Presentations from the 2022 Casebook: Jack the Ripper Conference

[jmenges]

This is the release thread for the recordings from the 2022 Casebook: Jack the Ripper Conference.

Links to all eight presentations and the author interview.

Jurriaan Maessen ‘Finding Mary Kelly: From Prototype To Holotype’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/01_Jurriaan_Maessen.mp4

Gracie Bain ‘Ripperature: Crossing Gender and Genre’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/02_Gracie_Bain.mp4

Madeleine Keane ‘A Harlot’s Progress: Intersectional Feminism and the Whitechapel Victims’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/03_Madeleine_Keane.mp4

Interview with Chris Jones, author of ‘THE MAYBRICK MURDER AND THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE END GAME'
with Jonathan Menges and Roger Palmer.

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/04_Maybrick.mp4

Steven Blomer ‘Missing Reports and Reluctant Witnesses’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/01_Steve_Blomer.mp4

Dr. Amy Sturgis ‘Whitechapel "What Ifs": Evolving Perspectives on the Autumn of Terror in Science Fiction’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/02_Amy_Sturgis.mp4

Dr. Billy Rough ‘The Art of Murder: The Strange Case of Walter Sickert & Jack the Ripper’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/03_Billy_Rough.mp4

Jo Mungovin ‘Peppermint Billy: William Brown & the Tollgate Murders of 1856’

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/04_Jo_Mungovin.mp4

Philipp Röttgers 'Jack Der Aufschlitzer-A German Perception of the Ripper Murders from 1888 to Today

http://www.rippercast.com/mp3/05_Philipp_Rottgers.mp4

THANK YOU to all of our excellent presenters and guests for participating in this years conference.

Thank you to my fellow conference team members Jon Rees, Ally Ryder and Andrew 'the Graphics Man' Firth.

Thank you for watching.

See you in 2023.



JM

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Cheers John.

[jmenges]

In the coming days, as bonus content, I’ll release the audio portion of the Q&A round Dan Dolgin and Chris Jones participated in on Saturday.

JM

[Losmandris]

In the coming days, as bonus content, I’ll release the audio portion of the Q&A round Dan Dolgin and Chris Jones participated in on Saturday.

JM

That was particularly fascinating. Will be interesting to see the response. It has a new and possibly extremely long thread written all over it!

[FISHY1118]

Very well done by Chris , I think the Maybrick saga, and James being considered a JtR suspect can be put to finally be put to rest.

[mpriestnall]

Very well done by Chris , I think the Maybrick saga, and James being considered a JtR suspect can be put to finally be put to rest.

There's always Florence as JTR...

[Aethelwulf]

Not that I take too much interest in The Diary (apart from childishly trying to wind Ike up), but what (if any) is the new evidence?

[FISHY1118]

Im looking forward to Ike commenting on what Chris had to say in the Rippercast .

[caz]

Not that I take too much interest in The Diary (apart from childishly trying to wind Ike up), but what (if any) is the new evidence?

Well Chris Jones was pretty adamant that the "silver bullet", proving the diary was written shortly before Mike Barrett took it to London, on 13th April 1992, was Baxendale's solubility test, which he conducted shortly after 13th April 1992.

So you might want to ask what 'new' evidence was needed, from that day forward, that the real James Maybrick didn't write it over a century previously.

Oh, and by the way, Chris said it isn't a diary. He said it's a journal, although I'm not sure what the difference is, considering that jour is simply French for 'day', and both are defined as daily records.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

A couple more observations...

In an effort to rubbish the rumours of a theft from Battlecrease on 9th March 1992, Chris Jones points out that the stories of the diary - sorry, the journal - being thrown from an upstairs window into a skip [a very large rubbish/garbage container for those across the pond] were not true because there never was a skip.

Truth, lies and half-truths. We can eliminate the skip from enquiries, because Chris is quite right; there wasn't one there on 9th March 1992. It wasn't needed.

But I'm wondering how that closes the book on the diary having instead been taken away from the house on 9th March 1992, and shown to Mike Barrett in his local pub the same day. Clearly, the absence of a skip simply means that nothing could have been thrown into one. But nobody ever claimed it was - apart from a couple of electricians, whose livelihoods depended on denying any actual knowledge that something was taken away from a property they had worked on.

As they say across the pond - do the math.

Next up, Chris uses Paul Feldman's dismissal of the electricians back in 1993 as evidence that they would all have lied for the right price. In short, if Feldy himself had to give up on such a promising provenance, he must have been right about his informants: cheats, liars and conmen, the lot of them, but not a solitary tea leaf [rhyming slang] among them. Bless.

It's a reasonable position to take - or it would have been if Feldy had not been focussing on 1989 for the diary being liberated from Paul Dodd's place before being passed on to Tony Devereux, who finally passed it on to Mike Barrett in 1991. When Feldy checked the records, he would have discovered that his informants had never set foot in Battlecrease before March 1992, months after Tony had died. That would have confirmed for Feldy that the electricians were lying to him, and that wherever the diary had been, it wasn't in Dodd's house. In 1993, Feldy would have seen no reason to connect any of the work done there with Mike's first known mention of the diary. We don't know what Feldy's reaction might have been if only he had experimented with taking out the middle man, Tony Devereux, asking Doreen for the date of Mike's first call to her in London and checking this against the date the suspected electricians began working in Paul Dodd's house. Feldy's rejection of their stories has therefore to be seen in the context of his total unawareness of the double event of 9th March 1992.

When Eddie Lyons was interviewed outside Battlecrease House in 2018, Chris Jones was present for part of it. Chris makes the point that Eddie could simply have denied working there on 9th March 1992, as his name wasn't on the relevant timesheet. Chris argues that Eddie's admission to being there that day shows he had nothing to hide. Two things here: firstly, why did Eddie agree to be interviewed at all, knowing he would be asked about the diary - again - and would deny all knowledge - again? Why didn't he say there was no point because Mike Barrett had admitted to faking it years ago? What advantage was there for Eddie to show up, unless he wanted to know what his interviewers knew?
Secondly, when Eddie freely admitted that he was working at the house on the day in question, he didn't appear to know that his name was not down on the timesheet for that job. It was news to him, and he couldn't recall any dates either. He didn't need to: they were on the timesheet. It was also clearly news to Eddie that Mike Barrett had phoned London that same afternoon. We don't know that Eddie would have been so forthcoming, or would have shown up at all, had he not been in ignorance, as Feldy had been, of the curious coincidence of dates.

Lastly for now, Chris's co-author, Dan Dolgin, is under the mistaken impression that Anne Graham was once interviewed by Scotland Yard in connection with the diary. He doesn't give a source for this, but he says he has met and talked with Anne, so presumably the subject never came up. Is Dan perhaps referring to the day the police came to Goldie Street to question Mike?

Love,

Caz
X

[jmenges]

Here is the audio from the live Q&A portion of the Maybrick presentation.
With authors Chris Jones and Dan Dolgin.
About 45 minutes long.

https://www.rippercast.com/mp3/MaybrickQ&A.mp3

JM