Ripper Street, Homosexuals and Jews
The BBC's hit series 'Ripper Street' not unsurprisingly has numerous references to jews being set in late nineteenth century London, which was - like New York, Berlin, Munich, Vienna and to a lesser extent Paris - being flooded with Ashkenazi jewish migrants from waves of localized popular anti-jewish violence in the Russian Empire (aka the pogroms). However there is also much in the series that is completely unhistorical.
A good example of this is the common theme in relation to homosexuality being a harmless thing that shouldn't be prosecuted. This is brought out in episode three of season one - 'The King Came Calling' - where the lead character Inspector Reid is looking for commonalities between several victims: the thing that they have in common is that they go to a 'Molly House' - basically a transvestite brothel - and makes it known that he has no issue (in spite of the letter and spirit of the law informing him otherwise) with what is going on there. A similar sentiment is echoed by Reid in episode five of season two - 'Threads of Silk and Gold' - where he uncovers a homosexual prostitution ring being run out of the post office and states more than once that 'it is wrong to criminalize love'.
These are late twentieth century ideas and norms: they were exactly the kind of thing that was considered well beyond the pale of normal sentiments - especially of a senior police officer - in late nineteenth century London. Echoing such sentiments at the time to his subordinates would leave Reid in all sorts of hot water since he would have faced an investigation and dismissal for condoning criminal acts.
Similar prevails in the relationship to jews exhibited by Reid in the series when in episode two of series one - 'In My Protection' - we are introduced to a fourteen year old boy - named Thomas Gower - who has murdered a toy maker by the name of Ernest Manby. Despite his name Gower is actually a jewish orphan (discovered when a policeman is searching him and discovers he is circumcised) who was taken in by the jewess Deborah Goren who runs a jewish orphanage all by herself and never turns anyone away (even gentiles as we later find out).
Gower is portrayed as being the victim of a scouse thug named Carmichael who has gotten him to commit murder - among other crimes - on his orders. Gower is never accused of actually doing wrong by the episode per se, but rather is simply the victim all the time: it is even implied - through the auspices of Goren (who is portrayed similarly to Gower as being an eternal victim of irrational anti-jewish prejudice) - that Gower's parents were killed by the evil Russian secret police: the Okhrana.
We return to the Okhrana and their anti-jewish schemes in episode six of season one - 'Tournament of Shadows' - with an allegedly peace-loving jewish anarchist (which is about as unhistorical as you get) named Joshua Bloom being killed by a bomb set by an Okhrana agent named Peter Morris with the intention of implicating Bloom in the violent turn (that Morris is orchestrating) of the London Dock Strike. Later we are shown the Russian ambassador confronted by Reid talking about the 'jew bastards' and how perhaps now they are causing problems in Britain then the British government will finally do something about them (with the implication: 'like the Russian government has been doing' aka launch pogroms).
Essentially here we are see the juxtaposition 'Ripper Street' is using that is derived from a rather one-sided reading of pre-1980s histories of the pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 1880s to 1890s and a simple not reading of any histories - other than possibly Norman Cohn's work on the Protocols of Zion (which significantly vilifies the Okhrana) - of the policies of the Russian Empire on jews or on the Okhrana. Neither position suggested by 'Ripper Street' is particularly historical considering that anti-jewish sentiment was extremely high in Whitechapel at the time due to a variety of different factors (something 'Ripper Street' categorically fails to even factor in to their characters): not least because the jews refused to assimilate, acted like they owned the place and also often had extreme left-wing and anti-British views.
It was these sort of experiences at the hands of jews that gave rise to anti-jewish organizations - such as the British Brothers League - operating primarily out of inner city London areas that were infested with Ashkenazi jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Had the Ashkenazi jews of Whitechapel been half as accommodating and assimilated as 'Ripper Street' makes out (especially in episode six of season two: 'A Stronger Loving World'): then you wouldn't have had these same organizations gaining large numbers of recruits there at the same time.
Simply put: Ripper Street in spite of its pretensions to some kind of historicity is actually pure fiction and imbued with the prevalent attitudes of a century after the era that it attempts to portray.