Book about Chapman as Ripper - 1953!

[HelenaWojtczak]

I have just come across a book called Harlot KIller Jack the Ripper by Allan Barnard, pub by Dod, Mead in New York. The book claims that Chapman was the Ripper and cites Abberline and Hargrave Adam.

And we thought R. Michael Gordon was the first!

Maybe that is where he got the idea from?

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18519141

Helena

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Helena.

The Harlot Killer is an interesting and entertaining book. It is edited by Allan Barnard and contains various articles and fictional stories that revolve around the Whitechapel Murders. The article "Jack the Ripper," by Edmond Pearson (originally published in More Studies In Murder, Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, New York, 1936, where it appeared in chapter 11: Four Infamous Names) is about Hargrave Adam's theory. The Barnard book also has an article and short story about my area of greatest interest - the Carrie Brown murder in New York in 1891. Lot's of fun but not great research material.

Wolf.

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hi Wolf. I was misinformed by my source, saying it was a pro-Chpman-as-Ripper book. Only this evening I discovered that (if my memory serves me) it has 13 chapters and nine of them are pieces of fiction.

Something else I discovered recently (and this is relevant to Carrie Brown etc) was that there were an awful lot of 'Jack the Ripper' style killings after 1888 and up to about 1930, in (and I jotted a list while researching) Berlin, Vienna, Mexico, Linz, Jamaica, Glasgow, Eire, Leeds, Nicaragua, Toyko. Paris, Dusseldorf, Chicago and San Francisco.

So the existence of ONE Ripper-style murder in New York isn't really very significant after all.

Helena

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Wolf. I was misinformed by my source, saying it was a pro-Chpman-as-Ripper book. Only this evening I discovered that (if my memory serves me) it has 13 chapters and nine of them are pieces of fiction.

Something else I discovered recently (and this is relevant to Carrie Brown etc) was that there were an awful lot of 'Jack the Ripper' style killings after 1888 and up to about 1930, in (and I jotted a list while researching) Berlin, Vienna, Mexico, Linz, Jamaica, Glasgow, Eire, Leeds, Nicaragua, Toyko. Paris, Dusseldorf, Chicago and San Francisco.

So the existence of ONE Ripper-style murder in New York isn't really very significant after all.

Helena

Don't get carried away by the stories of the number of Ripper-style murders around the globe. I believe the so-called Ripper "murders" in Jamaica was only one murder, that of Letitia Crawford on 27 December 1888 in St. Catherine, for which Benjamin Ranger was sentenced to death and hung on 5 February 1889.

Chris

[HelenaWojtczak]

Don't get carried away by the stories of the number of Ripper-style murders around the globe. I believe the so-called Ripper "murders" in Jamaica was only one murder, that of Letitia Crawford on 27 December 1888 in St. Catherine, for which Benjamin Ranger was sentenced to death and hung on 5 February 1889.

Chris

I'm not "carried away", Chris. Carrie Brown was only one Ripper-style murder, too. The Berlin one seems to have been part of a series, though.

The point I am making is, why all this focus on the Carrie Brown murder, which some cite as possible proof that "our" Ripper went to the USA, when there were lots of Ripper-style murders all over the globe?

Helena

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Helena.

The point I am making is, why all this focus on the Carrie Brown murder, which some cite as possible proof that "our" Ripper went to the USA, when there were lots of Ripper-style murders all over the globe?

The probable answer lies partly in the location of the Brown murder: New York City. The largest city in the United States and the Americas, the financial and cultural centre of the United States and, perhaps most importantly, the Press centre of the United States with the biggest and most influential newspapers in the hemisphere. Add to this a resentment, and from the Irish, hatred, towards Britain and its Empire and a chip on its shoulder the size of Mars. A Ripper-like murder in New York City was huge news. A Ripper-like murder in Beuthen, Germany, wasn’t.

Another reason is that theorists whose suspect came from, or visited or moved to the United States need the Brown murder as “evidence” to support their theories. Originally this was just Klososwski (although men like Henry Dowd were contemporaneously suspected of being both the Ripper and the murderer of Brown) but in the last 15 years several other names have been added to the list: Tumblety, Feigenbaum, Gibson, La Bruckman and Kelly, for example. And although the Brown murderer was never caught we know who the killer was, a fact that doesn’t seem to deter the theorists from claiming their suspects did it.

A final reason is probably ignorance. If you don’t know anything about the Brown murder, or rely on the few, and mostly incorrect, articles that have been written on the subject, then you can make almost any claim seem plausible, which is handy when you are trying to “prove” that Klosowski, let’s say, was the Ripper.

Wolf.

[HelenaWojtczak]

Indeed.

R. Michael Gordon points to how extraordinary a coincidence it was that the Ripper murders ceased and Carrie Brown was killed right after Klosowski went to the USA. What he didn't add was that there continued to be Ripper-like killings in the UK while Klosowski was in the USA.

Mind you, as I have been trawling through the literature I have found an awful lot of mistakes published about Klosowski generally. I don't think I have found one account yet that gets all the facts right. John Emsley claims for example that Klosowski took his wife AND the baby boy to the USA, and he has them leave London in 1890 and has Klosowski return in May 1891. Doesn't explain how he came to be listed in the census in April, of course.

I am aware that having pointed out the errors in others' biographies of Klosowski, I had better be damned careful with what I write. The problem is, I am having trouble myself separating fact from fiction, and this is getting worse as my research-and-writing goes on, as I have now discovered that no source can be trusted. What is one to do? Not everything that is not corroborated is necessarily untrue. We cannot blindly assume that every witness has an excellent memory and no agenda of his own. The trial transcripts are full of errors and, worse, omissions.

I don't envy me the task I have taken on.

Helena