Cover of the 21 September 1889 issue of Puck magazine by cartoonist Tom Merry
AuthorDr Diane Palmer |
DateAugust 2007, Workshop October 2007 |
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Project TypeWorkshop for postgraduates |
SubjectCriminology |
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DatasetsOS County Series, English Parishes |
Related SubjectsGIS; History; Psychology; Literature |
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Sources: Digimap, UK Data Service Census Support (fomerly UKBORDERS), Charles Booth Online Archive |
Key WordsProbability surfaces; Jack the Ripper |
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Dates/Editions: First Revision |
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Scale: 1:10,560 and 1:2,500 |
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Publishing InstitutionInterdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)-University of Sheffield |
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SummaryThe workshop will set out to consider the background to events of the Autumn of Terror in 1888 by studying the sociodemographics of Victorian London. A range of GIS techniques will then be employed to ascertain:
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Aims & ObjectivesTo teach the application of GIS techniques to both first-time and more experienced users. Techniques include:
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MethodologyAdditional data was first created. Point themes of location of victims and suspects were prepared by a combination of finding coordinates with streetmap.co.uk and searching the Ordnance survey historic maps.
Sociodemographics Initially the students will be shown how to overlay Charles Booth’s Poverty Map of Whitechapel with victim locations. This simple process introduces the concept of geodemographics. It reveals that victims were found in areas which were either “Lower class, vicious, semi-criminal” or “Mixed, some comfortable, others poor”. Students are then shown how to create thematic maps from historic English Parishes data. These reveal that the population in Whitechapel actually fell 1871-1881, but the population density was high and the number of paupers compared to area was large (Maps 1 and 2).
How Many Killers? Eleven women were murdered in Whitechapel between April 1988 and February 1891. They have all been considered to be ‘Ripper’ killings at some stage, although the ‘Canonical Five’ are undisputed victims. In an attempt to distinguish ‘Ripper’ casualties from other murders, students will be shown how to construct the Spatial-Temporal Moving Average in easy stages (repeated calculation of the mean centre over the series of events). This shows two mean areas of activity (Map 3), suggesting either at least two murderers or that the killer changed hunting ground. Map 3 also illustrates the results of Correlated Walk Analysis which allows the prediction of the next event in time, distance and direction. The predicted location of the sixth victim is in a very different area (off the top of the map) to where her body was actually found in Mitre Square.
Suspects An investigation will be carried out to discover whether any of the suspects (from the subset who could be georeferenced) might have been the perpetrator. The technique of ‘donut’ ring buffers will be demonstrated to workshop participants. Map 4 indicates that 3 suspects (blue, green and dark blue buffers) lived in suitable places to commit the crimes. However, there are alibis and other reasons which make it impossible to construct a case against any of these men.
Residence of the Killer Instructions to build up a simple probability surface of the killer’s home ground will be given. The following will be taken into account:
Map 5 suggests two possible areas as likely ‘Ripper’ residences. Goulston Street was broad by standards of Victorian London and used as a cut-through. Dorset Street was notorious for vice, drunkenness and overcrowding and was a “No go” place for the nineteenth century constabulary. Interestingly, the peak area of the FBI’s more complex geoprofile focused on the locale around the equally notorious Flower and Dean Street and Thrawl Street (almost between the two locations identified in Map 5). |
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Results/Outcome
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References & AcknowledgementsReferences Alexander, Monica; Groff, Elizabeth and Hibdon, Laurie “An Automated System for the Identification and Prioritization of Rape Suspects”. Accessed: 6 August 2007. http://gis2.esri.com/library/userconf/proc97/proc97/to350/pap333/p333.htm Metropolitan Police: http://www.met.police.uk/history/ripper.htm Ryder, Stephen P. (Ed.). "Casebook: Jack the Ripper”. Accessed: 6 August 2007. http://www.casebook.org Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper |