Pseudo-Criticism

[Chris]

I feel that this must have been seen before, but it's new to me.

Anderson's book, Pseudo-Criticism or the Higher Criticism and its Counterfeit (1904) is available here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=oloYAAAAYAAJ

(those outside the USA may need to use a proxy server such as http://proxify.us/)

There is a reference to the Whitechapel Murders on page 15. Anderson has argued that experts tend to lack judgment, so that "no civilised community tolerates a tribunal of experts". He continues as follows:



I think I can guess which of the cases attributed to the Ripper he is referring to in relation to the blunder of an expert, though I'd be interested to hear whether others agree. But I don't really see what he's getting at when he speaks of the "theories of experts" and "Jack the Ripper" being a myth.

[lynn cates]

a myth is as good as a mile

Hello Chris. Perhaps part of what Sir Robert is saying involves the myth based upon Jack's supposed correspondence. I think that, by the time he wrote his memoirs, he had come to disbelieve that they were authentic.

He may also be accounting some of the near super human hype attributed to Jack as false.

Seems a sensible view.

Cheers.
LC

[Chris]

Lynn

Thinking about it further, you may be right that it refers to the "Jack the Ripper" correspondence. If so, the final sentence of the paragraph would show Anderson alluding to the same themes he later developed in his memoirs - "the theories of the amateur Sherlock Holmeses of that date" (while he himself knew the truth of the matter), and the fact that the correspondence was the "creation of an enterprising London journalist".

For what it's worth, I assume that the case reckoned among the Ripper's exploits - whose categorisation as an "undiscovered murder" might be explained by the blunders of experts - was that of Rose Mylett, and the blundering experts in question were the doctors who gave evidence that she had been murdered, whereas in Anderson's view she had died of natural causes.

[Tom_Wescott]

Great find, Chris. I'd never heard of this book before, either. I'm afraid many posters are missing this thread due to its ambiguous (albeit appropriate) title. I'm with Lynn in thinking that Anderson means the character of Jack the Ripper (as popularized by the press and letters) is a myth, because by that point the tophat and cloak had become his popular image. The Ripper as known by Anderson was, of course, a crazy Jew.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

which K?

Hello Tom. Are you referring to Aaron K. or Nathan K?

Cheers.
LC

[Tom_Wescott]

Neither, I'm simply referring to whomever the 'Polish Jew' was that Anderson thought was the Ripper.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

clarification

Hello Tom. Thanks for the clarification.

As you may have guessed, I just finished Fido and so my head is spinning with 23 year olds.

The best.
LC

[Chris]

As the excerpt I posted above has attracted such a lot of interest, I thought it might be worth adding a link to another reference to the Whitechapel Murders in one of Anderson's theological works, the thirteenth edition of The Gospel and its Ministry, published in 1907 (originally posted on the old boards in 2005). In it, he briefly describes his reaction to a visit to Mary Kelly's room:

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4924/18565.html

[perrymason]

Great find, Chris. I'd never heard of this book before, either. I'm afraid many posters are missing this thread due to its ambiguous (albeit appropriate) title. I'm with Lynn in thinking that Anderson means the character of Jack the Ripper (as popularized by the press and letters) is a myth, because by that point the tophat and cloak had become his popular image. The Ripper as known by Anderson was, of course, a crazy Jew.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

I would agree with you both, seems to me that its the legend thats being addressed, not denying that some form of a "Jack" was responsible for some murders that Fall.

Anderson is one of the authorities I find troubling. His emphasis on points suggest certain knowledge which other of his quotes then put into question. I believe that the day to day hands-on investigators had a much better sense of not only the crimes, but where they were occurring and within what kind of social communities the killer may have come from.

And it seems to me that there is an abundance of men assigned to the Ripper murders that had established their credibility by penetrating Fenian plots and groups in that area, not by infiltrating the immigrant Jewish population.

Best regards