Robert Louis Stevenson

[Phil H]

jsantos wrote: RLS is in my opinion one of the best writers ever!

So why besmirch his reputation and memory without cause or evidence?

By the way you have still failed to answer my highly pertinent questions:

- where do experts on RLS or biographers suggest that there is a "hole" in his life that your "theory"(hah!) would fill?

- have you consulted the drafts of Ebb Tide or base your comments on the published version?

- what is the publishing history of Ebb Tide - did RLS ever revise it?

- is there any indication from a writer (other than you) that RLS might have had murderous intent or psychological problems?

- in which language did you read Ebb Tide?

- are there any other indications in RLS's wider published or unpublished writings that he was JtR?

- have you ever consulted RLS surviving papers? where are they kept? what do they indicate?

- where was RLS in the period August - November 1888 based on his surviving records, diaries, letters etc etc?

[jsantos]

I repeat, because it seems difficult to understand. RLS is in my opinion one of the best writers ever! And Phil admires RLS as a writer! Or Phil lived in the XIX century?

[Phil H]

There are none so blind as those that cannot see.

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about James Maybrick no one spoke about him.

Pardon me, but Maybrick was an alleged murder victim. Further, it was the so-called "Diary" which plunged him into the fray. I carry no brief for nor belief in the document, but forgery or not, there was a direct cause for Maybrick's involvement in the JtR case.

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about Walter Sickert no one spoke about him.

Read my previous post, sir. Sickert himself talked about the murders and seemed to identify with them. Those who knew him seem to have passed down stories and Joe Gorman brought Sickertr into the frame in the early 70s. This was NOT a case of a Ripperologist simply picking his name out as a suspect and then seeking to attach suspicion in a loose and unsupported/unsustainable way. I do not believe that Ms Cornwell's book is significant or well-argued, but she did not pin the name "suspect" to Sickert.

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about Francis Tumblety no one spoke about him.

Tumblety was researched and written about following the discovery of the Littlechild letter. Further, Tumblety appears to have been a contemporary suspect. SPE and others did not simply take him from thin air.

There may be a language issue here, and I want to be clear that I am talking about the status of the named individuals BEFORE they were explored as suspects in the modern era. In all cases there is an older shadow over the names. In your case, I see no prior association of RLS with the JtR case.

For your information, I am a great admirer of RLS - hence my dislike of your unsubstantiated smearing of a great writer.

Phil

[jsantos]

"As far as I know, no one has ever discussed RLS before, until you decided to sully his name and reputation with wholly unfounded allegations and circumstantial smears. Not only do you assist in giving ipper studies a bad name, you pillory a man greater than you who cannot defend himself."

What a joke!

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about James Maybrick no one spoke about him.

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about Walter Sickert no one spoke about him.

Before someone speak for the first time or write for the first time about Francis Tumblety no one spoke about him.

Mr. Phil, with the greatest respect, what a great discovery!

Do you mean, if my theory is all about RLS, I should talk about someone else, for not hurt feelings.

If RLS is better writer than I, undoubtedly!
I repeat, because you don`t understand, RLS was and will always be one of the best writers ever!

And I`ll be better in anything else.

What does it matter!

[Phil H]

Because one misguided writer acts in a reprehensible and misguided way, that provides licence for anyone to follow her, does it?

In fact Ms CornwEll, might be said to have more justification than yo do - Sickert identified himself with the murders in his own day and in his own way. Others have elaborated that over the years and there have been books discussing oral reports passed down from friends of his, as well as allegations by people like Joe Gorman which were picked up by Knight and Fairclough and resulted in books.

As far as I know, no one has ever discussed RLS before, until you decided to sully his name and reputation with wholly unfounded allegations and circumstantial smears. Not only do you assist in giving ipper studies a bad name, you pillory a man greater than you who cannot defend himself.

Phil

[jsantos]

Before I even try to answer any of your questions...

"The proposal denigrates a great writer, without basis."

Why??? As Patricia Cornwell denigrates the image of a great painter?
No. Certainly not. Walter Sickert will always be a great painter.
Has nothing to do one thing with another.
RLS was a great writer and will always be. One of the best writers of the XIX century.
Good attempt to dissuade me from what I think.

[Phil H]

It`s true Phil, we are in 2011. 123 years after the Jack the Ripper crimes. And what has been learned about Jack? Nothing, only speculation. After all, how many victims Jack made? What are the reasons that led him to commit such atrocities? Where he was hiding, where he lived? How could escape without being caught? And most important of all, what is your identity? Who was Jack the Ripper...

And precisely how will plucking the name of RLS out of the sir and accusing him assist in answering any of those questions.

The proposal denigrates a great writer, without basis.

You have still to address my questions in an earlier post:

- where do experts on RLS or biographers suggest that there is a "hole" in his life that your "theory"(hah!) would fill?

- have you consulted the drafts of Ebb Tide or base your comments on the published version?

- what is the publishing history of Ebb Tide - did RLS ever revise it?

- is there any indication from a writer (other than you) that RLS might have had murderous intent or psychological problems?

- in which language did you read Ebb Tide?

- are there any other indications in RLS's wider published or unpublished writings that he was JtR?

- have you ever consulted RLS surviving papers? where are they kept? what do they indicate?

- where was RLS in the period August - November 1888 based on his surviving records, diaries, letters etc etc?

Phil

[Jonathan H]

It is sometimes put here that there is a strict, even doctrinal demarcation between studies of the Jack the Ripper mystery and something called 'suspect'-based Ripperology.

I think that the latter term has some validity when modern, secondary sources attempt to pin the murders on a suspect totally unknown to the authorities of the time -- with little or no complelling 'evidence'.

On the other hand, I think that when it comes to those men suspected by policemen of that era, their claims are as much a part of the Ripper mystery as the crimes themselves; that it cannot be split from the subject without deforming the mystery itself.

It is the 'second act', if you like, from the point of view of the incomplete surviving sources, and not an afterthought or an adendum.

Anderson, Swanson, Abberline, Macnaghten, and Littlechild, all pointed to specific suspects. That for each of them -- to arguably differing degrees -- the Ripper mystery was not a mystery from their point of view.

That they favoured different suspects is the fascinating and frustrating mystery left for us.

One possible, provisional solution is that the very lack of a consensus means that they all cancel each other out.

Another possible, provisional solution is that one, or more, of these policeman is a more reliable source than the others (eg. Anderson because he appears to be backed up by Swanson, whereas Macnaghten was not even at the Met at the time of the murders).

Thus to argue for a provisional solution -- because these police, to varying degress, thought it was solved -- means that you have to come up with a theory, or working paradigm, as to why they disagreed and yet still argue why one, or more, is a more valuable source than the others (eg. Abberline was the most experienced detective and he made no self-serving claims about solving the case in 1888, only belatedly and redundantly in 1903, and plus he comments directly on, and pointedly dismisses, competing suspects).

The importance of Robert Louis Stevenson to the Ripper case is that his blockbuster novella, 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (1886) becomes intertwined with the Whitechapel murders of 1888 to 1891 in highly suggestive ways, and was even, arguably, made to be interwined.

From the start the press depicted the killer as a potential, real-life Edward Hyde, as if the author's work had eerily prophesised the real crimes -- arguably a grotesque, tabloid exaggeration. Nonetheless, a theatrical adapation of the novella had to be shut down at the height of the scare to calm public sensibilities.

An even stronger connection to the classic novella is that in the late Victorian and Edwardian Eras two writers -- one very famous and widely-read -- and both with top police contacts, claimed that the chief suspect was indeed a figure who, by heavy implication, resembled Stevenson's fictional creation.

That of an English, middle-aged, affluent, reclusive, physician, with no patients but with hovering, concerned friends, who takes his own life as he is finally overcome by his own bestiality, just as the forces of justice inexorably close around him (Dr Jekyll meet 'Dr D').

This is one of the most tanatlizing and peculiar aspects of the entire mystery, as for many Edwardians there was no Ripper mystery as he was a real-life Jekyll and Hyde -- he was even a a doctor!

Yet in the same era there were significant cracks, even fissures, to challenge this too-cosy consensus. For example, there was the open scoffing by the retired field detectives, and at the other end of the class/rank food chain the memoirs of a very senior police chief who strongly advocated the guilt of a figure about as far removed from Stevenson's sci-fi melodrama as you could get: foreign, mad, poor, and obscure.

In the modern era, we know, as Edwardians did not and could not know, that this Stevensonian-adopted profile of 'Jack' as the Drowned Doctor Super-suspect, in significant ways, does not match the historical figure who lies beneath this perhaps literary-inspired profile.

[Lechmere]

Phil – if you were to unwittingly mention to a Richard III obsessive that you thought Edward IV was a ‘good king’ or that Elizabeth I was admirable in any way, then you had better don your battle bowler and take to the trenches. The amount of 15th century rumour or modern day speculation that is passed off as cast iron fact makes the Hutchinson debate look perfectly tame.

[jsantos]

It`s true Phil, we are in 2011. 123 years after the Jack the Ripper crimes. And what has been learned about Jack? Nothing, only speculation. After all, how many victims Jack made? What are the reasons that led him to commit such atrocities? Where he was hiding, where he lived? How could escape without being caught? And most important of all, what is your identity? Who was Jack the Ripper...
If someone comes up with a new theory and to answer these and other questions will never be taken seriously. If you can answer all these questions will always be on the basis of assumptions, then, is not credible.
If the suspect is someone famous, then it`s not credible.
If anyone ever discovered the true identity of jack is evident that was not taken seriously.
Regardless of the sadness that Phil feels about this theory, I will try, with my bad English, describing several points that caught my attention for RLS as suspect in the ripper case.

[Phil H]

I entirely agree that the books are of "worth", but they are the products of individuals. I could add a few volumes to your list too: the A-Z (which while flawed has more than proved its usefulness to me); From Hall - the letters, which I bracket with the Ultimate; Neil Sheldon's work...

Ripperology has found no real vehicle for harnessing all the enthusiasm, and all too often what I see is in-fighting (as frequent resignations from Casebook or the arguments over the most recent documentary sometimes seem to indicate).

We do not seem to have developed any framwork in which students of this case can work in greater harmony and to promote the overall subject. Neither really have we brought on board established Victorian social historians or shown Ripper studies to be a valid subject for university study. I believe that the difference to Richard III studies is that Ripperologists are still commercially motivated in many cases - though I am aware that proceeds from books on the subject may not be lavish.

Phil

[TomTomKent]

If the fact that the "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" was written before the events of jack have bothered Tom, I apologize, but RLS is who was the blame.

And that is why I said it was no difference from those other "predictions", which were entirely coincidental and did not require the author of Wreck of the Titan to be responsible for the Titanic, or the script editor of "Lone Gunmen" to actually fly a passenger jet in to the World Trade Centre.

[TomTomKent]

I have no doubt, RLS is a writer of fiction. But sometimes writers relate "things" from their lives in their stories. "The Ebb-Tide" is full of experiences about RLS life. And this is not any speculation, much less any coincidence.

And sometimes they write things that are not based on their experiences.

Unless you can prove RLS was Jack the Ripper with actual tangible evidence how can your suspicion be anything other than speculation? You can prove anything else, or indeed everything else, an author wrote was based on experience. But unless you can prove otherwise you are left to speculate he was JtR.

The Ebb Tide may well draw on experiences, but that does not stop it being fiction, and is no way evidence that "if X was drawn from experience then Y must have been too." What you are actually doing is saying "because X was drawn on his experience I speculate that Y was also drawn from experience".

If you are basing your "theory" on speculation, don't pretend it is anything else or you lose credence.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Phil

I would argue contrary to what you are saying that there has been a raising of standards in the field, with the publication for example of Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner's The Ultimate and Philip Sugden's The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. Both those works are of academic standard. Even in the realm of suspect-driven books Evans and Gainey's Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer aka The Lodger about Tumblety and Robert House's Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect about Aaron Kosminski are immeasurably better books and more carefully written than other suspect books. Both provide a solid discussion of the case, even if we disagree with the authors' views about the particular suspect.

Best regards

Chris

[Phil H]

Chris,

The "We" was intended as a recognition that there is a society of Ripper enthusiasts that seeks advancement in study and a raising of thresholds.

I don't question that there are those still in a sort of "kindergarten" drinking milk, not yet ready for the red meat (sorry if that pun is rather inappropriate) of mature study. As an illustration, I am aware that there are children's history books, but I would not approve if that was the limit of a prospective undergraduate's reading. He would neither grasp nor benefit from discussions at the higher level.

Surely all of us should aim to encourage newcomers to this subject to leave the shallows as quickly as possible.

I am always fascinated by the contrast between Ricardians (those with an interest in rehabilitating Richard III) and "Ripperologists".

The former have banded together to put up memorials at places associated with Richard and his family (Middleham, Leicester etc) and created foundations to support academic study of the C15th and publication of period sources such as Richard's wardrobe accounts. as a result C15th syudies are now taken immeasurably more seriously by the wider historical world than they were even 30 years ago.

I see no equivolence of that here or in "Ripper-studies" generally, and the tolerance of the mad-cap and puerile is frankly one reason why that is true.

Phil