ABSTRACT
The thrilling mysteriousness of the East End was accentuated after the brutal murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel in 1888 and 1889, by an unknown assailant who called himself ‘Jack the Ripper’. This brought new attention to the social and environmental conditions in East London. In Morrison’s columns for The People: A Weekly Magazine for All Classes (1888–1889), he seems to be endeavouring to counter hysteria about the area. He uses spare, almost meagre prose modulated with ironic humour to represent the ‘Cockney Corners’ of London. His rhetorical style is established here: he acknowledges, then repudiates, a reader’s sensational expectations. Yet in two important ways, he furthered a worry about the East End. In some sketches, he succumbs to the melodramatic, confronting a reader with horrors. Further, he uses a diasporic qualification of ‘Cockney’: this East End spills into the West. Morrison’s main thematic concern, the constant transformation of the city, is represented with both nostalgia and resignation. Morrison both utilises and mocks the explorations of previous writers and explorers to develop his rhetorical address and to demonstrate his understanding of the city as its own intertext.
