‘The Mr. Hyde of Humanity’: Gothic Representations of the Whitechapel Crimes in the Victorian Periodical Press

Abstract

This article examines the influence of Gothic fiction on nineteenth-century British media accounts of the Whitechapel ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders. It argues that, rather than simply drawing on these Gothic modes and traditions for ‘sensational’ purposes, the press used them to explore wider concerns and anxieties in relation to selfhood, identity, and the unconscious mind. It proposes that, in doing so, the Ripper narrative acted as an important intersection between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture in late-Victorian society, allowing commentators (and the greater population) to engage with key emergent psychological, sociological, and scientific concerns.