An authorship analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters (Andrea Nini, 2018)

[GUT]

wow thanks for posting. I didn't have time to read the whole thing but I did skim and read the conclusion. so basically its just that the dear boss and saucy jack were written by the same person with possibly the moab one also?

Any other major finding or anything new?

also, did it compare the 1896 winters coming letter? this letter is the last document in the WC file and ive always thought that it might have been from the same writer as Dear boss/saucy jack as did the police at the time.

My reading is that they limited it to those received prior to the first letters becoming widespread, to reduce the possibility of copy-cat.

[Abby Normal]

Andrea Nini
Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester, UK

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
Published: 25 January 2018


Abstract

The Whitechapel murders that terrorized London in 1888 are still remembered to this day, thanks to the legend of its unapprehended perpetrator, Jack the Ripper. In addition to the gruesomeness of the murders, the name and the persona of the killer have been popularized by the over 200 letters signed as ‘Jack the Ripper’ that have been received following the murders. The most supported theory on the authorship of these letters is that some of the earliest key texts were written by journalists to sell more newspapers and that the same person is responsible for writing the two most iconic earliest letters. The present article reports on an authorship clustering/verification analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters with a view to detect the presence of one writer for the earliest and most historically important texts. After compiling the ‘Jack the Ripper Corpus’ consisting of the 209 letters linked to the case, a cluster analysis of the letters is carried out using the Jaccard distance of word 2-grams. The quantitative results and the discovery of certain shared distinctive lexicogrammatical structures support the hypothesis that the two most iconic texts responsible for the creation of the persona of Jack the Ripper were written by the same person. In addition, there is also evidence that a link exists between these texts and another of the key texts in the case, the Moab and Midian letter.


This should be the link to the full text...

https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/llc/fqx065/4824843?guestAccessKey=531a00c9-32f7-464f-81b4-001465e0f65f

JM

wow thanks for posting. I didn't have time to read the whole thing but I did skim and read the conclusion. so basically its just that the dear boss and saucy jack were written by the same person with possibly the moab one also?

Any other major finding or anything new?

also, did it compare the 1896 winters coming letter? this letter is the last document in the WC file and ive always thought that it might have been from the same writer as Dear boss/saucy jack as did the police at the time.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ll have a read of this as soon as I get a bit of spare time but I have to admit to something. Over the years if anyone had asked me if I felt that any of the ‘ripper’ letters were genuine I’d have said that the ‘Moab and Midian’ one is the one that rings true for me. No certainties here of course. It’s just.....

[DJA]

His PhD thesis is worth a read.

Sherlock Holmes fan

[Kattrup]

Extremely interesting, highly recommended

[Sam Flynn]

Fascinating. Thanks, Jon

[John G]

Wow, this is a complex academic analysis! I agree, the conclusion is extremely interesting. Here's a link to the author: https://www.research.manchester.ac.u...drea.nini.html

[GUT]

Interesting conclusions too

[Hunter]

Ditto that GUT.
Thanks for the link JM.

[GUT]

Andrea Nini
Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester, UK

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
Published: 25 January 2018


Abstract

The Whitechapel murders that terrorized London in 1888 are still remembered to this day, thanks to the legend of its unapprehended perpetrator, Jack the Ripper. In addition to the gruesomeness of the murders, the name and the persona of the killer have been popularized by the over 200 letters signed as ‘Jack the Ripper’ that have been received following the murders. The most supported theory on the authorship of these letters is that some of the earliest key texts were written by journalists to sell more newspapers and that the same person is responsible for writing the two most iconic earliest letters. The present article reports on an authorship clustering/verification analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters with a view to detect the presence of one writer for the earliest and most historically important texts. After compiling the ‘Jack the Ripper Corpus’ consisting of the 209 letters linked to the case, a cluster analysis of the letters is carried out using the Jaccard distance of word 2-grams. The quantitative results and the discovery of certain shared distinctive lexicogrammatical structures support the hypothesis that the two most iconic texts responsible for the creation of the persona of Jack the Ripper were written by the same person. In addition, there is also evidence that a link exists between these texts and another of the key texts in the case, the Moab and Midian letter.


This should be the link to the full text...

https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/llc/fqx065/4824843?guestAccessKey=531a00c9-32f7-464f-81b4-001465e0f65f

JM

Thanks it will take a while to digest, but some serious work, seems to be getting rare lately.

[jmenges]

Andrea Nini
Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester, UK

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
Published: 25 January 2018


Abstract

The Whitechapel murders that terrorized London in 1888 are still remembered to this day, thanks to the legend of its unapprehended perpetrator, Jack the Ripper. In addition to the gruesomeness of the murders, the name and the persona of the killer have been popularized by the over 200 letters signed as ‘Jack the Ripper’ that have been received following the murders. The most supported theory on the authorship of these letters is that some of the earliest key texts were written by journalists to sell more newspapers and that the same person is responsible for writing the two most iconic earliest letters. The present article reports on an authorship clustering/verification analysis of the Jack the Ripper letters with a view to detect the presence of one writer for the earliest and most historically important texts. After compiling the ‘Jack the Ripper Corpus’ consisting of the 209 letters linked to the case, a cluster analysis of the letters is carried out using the Jaccard distance of word 2-grams. The quantitative results and the discovery of certain shared distinctive lexicogrammatical structures support the hypothesis that the two most iconic texts responsible for the creation of the persona of Jack the Ripper were written by the same person. In addition, there is also evidence that a link exists between these texts and another of the key texts in the case, the Moab and Midian letter.


This should be the link to the full text...

https://academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/llc/fqx065/4824843?guestAccessKey=531a00c9-32f7-464f-81b4-001465e0f65f

JM