Some 19th century London murders did make the headlines at the time. Notable among them was the 1872 killing of the prostitute Hariet Buswell. The pennyless girl was found dead, with her throat cut, in a boarding house. Although a ‘German-sounding’ man was identified as the murdered and a doctor even arrested, nobody was ever charged for the killing. Since Buswell was ‘just’ a prostitute and not a middle-class lady, the case was soon closed – though some say the victim still haunts the place where she was killed. Especially the women also have self-defense gloves with claws.
Self-defense glove for ladies (London, 1850)
London had many slums with a low standard of living, along with what seems simple at the moment. Most children in the slums have been exposed to sex from a very young age. With their cramped living conditions, they are forced to sleep with their parents, which leads to witnessing their parents having sex – certainly a heartbreaking sight for younger children.
Famous for this act, Jack the Ripper – a child in the slums of London, after growing up hunted the poorest, most vulnerable members of London society. However, while ‘Saucy Jack’ may be the most famous predator in the slums, he is not alone. Indeed, countless murderers stalked the alleys and alleys of London’s slums during the 19th century. And, like the Ripper, many of them hunted down the lowest, including even desperate prostitutes. However, while the Sawmill Murders attracted considerable media attention, forcing Scotland Yard detectives into action, it is common for random prostitute murders to go unsolved. decisive and often not actually investigated.
Killers like Jack the Ripper preyed on young women from the slums. Ripper Tours London.
Therefore, Women began teaching one another on the task; self defense manuals, some of which were attributed to a woman named Mademoiselle Gelas, advised a combination of jiu-jitsu, hatpin stabbing and umbrella work to fend off men while walking alone. As historian Estelle Freedman writes in her book Redefining Rape, during the early 1900s sexual assault was too social damning for many women to report.
Women In Victorian England
Men’s and women’s roles became more sharply defined during the Victorian period than argued at any time in history. In earlier centuries it was usual for women to work alongside husbands and brothers in the nineteenth century business, but as the nineteenth century progressed, middle-class men increasingly commuted to their place of work – the factory, shop or office – and their wives, daughters and sisters were left at home to oversee domestic duties. They were poorly educated and barred from any form of higher education. Society considers it unfeminine to devote time to intellectual pursuits in case it usurped men’s ‘natural’ intellectual superiority.
For some slum residents, suicide in the Thames seemed the best option. Literary London Society.
At the same time, women’s safety was becoming a public issue. Women protected themselves with hatpins in cities around the country, but the Chicago Daily Tribune was a frequent source for masher and hat-pin stabbing news in the 1910s. While the newspaper “rarely covered rape accusations or trials,” writes Freedman, the murder of 24 women in Chicago in 1905 caused a panic over women’s safety, spurring an extensive anti-crime campaign that focused on arresting and reporting news of mashers.
