E X T E N S I O N CRIMINALS Crime1 was a big problem in the Victorian Age: poverty was one of the principal causes. One of the most common forms of crime was stealing: orphans and abandoned children formed pickpocket gangs2. Many novelists wrote about crime in London. We can think of Charles Dickens who wrote Oliver Twist in 1839: it is the story of an orphan boy and a gang of boy thieves3; another important writer was Arthur Conan Doyle who invented the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. Some famous characters are awful4 criminals: in The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray kills Basil Halloward, the painter5 of his picture, in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the monster kills three times and then in The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Mr Hyde kills Sir Carew. Perhaps the most famous criminal in the Victorian Age was Jack the Ripper : between the months of August and November 1888 in London s East End he committed horrific6 murders. The victims were all street women who were horribly cut with a long knife. We don t know who he really was, so the mystery continues. It is interesting to note that his crimes took place7 two years after the publication of Stevenson s novel; some people thought that Stevenson influenced the murderer s mind. Identification of criminals (1881-1882). 1. crime: illegal activities. 2. pickpocket gangs: groups of children that steal things from people s pockets. 3. thieves (pl. of thief): people that steal. 4. awful: horrible. 5. painter: an artist that makes pictures using paint. 6. horrific: terrible. 7. took place: happened. 37