Walter Sickert: Whitechapel Murderer ?

[Graham]

From what I've read, the police were receiving hoax Ripper letters until the 1930's. I believe the total number ran to several thousand. I'd have to hazard a guess and say that most of them were jokes, and were perceived to be jokes. The police at the time felt that a few - a very few - were serious if not genuine (there's a difference!) and all of this has been debated on this forum for years.

I don't know too much about the Yorkshire Ripper Case, but I think that the audio tape(s) contained information that the police, at the time, felt could be known only to the killer. Hence they were taken seriously. Also, I believe that Sutcliffe was questioned at least once by the investigating team, and released. I also think that the Geordie bloke responsible for the tapes was identified at some point, and brought to book. Maybe someone who knows more about this case than I can correct me.

There are also cases of idiots actually confessing to murder, when they had nothing to do with a particular case - beats me why people would want to do this.

Cheers,

Graham

[John Wheat]

Sickert

Maybe Sickert was the Ripper and after the murders painted pictures of
the murdered women by whatever light was available. Wow maybe Cornwell could write another book about this obviously true aspect of the Ripper case. Sickert painting the victims right after he's mutilated them it's bound to be a best seller. As for the hoax letters what about the journalist that started it all off mabye he was there holding Sickerts paints for him. Come on Cornwell get writing the whole Worlds waiting with baited breath.

[Graham]

Hi Michael,

Our posts crossed, but with you all the way.

Best,

Graham

[perrymason]

Hi Michael,

Our posts crossed, but with you all the way.

Best,

Graham

"Great minds....", and "Fools....", and all that... .....nice to see you Graham.

Yep, were on the same page....its nice when it works this way for a change.

Cheers Mate

[Graham]

Maybe Sickert was the Ripper and after the murders painted pictures of
the murdered women by whatever light was available

Flash photography was available in 1888 - he'd have been better off with that, I think...gawd, can you imagine....?

Graham

[richardnunweek]

Hi,
So the attitude is , Ok, Sickert might have wrote a letter ot two, but so what , he also had a intrest in the macabre, but so what, he also painted pictures entitled . JTRs bedroom. The passing funeral, and Blackmail, and What shall we do for the rent', but so what, he happens to have a history as a suspect, but so what.
I find that trust in a very eccentric man so praiseworthy.
I am not suggesting that Sickert is a strong contender, but he certainly is no forlorn hope.
I am not talking about everyone that sent a hoax letter, that are unknown to us all, but a suspect that has some credibility.
And incidently the enterprising newsman that may have been responsible for the initial name of Jack the Ripper, how about him in the lists?
Regards Richard.

[John Wheat]

So What?

Sickert obviously had an interest in Jack the Ripper and may have written a hoax letter or two and as you say so what? The fact remains there is no actual evidence to connect Sickert to the Ripper crimes and there isn't even any evidence to suggest Sickert was even in Whitechapel during 1888. When looking at Ripper suspects I prefer to look at things like actual evidence.

[Graham]

Richard, me old mate,

Sickert was painting scenes of London low-life when he was a young man, well before 1888. He was, as you rightly state, an eccentric, and he said he believed he had once stayed in the same room as the suspect immortalised in The Lodger' hence his painting Jack The Ripper's Bedroom which was, with the best will in the world, a leg-pull. His 'history' as a suspect is entirely down to Stephen Knight, who apparently believed everything he was told by one Joseph Gorman 'Hobo' Sickert, who claimed he was Walter Sickert's illegitimate son and 'knew' what had gone on apropos Prince Eddy, Dr Gull, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. Stephen Knight's book was a good read, but it was fiction, pure and simple. Gorman later admitted that the whole story was made up, a con.

Sickert may well have known Prince Eddy - after all, Sickert was moving in pretty high Society for a time. The whole Sickert theory crashes in flames because he was living in Dieppe during most of 1888, and had Ms Cornwell bothered to recognise this small fact, perhaps she wouldn't have inflicted her bloody book on us. OK, he could well have written a Ripper letter or two, but he wasn't the only one who did so. Ripper Letters were a minor journalistic industry at the time. Jack the Ripper he was not.

Cheers,

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

I don't know too much about the Yorkshire Ripper Case, but I think that the audio tape(s) contained information that the police, at the time, felt could be known only to the killer. Hence they were taken seriously. I also think that the Geordie bloke responsible for the tapes was identified at some point, and brought to book.

John Humble, the hoaxer in question, was sentenced in 2006 and is approaching the halfway mark in an eight-year prison sentence for perverting the course of justice.

[miss marple]

fact not fiction

The problem with identifing any ripper suspect outsde the norm [ local,working class, history of deviant behavoir or violence] Is the tendancy to confuse fact with fiction. In fiction a 'normal mentally healthy person can be a serial killer[wheras it is deviant physopathic rare behaviour. And too many normal mentally heathy, creative, life lovers are suspects.[ poor Barnado who did so much good i include in this too]
Cornwall hs created a 'fictional' charactor called Sickert.
The real Sickert was a life lover,a handsome creative interesting, man, a social being with interests as broad ranging as food and crime. A sophistcated raconteur, adored by women,who's life passion and gift for art is complete and central to his life. Read his writing and see his humanity and sensitivity to real lwoman, not society beauties The real world he loved, like his master Degas, was the world of the streets, the music halls, newspapers, markets,The lives of the lower middle class.He reflected the society around him.
That's what artists do and have done for hundreds of years.
They are not serial killers, an artist's energy is a life force, not a destructive force.It takes up all your time too.
People seem to have a problem with this simple fact.
Cheers Miss Marple

[Graham]

Hi Miss M,

Cornwall hs created a 'fictional' charactor called Sickert.

Absolutely spot on!

And I like his works, too.

Cheers,

Graham

[The Grave Maurice]

I agree. This evening, I've been looking through, once again, Wendy Baron's Sickert: Paintings & Drawings (2006). Guys with that kind of talent don't go around killing people and, given his output, he probably wouldn't have had the energy anyway. It's too bad the libel laws don't apply after death. Someone could be putting Patricia's millions to better use.

[miss marple]

sickert's suspect

Hi All,

Well said, Graham and Grave MaurIce

is Osbert Sitwell's account of Sickert's account of 'The Lodger'
which might be of interest.

‘’His talk like most good talk, contained in its web certain invariable strands, certain immutable monuments that could be evoked for purposes of reference, allusion, comparison and simile. The Titchbourne Case and the mystery of Jack the Ripper constituted two such monuments.
……………As for the second, apart from the intrinsic and abiding horror of that extraordinary series of crimes, it interested him because he thought he knew the identity of the murderer. He told me- and no doubt many others- how this was….
Some years after the murders he had taken a room in a London suburb. An old couple looked after the house, and when he had been there some months, the woman, with whom he used often to talk, asked him one day, as she was dusting the room, if he knew who had occupied it before. When he said ‘’No ‘’ she had waited a moment and then said ‘’Jack the Ripper !’’
Her story was that his predecessor had been a veterinary student. After he had been a month or two in London, this delicate-looking young man- He was consumptive- took to occasionally staying out all night. His landlord and landlady would hear him come in at about six in the morning, and then walk about in his room for an hour or two, until the first edition of the morning paper was on sale, when he would creep lightly downstairs and run to the corner to buy one. Quietly he would return and go to bed; but an hour later, when the old man called him, he would notice, by the traces in the fireplace, that his lodger had burnt the suit he had been wearing the previous evening, For the rest of the day millions of people in London would be discussing the terrible new murder, plainly belonging to the same series, that had been committed in the small hours. Only the student seemed never to mention them: but then he knew no one and talked to no one, though he did not seem lonely….. The old couple did not know what to make of it: daily his health grew worse, and it seemed improbable that his gentle ailing, silent youth should be responsible for such crimes. They could hardly credit there own senses- and then before they could make up their minds whether to warn the police or not, the lodger’s health had suddenly grown much worse, and his mother- a widow came to fetch him back to Bournemouth, where she lived,,, from that moment the had murders stopped… He died three months later.
Before leaving the subject, I may add in talking of this matter to my brother while I was actually engaged in writing this account of Sickert, he reminded me that the painter had told us that when his landlady had confided to him to him that morning, in the course of her dusting, the name of Jack the Ripper, he had scribbled it down in pencil on the margin of a French edition of Casanova’s memoirs which he happed to be reading at the time, and that, subsequently, he had given the book away- we thought he had said to Sir William Rothenstein. [famous critic and artist RA and part of the Wilde, Whistler circle]
Sickert had added’’ And there it will be now, if you want to know the name ‘’
Accordingly I wrote Lady Rotherstein but neither she nor Sir William remembered the book. On my consulting Mrs Sickert, she maintained that he had given the volume to Sir William’s brother Albert Rotherstein. And this proved to be the case. My friend Mr Rotherstein informed me that he had only recently lost the book during the bombing of London and that there had been several pencil notes entered in the margin, in Sickert’s handwriting, always so difficult to decipher.
Cheers Miss Marple

[Sickert]

Sickert did it

I have always thought that Walter Sickert was guilty. What with DNA, Paintings, and him been a master of disguise, sounds good to me.

[Graham]

I have always thought that Walter Sickert was guilty. What with DNA, Paintings, and him been a master of disguise, sounds good to me.

...and pigs might fly....

Graham