This remarkable woman, whose childhood as the daughter of the disgraced and beheaded Anne Boleyn was a long lesson in survival. Her mother Anne, who was many years younger than Henry VIII, was crowned queen on June 1, 1533 and executed in the Tower on May 19, 1536. Elizabeth Tudor was not much more than two and a half years old, when her mother was taken to the block. Elizabeth proved herself the true child of Henry VIII (although it was often rumoured she was a bastard) by the shrewd and dedicated way in which she restored unity to her country and made England a world power. She came to the throne in 1558. Elizabeth never married, instead playing off her suitors against each other and retaining her cherished image as Virgin Queen, and the vanity that went with it, into old age.
There is something of her father's expression in the Queen's pursed lips and uncompromising gaze in this portrait. Her magnificent silver gauze ruff and silvery dress proclaim her virginity. Her love of jewels, especially pearls, is evident in their lavish use, in her ears, around her neck and in her hair-which is of course a wig. Her pale complexion testifies to the skills of her ladies-in-waiting, who took immensepains with their royal mistress's make-up. In this portrait Elizabeth is in her fifties.
Atleast five, even seven, prostitutes are brutally murdered at London's East End neighborhood between August 31, and November 9, 1888. Jack the Ripper gets his nickname when police receive notes about the killings from someone calling himself by that name.
The attorney Montague John Druitt (who commits suicide after the last murder), a policeman, Queen Victoria's grandson the duke of Clarence, his friend John Stephen, and Sir William Gull (physician to the royal family), are all suspects of being Jack the Ripper.
Jack the Ripper is one of the first sexual criminals recorded in the history of crime. Since cases of sexual deviance were not Sherlock Holmes forte: may have been the reason he was not able to catch him. During Jack's gruesome career, terror grips London. With one policeman for every 769 inhabitants, the police force in England is less than ideal at the time. Police saturate the Scotland Yard, and vigilantes roam the streets. Ripper is never arrested despite all these efforts, and his identity remains a mystery to this day.
