What do we know about this character?

[Sickert]

Lewis Carroll

I have never heard any real evidence that Lewis Carroll was the Ripper. I think this is just one of those silly ideas that do the rounds.

[RavenDarkendale]

The whole idea of Carroll as suspect probably stems from his highly controversial photographs of children as naked fairies, despite his efforts to make sure they were NOT graphic by any means and that he had the children's parent's permission to take them.

As for anagrams, Carroll was a brilliant mathematician, an excellent poet, and a man fond of word games, but if he had any anagrams in his work they would be perfect, no need to change any wording, and far more cleaver than the ones supposedly found.

If we are to trust to vague anagrams, perhaps we should be suspecting Dave Barry of something untoward as he is a master at finding rather raw anagrams in the names of public persons. For example Spiro Agnew becomes Grow A Penis. Jack the Ripper becomes Pa Chit Jerk Rep And so on and so on.

The theory is built out of bricks without straw on a foundation of quicksand. Totally bonkers!

[R Wallace]

I've commented already in a prior post that the notion that Dodgson had alibis for the nights of the murders because his diaries placed him at Oxford or Eastbourne. This argument is ludicrous and aimed at those who don't know the rail system at the time or haven't read my book which discusses it.

Oxford and Eastbourne are about 60 miles from London and during the period were on prime railroad lines, terminating at stations connecting the underground system. Current estimates are that the train trips are about an hour but could have been three to four hours in the 1880s. And they ran at night. In any event, they served the needs of a bustling London night life. Charles Dodgson was more than a frequent user of the rail system, was in and out of London sometimes several days (or nights) a week as he frequented the theater. While at times he would stay over night in London, there is also evidence that he returned sometimes on the night train. There are also gaps in the diaries such that we don't know where he was over several days. The murders were all committed late at night, well within the window of opportunity made available by the rail system, even if he had been elsewhere during the day.

As to the diary entries, in my book I never questioned the veracity of the entries but suspect that he may have written entries for "the past few days" on a single day as he "caught up" with his diaries. This is not untypical of diarists. There was no indication that he had them with him except when he was at Oxford, Eastbourne, or Guildford (site of the family home and also a short rail ride from London); it appears he did not carry them with him to complete entries placing him in London or other locations although he would write about trips taken that day or previous days.

It is my contention that the notion that the diary entries preclude him from being in London on the nights of the murders is ludicrous.

[R Wallace]

To dag:

I guess congratulations are in order for solving the "Conundrum." How you found it would be an interesting story.

In response to your inquiry: As many have pointed out, anagrams are interesting things. I think it's true that just about any paragraph can be reassembled into just about anything else; the problem is getting something that makes sense. When Harper's did it's review of The Agony, it appears to have done it in conjunction with a (debunking) letter to the editor in the following issue which rearranged one of the paragraphs in the review. The anagram was technically "a statement" (though it missed one letter) but it was nonsense, as it implicated me in the murder of OJ Simpson’s wife and others absurdities. I decided to examine "Christmas Greetings," originally published in 1867, solely because it appeared at the end of Nursery Alice, a particularly angry rendition of Alice and published in 1890, after the Ripper murders. That I got a "confession" was, of course, pure coincidence – but curious. Was Dodgson aware of it? Any guess would be pure speculation – all part of the conundrum.

[R Wallace]

To Lord-Z:

You were not the only one to respond with outrage at my books, but not all did. There's a big difference between being recognized and not, but the first book was on the short list to be recognized by, of all organizations, the Children's Literature Association, in its year of publication.

I'm not sure that your certainty regarding my motivation in pursuing the themes I did in the anagrams is well founded. I did a great deal of research before concluding that there was much more anger behind Carroll's works than met the eye and how that anger might be expressed. A big problem with the books is that they leave the seeds for criticism so evident – the anagrams that don't measure up to being either "very worthy" or "worthy." And you and Karoline Leach and many others have jumped on them while ignoring the good ones; perhaps we all come with motives. I think the presence of the less worthy ones reflects continuing doubts on my part that I was on the right track. No one has chosen to critique either Jabberwocky which interpretation originated with others (except for the missing 3 letters, which I corrected) or the anagram about his mother, whose original description others have found suspect.

In any event, both books represent a trip off the beaten path.

[dag]

Jack the Ripper Conundrum

Richard:
It's good to see you posting here and defending your theory about Lewis Carroll. I've read your Light-hearted Friend several times since it straddles three interests of mine: JtR, Lewis Carroll and anagrams.

Here are two of my own Lewis Carroll anagrams:

"Lewis Carroll, Photographer of Children: Four Nude Studies" edited by Morton N. Cohen =
Innocent writer, but horror of Charles Dodgson's pedophilia fully documented here.

"Curiosa Mathematica: Pillow Problems Thought Out During Sleepless Nights" by Charles Dodgson =
Insomnia bugged Lewis Carroll, th-thus that hapless guy in dog collar composed this superb tome.

(Note the affectionate appearance of LC's stutter in the second anagram.)

Richard: I wonder if you would care to comment on the following. In July 2005 I had an article published in Ripperologist magazine in which I solved the Lewis Carroll anagram conundrum you posed in chapter 16 of Light-hearted Friend. For readers who may not be familiar with this conundrum, you constructed a long anagram from an unidentified Carroll publication and stated that in your view this anagram offered an accurate description of the JtR murder spree. The anagram began "I strangled Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes...". Teasingly, you withheld the source of the anagram.

I identified the source of this anagram as Carroll's poem 'Christmas Greetings from a Fairy to a Child' but I pointed out that the anagram can't possibly have been constructed by Carroll as a statement about the Ripper murders since the poem was written in 1867 - more than twenty years before the murders took place!

[Lord-z]

First, Mr. Wallace, I wish to apologize for my almost unreasonable anger early in this thread. I reacted to a reasonable question in a way that, I see now, personally insulted you and people who take stock in your theory, and I feel bad about that. I disagree with it, but there is no cause for childish insults.

Anyway, I guess most of our problem with your theory is, anything can be made anagrams. You went to the task with a specific goal, to find filthy and violent anagrams. If it can even be called an anagram if you remove and change letters. If the college-kids that made the OJ anagram went through your books with the same goal, I am certain they could find a lot of similar themes of twisted sexuality, violence and hatred. Especially if they could get away with sentences that only barely makes grammatical sense, like you attempt. If Carroll did hide anagrams in his works, I would certainly hope that he would be able to come up with better sentences than "Few fellow dons give phony love to mouth man's wet arse", which sounds more like a japanese sentence pulled through an online translator a few times too many.

[R Wallace]

This will be my last post until others join in. But I indicated in my first post I'd comment on the issue of Dodgson being in Oxford or Eastbourne during the murders and that these facts represented an alibi. This notion is, of course, preposterous, based either on intentional deception or ignorance of Dodgson's life. For he used the rails all the time from both places to attend the theater and make other trips to London, sometimes staying over at a hotel, often returning on a night train. This is acknowledged by all credible biographers and verified frequently in the hand-written diaries, which I had the privilege to read from beginning to end.

I was nearly upended in my case against Dodgson when I read in the diaries (an entry not in the published diaries) that he was in Eastbourne with child friend Isa Bowman during one of the murders. In fact I was prepared to abandon the case since my argument that he had "opportunity" looked like it was now severely weakened. Then I read a convoluted entry which appeared that he had started writing (in ink, as he always did) and tried to find a way to bring to an end. The entry clearly indicates that the children often had sleep-overs with returning families and, in fact, did not always stay the night with him. He was particularly upset that a sleep-over had been requested so soon after his guest's arrival. The notion that he was allowing these more often than he liked strongly suggested that he still had the opportunity to find another way to spend the evenings when he felt "abandoned" by his guests, who clearly were saying to him that they preferred to be with peers than a middle-aged man.

In the end, there is nothing to keep him from having been in London during the nights of the murders. There is also nothing that places him there, but isn't that true of all of the suspects? Isn't that a fundamental problem in attempting to solve this case, but a problem which doesn't keep would-be sleuths from trying.

Finally, as to my books, the Casebook web site indicates that the books are available in hard copy. They really are not; I have just a few copies available directly from me. Ebook copies are available at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rdwallace27 and hopefully will be available as ebooks through major outlets shortly. An email address is available at that site.

[R Wallace]

To follow up with my earlier post, both of my books certainly upset the defenders of Lewis Carroll and/or just those who love his books. But he did tell a child friend about two years after publication of Alice in Wonderland that the book was about "malice." My sense is that his readers reacted: "That adorable scamp, playing with words with his little friend." And when I suggested he was being serious, their reaction was: "That saint didn't have a deceitful bone in his body; he couldn't have really meant it." So my advice to those who don't want their view of LC to be challenged: "Don't read my books." I had a college friend who declined my gift of my first book precisely because he thought I was a good researcher and would spoil his lifetime of enjoyment with the Alice books.

Regarding anagrams, critics of them have never commented on the great effort in my books to identify the theme of a possible anagram from the works of others -- biographers, psychological studies, etc. -- before working on a possible anagram. But they are not just projections. It was Derek Hudson (the family's chosen biographer who gave him much access and identified LC's description of his mother as having been produced by him) who indicated that the description was "unreal" and looked like a "construct." Others agreed. So, I worked out an anagram that described her as the opposite of what LC had created, and, I believe, came to the truth.

Several studies by psychologists far more qualified than I had identified the underlying theme of Jabberwocky as masturbatory in nature; I valued their opinions and worked to solve an anagram which was consistent in theme and succeeded. I also used what I believe was LC's clue that the first verse was an anagram.

As a general rule -- clearly laid out in the books -- LC left clues as to what was likely an anagram, with my favorite being the inappropriate reaction (usually shock or discomfort) of scene characters to an italicized comment or sentence by another character, but a reaction totally consistent with the anagram to be derived.

When Vanity Fair reviewed The Agony of Lewis Carroll (my recollection was that publication was delayed, perhaps until the college scamps had converted one of MY paragraphs into an anagram), they followed publication with a "letter to the editor." In their anagram they did pretty well connecting me to the O.J. Simpson (alleged) murders, but then lost their way by indicating that I had written the works of Shakespeare and Bacon, preposterous, of course. They proved their point that you can make ANYTHING by rearranging letters, but making anything is the lazy man's game. It's a little harder to adhere to a theme, especially one identified by others, and to have full consistency from beginning to end as the best of my anagrams do.

But are they evidence? How many does it take to constitute evidence?

[R Wallace]

Mark:
"Amusing" is not the word I would choose given the subject and the damage I believe was done to both Dodgson and the victims. I do take it seriously but, as to the certainty of my inferences, that's another matter. I'm fully aware of the risks in anagrammatic construction, and, that some are better than others. I did tackle what some would describe as a speculative task.

As to Colin Wilson, he was not a sudden convert to my conclusion, but did think the book good enough to be presented and was willing to lend his name toward that end.

[m_w_r]

Richard,

Welcome to the asylum.

Colin Wilson didn't exactly subscribe to your theory, though, did he? If I remember rightly he was on the cusp of a Maybrick-was-the-Ripper phase at that point. I have all due respect for Colin, but I wouldn't unhesitatingly use him as a yardstick of responsible Ripper theorising.

What do you make of this comment, found here in the short review of your book on this site?

Its actually quite an amusing book, though I find it hard to believe that even Wallace takes it seriously.

Regards,

Mark

[R Wallace]

I'm commenting as the author of the books.

At long last I've joined the discussion, hoping that I can lend some light to the subject. Much of what I've read over the two years of posts seem to be based on reactions passed on by others rather than from those who have read Jack the Ripper: "Light-hearted Friend."

While Karoline Leach certainly is entitled to her opinion re Dodgson-as-suspect, the work carries an introduction by Colin Wilson, who has been used by many writers on JTR over the years based on his own life-long research and writing effort on the subject. He praised the research of JTR and its predecessor work The Agony of Lewis Carroll, and, in the end, despite reservations, thought the work had more than accomplished its goal of introducing a new suspect. While the subject of anagrams-as-evidence can certainly be held, Lewis Carroll fans cannot admit that the master of the genre might have used them in his books, because if they do, their whole world view of him may unravel.

In the future I hope to get into some of the controversies regarding the work, such as whether Dodgson could take a train to London from either Oxford or his vacation at the beach for murders, just as he did for theater, and the extent of other people's work on the themes of such pieces as Jabberwocky before I attempted to search for an anagram.

I look forward to the discussion.

[Sickert]

No Way

One of the more stupid suggestions for a suspect. For certain of the murder dates Lewis Carroll was not within reach of London.

[jerrip]

dead in 1870 shouldn't rule him out, surely?

Actually he died in 1898. But nevertheless he should not even be included here. Unless the heading was for "The wackiest Suspects", like elephant man and so on.

And all that anagram nonsense Wallace brought up, what load of dung. The stories were written years before JTR, why the delay? Because Wallace is desperate to sell books!

Jer

[Madam Red]

Personally, I find it really depressing that some would seriously taint the well respected names of authors or artists like Carroll and Sickert.

I'd have to agree with nugnug wholeheartedly.