An interesting thought

[Phil Carter]

Hello all,

Those of us that have read a few books through the years might like to put ourselves at a moment in time. For the sake of this discussion, I chose 1967.
Of the main writers on the subjects pre 1967, which of them either enhanced the subject most, put forward the most plausible theory, entertained, or perhaps the opposite of any of these? Or perhaps something else that caught the eye perhaps? My own vote goes to one of the above, namely Leonard Matters. Although his theory, as we know it today, is pure speculation and very little fact, I maintain that his book created a popular image for the average reader, with an interesting story involved, much perhaps like Stephen Kight's did nearly 50 years later.

best wishes

Phil

[Jonathan H]

Tom Cullen's 'Authumn of Terror' (1965).

The mostly unsung, leftist literary masterpiece of this entire mystery.

It's portrait of the fiend as a deranged social reformer is beguiling and sublime, if lacking in any hard evidence whatsoever.

Yet the Marxist-tinged 'Jack the Oxonian' just did not take with the public and is forgotten -- a great pity.

In the long term, Melville Macnaghten's exposed errors about the Drowned Not-a-Doctor blasted such a gaping hole in the opera-cloaked, top-hatted physician, Edwardian paradigm that it inspired the birth of modern 'Ripperology'.

This cultural phenomenon moved on parallel but separate tracks; the Royal Watergate, the Hoax Diary, and the Predatory Artist for mass culture, and the genuine police suspects: Kosminski, Tumblety and Chapman pursued by serious researchers for serious readers.

The American journeyman writer/journalist Cullen, the first author to publish Montague John Druitt's name as Sir Melville Macnaghten's top suspect, makes a lot of errors. Some are unavoidable -- eg. no Tumblety -- and others are avoidable eg. Jack wrote the 'Dear Boss' letter, that Macnaghten was wrong in claiming that Druitt was unknown to police until 'some years after', and most excruciating of all: the made-up Backert story which tried to shoehorn Druitt into the 1888 police investigation.

But Cullen's main point that Macnaghten -- originally, before memory faded -- had access to accurate information about his preferred suspect has been enormously strengthened in the past generation by the discovery of the Littlechild Letter, which showed that there had been a contemporaneous medico suspect being hunted by Scotland Yard and therefore some kind of suspect fusion is in play; by the identification of the 'West of England MP' as a fellow, clubby Etonian and a Druitt clan near-neighbour; and, I argue, that George Sims' writings on the 'Drowned Doctor' are a portal into the police chief's knowledge of Druitt -- which shows that Macnaghten once knew that the Druitt brother, in 1888, was frantically searching for his missing sibling.

[sdreid]

Matters would be my second choice for the reasons you state with Stewart a close third since his is about it for the 50th anniversary but Cullen gets my vote. His book was the last with living witnesses and bridged the gap between the melodramatic early works and the more serious case studies that came after.