But just when we think we have seen the last of Jack the Ripper “murder porn”, when the conversation seems to have moved on beyond the violence and instead towards the lives of the women themselves – as with the ENO’s new opera Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel – BBC One reminds us that dead women’s bodies are still an important device in entertaining us.

Using the latest technology, Jack the Ripper – The Case Reopened promises viewers new insights into how the Ripper went about killing mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and friends. The programme’s description on the BBC website invites audiences to “understand the extraordinary risks the Ripper took to kill his victims” as it places the women on a “virtual reality dissection table”.
--------------
I struggle to see how violence in any form, whether it’s against women or men, is entertainment. Nor do I find the prospect of watching a 130-year-old murder case reopened simply to try out some modern technology on the bodies of some of the most defiled, defamed and dehumanised women in history a nice way of spending the evening. No amount of 21st-century sleuthing will ever solve the Ripper murders, a series of crimes where the majority of the documentation is missing or unreliable to begin with. Recently, Hamish Campbell, the detective leading the murder inquiry into the killing of Jill Dando, a professional with all the contemporary resources available to him, admitted that the case will never be solved. The hunt for these killers will only ever be a parlour game played for our own entertainment and at the victims’ expense. We owe it to them to finally call it a day.