Whitechapel murders
The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. A number of the victims—Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, an unidentified woman—were prostitutes. Smith was sexually robbed by a gang. Tabram was stabbed 39 times. Nichols, Stride, Kelly, McKenzie and Coles had their throats cut. Eddowes and Stride were killed on the same night and less than a mile apart; the bodies of Nichols, Chapman and Kelly had abdominal mutilations. Mylett was strangled; the body of the unidentified woman was dismembered. The Metropolitan Police, City of London Police, private organisations such as the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee were involved in the search for the killer or killers.
Despite extensive inquiries and several arrests, the culprit or culprits evaded identification and capture. The murders drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End slums, which were subsequently improved; the enduring mystery of who committed the crimes has captured public imagination to the present day. In the late Victorian era, Whitechapel was considered to be the most notorious criminal rookery in London; the area around Flower and Dean Street was described as "perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis". Assistant Police Commissioner Robert Anderson recommended Whitechapel to "those who take an interest in the dangerous classes" as one of London's prime criminal "show places". Robbery and violence were commonplace; the district was characterised by extreme poverty, sub-standard housing, homelessness and endemic prostitution. These factors were focused in the institution of the common lodging-house, which provided cheap communal lodgings for the desperate and the destitute, among whom the Whitechapel murder victims were numbered.
All the identified victims lived in the heart of the rookery in Spitalfields, including three in George Street, two in Dorset Street, two in Flower and Dean Street and one in Thrawl Street. Police work and criminal prosecutions relied on confessions, witness testimony, apprehending perpetrators in the act of committing an offence or in the possession of obvious physical evidence that linked them to a crime. Forensic techniques, such as fingerprint analysis, were not in use. Policing in London was—and still is—divided between two forces: the Metropolitan Police with jurisdiction over most of the urban area, the City of London Police with jurisdiction over about a square mile of the city centre; the Home Secretary, a senior minister of the United Kingdom government, controlled the Metropolitan Police, whereas the City Police were responsible to the Corporation of London. Beat constables walked timed routes. Eleven deaths in or near Whitechapel between 1888 and 1891 were gathered into a single file, referred to in the police docket as the Whitechapel murders.
Much of the original material has been either destroyed. On Tuesday 3 April 1888, following the Easter Monday bank holiday, prostitute Emma Elizabeth Smith was assaulted and robbed at the junction of Osborn Street and Brick Lane, Whitechapel, in the early hours of the morning. Although injured, she survived the attack and managed to walk back to her lodging house at 18 George Street, Spitalfields, she told the deputy keeper, Mary Russell, that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of them a youth. Mrs Russell took Smith to the London Hospital, where medical examination revealed that a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, rupturing her peritoneum, she developed peritonitis and died at 9 am on 4 April 1888. The inquest was conducted on 7 April by the coroner for East Middlesex, Wynne Edwin Baxter, who conducted inquests on six of the victims; the local inspector of the Metropolitan Police, Edmund Reid of H Division Whitechapel, investigated the attack but the culprits were never caught.
Walter Dew, a detective constable stationed with H Division wrote that he thought Smith was the first victim of Jack the Ripper, but his colleagues suspected it was the work of a criminal gang. Smith claimed that she was attacked by a group of men, but either refused to or could not describe them. Prostitutes were managed by gangs, Smith could have been attacked by her pimps as a punishment for disobeying them, or as part of their intimidation, she may not have identified her attackers because she feared reprisal, her murder is unlikely to be connected with the killings. On Tuesday 7 August, following a Monday bank holiday, prostitute Martha Tabram was murdered at about 2:30 am, her body was found at George Yard, Whitechapel. She had been stabbed 39 times with a short blade. On the basis of statements from a fellow prostitute, PC Thomas Barrett, patrolling nearby, Inspector Reid put soldiers at the Tower of London and Wellington Barracks on an identification parade, but without positive results.
The police did not connect the murder with Smith's, but they did connect it with the murders. Most experts today do not connect it with the other killings, as Tabram was stabbed whereas the victims were slashed, but a connection cannot be ruled out. On
Orphanage
An orphanage was a residential institution, or group home, devoted to the care of orphans and other children who were separated from their biological families. Examples of what would cause a child to be placed in orphanages are when the biological parents were deceased, the biological family was abusive to the child, there was substance abuse or mental illness in the biological home, detrimental to the child, or the parents had to leave to work elsewhere and were unable or unwilling to take the child; the role of legal responsibility for the support of children whose parent have died or are otherwise unable to provide care differs internationally. The use of government-run orphanages has been phased out in the United States, the United Kingdom, in the European Union member-states during the latter half of the 20th century but continue to operate in many other regions internationally. While the term "orphanage" is no longer used in the United States, nearly every US state continues to operate residential group homes for children in need of a safe place to live and in which to be supported in their educational and life-skills pursuits.
Homes like the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania, Mooseheart in Illinois and the Crossnore School and Children's Home in North Carolina continue to provide care and support for children in need. While a place like the Milton Hershey School houses nearly 2,000 children, each child lives in a small group-home environment with "house parents" who live many years in that home. Children who grow up in these residential homes have higher rates of high school and college graduation than those who spend equivalent numbers of years in the US Foster Care system, wherein only 44 to 66 percent of children graduate from high school. Research from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project is cited as demonstrating that residential institutions negatively impact the wellbeing of children; the BEIP selected orphanages in Bucharest, Romania that raised abandoned children in and deprived environments in order to study the changes in development of infants and children after they had been placed with specially trained foster families in the local community.
This powerful study demonstrated how the lack of loving attention provided to children by their parents or caregivers is pivotal for optimal human development of the brain. Further research of children who were adopted from institutions in Eastern European countries to the US demonstrated that for every 3.5 months that an infant spent in the institution, they lagged behind their peers in growth by 1 month. Further, a meta-analysis of research on the IQs of children in orphanages found lower IQs among the children in many institutions, but this result was not found in the low-income country setting. Worldwide, residential institutions like orphanages can be detrimental to the psychological development of affected children. In countries where orphanages are no longer in use, the long-term care of unwarded children by the state has been transitioned to a domestic environment, with an emphasis on replicating a family home. Many of these countries, such as the United States, utilize a system of monetary stipends paid to foster parents to incentivize and subsidize the care of state wards in private homes.
A distinction must be made between foster care and adoption, as adoption would remove the child from the care of the state and transfer the legal responsibility for that child's care to the adoptive parent and irrevocably, whereas in the case of foster care, the child would remain a ward of the state with the foster parent acting only as caregiver. Most children who live in orphanages are not orphans. Developing countries and their governments rely on kinship care to aid in the orphan crisis, because it is cheaper to financially help extended families in taking in an orphaned child it is to institutionalize them. Additionally, developing nations are lacking in child welfare and their well-being because of lack of resources. Research, being collected in the developing world shows that these countries focus purely on survival indicators instead of a combination of their survival and other positive indicators like a developed nation would do; this speaks to the way that many developed countries treat an orphan crisis, as the only focus is to obtain a way to insure their survival.
In the developed nations orphans can expect to find not only a home but these countries will try an ensure a secure future as well. Furthermore, orphans in developing nations are seen as a problem that needs to be solved, this makes them vulnerable to exploitation or neglect. In Pakistan, alternative care for orphans falls on to extended families and Pakistan society as the government feels puts the burden of caring for orphans on them. Although it is common for Pakistan citizens to take in orphans because of their culture and religion only orphans whose parents have died are taken in; this neglects a population of children who need alternative care either due to abuse or parents who are unable to care for their child because of poverty, mental, or physical issues. A few large international charities continue to fund orphanages, but most are still founded by smaller charities and religious groups. In developing countries, orphanages may prey on vulnerable families at risk of breakdown and recruit children to ensure continued funding.
Orphanages in developing countries are run by the state. However, not all orphanages that are state-run are less corrupted.
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people." In 2012–13, the National Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, an additional 15,506 metres of manuscript material. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT; the National Library of Australia, while formally established by the passage of the National Library Act 1960, had been functioning as a national library rather than a Parliamentary Library since its inception. In 1901, a Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was established to serve the newly formed Federal Parliament of Australia. From its inception the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library was driven to development of a national collection. In 1907 the Joint Parliamentary Library Committee under the Chairmanship of the Speaker, Sir Frederick William Holder defined the objective of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in the following words: The Library Committee is keeping before it the ideal of building up, for the time when Parliament shall be established in the Federal Capital, a great Public Library on the lines of the world-famed Library of Congress at Washington.
The present library building was opened on 15 August 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Bunning and Madden in the Late Twentieth Century Stripped Classical style; the foyer is decorated in marble, with stained-glass windows by Leonard French and three tapestries by Mathieu Matégot. The building was listed on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004. In 2012–13 the Library collection comprised 6,496,772 items, with an estimated additional 2,325,900 items held in the manuscripts collection; the Library's collections of Australiana have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. Australian writers and illustrators are sought and well represented—whether published in Australia or overseas; the Library's collection includes all formats of material, from books, journals and manuscripts to pictures, maps, oral history recordings, manuscript papers and ephemera.
92.1% of the Library's collection has been catalogued and is discoverable through the online catalogue. The Library has digitized over 174,000 items from its collection and, where possible, delivers these directly across the Internet; the Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques, maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive. The Library collects material produced by Australians, for Australians or about the Australian experience in all formats—not just printed works—books, newspapers, posters and printed ephemera—but online publications and unpublished material such as manuscripts and oral histories. A core Australiana collection is that of John A. Ferguson; the Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance. The Library's considerable collections of general overseas and rare book materials, as well as world-class Asian and Pacific collections which augment the Australiana collections.
The print collections are further supported by extensive microform holdings. The Library maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection; the Library houses the largest and most developing research resource on Asia in Australia, the largest Asian language collections in the Southern hemisphere, with over half a million volumes in the collection, as well as extensive online and electronic resources. The Library collects resources about all Asian countries in Western languages extensively, resources in the following Asian languages: Burmese, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Thai and Vietnamese; the Library has acquired a number of important Western and Asian language scholarly collections from researchers and bibliophiles. These collections include: Australian Buddhist Library Collection Braga Collection Claasz Collection Coedes Collection London Missionary Society Collection Luce Collection McLaren-Human Collection Otley Beyer Collection Sakakibara Collection Sang Ye Collection Simon Collection Harold S. Williams Collection The Asian Collections are searchable via the National Library's catalogue.
The National Library holds an extensive collection of manuscripts. The manuscript collection contains about 26 million separate items, covering in excess of 10,492 meters of shelf space; the collection relates predominantly to Australia, but there are important holdings relating to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the Pacific. The collection holds a number of European and Asian manuscript collections or single items have been received as part of formed book collections; the Australian manuscript collections date from the period of maritime exploration and settlement in the 18th century until the present, with the greatest area of strength dating from the 1890s onwards. The collection includes a large number of outstanding single items, such as the 14th century Chertsey Cartulary, the journal of James Cook on the HM Bark Endeavour, inscribed on t
Essex
Essex is a county in the south-east of England, north-east of London. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, London to the south-west; the county town is the only city in the county. For government statistical purposes Essex is placed in the East of England region. Essex occupies the eastern part of the ancient Kingdom of Essex, which united with the other Anglian and Saxon kingdoms to make England a single nation state; as well as rural areas, the county includes London Stansted Airport, the new towns of Basildon and Harlow, Lakeside Shopping Centre, the port of Tilbury and the borough of Southend-on-Sea. The name Essex originates in the Anglo-Saxon period of the Early Middle Ages and has its root in the Anglo-Saxon name Ēastseaxe, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons who had come from the continent and settled in Britain during the Heptarchy. Recorded in AD 527, Essex occupied territory to the north of the River Thames, incorporating all of what became Middlesex and most of what became Hertfordshire.
Its territory was restricted to lands east of the River Lea. Colchester in the north-east of the county is Britain's oldest recorded town, dating from before the Roman conquest, when it was known as Camulodunum and was sufficiently well-developed to have its own mint. In AD 824, following the Battle of Ellandun, the kingdoms of the East Saxons, the South Saxons and the Jutes of Kent were absorbed into the kingdom of the West Saxons, uniting Saxland under King Alfred's grandfather Ecgberht. Before the Norman conquest the East Saxons were subsumed into the Kingdom of England. After the Norman conquest, Essex became a county. During the medieval period, much of the area was designated a Royal forest, including the entire county in a period to 1204, when the area "north of the Stanestreet" was disafforested; the areas subject to forest law diminished, but at various times they included the forests of Becontree, Epping, Hatfield and Waltham. Essex County Council was formed in 1889. However, County Boroughs of West Ham, Southend-on-Sea and East Ham formed part of the county but were unitary authorities.
12 boroughs and districts provide more localised services such as rubbish and recycling collections and planning, as shown in the map on the right. A few Essex parishes have been transferred to other counties. Before 1889, small areas were transferred to Hertfordshire near Bishops Stortford and Sawbridgeworth. At the time of the main changes around 1900, parts of Helions Bumpstead, Sturmer and Ballingdon-with-Brundon were transferred to Suffolk. Part of Hadstock, part of Ashton and part of Chrishall were transferred to Cambridgeshire and part of Great Horkesley went to Suffolk; the boundary with Greater London was established in 1965, when East Ham and West Ham county boroughs and the Barking, Dagenham, Ilford, Romford and Wanstead and Woodford districts were transferred to form the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Waltham Forest. Essex became part of the East of England Government Office Region in 1994 and was statistically counted as part of that region from 1999, having been part of the South East England region.
In 1998, the boroughs of Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock were granted autonomy from the administrative county of Essex after successful requests to become unitary authorities. Essex Police covers the two unitary authorities; the county council chamber and main headquarters is at the County Hall in Chelmsford. Before 1938, the council met in London near Moorgate, which with significant parts of the county close to that point and the dominance of railway travel had been more convenient than any place in the county, it has 75 elected councillors. Before 1965, the number of councillors reached over 100; the County Hall, made a listed building in 2007, dates from the mid-1930s and is decorated with fine artworks of that period the gift of the family who owned the textile firm Courtaulds. The highest point of the county of Essex is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches 482 feet; the ceremonial county of Essex is bounded to the south by its estuary.
The pattern of settlement in the county is diverse. The Metropolitan Green Belt has prevented the further sprawl of London into the county, although it contains the new towns of Basildon and Harlow developed to resettle Londoners after the destruction of London housing in the Second World War, since which they have been developed and expanded. Epping Forest prevents the further spread of the Greater London Urban Area; as it is not far from London with its economic magnetism, many of Essex's settlements those near or within short driving distance of railway stations, function as dormitory towns or villages where London workers raise their families. Part of the s
Ragged School Museum
The Ragged School Museum is a museum in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The museum was opened in 1990 in the premises of the former Dr Barnardo's Copperfield Road Ragged School; the school opened in 1877 to serve the children of Mile End with a basic education. It was the largest of its kind at the time, it closed in 1908 when sufficient government/London County Council schools had been established to take over the work. At its height the school had more than 1,000 pupils on weekdays, 2,400 Sunday school attendees; the team continued to organise events for the local community after the school closed. The building saw use as a factory; the museum is housed in three canalside warehouses at 46–50 Copperfield Road. The buildings were saved from demolition in the 1980s by local residents and a trust set up to manage the property in 1990. In December 2016 it was awarded a £4.3m restoration grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The museum, run by volunteers, seeks to record the establishment in 1844 of the London Ragged School Union and to recreate the experience of how Victorian children would have been taught.
It features a reconstructed Victorian classroom and a typical East End kitchen from 1900. Gallery areas introduce local and cultural history of the East End; the buildings face Mile End Park. The Ragged School Museum
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 411.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
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