In 1890, the Salvation Army revealed that 30,000 people, out of about six million inhabitants of London, were prostitutes. In 1889, 160,000 people were imprisoned for alcoholism, 2,297 committed suicide and 2,157 were found dead in slums, streets or parks. Almost 5% of the population suffered from nutritional deficiencies, and many survived in asylums, hospitals or on the streets, consumed by poverty, alcohol and hunger.
The female victims of the Ripper endured all these evils. The murderer raged in a district where misery was concentrated:the East End, in east London, with the docks and the dilapidated districts of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, adjoining the Thames to the south and the economic lung of the metropolis, the 'active City, to the west.
In the alleys and sordid hovels were crowded English and migrants fleeing the famine and the persecutions of Eastern Europe, following the example of the Jews, designated as guilty of the crimes by an inscription. Aaron Kosminski and John Pizer, both Polish Jews, were thus suspected. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the East End district dreamed of a better world:Elizabeth Stride was murdered near the International Working Men's Educational Club, whose members were Eastern European Jews. 'East.