As the newspaper coverage of the Whitechapel murders gathered momentum throughout the autumn of 1888, the sensationalism of some of the reporting began to attract widespread criticism.
It fed into a debate that had been going on for many years as to whether the depictions of crime and criminals in publications, such as the "Penny Dreadfuls" - which were extremely popular with the young - were influencing the behavior of some teenagers, and encouraging to commit similar acts of criminality.
When the "Dear Boss" letter gave the murderer a name that could have come straight out of the pages of a penny dreadful - "Jack the Ripper" - the murderer became an almost mythical figure and permeated the national consciousness in a way that no murderer had done in the past. and in which no murderer would ever do again.
It wasn't long before the old and the young alike were emanating the miscreant, and imitators were at large up and down the kand.
Soon this had permeated down to the young, and playing at Jack the Ripper had become a popular children's game by the end of October 1888.
Inevitably, it wasn;t long before one of these games went a little too far, almost with tragic consequences.
In this video, we look at the debate over whether violent and sensationalist literature was encouraging the young to commit similar acts of violence, before turning our attention to a playground incident that occurred in December 1888, in which twelve-year-old Oliver Thorne stabbed eight-year-old William Edward Govier during a game of "Jack the Ripper."