A new map showing every murder to have taken place in London has shone a light on the dark side of the borough.
Author and former crime reporter Peter Stubley is the founding editor of Murdermap, a website aiming to register every killing in the city since the time of Jack the Ripper to today and beyond.
In the interactive map – which covers cases from 2008 – Newham is dotted with pins, each a certain colour that indicates the means by which the victim was murdered.
Blue pins, which represent knives, dominate the borough alongside yellows ones, which represent “no weapon” (eg, fists and feet).
Killings by guns, represented by red pins, are also scattered throughout the centre of Newham and ligature (ie, strangling), blunt objects and “other” also feature.
Cases covered by the map include the shooting of 16-year-old Samuel Adelagun by masked gunmen in Plaistow in 2010 and the assault of John Francis Breen in Stratford in October of last year.
Yorkshire-born Mr Stubley, who covered murder cases at the Old Bailey for more than a decade, has also written a book about the capital’s most infamous murderer titled 1888: London Murders In The Year Of The Ripper.
He told the East London Advertiser at the time of the book’s publication that many murderers are “ordinary people driven to the ultimate crime by circumstance, a fit of anger or a desire for revenge.”
View the map at murdermap.co.uk/murder-map.asp
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here