Both the BBC One and BBC America Ripper Street websites have been updated with far more content, including videos, character backgrounds and historical references to Whitechapel and Jack The Ripper.

Here is more information about Inspector Reid (played by Matthew Macfadyen): 

The boss of H Division, Reid was one of the lead detectives on the Ripper investigation (working side by side with the more historically celebrated Frederick Abberline). But unlike Abberline, when the hunt for the killer was given up in early 1889, he didn’t return to Scotland Yard. He stayed exactly where he had been for the last two years, policing the same streets – the streets down which he hunted the Ripper, the streets which will always remind him of his failure.

He has known tragedy – the full details of which are known only to himself. He carries a serious injury to his left shoulder that attests to this. Only a very few know how he came by the wounds. None of them talk about it because what they see is a man fighting to find someone from his past – someone many believe to be a ghost.

Because – and this is crucial to his belligerent breed of optimism – Reid has to believe a better day is coming. As such, he has become both committed technophile and progressive atheist. The world – its many despairs – will be healed by science and freedom from suspicion. Any time he allows himself away from work, he is to be found sitting attentive in the lecture halls of The Royal Academy or The Royal Institute; the knowledge he gains here aiding him in his investigations. But this knowledge comes at a price – the ever growing conviction that, had science and technology only moved faster, he would have found the Ripper. This haunts him too. He wrestles to ensure that ignorance – or innocence – will never stand in his way again.