After the second series, the show was cancelled by BBC due to low viewing figures, but Amazon Video stepped in to fund and resurrect it for a third series, similar to how Netflix funded new episodes of Arrested Development.

Although set in Whitechapel, London, the series was filmed entirely in Dublin, Ireland, using locations such as the former Clancy Barracks beside Clancy Quay and Trinity College.

Adam Rothenberg got his role simply by auditioning for the pilot, later joking on set that he didn't know how he'd ended up there.

Jerome Flynn was cast after writer Richard Warlow saw him playing Bronn in Game of Thrones and asked about casting him as Bennet Drake.

Matthew Macfadyen said he chose the project because the script felt fresh, admitting his first reaction to the title was that a Jack the Ripper story had 'been done before'.

Director Tom Shankland noted that in Victorian Whitechapel, almost any woman found murdered was attributed to the Ripper, so the show references that phenomenon without digging up or altering the canonical five Ripper murders.

A reviewer for PopMatters pointed out that an underground boxing club sequence in the first episode closely resembled a similar scene in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009).

Ripper Street was voted best show of 2013 in a UK public poll for the Radio Times TV guide, ranking ahead of Doctor Who.