I’m unsure if this is the correct place for this but I’m sure that JM will move it to a more appropriate place if he thinks it necessary.
……
As my 59th birthday gets ever nearer it occurred to me that I’ve now been interested in this case for 40 years! Who’d have thought it? A few years ago I’d have called myself a bit of a collector (books, pamphlets, magazines, graphic novels, Ripperologist, Ripperana etc) but these days I wouldn’t as I tend to pick and choose which books I buy due to the flood of crap that’s so easily accessible these days. I was having a bit of a tidy up recently and ended up going on a bit of a walk down Memory Lane. One thing that I saw were a small pile of around a dozen pamphlets that I’d acquired so I thought that I’d mention them on here expecting that some others will own them too but it’s probably the case that many won’t. Pamphlets were ‘then.’ They used to surface occasionally and we would snap them up.
The first one is called Tales Of Terror: Old Murder Cases With Black Country Connections by Aristotle Tump..volume one (I never saw a volume two) It’s from 1984.
Loretta Lay Books has one for sale at £10 (I can’t recall how much I paid at the time)
The name Aristotle Tump might be a familiar one to anyone aware of the Black Country Bugle which is a weekly local (for me) newspaper dealing largely in historical subjects. The pamphlet has a sale price of 90p on the cover and on the inside it has listed chapters like “The Kate’s Hill Murder” and “The Murder of Miser Maughan,” but this pamphlet contains just one story. It is the one which was of the most interest and was called “Did Jack The Ripper Die In The Black Country?”
It starts with a colourful run down of the murders from Tabram to Kelly that has scant regard for accuracy. Tabram was apparently killed on August 8th and Nichols on August 22nd. Stride was found by a Cabbie who saw a dark figure running away and Kelly was seen by two men in the company of a man carrying a black bag who had the look of a Doctor. Robert Anderson is described as a famous criminologist of the day. It’s then stated that a persistent rumour circulated that the Ripper had left London for the Midlands where it became hazardous for men to carry a black bag. It tells of an occasion when a Rent Collector with a moustache was chased through the Bull Ring by a howling mob.
Even in nearby Rowley Regis there was a verse set to rhyme by ‘Rhymer’ Greensell, a singer and ballad writer from Old Hill, called “The Terrible Doom of Jack the Ripper,” which told a scary tale that occurred at the Navigation pub near to the local railway station. In it the Ripper met his death down a local drainage hole known as as the ‘Sleck Hillock.’ A mysterious stranger who alighted a train at Old Hill Station on a foggy late November night took lodgings at the Navigation pub. The licensee Jethro Homer and his wife Eliza Jane described him as well-dressed and ‘gentlemanly,’ and that he was carrying a black bag. Later that night they were both kept awake by their guest’s anguished cries and moans interspersed with shrieks of “Marie Kelly!” Homer tried to rouse him and when he finally managed to he grabbed his black bag and ran from the building out into the night where he jumped over a fence straight down the deep drainage hole. The hole was later drained but the mysterious strangers body was never recovered. They found his bag though which was full of surgical instruments. The man left behind a silk top hat though which Homer kept on display as “The Ripper’s Hat.”
The locations all existed, including the pub and the landlord and so did Ryhmer Greensell so who knows, it might have been true.![Pleased](https://forum.casebook.org/core/images/smilies/clipart/pleased.gif)
…
For some unknown reason I have two of these pamphlets so if anyone wants one just pm me and I’ll send it free of charge to the first person.
……
As my 59th birthday gets ever nearer it occurred to me that I’ve now been interested in this case for 40 years! Who’d have thought it? A few years ago I’d have called myself a bit of a collector (books, pamphlets, magazines, graphic novels, Ripperologist, Ripperana etc) but these days I wouldn’t as I tend to pick and choose which books I buy due to the flood of crap that’s so easily accessible these days. I was having a bit of a tidy up recently and ended up going on a bit of a walk down Memory Lane. One thing that I saw were a small pile of around a dozen pamphlets that I’d acquired so I thought that I’d mention them on here expecting that some others will own them too but it’s probably the case that many won’t. Pamphlets were ‘then.’ They used to surface occasionally and we would snap them up.
The first one is called Tales Of Terror: Old Murder Cases With Black Country Connections by Aristotle Tump..volume one (I never saw a volume two) It’s from 1984.
Loretta Lay Books has one for sale at £10 (I can’t recall how much I paid at the time)
The name Aristotle Tump might be a familiar one to anyone aware of the Black Country Bugle which is a weekly local (for me) newspaper dealing largely in historical subjects. The pamphlet has a sale price of 90p on the cover and on the inside it has listed chapters like “The Kate’s Hill Murder” and “The Murder of Miser Maughan,” but this pamphlet contains just one story. It is the one which was of the most interest and was called “Did Jack The Ripper Die In The Black Country?”
It starts with a colourful run down of the murders from Tabram to Kelly that has scant regard for accuracy. Tabram was apparently killed on August 8th and Nichols on August 22nd. Stride was found by a Cabbie who saw a dark figure running away and Kelly was seen by two men in the company of a man carrying a black bag who had the look of a Doctor. Robert Anderson is described as a famous criminologist of the day. It’s then stated that a persistent rumour circulated that the Ripper had left London for the Midlands where it became hazardous for men to carry a black bag. It tells of an occasion when a Rent Collector with a moustache was chased through the Bull Ring by a howling mob.
Even in nearby Rowley Regis there was a verse set to rhyme by ‘Rhymer’ Greensell, a singer and ballad writer from Old Hill, called “The Terrible Doom of Jack the Ripper,” which told a scary tale that occurred at the Navigation pub near to the local railway station. In it the Ripper met his death down a local drainage hole known as as the ‘Sleck Hillock.’ A mysterious stranger who alighted a train at Old Hill Station on a foggy late November night took lodgings at the Navigation pub. The licensee Jethro Homer and his wife Eliza Jane described him as well-dressed and ‘gentlemanly,’ and that he was carrying a black bag. Later that night they were both kept awake by their guest’s anguished cries and moans interspersed with shrieks of “Marie Kelly!” Homer tried to rouse him and when he finally managed to he grabbed his black bag and ran from the building out into the night where he jumped over a fence straight down the deep drainage hole. The hole was later drained but the mysterious strangers body was never recovered. They found his bag though which was full of surgical instruments. The man left behind a silk top hat though which Homer kept on display as “The Ripper’s Hat.”
The locations all existed, including the pub and the landlord and so did Ryhmer Greensell so who knows, it might have been true.
![Pleased](https://forum.casebook.org/core/images/smilies/clipart/pleased.gif)
…
For some unknown reason I have two of these pamphlets so if anyone wants one just pm me and I’ll send it free of charge to the first person.
Comment