A New Ripper Book

[Crystal]

I think it's a sensationalist marketing tactic and I consider it inappropriate.

[Khanada]

I think it's a tasteless cover to create, together with the ridiculous title, but strangely I'm not worried much about the reaction of children. For these reasons...

One, most bookstores are not real likely to stick this book up on display so it's the first thing people see as they come in the door. (Though in a way I wish they would, if only so they'd move all the damn Twilight rubbish.) Two, we have at least a few people on Casebook who guide Ripper tours. At least one of them has stated, recently and on Casebook, about their first-hand experience of just how ghoulish children can be with this stuff, and how many of them have asked to see Mary's photo multiple times.

Again, I think it's a tasteless choice, and I can't help but think that it's more about grabbing attention (which we are all happily providing by having this conversation) than anything else. But I'm not terribly worried for the kiddies, sorry.

[Chris]

A. P.

If you really feel so strongly about this, are you not at all concerned about the fact this image is freely available through the Internet - on sites such as this one? Aren't many more impressionable people likely to see it here than in their local supermarkets?

Shouldn't you be at the very least raising a petition to ask Stephen Ryder to remove the Kelly photograph from casebook.org - and maybe even contacting regulatory bodies to try to force him to do so, as you did in respect of amazon.co.uk?

Why are you directing all this stuff exclusively at Andrew Cook, when so many others have published, and continue to publish, this image, which you say you view as "extreme pornography" and "criminally obscene"? Is it really something to do with the curious view you expressed on the other thread - that despite appearances his book is all an effort to support the candidacy of Tumblety?

[Christine]

Honestly, this book is never going to be sold at Tesco, and may never even be sold at bookstores. I'm still trying to determine if Amberley books are distributed through the book wholesalers that supply bookstores--most "vanity press" books are not, but I don't think Amberley is a vanity press. If so, it will be sold on the Internet, to people who have heard about it through specialized journals and websites, and who have already seen the picture.

[Cap'n Jack]

Chris
I first voiced my views in regard to this image over 12 years ago, as you very well know in the 'Myth' - see the article that was published shortly after in the Independent where I labelled all users of the image as purveyors of pornography - and more recently I have made my strong views known on threads here where people have continued to display this image in ever increasing magnitude for no good reason whatsoever.
This is nothing new.
But the display of the image on the front cover of a book is.
For me this is a step too far.
I view the publication and distibution of this image to be a direct influence on the confused social signalling that may well shape the future of a child who eventually becomes a killer.
It portrays women as trash, and this is totally unacceptable.
Again I struggle with the cosy explanations and platitudes I am offered about the public display of this image; and would ask those who have replied if they intended to feed a child a burger would they take that child to the slaughterhouse to see the cow slaughtered, or would they buy it frozen in a packet out of a supermarket freezer?
This is the degree of difference we discuss here.

[Chris]

A. P.

Please don't try to suggest I am being dishonest. I haven't read "Jack the Myth", so I don't "very well know" what you may or may not have said in that work.

But if you can direct me to previous claims on your part that the publication - or even the possession - of this image is, or should be made, illegal, then do so. "Jack the Myth" is online in its entirety, so if it did say anything like that you would easily be able to provide a link.

And if you have asked Stephen Ryder to remove the Kelly photo from this website - or if you have contacted a regulatory body to ask them to make him do so - then say so. I don't think you have done either.

[DVV]

Eddowes' pics are as much horrible as Kelly's.
Looking at them makes you sad, deeply sad.
Same feelings when you watch a documentary about Auschwitz.
But I can't call that pornography.

Is Dr Bond's post-mortem pornography ?

The Whitechapel Murders now belong to history, and all pictures and drawings must be taken as historical documents/sources.

Amitiés all,
David

[Cap'n Jack]

Chris:

The Independent, August 1995:

The people involved in all this used to call themselves "historians" or "enthusiasts", but since the centenary of the killings they have been cursed with the moniker "Ripperologists". There is, everyone agrees, a weirdo element in the ranks, but there is also a strange and defensive inner sanctum whose members by no means defend one another. Each proponent of a particular candidate for the Ripper is forced venomously to refute all charges of innocence levelled against him, and the number of theories deemed viable depends entirely on to whom you talk. Off the record, almost everyone is savaged for their unreasonable beliefs and evidence-twisting. Ripperana, which has a circulation of 500 across 11 countries, is surreptitiously described by one Ripperologist as mere "bits and pieces not very professionally put together". Dark reference is made to a pending libel action.
The most violent disputes ever to hit Ripperology were caused by the Maybrick diary, supposedly written by James Maybrick, who died in 1889, apparently poisoned by his wife. This confessional journal was produced in 1993 by a Liverpool man, Mike Barrett, who suggested it had been discovered under some floorboards.
Colin Wilson, best known for his book The Outsider, but a longstanding true-crime writer as well, is convinced that the diary is genuine, and that Maybrick was the Ripper. Asked about the fact that Barrett signed a confession saying the diary was faked, Wilson simply says: "He retracted the next day." He explains that one expert analysis proves the diary ink is old, the other that it is modern: take your pick.
Paul Gainey, a press officer for the Suffolk police, recently co-authored The Lodger, a book that unveils the American quack Francis Tumblety as a long-neglected original Ripper suspect. "The diary has been horrendous," he says. "It was probably the most damaging thing that ever happened to Ripper research. There was modern preservative in the ink. Mike Barrett has made five confessions: one verbal and four written."
Paul Begg, who has written extensively on the murders, and is the founder- editor of the encyclopaedic Jack the Ripper A to Z, agrees that nothing has done more than the diary to divide Ripper writers. "The old writers have nothing to prove," he says, but since the diary "people are really going for the jugular". Added to which, there aren't merely two positions on the diary: there are three. Begg doesn't believe either that it is genuine, or that it's a contemporary fake, but that it is a non-contemporary fake, full of historical interest.
Where do these arcane obsessions spring from? There are four probable explanations: the originality of the Ripper's crimes, the tantalising thoroughness of his mystery, the vast extent of his fame, and a love of Victoriana itself. The Ripper murders, says Begg, "caught all that life like a fly in amber".
Wilson asserts that this fascination with the Ripper must derive partly from his being "the first serial sex killer". He means it, too, though he does concede that the first ever sex killing probably took place in 1876, when a little girl, Fanny Adams, was chopped into tiny pieces: hence "sweet Fanny Adams" meaning "nothing".
Wilson defines a sex killing as an act of murder that induces orgasm. Although there is in fact no evidence that the Ripper experienced any such thing, Wilson won't agree either that the murders might not have been sexual, or that if sex killings did occur at the end of the 19th century, they must also have occurred before then. It is, typically in Ripper debates, impossible to argue this further.
Nick Warren, a surgeon and the publisher and guiding eminence behind Ripperana, is relatively circumspect in calling the Ripper "the first urban sex serial murderer we know about". Nevertheless, he has written of the "romance" that drives Ripper research ever onwards. Why romance? "I call it a 'romance' because it's a mystery and the two words go together: - I don't think people worry about the background."
This vision of the blameless Ripperologist in pursuit of the truth is not universally accepted. The pseudonymous author AP Wolf has accused all Ripper historians of participating in a deadly trade. Ripper books have become increasingly explicit, with the publication of original post- mortem notes and revolting scene-of-crime photographs. Last year Wolf wrote about coming close to madness as a consequence of researching the case, and condemned all Ripper studies as pornographic.
If there is one subject on which the Ripperologists are united, however, it is the denial of prurience. Martin Fido, once a university lecturer in literature, took up the profession of true-crime specialist in 1983. He thinks Wolf's argument is in itself "madness". Nobody's interest, he says, is "morbid or gloating". For five years he conducted Ripper tours in the East End. Half his custom, he says, came from well-to-do women: "One owes it to the victims to describe calmly how they were injured," he insists. "Only three times did I see to my horror a man leering at the back saying 'go on, go on; tell me more'."
Gainey thinks AP Wolf is a woman. "She takes a definite feminine line. She's quite critical of people who study the case: I blanched a bit when I read that. [But] I don't write about it because it's about killing women. It's like a true-life crime story with the final page torn out."
If Wolf were a woman, and others strongly dispute it, this would be a rare thing. The Ripper case is conspicuous for its lack of appeal to female writers, perhaps because their concern for the victims obliterates their interest in the murderer; perhaps because the debates so rarely remain clinical. In talking about the lunatic fringe in Ripper studies, Warren lumps together National Front members trying to prove that the Ripper was Jewish, and "feminist" agitators who promote the Maybrick diary as proof that Florence Maybrick was terrorised into murdering her husband.
Ripperologists repeatedly draw distinctions between the "serious" and "non-serious", whether referring to suspects, victims or each other. The suspect suspects - minor royals, fish gutters and major theosophists - greatly irritate the "serious'" theorists, but above all they hate the top hat and black bag image of the Ripper. "Colin Wilson is not accepted by anyone who is serious," Warren contends. "All future serious research is going to be directed at Tumblety," says Gainey. Though the evidence against Tumblety is "overstated", "he is a serious addition to the history of the case," says Fido. Tumbelty, says Wilson, is "absolutely unlikely" as a candidate for the Ripper, because "no creative person has ever committed a premeditated murder. They have other ways of letting off steam".
Aside from the question of whether "letting off steam" quite covers the Ripper's crimes, it is inconceivable that consensus on his identity will ever be reached. Given the primitive nature of crime-solving in 1888, few accept that such a thing as indisputable proof could still exist, let alone that they could all be persuaded by a single theory. Which is perhaps the point. Once you join the club, you are a member for life.
How would they feel if the case were solved beyond dispute? This question goes down badly, at first.
"There wouldn't be any feeling," says Warren. "Those who really know the case think they will never know who the Ripper is."
"I'd be very happy - delighted," says Begg. "We'd all be able to get on with something more important. I would much rather have been an expert of a cure for cancer."
Gainey, of course, believes that he and Evans have solved the case. What did it feel like? Gainey was on "cloud nine". He found Tumblety's will in a probate office, asked to see it, received the dusty bundle, pulled the string: "I felt a jolt in my system. I was holding something he'd signed!"
Fido describes his fear that were the truth uncovered, Jack the Ripper would quickly be forgotten, but declares that he is "in this job for truth, not prestige". Not that he is indifferent to public opinion, though. "Public disbelief is a fear we have when a big piece of incredible stuff comes out," he says.
Surely Jack the Ripper, as both mythological figure and criminal, is an indivisible mixture of truth and "incredible stuff"? But the contempt of "serious" Ripperologists for what they call "fiction" is too strong. "No two people," says Fido, "apart, of course, from co-authors, agree on what the truth is." Then he concedes that perhaps there are three people who stand by the Maybrick diary. "Is Colin Wilson believing in it at the moment?" he asks. "He's been swinging like a pendulum."
Earlier this year, the specialist crime publishers Grey House Books brought out a slim volume containing the Ripper theories of 53 contributors. Each writer was allowed two pages. The first edition of Who Was Jack the Ripper? was limited to 100 copies. These were to be signed by as many contributors as possible, and distributed among them in lieu of payment. Grey House kept the balance of the books to sell at pounds 100 each.
The project was co-ordinated by Loretta Lay. "They are so jealous of each other's theories that it was almost impossible to get them together on the page even, let alone for a party," she says. So there had to be two signing sessions. When she announced this, she started receiving furtive phone calls from contributors wanting to avoid those with whom they fiercely disagreed. Begg enjoyed his evening anyway. "Apart from a pro- and anti- diary blow-up, Loretta's party was very nice," he says.
"They do this amazing research," says Lay ruminatively. "But I have sometimes wondered what they might not have achieved had they all dedicated themselves to something more worthwhile."
They could, after all, have dedicated themselves to something much worse ....'

If you read the Myth you'll soon see that it was written primarily to counter the use of such images in the media for commercial gain.
I certainly am not happy with the display of such images on this site, but I note they come with a clear warning now, and to view them one must go to specific threads concerned.
If the home page consisted of a full page image of a slaughtered and naked woman you can bet your asp that Spry's hotmail would be on fire.

[Chris]

A. P.

Thanks for posting that. But I'm afraid it only illustrates the way in which all your statements have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Yesterday you said "see the article that was published shortly after in the Independent where I labelled all users of the image as purveyors of pornography".

There's no such statement in the article. It's not clear whether the passing reference to the use of post-mortem notes and scene-of-crime photographs comes from you or the author of the article. And in fact I don't see any direct quotations from you - only references to things you had written in the past. Obviously you weren't interviewed for the article, as the author wasn't even sure if you were a man or a woman!

What the article does say is that writing the previous year you had "condemned all Ripper studies as pornographic". If by quoting the article you are endorsing that opinion, then you should be attacking all of us, not singling out Andrew Cook.

[Jeff Leahy]

The straw that broke the Camels back

A. P.

What the article does say is that writing the previous year you had "condemned all Ripper studies as pornographic". If by quoting the article you are endorsing that opinion, then you should be attacking all of us, not singling out Andrew Cook.

The straw that broke the camels back.

I find this reasoning a little unfair. If I can draw a comparison in current UK politics’:

We have all known and been aware for years that MP’s have second, homes and second jobs. They through in exorbitant expense claims on dinners and running their constituency practices, often employing members of there own families.

Now I’m not making a right or wrong assumption here, its done by MP’s from all parties and become accepted by the public at large.

Then a few shocking revelations come to light and suddenly it’s a big story and the press are going through every receipt. We have a public out cry!

Is this book cover not a similar line in the sand? The straw that breaks the camels back? The individual line that we all draw and access where a bouts we are standing?

So I pose this question to you Chris:

Where do you draw the line? If Coke a Cola suddenly run an advertising campaign using this image with the caption ‘So good it cuts you up’ ? Do you object?
Giant haw dings in Piccadilly Circus? Do you object?
A subliminal TV adds campaign where this image is flashed up during Blue Peter?

Surely there has to be some moral point at which we all see the line crossed and where we believe we must speak out about something. Has not AP Wolf simply seen that line and decided enough is enough?

Not that I’d agree with a total ban of this image. But I don’t think the fact that this image requires considerable thought does any harm either.

The really question is where we, as individuals, each choose to draw the line.

Pirate

[Chris]

Jeff

As I've said before, my personal opinion is that the Kelly photograph is not appropriate as a cover illustration. If A. P. is contacting retailers to warn them about the image and to urge them not to display it where children might see it, as the court official in Jersey advised him to, then I'd support him in that. But I think all the stuff about banning the publication of the photograph, or restricting access to accredited researchers, is ridiculous.

As for the hypothetical question about advertising, that is quite closely regulated - at least in the UK - and I presume the use of an image like this wouldn't be allowed, certainly in a context where it could be seen by minors.

[anna]

BB........your post was spot on,and mirrored my own thoughts exactly.

Why are children being used as examples in this....as I have said before,they will not recognise this image as what it is,and why should they wish to pick it up,or look at it,in anyway?.... Thomas or another of their favourites will be somewhere else,and they will probably have headed over to that section,in anyway.
I don't think a teenager would even bother to look at it...probably considered something wrinklies would appreciate!,while they themselves appreciate drum and bass or some other crap invading their ears.....god,I'd hate to be a set of teenagers ears.
Something has just occurred to me...wasn't this image and others,flashed on the screen during the screening of "Whitechapel"?????the images clearly visible?funnily enough,that is the EXACT circumstances where you would have expected the scream to come from..but it didn't...because they were accepted as the most important part of the story,with the explanation and storyline built around them.
As babybird says...this is the only image we have of Kelly...until another nicer one is found.Like babybird,I would welcome that day.You cannot leave out a victim...just because she isn't "cleaned up",as the others are.
How long would anyone who first looks at this image,actually look at Kelly?
She is the obvious...when there's lots of less obvious to search out.
That picture is a gift...it let's me actually be in the room..I know what the weather is like outside,that there are coppers in the court,residents upstairs,who's familiar names and prior movements I know all about.I wish I could be that cameraman,walk around the bed and go out and see for myself everything I have read about.
AP is viewing the picture as distasteful...but Kelly was not,so how do you seperate the two,without it affecting Kelly's memory.
Yet another reason why I think it is wrong to remove or magnify the effect of this picture...leave Mary to rest in peace.
P.S...one wonders what sort of "so called" journalist wrote that crap in the Independent..it is a well known fact that if they know nothing of the subject,the source out write-up's etc..hence the weirdo thing aswell...wish they had actually asked someone,before the took to writing it.

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Chris

And as I’ve said before I’m in total agreement with you on this. What I was trying to say, and please bear with me…

Is that AP has the right to say enough is enough, I’ve put up with it a long time but this is a step to far and I want to see things changed. When these things happen sometimes things you let go two years ago, you now choose not to, because the current Zeitgeist is different. Today.

I’m not certain if I’m explaining this very well, but AP has the right to base his position on the current state of play and not necessarily be held to a position he may have held five or ten years ago because things have changed in the mean time. New day , new set of circumstance, fresh re-think. He has always thought roughly in that direction...but this is where he is now.

Well there it is, I’m sort of getting exhausted on ideas, so if you don’t all mind I’ll take a back seat until Jonathon’s interview or some genuine new info.

Have a good day all

Pirate

[caz]

Hi Jeff,

I get where you are coming from. Nobody would ever be able to raise an objection to anything, if they first had to prove that they had always objected equally strongly in the past to anything and everything of a similar nature, regardless of context.

Moreover, it would be patently absurd and more than a bit frightening if people were expected to adopt a position and never deviate from it one iota, from cradle to grave, regardless of new information and ideas picked up along the way. There wasn't suddenly a whole new generation of men, for instance, who grew up strongly objecting to husbands being allowed to beat up their wives, where the previous generation had all died vehemently protesting their right to do so. It's only the gradual changing of individual minds over time, as we get access to more information about our world, that leads to changes in the law and, if we are lucky, bad old attitudes dying out slowly to be replaced with new improved ones.

I would have thought anyone who considered it an essential quality to be exactly the same person they were even five years ago, with precisely the same outlook and same strength of feeling on every issue, regardless of how the world has turned since and what they have read in the meantime, would be uniquely unsuited to the medium of debate.

Love,

Caz
X

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks for the supportive comments, Chris, and me old pirating mate, Jeff.
I thought it worthwhile to post a few of my thoughts from then, taken from the introduction of the Myth, to show where I was then, and where I am now.
To be honest, with the gradual extinction of the old Rippersaurs, much of the written material that I objected to has expired with them, but sadly is has been replaced by wicked imagery.
I certainly do not classify some of the fine writers, historians and researchers around today as 'purveyors of pornography', in fact for the most part I have nothing but admiration for their truly academic abilities to deal with a difficult subject without reducing it to a level of titillation or obscentity.
Just when you think you stare a brave new world in the eye and think you better shut up with all this stuff about pornography and obscenity, then up pops Dr Cook with his evil brew.

'Ripper literature has evolved over the years into some kind of super- pornography, designed to titillate the discerning reader - the sophisticated armchair murderer - with much, much more than standard pornography can ever offer, with its elaborate theories of forbidden sex and bodily destruction. To take but one lurid example which has the impotent killer substituting his penis for a knife and then thrusting it into the reproductive organs of his victims as an act of sexual finality.

The details of the horrific murders are mulled over in a serious crime-writer style of language as is appropriate to this peculiar form of high-class pornography, but the sexual connotations which probably sell the books in the first place are still there. For example:

Was Mary Jane Kelly buggared before being ripped to pieces? Did the Ripper cut the throats of his prostitute victims while they were bent over in front of him exposing their backside for sex or did he lay them on the ground, have them raise their skirts for sexual intercourse and then plunge his knife into them?

Even Donald Rumbelow - a policeman who is considered to be the leading authority on the Ripper murders - in his otherwise serious examination of the case `The Complete Jack the Ripper' couldn't resist the temptation to inform his readers that the killer most likely struck from behind as most prostitutes in those days preferred anal intercourse rather than normal intercourse to prevent unwanted pregnancies. He then goes on to reveal that the majority of prostitutes are able to bring a man to climax without any insertion at all, merely grasping the offending object between their thighs to satisfy their customers. One is left wondering exactly what these choice snippets concerning the sexual behaviour of prostitutes in 1888 and today have to do with a murder case, and where the author gleaned his astonishing information from in the first place? Perhaps Rumbelow could explain to his readers why he chose to include in his book horrifying pictures of the bloody remains of the victims of the Ripper?

It is well worth looking at some of Colin Wilson's comments in his latest effort - as he is one of the most prolific Ripper writers of all time - to come to grips with `his' Ripper. In describing the Ripper about his task of killing Annie Chapman, Wilson equates the killer's behaviour with that of a dog copulating with a bitch on heat. Mary Jane Kelly's murder has blood spurting over walls and Wilson postulates that the Ripper must therefore have been naked when he discovered the `ultimate thrill', a 3-month-old foetus in the victim's womb. When it comes to Catherine Eddowes' murder Wilson uses words like `delight' and `delicate' to describe the horrifying attack and then goes on to make the curious statement that the killer `went almost insane' when he found another victim to murder and mutilate. That is an odd way to describe the actions of a knife-wielding maniac with a bent for murdering and then cutting the insides out of women. Surely the Ripper was already insane before he began his attack on Catherine Eddowes?

In the case of Annie Chapman's sad and brutal murder Wilson's choice of words is particularly painful. After all what on earth have copulating dogs got to do with the callous murder of a woman? And Wilson's `ultimate thrill' of the Ripper discovering the foetus of a child in the womb of Mary Jane Kelly is a bit of a damp squib. Dr Thomas Bond's extensive post-mortem carried out the day after Kelly was murdered makes it absolutely clear that she was not pregnant. There was no foetus to provide Wilson's Ripper with the ultimate thrill.

As an aside to the main story Colin Wilson throws in a case where the victim's intestines were torn out through her vagina, and keen to show us that his Ripper is no ordinary mass murderer he launches into a dramatic and bloody description of his Ripper at his gruesome work. He reveals that the Ripper was not content to merely stab and maim his victims but achieved his pleasure from delving into the bodies and extracting the bloody contents. He then goes on with what almost seems admiration for his Ripper when he describes the killer as being as skillful as a butcher who would never have left a woman dying and performed his mutilations by touch alone.'