Unsolved mysteries · Curious history

The reward got so big that London began accusing itself

Between 1788 and 1790, London was gripped by fear of a man who would accost women on the street with lewd remarks before slashing their clothes and skin with a knife, hidden blades, or even spikes strapped to his knees. Attacks escalated from a handful of incidents in the first two years to dozens in early 1790, as the method shifted from stabbing well-dressed young women to a wider range of victims and stranger tactics, including flowers rigged with hidden blades. Public panic grew so intense that vigilante mobs formed, dozens of innocent men were hauled before magistrates and released, and women took to wearing copper or cork linings under their petticoats for protection. A reward organised by the philanthropist John Julius Angerstein fed a frenzy of accusations, while newspapers turned the case into a sensation, coining the "Monster" label and fuelling what historians call a full-blown moral panic.

In June 1790 a young Welsh artificial-flower maker named Renwick Williams was identified in the street by one victim and chased down by her companion, then convicted at the Old Bailey despite producing an alibi backed by his employer and co-workers. Legal confusion over which law actually applied forced a second trial months later, this time for a lesser offence, in which a combative defence barrister tried to discredit his accuser by needling her past and making her faint in the witness box. Williams was found guilty again and served six years in Newgate, emerging to marry and quietly disappear from the historical record. Throughout both trials, several of the women who had reported attacks said under oath that he was not the man who had hurt them, while the press meanwhile speculated luridly about his character, alternately painting him as a dissolute rake and hinting, through innuendo about his shared lodgings, that he was something more scandalous.

Modern historians remain divided over whether Williams was guilty of all, some, or any of the attacks, given the wildly inconsistent descriptions victims gave and the fact that assaults continued even after his arrest. Some researchers think copycat attackers, inspired by the lurid press coverage and chance of notoriety, were responsible for many of the later incidents, while others argue Williams was a convenient scapegoat railroaded by a vengeful accuser eager to claim the reward money. One cultural historian situates the case within a broader, grimly recurring pattern of men compulsively stabbing or cutting strangers for sexual gratification, drawing comparisons to similar attackers in nineteenth-century France and Germany. The episode also left a cultural trace beyond the courtroom, inspiring stage plays, satirical cartoons, and even women fabricating or self-inflicting wounds to claim the social cachet of being one of the Monster's victims.”} (ensure correct quoting)

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Women armoured themselves against the attacks: copper petticoats for those who could afford them, cork linings or a porridge pot for those who could not.

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