Sickert Was Ripper

[plang]

Make that " Fistula of Dollars" that's what was on the tip of your tongue Mike.

[HollyDolly]

Sickert was Ripper

I had read Cornwell's book awhile back ,but recall few details.
While i am not sure about Sickert as an actor, I don recall reading whether at Crime Library or some where else,the actor Richard Mansfield perhasp being Jack the Ripper. He was a well known American actor of the time,and had apparently been in London on various occasions in plays.I think he was best known for playing Doctor Jekyll and Mr.Hyde.He certainly knew makeup and would have had acess to wigs,false mustaches,etc,all tricks of the trade.
In fact I recall several years back they did a movie with Armand Assante playing Richard Mansfield and going along the line of him being the killer possibly.There would have been no reason to resort to hair dyes on the Ripper's part.

In Jay Robert Nash's book on famous unsolved crimes,his theory was the killer may have been a doctor,probably a married man whose wife left him .
He may have gone to London to try to track her down.

I think he mentions Mansfield as a possible Ripper suspect.
It would be interesting to see if any other Ripper type murders occured in cities where he was playing.
I seem to recall one time when my father mentioned jack the Ripper, he said something about some similar murders in France and elsewhere.
Where he got the information from I don't know,but I was under the impression that he felt like the Ripper was a seaman or ship's doctor,someone who traveled about ,just an ordinary man.
And regardless of Sickert's medical childhood problems, that does not mean he was a killer,as there are other men out there with his type of personality and they don't kill.

[Mike Covell]

Hi HollyDolly,

Have you seen Michael Caine in the Jack the Ripper TV series, which is now available on DVD?

Mansfield has a large role in the production and it's worth watching.

[Celesta]

Hi HollyDolly,

It would be interesting to know where your dad heard about the murders in France, wouldn't it? There was some suspicion attached to Mansfield, and Mike is right, he figures in the movie with Michael Caine. He was played by Armand Assante. I agree that Sickert fistula (full of samolians) would not have been the likely cause for his being a serial killer. I think Cornwell was stretching, looking for a defect, as she claimed that serial killers usually have one of some sort.

Best Regards, and welcome to the Casebook,

Celesta

[HollyDolly]

Sickert was Ripper

Thanks for the welcome all.Yes,that was it,Michael Caine played I believe
Detective Abberline,and that's the show I was thinking of.
As far as where my dad got any info on similar crimes happending in France or elsewhere,i have no idea.Whether he read this years ago in some book or not i cannot say.He mentioned a case in Germany where a guy killed people and sold the bodies as meat to unsuspecting buyers ,and several other cases.
My late father's family came from Germany to the US in 1882 ,and they used to write to relatives,so maybe that's he found out about those crime cases.
As far as the Ripper case and similar crimes elsewhere,that I don't know,and didn't think to ask. He could have read about it in some obscure book or old papers maybe at the Milwaukee Public Library back in the 1930s and 40s.
He worked in military intelligence from 1942 to 1975,when he retired from the US AirForce.Shortly before he passed away I learned he had been in Yugoslavia during the war,when he was recruited to spy on Tito's partisans.
I know in the late 1950s he did a tour of duty or TDY as they call it to Germany and England for Security Service. Don't know what he was doing in England or where he went,except to visit Windsor Castle and the Tower of London and such on free moments.Don't think he or don't recall him visiting Scotland Yard's Black Museum,and any dealings with the british Government would have been in relations to US interests.
Wish I had a time machine where I could go back and ask him about his information on this subject.

[Mike Covell]

Hi HollyDolly,

I have a couple of news reports from 1888 stating a German Jack the Ripper is at large, there were several follow up reports from people claiming to be the German Jack!

My father had a "Top Secret" clearance for work he did at Ministry of Defence Sites. He doesn't talk about it, and I don't push him.

[JSchmidt]

German Ripper in 1888? Either I'm not catching a certain irony or if you have some more details I could look up some more infos in German sources if you want.
(I am German btw.)

[Mike Covell]

I can't find it in my mass of newspaper reports, it was late 1888, but the authorities threw it out because the guy had never left Germany!!

I also have a Death bed Ripper confession from 1891, but again it sounds a little dubious.

I will attempt to dig them out and post them on a newspaper thread, (I will PM you with the link)

[Graham]

Richard Mansfield was an American actor-manager who at the time of the Ripper crimes was running a production of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the Lyceum. Apparently his transformation from Jekyll to Hyde was so effective and disturbing that women in the audience fainted, dogs barked, etc. He was accused by person or persons unknown that his portrayal actually encouraged serial murder and he was forced to take the show off because of dwindling sales.

All of the above is in the A-Z.

I have never seen any credible support for any suggestion or accusation that Mansfield was himself the Ripper. I believe that he ended up a bankrupt and either returned to America or just disappeared into obscurity.

Cheers,

Graham

.

Cheers,

Graham

[The Good Michael]

Graham,

I really wonder about that legend. It reminds me of the Orson Wells radio broadcast that supposedly terrified people. The reality is that there were a few people out of thousands and thousands who had any traumatic feelings or actions because of the broadcast. It has been blown so far out of proportion to what the reality was. I wonder if the same exaggeration hasn't been applied here. What if it was one woman who screamed and that screaming surprised others, so they screamed too.


Mike

[Graham]

Graham,

I really wonder about that legend. It reminds me of the Orson Wells radio broadcast that supposedly terrified people. The reality is that there were a few people out of thousands and thousands who had any traumatic feelings or actions because of the broadcast. It has been blown so far out of proportion to what the reality was. I wonder if the same exaggeration hasn't been applied here. What if it was one woman who screamed and that screaming surprised others, so they screamed too.


Mike

Hi Mike.

I do have a non-Ripper passing interest in Mansfield because he was a sometime member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) in which I have a very great interest. He also performed Shakspeare, Ibsen, and so forth, and was well-known on the Londo stage.

Re: Dr J and Mr H, all I can tell you is that the 'transformation scene' was so scarily realistic (by Victorian standards, remember) that it really did disturb people. The Ripper connection comes from some unknown (or forgotten) man who witnessed the play and wrote to The Times that anyone capable of doing what Mansfield did is capable of either murder in his own right or inspiring others to murder. As far as I'm aware that was the end of it. The suspicion that Mansfield might have been the Ripper was neither official nor, as far as I know, even contemporary, and would appear to stem from the TV production referred to by Mike Covell.

Cheers,

Graham

[HollyDolly]

Sickert was Ripper

I remember my dad talking about War of the Worlds and Orson Wells.
Daddy said they had the radio on, and they listened to it for a little bit,when grandpa said "Turn it to something else,I don't care to listen to that nonsense." Don't recall daddy saying anything about a great panic in Milwaukee over it.The vast majority of people there knew it was just a radio show,and you are right,i think over time the thing got blown waaay out of poportion .

[Graham]

I remember my dad talking about War of the Worlds and Orson Wells.
Daddy said they had the radio on, and they listened to it for a little bit,when grandpa said "Turn it to something else,I don't care to listen to that nonsense." Don't recall daddy saying anything about a great panic in Milwaukee over it.The vast majority of people there knew it was just a radio show,and you are right,i think over time the thing got blown waaay out of poportion .

Hiya HD

I don't honestly think you can compare the Mansfield 'incident' with the 'War Of The Worlds' broadcast. Welles almost certainly knew what the reaction amongst certain folk would be, whereas Mansfield acted in all innocence, pardon the pun.

Back in the 1950's a BBC TV programme broadcast on April 1st purported to show 'the spaghetti harvest' in Italy, with shots of farm-workers clipping great hanging wodges of spaghetti off trees. As the average Brit in those days hadn't got a clue what spaghetti was, let alone ever having eaten it, a large chunk of the population believed what they say.

People believe what they want to believe, simple as that.

Back in 1888 the stage was just beginning to get to grips with more sophisticated effects, lighting, props and so forth. And to the average Victorian I should think that Mansfield's portrayal of Dr J and Mr H was indeed scary.

Cheers,

Graham

[BillyE]

There are several subjects running through this thread, so I'll try to tackle them in reverse order.

I would have said "Fistula Dollers" myself, but that's just me, and what do I know? ;-)

Richard Mansfield was famous for his on-stage transformation from Jeckel into Hyde. He acheived this by using florescent make-up. In normal light it wasn't visible. He'd thrash around, screaming in the normal light, and then step forward into the flurescent lighting, where the make-up would be visible, and ta-da, you have a hidious looking monster right before the audience's eyes. A policeman did interview Mansfield, but it was obvious he wasn't the killer, so the questioning didn't last long, but the lasting affect was the show was canceled so as to not inspire the Ripper to kill again, as if he needed such inspiriation.

Finally about Walter Sickert, and Patricia Cornwell's book naming him as the Ripper. There is no doubt Sickert made Jack the Ripper a part of his own personal mythology. It's partly because of him we remember the Ripper. Without him there's be no Ripper fiction, which was the lynchpin of true Ripper research. But none of that makes him the Ripper. Just obsessed with the Ripper. Does this obsession come from the knowlege of who the real killer is, or might be, or knowing one, or more of the victims? Who knows.

With every new book claiming to have solved the case comes out they almost always make a compelling case for their suspects. In almost every case when I'd read a new suspect book I thought "Maybe it's finally been solved" only to have some monkey wrench thrown into the works.
I was convinced when I read the "Final Solution" and was convinced with I tore through the pages of the "Diary" thinking it finally was over. Of course it wasn't. Only three books claiming to have solved the case have met with complete and utter skeptisism with me. Those are "Prince Jack" by Frank Spiering, "Murder & Madness : The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper" by David Abrahamsen, and finally "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed" by Patricia Cornwell. From the first page I found myself saying "I can't believe I'm reading this crap". In the end I just didn't believe she proved anything, and proclaimed herself the ruler of truth. It's caused me not to want to read even her fiction. Anyway, even though I don't believe any of the Sickert stories about Jack the Ripper, I have to say the two Ripper yarns involving Sickert are probably my favorite Ripper stories. They're so much fun!

[Doctor X]

A Drive-By Troll apparently; however, it did yield a good explanation as to why Sickert is not a reasonable suspect.

Yours truly,

--J.D.