"That man...the Ripper! His brutality. How many? Seven? At most? And his name all set to haunt this city for thousand years. I have already tripled his score. Think how long they'll talk of me!"
Aiden Galvin: Don’t come your charitable English babble with me, It is a ventin’ designed to suit your purposes and ambition. This task you’d send me out is not for ideas but for your own advancement and profits.
Dr. Charles Broadwick: Perhaps, but it is that profit you’d see to New York. Before then however half of the London county council waits on Sebastian Ferranti’s word, and on your dynamite. Your last chance to spill the blood of British politicians, and manage to extinguish my competitors.
Dr. Charles Broadwick: Perhaps, but it is that profit you’d see to New York. Before then however half of the London county council waits on Sebastian Ferranti’s word, and on your dynamite. Your last chance to spill the blood of British politicians, and manage to extinguish my competitors.
—"Dynamite and a Woman"
Whitechapel has faced many villains in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s rampage. Even in this Wretched Hive, some characters stand out as particularly monstrous.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Series 1
- "I Need Light": Sir Arthur Donaldson first shows up mere months after Jack's rampage, yet manages to be a depraved monster in his own right. He was a Serial Rapist who abducted women by drugging them, then he would take them to a secret location where he would rape them before strangling them to death. Next, to remove suspicion from himself, he would mutilate them so they would appear to be new victims of Jack. His monstrous nature also extends to his lone servant, whom he would force to film him commit his atrocities all so he could watch them in his spare time. The abuse that Donaldson gave to his servant was so bad that the servant eventually killed himself. In the end, while Donaldson was only the first felon Detective Inspector Edmund Reid encountered since his search for The Ripper, it was this case that convinces Reid to let go of his pursuit, so he can find other criminals lurking in the streets of Whitechapel.
- "In My Protection": Carmichael, the adult leader of a gang of child criminals, directs his gang in carrying out robbery, murder, and rape, then gives them tattoos as "trophies". After one of his boys, Thomas Gower, brutally murdered an elderly man on his orders, Carmichael sends his gang to break him out, personally beating Mr. Eagles to death. After Captain Homer Jackson and Susan Hart investigate him, Carmichael holds both of them hostage, only letting them go so they can lead him to Gower, before leading an attack on the orphanage in an attempt to eliminate the evidence against him. Always smoking a pipe before committing crimes and giving himself "trophies" for them, Carmichael was a crime lord who took pleasure in his work.
- "The King Came Calling": Claxton is the manager of a Whitechapel bakery, where he uses his position to contaminate the bread with lethal poison before distributing them to the commonwealth. This was done in a manner that would looked like an outbreak of cholera, and results in dozens of deaths of men, women, and children in a matter of days, with Detective Reid's wife Emily nearly another victim. When Reid finally captures Claxton and ask him why he did all this, Claxton's response was that Jack took attention he felt was deservedly his and by killing many people, even bragging of tripling The Ripper's total, he would finally regain all that fame.
- "What Use Our Work?": Sir Victor Silver may look like a gentle man, but in truth he is anything but. Long ago, he was suspected of being Jack, but the issue was dropped when he thought to have died in a boat accident. However, he managed to survive, and continued his business in kidnapping women and having them shipped to South America as sex slaves, using his superficial charm to gain their trust before luring them to his family's estate, where he would shackle them to a bed for days before drugging them and locking them in small boxes to be sent overseas. Overall, while Silver was just one of many Ripper suspects, he was evil enough to match Jack's himself.
Series 2
- "Dynamite and a Woman": Dr. Charles Broadwick, despite knowing how unstable and dangerous direct current is compared to alternating current, wants to have the entire city of London use the former, just so he could profit off of it, completely uncaring how many people could get killed because of these currents. In an effort to hide the truth from the public, he frees Aiden Galvin, while killing the police officer transporting him. He then has Galvin plant a bomb at one of his colleague's room, before framing the Irish Republican Brotherhood for this. Once this succeeds, Broadwick send him to place a bomb at Whitechapel University, where all of his colleagues will be in one place for him to kill. It was also revealed that this was not only time Broadwick collaborated with Galvin, as he did so a couple years ago where he had 12 innocent people killed, then pinned all the blame on his cohort, while he walked free. While Galvin has a daughter whom he genuinely cares for, Broadwick has no such qualities, and is solely defined by his greed, which to satisfy he has killed many and would kill many more.
- "A Stronger Loving World": Gabriel Cain was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, before he was kicked out for his radical beliefs that the world is corrupt. He then formed a cult solely based around his ideology. He brainwashes all of his followers to carry out suicide attacks to spite those whom he believed had wronged him. These tactics included having one of them to burn himself alive in a Catholic Church full of innocents, framing the Hebrews of Whitechapel for it; to having another slit his own throat in front of the detectives investigating him. He also has his daughter, Bella, marry Detective Inspector Bennet Drake, so that he could recruit him into the cult in the near future. When Drake discovers the cult as well as the revelation that Cain had manipulated Bella, his own daughter, into have sex with him to impregnate her with his child, Cain captures him and attempts to have him as well all of his followers—including Bella—die by drinking poisoned wine as a way to destroy the evidence against him, at which point he could form another cult in hiding. Ultimately, his depraved acts prove that Cain himself is just as morally corrupt, if not more so, as the world he is claiming to be fighting against.
Series 3
- Ronald Capshaw, the solicitor of Obsidian Estates, serves as the Arc Villain of the season's first half, where he, along with co-conspirator Susan Hart, organize a plan to rob the latter's father of his cargo train, carrying $350,000 in unclaimed bearer bonds. The plot worked but resulted in an accident killing 55 innocents, with Capshaw only concerned if he could profit from this travesty or if he might get caught. He has his accomplices meet him in a warehouse, only to betray them, only keeping Hart because she is useful. When hearing of Edmund Reid still investigating the incident, Capshaw finds out about Reid's long-lost daughter, Mathilda, goes to her location, kills one of her caretakers, and manipulates Reid into killing the other caretaker by lying that they killed her, when the truth is that he'd kidnapped her. He also tries to kill Mathilda himself, only for Hart to intervene and try to send her away from Whitechapel, only for her to escape from both of them. Furious, Capshaw sends his men to find and kill her while he threatens to expose Hart's part in the train incident if she ever disobeys him again. Through this blackmail he forces Hart to attempt to kill Reid. While Susan Hart had plans to use the stolen money to gentrify Whitechapel and was morally appalled on what she had done, Ronald Capshaw had no such reason or remorse for any of his actions and was just a greedy sociopath more than happy to cause the deaths and misery of many if he could benefit from it all.
- "Your Father My Friend": Harry Ward is a teenage pimp of young girls. Making a business of kidnapping girls, Harry would pimp them out to be raped by groups of older men, having made a good living off of this. After finding Inspector Reid's daughter Mathilda on the streets, Harry feigned kindness to her in order to lure her back to his base where he would try to rape her himself before planning on selling her to be gang-raped by a group of men. Despite his young age, Harry Ward is one of the worst criminals lurking the streets of Whitechapel.
Series 4
- "Some Conscience Lost": Cornelius Wilde, Director of Whitechapel Hospital, seemingly cares about sick children and tries to cure them of their illnesses. In reality, he kills them using poison, resulting in excruciating and painful deaths before hiding their bodies under the floors of the lodging house. Poisoning children for two months, Wilde tries to cover up his crime by accusing the mother of one of the children he killed as being crazy, and when Inspector Reed confronts him about his atrocities, Wilde tries to justify himself by claiming that the children he killed were "useless" for society anyway and that he simply accelerated their "pathetic" lives. Having taken the lives of countless children, due to not wanting to spend money and effort on them, Wilde takes laziness to a truly monstrous level.
