Policing in Whitechapel Flashcards

All 7 cards in this deck

Which division of the Metropolitan Police was responsible for Whitechapel?

H Division.

What was the role of the beat constable in Whitechapel?

To patrol a set route on foot so that police presence prevented crime, and to deal with drunks, traffic and accidents.

What was a rookery?

A slum district of overcrowded, run-down housing in a maze of narrow alleys and courts, which beat constables found hard to patrol.

What was a protection racket in Whitechapel?

Gangs threatened to damage a business unless the owner paid them a fee regularly.

Give one reason Jewish people in Whitechapel were attacked.

Migrants were seen as a threat by people already living there, blamed for taking jobs, housing and working for low wages.

True or false? Most of the crime H Division dealt with in Whitechapel was murder.

False. Most was petty theft, drunkenness and disorder, much of it linked to the area's many pubs.

Roughly how many prostitutes did the police estimate were working in Whitechapel in 1888?

About 1,200. Few other jobs were open to women, so many had no other way to survive, and they were very vulnerable to violent attack.