How did you get interested in Jack.

[packers stem]

Think I was about 11 and on holiday so staying up a bit later than normal and an old ripper film was on the little telly we had in the caravan... Remember asking my mum ' was there really a jack the ripper' so I think it was the name. Not sure what film it was but it was years before murder by decree

[c.d.]

I am embarrassed to say that it all started by watching an interview with Patricia Cornwell. I was really impressed with the "evidence" that she had come up with regarding Walter Sickert. I was also intrigued by her claim that she had used modern forensic techniques to "solve" the case.

c.d.

[Robert St Devil]

It was the Michael Cain movie in 1988.

Me too. thats when they thought it was the... Oh well, we know. I just remember Michael Caine , mad as hell at a bunch of constables, yelling, "if you see something, WRITE IT DOWN!"

I forgot about the case until i found casebook this past summer.

[Paddy]

I became aware of Jack the Ripper when I was about 9 or so. My nan used to tell me all about the murders in great detail and then say "and they've never found him", then she would send me home terrified. I used to pass Berner street in the early 60s on my way to school and think what a gloomy little street it looked that sloped down to the Thames. At that time I didn't know about its connection to JTR.

When I started doing our family tree I discovered my gg was a preacher on Gunn Street and commited suicide by cutting his throat in 1890. I wondered if he could have been connected and started researching. I even found small things that could have made it seem possible ( I am a bit imaginative). Then I found it was Gunn street in Blackfriars (now Webber street) not the Whitechapel one.

By researching JTR because of him I then discovered my great uncle was a detective on the case (that was very unexpected, although I did know he was a policeman) So I was drawn in even more. Most of the London children knew about JTR, just like when we went hop picking most kids knew the story of the White Lady often told around the fires. We all liked horror tales !

The first film I saw when young was with Robert MItcham as The Lodger, I thought that was about Jack and it scared me..
Pat..........

[Baynes]

As a young boy my parents took me on a ripper tour with the esteemed Martin Fido.

It was my first time in London, first time in a large international city. The wonder never left me and neither did the questions of how someone so vile could pass undetected.

I found this site many years ago and have followed the goings in here ever since.

[Hercule Poirot]

Like many of you, I've heard about the Ripper when I was young but the horrific death of each of his victims always kept me from wanting to look further into the case.

Some 5-6 years ago, I kept having this dream about a predator who was searching for easy preys for him to kill, watching them late at night in bars, discotheques, discretely following them to learn more about them, who they spoke to, where they lived, in order to measure how easily they would fall into his traps and where to set them up. Was I dreaming about a potential dark side I had and kept hiding during many years or was it my mind imposing upon me imaginary elements and condemning me to expel them in order to preserve my sanity? Months later, the only way I believed I could stop having these dreams was to write something related to them.

I decided upon a historical fiction.

Since it involved a serial killer, I either had to create one or use one who actually existed. Jack the Ripper became the best candidate non only because he was so different from any other serial killer but also because I was fascinated by the Victorian era. Casebook.org became my hide-out where I lurked and lurked as a predator would have. I turned into a sponge picking up every piece of information I tought I could eventually use.


Those dreams I had ended but the task of writing this fictional story had just begun, me totaly ignoring what I was getting into. It is now almost completed.

Hercule Poirot

[Pcdunn]

Never know where your inspiration will come from-- many authors attribute their works to dreams or dream imagery. A noted example of the latter is Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he dreamed of a two-faced man, and was inspired to write "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".

Good luck with the book, Sir John!

[Fantomas]

Hi, I'm Fantomas from Glasgow. Just joined this week. I have loved Victoriana since 'The Water Babies' movie and Jeremy Brett's definitive Holmes. Aged eleven, watching the Waddell presented 'Black Museum' Thames programme and Ustinov's sound, if flawed, Kosminski-citing 'In Search of Jack The Ripper' - in 1988 - I was hooked on JtR-era-iana.
My indie-rock/metal fan years saw me embrace Knight's Royal Conspiracy and Campbell/Moore's (flawed but psychotropic) 'From Hell' which I love (but ill believe) like an unruly brother.
Provincial university here in Scotland engendered an undergraduate grounding in social history and appreciation of the bricks, mortar, muck and grass of a place and time and its people.
Throw in growing admiration of Rumbelow and obsession with the Rippercast and its socio-historiographical idiom and I was led to casebook.org.
Proud to have been granted membership. Hope I don't stray too far from the reservation!

[Hercule Poirot]

...Good luck with the book, Sir John!

Thank. The amusing thing about working on my fictitious tale is that sometimes while re-reading it, I find myself thinking out loud and saying: "Hell, this is probably what actually happened". That's when the time comes for me to pour myself another double Bloody Ceasar. LOL

Cheers,
Hercule Poirot

[Shaggyrand]

It started with old horror movies on the local TV station, which eventually lead to an interest in true crime and documentaries, which led to an interest in unsolved true crime and that eventually led to a passing interest in Jack. But what really got me hooked wasn't the crime itself but an appendix in Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's From Hell, a brief overview of the theories and a description of Ripperology as a blood sport, called Dance of the Gull Catchers. Just fascinated by all the extra around the killings.
A newer poster than myself has mentioned working on a doc about Ripperologists. I wish him luck because I've tinkered with a similar idea for years, on and off for about 20 years now, and always find myself so wrapped up in the arguments and theories that I never get anywhere. But I have a hard time focusing when there's so much interesting involved.

[GUT]

Hi, I'm Fantomas from Glasgow. Just joined this week. I have loved Victoriana since 'The Water Babies' movie and Jeremy Brett's definitive Holmes. Aged eleven, watching the Waddell presented 'Black Museum' Thames programme and Ustinov's sound, if flawed, Kosminski-citing 'In Search of Jack The Ripper' - in 1988 - I was hooked on JtR-era-iana.
My indie-rock/metal fan years saw me embrace Knight's Royal Conspiracy and Campbell/Moore's (flawed but psychotropic) 'From Hell' which I love (but ill believe) like an unruly brother.
Provincial university here in Scotland engendered an undergraduate grounding in social history and appreciation of the bricks, mortar, muck and grass of a place and time and its people.
Throw in growing admiration of Rumbelow and obsession with the Rippercast and its socio-historiographical idiom and I was led to casebook.org.
Proud to have been granted membership. Hope I don't stray too far from the reservation!

ẂLCOME TO CASEBOOK FANTOMAS

[SirJohnFalstaff]

Never know where your inspiration will come from-- many authors attribute their works to dreams or dream imagery. A noted example of the latter is Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he dreamed of a two-faced man, and was inspired to write "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".

Good luck with the book, Sir John!

thank you.

This is a very interesting thread, by the way.

[Fantomas]

ẂLCOME TO CASEBOOK FANTOMAS

Thanks!

[Rosella]

^ I was a young teenager growing up in Norfolk, but in my early teens I was taken around the ripper sites by an uncle; don't know why, maybe because I've always been a history buff. That was in the early 1960's and quite a bit of East London was still in situ then. After that I read everything I could about Jack including the inevitable Cullen's 'Autumn of Terror' and I was hooked, for ever.

By the way, welcome Fantomas!

[Steadmund Brand]

This is a question I get asked so often...and it's not an easy one to answer.

I was 14 in 1988 so I remember countless TV shows, and books and movies and newspaper articles etc from the time, and I started reading so many books... and the fact that none of the books agreed with each other made me at first think how silly it all was.. then the Peter Ustinov "secret identity of Jack the Ripper" came on.. .and I was hooked.. something about that "debate" captured my imagination, plus the fact that it didn't fixate on one suspect.. but several....then I started " seriously" researching it ( as serious as a 14 year old can)

That and the fact that I have always been a movie buff, from a very young age I was addicted to "old movies" and silent films (yeah every member of my family thought, and still do, think I'm a freak) and when I started getting deeper into the case, it reminded me of Hitchcock’s the Lodger and Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, started re-watching films and searching out other films with “the Ripper”

Steadmund Brand