Conan Doyle on the Whitechapel murders 1894

[Chris Scott]

It is an often mentioned fact that the close synchrocity of the birth of Sherlock Holmes as a literary character in 1887 and the Ripper murders in 1888 make it somewhat surprising that Conan Doyle never pitted Sherlock against the Whitechapel murderer. Many have done so since - for details see;

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-riplit.html

I had not seen before Conan Doyle's thoughts about the Whitechapel murders but have found a newspaper account of an interview with him where the subject is raised and Conan Doyle gives a "Holmesian" analysis of the Dear Boss letter.
The passage in question, published in 1894, is below - I will transcribe the whole interview and get this placed in the Press Reports section
Hope this is of interest
Chris S

Milwaukee Sentinel
10 June 1894
The first person speaking is the reporter who interviewed Conan Doyle:

[Graham]

Out of interest, I just scanned the A-Z for references to Conan Doyle, and came up with the following:

1] Nigel Morland said that Conan Doyle told him that the Ripper was from the 'upper stratum of Society.

2] Conan Doyle postulated that the Ripper might have posed as a midwife, as such a person could pass unremarked if heavily stained with blood, ergo that a male murderer might have disguised himself as a midwife. This 'theory' was apparently extended by William Stewart who suggested that 'she' might have been an illegal abortionist. Sounds highly unlikely to me, though.

As we all know, Holmes solved his cases via observation and the inspired interpretation of clues, and as far as the Ripper Murders were concerned, there were no clues.

Cheers,

Graham

[Chris Scott]

Many thanks for those Graham

[DVV]

Only President Sunday could catch JtR.
Unfortunately he was born a bit too late.