With the Vigilance Committee in the East End: A Suspicious Character.

Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer generally believed to have been active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. In both the criminal case files and contemporary journalistic accounts, the killer was called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes who lived and worked in the slums of the East End of London whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer had some anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer. (read more ...)

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A scan of the first page of the notes from the interrogation of John/Eleanor Rykener at The Guildhall, London in December 1394 – January 1395.

John Rykener, also known as Eleanor (fl. 1394), was a 14th-century transvestite sex worker arrested in December 1394 for performing a sex act with another man, John Britby, in London's Cheapside. Although historians tentatively link Rykener to a prisoner of the same name, the only known facts of his life come from interrogation made by the mayor of London. Rykener was questioned on two offences: prostitution and sodomy. Prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, while sodomy was an offence against morality rather than common law, and so pursued in ecclesiastical courts. There is no evidence that Rykener was prosecuted for either crime. Rykener said that he was introduced to sexual contact with men by Elizabeth Brouderer, a London embroideress who dressed him as a woman and may have acted as his procurer. (read more ...)

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A Harlot's Progress

• ...that renowned brothel-keeper Elizabeth Needham, depicted in William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress (pictured), was pelted so severely in the pillory that she died 3 days later?
• ...that Tom Dennison got a mayor elected eight times, instigated a race riot and controlled all sale of liquor, gambling and prostitution during his 30+ year reign as Omaha's political boss?
• ...that the original name of Euphemia, empress consort of Justin I of the Byzantine Empire, was 'Lupicina', which led historian Alexander Vasiliev to associate her with she-wolves and prostitution?
• ...that in the days immediately following the revelation of her role in the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, the MySpace page of Ashley Alexandra Dupré was viewed over 9 million times?

• 2nd
  • 1940: Death of Big Nose Kate (Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings), Hungarian-born prostitute and common-law wife of Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday.
• 3rd
  • 2009: Prostitution in Rhode Island was made illegal. Rhode Island was the last state in the US to ban prostitution.
• 5th
  • 1975: Birth of Brooke Magnanti (pen-name Belle de Jour), an American born research scientist, blogger and writer, known for her book The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl.
• 9th
  • 1888: Murder of Mary Jane Kelly, an Irish born London prostitute, widely believed to be the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
• 24th
  • 1998: Death of Gerda Munsinger, an East German prostitute and alleged Soviet spy who was the central protagonist of the Munsinger Affair.
• 28th
  • 1942: Execution of Toni Jo Henry (née Annie Beatrice McQuiston), an American prostitute, murderer and the only woman ever to be executed in Louisiana's electric chair.

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