Ripper Street is a British TV series set in Whitechapel in the East End of London. It begins in 1889, six months after the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. Starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, and Adam Rothenberg, the first episode was broadcast on 30 December 2012 during BBC One's Christmas schedule. It was first broadcast in the US on BBC America on 19 January 2013. Ripper Street returned for a second eight-part series on 28 October 2013.
The series begins in April 1889, six months since the last Jack the Ripper killing, and in Whitechapel H Division is responsible for policing one and a quarter square miles of East London: a district with a population of 67,000 poor and dispossessed. The men of H Division had hunted the Ripper and failed to find him. When more women are murdered on the streets of Whitechapel, the police begin to wonder if the killer has returned.
Among the factories, rookeries, chop shops (food establishments), brothels and pubs, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) and Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) team up with former US Army surgeon and Pinkerton agent Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) to investigate the killings. They frequently cross paths with Tenter Street brothel madam Long Susan (MyAnna Buring), who came to London with Jackson from America and lets him reside at the brothel. Their relationship becomes strained due to Jackson's attraction to one of her most profitable girls, Rose Erskine (Charlene McKenna), and because of his close involvement with Reid and H Division.
Reid and his wife Emily (Amanda Hale) only have one daughter, Mathilda, who was lost and presumed deceased, some months before the series begins, in a river accident during the hunt for the Ripper. The newspaper reporter, Fred Best (David Dawson), knows a dark secret about her death. Although still troubled, and despite her husband's reservations, Emily is determined to make a new life for herself by helping the fallen women of Whitechapel.
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