... Guess what the slogan is for this game... Jack's Back!! How funny is that?!

http://uk.pc.ign.com/objects/552/552553.html - this is another video game.It's on PC format and wasn't as popular as the first game. It's like a cat-and-mouse style, with the player taking on the role of a reporter trying to nail Jack, who for some reason or another is in New York.

http://www.peginc.com/Games/Savage%20Worlds/Rippers.htm - yet another role playing game.. but by the looks of it, i think your supposed to play this like you play trading cards... kind of complicated though.

http://www.addictinggames.com/jacktheripper.html - you can play this game online and its hilarious, just spent like half hour on it.. yeah, i know, i need a life..

Anyways, thanks for booking the study room.
Will see y'all in lecture in the morning..

Presentation Rota

Charlene, thanks for booking the study room. Will see you all there.

So, I checked the rota on WOLF that Meena put up but our group doesn't appear to be on there. Asked Mark and he doesn't know why either. However, there is a section entitled ROGUE GROUPS, so I guess we come under that bit. Which week would people prefer to do? I would suggest second week as I have another presentation to do next week as well as his one. What does everyone else think? Also, we could use tomorrows session to put it all together and run through it the week after if we do the actual presentation on the second week.

In time for tomorrows meeting I will write down what I'm going to say in class. I' guessing at one A4 side each in order to fit everyone in? Then we can run through it or whatever everyone wants to do.

See ya all tomorrow anyway.

Cat.X :)

Exploiting The Ripper

I think some very interesting points have been raised in the last two posts. I agree with what Charlene discusses, in particular I think that it is interesting that people at the time took the "not on our soil" attitude. It raises many arguments as to how accurate the policing was at the time of the murders. Earlier in the module when Mark gave the lecture on crime and policing he highlighted that it was an early establishment and that it was mainly private policing. This leads me into contemplating how accurate the evidence actually is. It seems that at the time a lot of finger pointing was done yet no actual suspect was charged. Do you think that at the time it was maybe used to peoples advantage? i.e. the media. Even today people use it to their advantage in the world of consumerism(films/books/tv). It seems to occur with lots of crimes in modern society today, one of the main examples that comes to mind is 9/11 and how that was exploited in films such as World Trade Centre...and all of the documentaries/tv programmes that have been made.

As Kiri points out, it is interesting to find out just how many ways that Jack the Ripper as a name has been exploited through consumerism. The My Chemical Romance T-shirt is a great example as to how popular bands can use such a terrible subject, although as I have previously discussed is it so horrific these days? I think that in modern society people may accept it as just a name rather than a murderer.

I found a very interesting book that will be useful to everyone for our presentation 'Jack the Ripper: A Bibliography and Review of the Literature' by Alexander Kelly. This book covers almost all of the topics that we are covering, not just literature. It raises some great points about each topic so I will bring this to our group work session on Thursday.

The Ripper as a foreigner, and his image.

Whilst researching for my part of the presentation, I came across Gary Covilles book on Jack the Ripper in popular entertainment. What interested me was the lack of depth to the witnesses’ accounts at the time and more importantly how the image of the Ripper was created from these vague accounts. Many suspects in the Ripper murders were foreign for example kosmiski who was a polish Jew and Ostrog who was Russian. Why did the Victorian public and police convey and believe that the Ripper was foreign? The attitude often portrayed for this was that such a terrible crime could not have been committed by an Englishman.

After much reading around the Jack the Ripper case, what came across was that foreigners were often frequemtly blamed or used as a scapegoat for all sorts off crime. Evidence of the Ripper being foreign is often with very vague descriptions. Covilles book indicates this well, with witnesses often stating that ‘he spoke in a foreign accent’ or that he just looked foreign. Jack the Ripper casebook website shows the witness accounts descriptions; in particular at the scene of Annie Chapman’s murder, most indicate the identity as foreign. Emily Walter states that he was ‘foreigner aged 37’ whilst Elizabeth Long states that he was a foreigner of "shabby genteel." Coville argues that the Rippers’ description as a foreigner was ‘fabricated by a commiteed of officals hoping to stave of criticism of police inaction’. These descriptions of the Ripper are extremely vague, and can be said to be not describing who the Ripper was, but the image of who we want him to be. As the image of Jack the Ripper creates an exciting tale that at the time helped sell newspapers. The use of this dark image of the Ripper is often the typical image and representation of the Ripper used today in numerous popular entertainments, such as films, tv, computer games and action figures. The uncertainty of the witness accounts of the Ripper only highlight even more so that the Rippers identity is completely unknown, and its creation made a more exciting tale of the murders of whitechapel, this has carried on to a high degree throughout the hundred and twenty years following the Ripper’s murders.

http://www.casebook.org/witnesses/

Coville, Gary, 1949- Jack the Ripper : his life and crime in popular entertainment