The Private Life of Jack The Ripper by Richard Gordon

[Beowulf]

Anybody read this yet?

It was written back in 2001 or something. I was considering the thought that JTR was a lycanthrope. This book seems to touch on that.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-Life-Jack-The-Ripper/dp/1842325140

[GUT]

G'day Beowulf

Can I ask why you are considering that, merely the level of mutilation?

Or have I missed something ewlse that points that way?

[Beowulf]

I've thought of this before, wondering if that was his delusion. That he was some sort of animal, but of course it always dead ends in the fact that the Ripper murders included a tool, a knife.

But I did come across this book when scouting about the net for something else, I forget what:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sUtN0Kfy7ugC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=lycanthropy+and+jack+the+ripper&source=bl&ots=w5fF9LB2cX&sig=cIA0sxU5vKTqD4x6onxcm5WMKF0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MGQuU-7bKeeCyAH2roFQ&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=lycanthropy%20and%20jack%20the%20ripper&f=false

"The people who have the diagnosis of clinical lycanthropy often take on the sounds of the animal in which they believe they turn into. So, if a person believes that he or she is a werewolf, they may begin to howl at the moon or sometimes even in the daylight. The last symptom that matches schizophrenia is grossly disorganized behavior. This is appropriate because individuals with clinical lycanthropy often act like the animal they believe they have become, including living outside and picking up their diet."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy

That last part, about 'picking up their diet' made me think of Kozminski, and the report of him refusing food and eating foot from the gutters instead.

It's pretty surely schizophrenia. Mistrust of food being poisoned, as in the institution he ended up in but it also made me think of lycanthropic behavior, and wondering if he was imagining he was a beast, and if he might've been guilty of being the Ripper with that idea a driving force in his head

I'd rather read a nonfictional book on the subject, there does not seem to be any I know of. Was wondering if anyone had read this.

[GUT]

Don't know of any books.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

My biggest problem with the idea is that I think he was too organised, but....