The London Monster: A Sanguinary Tale

"The facts in this case are so bizarre that no novelist would have dared to invent them," said the Philadelphia Inquirer. Indeed. A century before Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London, another predator held sway: a "vulgar-looking man" who slashed at female pedestrians with a knife while uttering profanities with a "tremulous eagerness" — over fifty victims during a two-year crime spree. The city was gripped with fear, outrage, and "Monster mania." The latter was abetted by a — rew...