I'm not a butcher, I'm not a Yid......

[Sam Flynn]

Enoch Soames.

Is that Enoch Soames, the famous wrecking-ball operator?

[Robert]

Jeff, when I was about 11, I read Beerbohm's story 'A.V. Laider.' I spent the next couple of years scrutinising my palm and imagining I was doomed.

[Mayerling]

Enoch Soames.

Right on Robert. I believe it is from his book "Fungoids".

[Robert]

Enoch Soames.

[Mayerling]

Up and down the goddamn town
All over the metropolis
I wrote my curse in splendid verse
Though some don't think a lot of this.

I am acquainted with a poem from the late 1890s by a minor poet of that period. It does have similar traits and spirit to those ascribed as written by Jack that have been put down. The poet involved here mysteriously vanished about 1897. Only published two collections.

Anyway:

"Round and round the shutter'd Square
I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine.
No sound but the scrap of his hoofs was there
And the ring of his laughter and mine -
We had drunk black wine.

I scream'd, 'I will race you Master!"
"What matter," he shriek'd, "to-night which of us runs the faster?
There is nothing to fear to-night in the foul moon light"

The I look'd him in the eyes.
And I laugh'd full chill at all that he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
It was true what I'd time and again been told:
He was old - old."

There was a subsequent report he may have been seen in the next century visiting a prominent locale, but the length of time involved seems to make it improbable it was the same man.

Jeff

[Robert]

Up and down the goddamn town
All over the metropolis
I wrote my curse in splendid verse
Though some don't think a lot of this.

[Robert]

"I'm not a butcher
I'm not a Yid
Nor yet a foreign skipper
But I'm your own light-hearted friend
Yours truly
Walter Pettigrew

I couldn't think of a rhyme there, Lurcio."

"Well you're the only one who can't."

[Phil Carter]

Please excuse the diversion..but I can remember clearly the first thought I had reading through the "diary"...

"Another McCormick"

The similarity of invention struck me. The educated prose. The hint..slightest hint only.. of the over dramatic..which..as both books went on. .increased.

Just an additional, slightly linked thought on McCormick and his awful book.

Happy New Year to all 😊


Phil

[Mayerling]

It may be jovial, but the rhythms are far less sophisticated in the "extra verses" than in Macnaghten's original. In absolute poetic terms, the lines "But I ain't a chap yet to drown / In drink or Thames or sea" and "But you should know, as time will show / That I'm society's pillar" use tortuous English and are positively lame.

The phrase "the goddamn town", apart from being rather unidiomatic and decidedly inelegant, are frankly a waste of syllables. A much better option would have been "Up and down old London town", for example. Whoever wrote the extra verses, they evidently didn't expend too much time or effort on them.

Maybe he did not have the time because he was on the run - especially if he had just written the GSG a moment before he penned this.

[Sam Flynn]

We'll have to beg to differ on our opinions of this.
I think the rather comedic feel to "Up and down the goddamn town"
sits rather nicely with the almost jovial "......But I'm your own light-hearted friend
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper"

It may be jovial, but the rhythms are far less sophisticated in the "extra verses" than in Macnaghten's original. In absolute poetic terms, the lines "But I ain't a chap yet to drown / In drink or Thames or sea" and "But you should know, as time will show / That I'm society's pillar" use tortuous English and are positively lame.

The phrase "the goddamn town", apart from being rather unidiomatic and decidedly inelegant, are frankly a waste of syllables. A much better option would have been "Up and down old London town", for example. Whoever wrote the extra verses, they evidently didn't expend too much time or effort on them.

[Spider]

We'll have to beg to differ on our opinions of this.
I think the rather comedic feel to "Up and down the goddamn town"
sits rather nicely with the almost jovial "......But I'm your own light-hearted friend
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper"

It would be nice to find the source of the first two verses or to lay eyes on the original that Mcnaghten cited, though as with much of Jack the Ripper history there is little substantiated, it's always just beyond our grasp.

[Sam Flynn]

I can't say I'm convinced of McCormick "probably" having made up the other two verses as they seem to run nicely in many respects with the Mcnaghton quoted verse

Personally, I think the two extra verses don't match up to the original. Whilst the Macnaghten "I'm not a butcher" wasn't ever likely to win any prizes, at least it scans passably well. In comparison "Up and down the goddamn town" is appallingly bad, and seems to have been written by a poet of much lesser skill... which is saying something.

[Spider]

Those verses were probably made up by Donald McCormick in the late 1950s. I believe that doggerel first appears in his book The Identity of Jack the Ripper.

I can't say I'm convinced of McCormick "probably" having made up the other two verses as they seem to run nicely in many respects with the Mcnaghton quoted verse from his 1913 memoirs but of course they could have been created later.

[Pcdunn]

I have not read very much of the older books on the Ripper, I will admit. Will keep an eye out for it. Yes, source lists and bibliographies are good things to put in books if you wish to be taken seriously!

[Sam Flynn]

Donald McCormick littered his Ripper work with invented dialogue...

Indeed, Phil. He took "creative writing" to a whole new level.