Best solution?

[lynn cates]

journalist

Hello Bridewell. Thanks.

If not a journalist, then whom?

Cheers.
LC

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Just a crass notion, but Best couldn't have profited financially or enhanced his career prospects by writing DB without letting someone else in on the wheeze.

Also, if Jack the Ripper was nothing but a press invention cooked up to boost newspaper circulation, why years later were assorted top cops pretending he was real?

Regards,

Simon

[Bridewell]

Hi Lynn,

I'm actually quite sceptical about the Dear Boss having been written by a journalist at all. The style is that typically taught at the time, with no obvious individual flourishes of the sort you might expect a journalist to develop during the course of his work. As you say, the suggested motive is unconvincing.

Regards, Bridewell.

[lynn cates]

logical

Hello Simon. Sounds logical to me. I cannot quite understand the motive Cook attributes to him. In fact, a good many of the motives for the DB I've seen are beyond my comprehension.

Cheers.
LC

[Simon Wood]

Hi Lynn,

Best's handwriting must have been familiar to his press colleagues, so would he really have been dumb enough to pen the DB missive?

Regards,

Simon

[lynn cates]

Hello All. Having just finished Andrew Cook’s book on the ripper, I thought it time to discuss his thesis that Best wrote the “Dear Boss.”

In the book, Cook provides a sample of Best’s handwriting. Whilst not an expert on hands, I must confess that the sample looks closer to the handwriting in the “Dear Boss” than my three samples which include Hurlbert, Bulling and Moore.

So, here is my question. “If Best really did write the ‘Dear Boss’, is the tentative motive put forward by Cook, namely, that he did it to “spite” the Central News Agency, credible?

In my mind, this motive seems a bit cold and lifeless. Curious about what others think.

Cheers.
LC