Today, we get our crime news from a variety of sources. Newspapers are still read, but 21st century news is also gleaned from websites and social media, with police forces putting out information on Twitter, for example, and policemen even posing for selfies in front of crash scenes or the other scenes of crime, something that has recently got some officers into trouble.

Tales of offences and their punishments are an endless source of interest, of gossip, and of speculation. True crime magazines and books proliferate; we follow court cases; we shudder at tales of more lurid cases yet are unable to stop reading about them. This is not a modern phenomenon, though – our interest seems to be a fundamental part of the human condition, and our forebears displayed the same fascination with murders and misdeeds as we do today. Where we differ, perhaps, is in how we access such stories, and how they are presented.

In the 19th century, the earlier prevalence of crime broadsides – publications sold at executions to the crowds of onlookers, setting out the details of a crime and the executed felon’s life, often with a standard repentance, often in rhyme – diminished as time went on, being replaced by a new style of crime journalism. This can be most aptly seen by looking at the example of the Illustrated Police News.

This publication was founded in 1864, and followed the stylistically similar Illustrated London News, established in 1843. To start with, it was a simple publication – a four page newspaper (one page with images, and three pages of text), on sale at a penny per copy. It sold particularly well in urban centres such as Liverpool and Birmingham, but didn’t restrict itself to UK news, instead relying on trawls of newspapers from around the world to find the ‘best’ stories.

It was a precursor of the modern tabloid, seen as being aimed at, and popular with, the working classes. It was therefore scorned by more ‘high-brow’ or competing publications, with the Pall Mall Gazette, in 1886, describing it as ‘the worse newspaper in England’. In fact, others went further, arguing that the IPN in fact encouraged crime, with its labouring class readership becoming ‘demoralised’ by its tales of sin, and learning how to commit crimes themselves. This was a similar argument used against the readership of penny dreadfuls in the late 19th century – the working-classes and, in particular, children, would become dissatisfied with their lot as a result of reading tales of others’ lives, and be tempted into lives of sin themselves.

Stories were liberally illustrated with drawings of scenes of crime, perpetrators, victims and onlookers – in fact, the latter were often portrayed, stressing the role of the reader in watching the crime being committed, albeit from a distance. Murderers and murderesses were commonly depicted as harsh, ugly, creatures – although there were exceptions – and murder victims, if female, were frequently in dishabille, and depicted as more glamorous, prettier, individuals than their attackers, if the latter were also female.

Reflecting the times
The coverage of crimes frequently reflected the times, and contemporary concerns about society. Xenophobia towards outsiders was evident; the Irish were often depicted as anti-social, drinking and swearing and prone to domestic violence; women who committed murders were abnormal, unfeminine, creatures. It may have been reflecting the views of its largely working-class audience, but it also fostered their resentment and antipathy towards the ‘unknown’ – immigrants into Britain. The stories also helped foster an image of the Victorian city as a heaving mass of bodies, of tensions, and of lawlessness.

One of the IPN’s proprietors, George Purkess, however, argued that the IPN helped stop crime, both by highlighting what happened to individuals who committed crimes, and by those readers who might have committed crimes being put off by the thought of their likeness appearing in the paper (this last point may not be understood by the modern reader, to whom many of the ‘likenesses’ look rather similar and generic).

In 1888, the IPN covered its most famous case – that of Jack the Ripper, or, as it was more commonly known, the Whitechapel Murders. This was a story that lent itself well to the IPN’s style – female victims, dark shadows in the Victorian city, and alleged police incompetence. Although today five women are accepted as the ‘canonical five’ – those killed by one individual, ‘Jack the Ripper’ – there were several more murders in east London around this time, and the IPN reflected its readers’ fears that the Whitechapel murderer could have killed more victims. Its front-page coverage of each murder, and of developments in the cases, does not mean that this was the only story. In fact, the Whitechapel Murders did not occupy the whole of the front page even when they were mentioned; as today’s tabloids advertise some of their other news stories on the front page, the IPN did too. On its 15 September front page, the latest murder in Whitechapel shared illustration space with a lion in a menagerie and a fight at an Irish wake. On 22 September, the graphic front page illustrations included two of victim Annie Chapman – one before death, and one after. Other drawings included relatives of the victim, her lodging house keeper, a handkerchief worn by Annie, and a ‘paper on which murderer wiped his hands’. The front page was an advert for the content of the other pages – highlighting ‘more horrible mysteries’ inside, including a graphically depicted stabbing. But it is clear that the newspaper recognised that different readers would want to read about different things – and those put off by the focus on the Whitechapel Murders needed to then be drawn in by the potential of other stories.

The IPN was, like other publications, frustrated by the continuing murders, and the apparent lack of ability of the Metropolitan Police to apprehend the offender. On 6 October 1888, it asked a question on its front page – ‘two more Whitechapel horrors [the murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes]. When will the murderer be captured[?]’. One of the main illustrations showed ‘Police Constable Watkins signalling for assistance’ as he found the latest body, Catherine’s, in Mitre Square, the caption suggesting the police needing help finding the killer, as much as Watkins needing more immediate help.

Staffing the IPN
The IPN was, by the 1880s, run by George Purkess. He had been brought up to know about the popularity of sensational literature, as printed in cheap periodicals – his father, also named George, worked as a bookseller in London, but had also been a regular publisher of such serials over the course of some 30 years, until his death in 1859. The younger George, born in 1832 in Soho, had worked with his father in his early 20s, but in 1865, he took over the running of the IPN (in 1867, he would also launch the short-lived Illustrated Police Gazette, which would soon be absorbed into the IPN).

Purkess’ office was at 286 Strand, in central London. He claimed to have not only six or so artists on his London staff, but also numerous freelance artists across the country – apparently numbering up to 100. This may have been a bit of hyperbole, but the IPN claimed to produce ‘the best portraits published by any journal’, with artists being despatched to the scene of the crime as soon as word came into the office of an offence having taken place.

George Purkess died in 1892, but the Illustrated Police News continued. It finally stopped its presses in 1938, by which time, the modern tabloid was providing substantial competition with its own tales of crime and disorder. As always, the public’s interest continued, but the way in which it obtained its diet of crime news changed with the times.