Scene of the Crime.(The Arts)('Jack the Ripper and the East End')

Byline: Sophie Grove

A chilling exhibit of historic evidence lets viewers try to figure out who Jack the Ripper really was.

THE SALLOW FACES OF LIFELESS prostitutes gaze out from the display, their skin scrofulous from poor diet, their mouths gaping as if in misery. These sepia-stained images are thought to be the first crime-scene photos ever taken, used by Scotland Yard in its hunt to catch Jack the Ripper in the late 19th century. There's no Hollywood glamour in this blunt presentation of the facts about the first serial killer to capture the mass media's attention. The grisly frames are a sobering reminder that this is one cold case that may not be closed, but it will likely never be solved.

Amateur detectives can access the original evidence in an unmatched new show at the Museum of London, "Jack the Ripper and the East End" (through November 2008 at the museum's new Docklands branch). The displays lay out reams of photographs, letters, police reports and curios, as well as letters the Ripper allegedly sent to police. "There has never been a serious exhibition that allows the public to see the original material," says curator Alex Werner. "We place the murders in a historical context and let the artifacts speak for themselves."

The exhibit does that by creating a vivid and often troubling portrait of Victorian London at the time of the crimes. The spasm of 11 murders terrorized London from 1888 to 1891--and just as mysteriously suddenly stopped. To compile the artifacts, curators spent two years trolling through municipal and museum archives, digging up a stunning series of photographs that document the East End's grueling poverty. Gaggles of barefoot homeless children, known then as "street Arabs," loiter in the snowy alleyways. A knife smithy--the strain of arduous labor etched in his face--stares vacantly into the lens. Viewers can see how whole neighborhoods were considered dangerous no-go areas for the respectable middle class.

The murders confronted prosperous Victorians with the rot at the heart of their society. "At the turn of the century, more than one third of Londoners were living on or below the poverty line," says Werner, pointing to a color-coded "poverty map," published in 1889 by the social scientist Charles Booth. It labels low-income spots that dominate Whitechapel, where the mutilated victims were dumped, as "vicious, semi-criminal." The area's dank, unsanitary ...