3 Faith and Occult Crimes The Whitechapel crimes of 1888 happened as strange new cultures were introduced to the British Empire. Immigration to the East End, the nature of wounds and the extraction of internal organs from victims fed into medieval presumptions and beliefs. Jack the Ripper’s apparent post-mortem targeting of the victims’ bodies caused suspicions of a ritualistic killer. Fantastic theories clashed with mainstream religious beliefs. The series of murders were so unusual in the experience of the police that foreign and alien elements of the city came to be strongly suspected by conservative society. Scientific advances challenged theology and medieval superstitions while a series of messy, irrational prostitute murders in the East End signaled the end of days. English mainstream culture could not have nurtured a demonic monster such as the Whitechapel murderer, it was thought, so the killer had to be a product of an exotic subculture or of foreign origins. From a Victorian perspective, emerging psychological and “psychic” sciences saw Jack the Ripper as an excellent case study. Though advances in fingerprinting and blood analysis came too late to apply to the Whitechapel murders case, Scotland Yard was prepared to consider alternative hints and suggestions, as Robert Anderson had noted. With Victorian beliefs on the nature of evil and crime in flux, Victorian London’s “occult” subcultures, now largely consigned to obscurity in general historical studies of the period, took a marked interest in the murders of Jack the Ripper. As previously stated, the police investigation, combined with press allegations of ritual murder, ensured that the motive of the killer was as obscure as his identity. The mystery of the Whitechapel murders was ripe for a Victorian society that valued discovery and explorations. As new archaeological finds were shipped to the British Museum and Library or housed in private collections from the far reaches of the Empire, discoveries that prompted the “Victorian Occult Revival” also influenced theories about Jack the Ripper. He was a scapegoat for the changing sentiments of critical and religious rationalism — a serial killer demonized for the social ills of the time by Christian and religious clerics and congregations. Anderson, for instance, held to some moral views on the nature of crime and evil, which it could be said, influenced his role in the investigation. In his prolific religious writings, which he developed in his leisure time, he often taught in legalistic and criminal fables. In his The Bible and Modern Criticism, he had this to say: A few years ago — I could give details of every part of my narrative — a certain London merchant killed an unfortunate wretch whom circumstances had placed in his power. He did not actually kill
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