Law OrderAn interactive map has been designed to allow users to see where every single recorded case of murder and manslaughter has taken place in London.
MurderMap - which is partly owned by the proprietors of Court News UK and regularly updated by volunteers - is an ongoing project. It will soon detail every single case that's occurred in the capital since at least 1888, according to the MurderMap website.
The coloured pins on the map represent the different weapons used in the thousands of cases included. The map can be filtered to show murders involving knives (navy blue), guns (red), ligature (purple), poison (brown), vehicles (pink), bombs (light blue), blunt objects (turquoise), other (grey), or none (gold).
This is what central London looks like:
MurderMap
By using the filter tool, you can see that some weapons have been used a lot more than others throughout history.
Poison and bombs, for example, have rarely featured in murder and manslaughter cases.
MurderMap
However, add cases involving knives and guns, and the picture looks very different.
MurderMap
The map was designed based on information obtained from the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service and media coverage, and includes data stretching back as far as the early 19th century, according to the founder of MurderMap, Peter Stubley.
You can even see where the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper carried out his murder spree in Whitechapel in 1888.
These are the locations he struck:
MurderMap
The unidentified murderer killed five women in the impoverished suburbs of east end London in a series of murders so brutal and mysterious that it has been the subject of both folklore and rigorous historical research to this day.
The map allows users to go even deeper into the history books, though.
Here's where Spencer Perceval was shot dead in 1812. Perceval was the only Prime Minister in British history to be assassinated.
MurderMap
Perceval was gunned down in the Houses of Commons lobby by a merchant who had a grievance against the government of the time.
For each individual pin, there's a "read the case" that leads users to a detailed account of the murder including a synopsis, the status of the case, and links to further reading and information.
"As a reporter covering the Old Bailey I'd always thought that murder cases gave us a new perspective on London and its problems," Stubley told Business Insider over email. "I think I must have seen some similar maps covering parts of the US and decided it would be useful to not only put cases on a map but also add much more detail and try and follow every case from start to finish in the same way rather than just do the most famous ones."
Stubley added that the team behind the map was "wary" of the reaction it could receive, so tried to avoid senstationalising cases out of respects for the victims' families.
"On two or three occasions over the last six years we have been asked not to cover a case at all," he said. "But we hope that the site is of some use to everyone - the general public, students, academics, police, prosecutors, and the families of victims."
You can find the full interactive map here.