Investigation glossary
- FACT
- Information established by a recognised source (archive, official report, historian). In our dossiers, every fact carries this label.
- TESTIMONY
- What a person stated (deposition, memoir, letter). Testimony can be sincere and wrong; we compare it with other sources.
- RUMOUR
- A widespread but unproven claim. Our dossiers flag it as such and show what contradicts or qualifies it.
- GAME
- An element invented for the puzzle (fictional character, note, mission witness). It is always labelled and never attributes wrongdoing to a real person.
- Coroner's inquest
- A British public hearing held to establish the circumstances of a death. The 1888 depositions, reported by the press, are a key source on the Whitechapel murders.
- Board of Trade
- The British trade ministry, responsible in 1912 for ship safety rules, including the number of lifeboats required.
- CQD / SOS
- Wireless distress signals. Titanic sent both on the night of 15 April 1912.
- Prohibition
- The ban on making, transporting and selling alcohol in the United States, from 17 January 1920 to 5 December 1933.
- Volstead Act
- The 1919 federal law that implemented Prohibition and defined the banned beverages.
- Macnaghten memorandum
- An 1894 Scotland Yard internal note naming three men suspected by officers in the Whitechapel case. It is neither proof nor a charge.
- Common lodging-house
- A dormitory paid by the night, common in Whitechapel in 1888: you paid for the bed in the evening or went back to the street.
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