Stabbed in the Butt: The Mass Hysteria Behind the London Monster of 1790 and the Tragic Case of Rhynwick Williams
At the end of the eighteenth century between 1788 and 1790 there was a man on the loose roaming the streets of London who attacked unsuspecting beautiful aristocratic women at will. The penny press of the Georgian Era quickly dubbed the assailant “The London Monster” and over fifty such attacks were reported in just under a two year span. The London Monster became a cause celebre almost overnight. Armed vigilante groups formed in all of the city's neighborhoods; well known politicians, authors, actors and entertainers all called upon the city government to do something, anything , to capture the fiend that was terrorizing London's most lovely ladies and bring him (or them) to justice. All of the city’s well-to-do ladies were up in arms and sent into a near panic, the likes of which would not be equaled again until the 1880’s during Jack the Ripper’s reign of murderous terror. The working class and London’s poor avidly read the scandalous reports, with undert