Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession-(Monaghan, 2010)

[David Monaghan]

Hi David,

Thanks for that. Very interesting stuff. I'm still reading the book (on about pg 150), though it's been slow going due to lack of time. I'm waiting until I finish to comment further, but it seems some points of our research are overlapping (my preferred suspect was a particular pimp), so that's exciting.

I ordered your book at the same time as Andrew Cook's and M.J. Trow's. Of the three, yours is the only one that doesn't boast on the cover 'SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV DOCUMENTARY'. Of course, the irony of this is that you're a TV director!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Dear Tom,

I'll be fascinated to see the fruits of your research. The pimp angle sounds very interesting. We do have much in common, as it would seem to me these type of crimes had almost universally been committed by men very intimate with this class of women - and pimps and punters being closest to them.
On the soon-to-be major TV documentary, you hit on an odd point. The book arose out of research I did for a documentary I originated about Walter for Channel Four some years ago. The books delves into such psychological nastiness about the guy in the crimes, it might be pretty near unfilmable!!


David Monaghan
Author
Jack the Ripper's Secret Confessions

[David Monaghan]

That's a dangerously exhaustive list, there, David...really is the guts of your book, so fair play for posting it on here. If a psychological portrait was all that was needed to identify a killer with the Ripper's qualities with the crimes themselves, then I'd say you're onto something. But, to be perfectly frank, I think you've a way to go in terms of linking the actual individual (ie. the author of MSL) to the offences themselves (as distinct from the type of offences that they might be interpreted as being).

Some of the problem lies in not interrogating the precise circumstances of each murder, and the victim concerned, but relying on the standard fare. It also lies in excessive extrapolation--eg. while the bonnet example was interesting, there is no *necessary* connection between the new bonnet and his supposed fetish.

The other thing, of course, is that we just don't know that what he wrote had any strong basis in actual events. Other sources note wildly different prices for 'low-class' girls than those he mentions; still more note that the number of very young prostitutes were few. Clearly, the veil of secrecy that surrounded these issues, along with the more general one of sexual assault, mitigates a little against me there, but I wonder if any attempt was made to match his version of events with records of complaints. As you know, there are legions of examples of 'offensive' or pornographic writings that are either explicitly fictive, or can more or less be demonstrated to be inventions. The sheer unpleasantness of MSL shouldn't counter the need to verify the extent to which those events did, or could, occur. I'm pretty wary of using a work of fiction (and I certainly would include memoir in that, as Walter is a very unreliable narrator) to interrogate factual events.

But, interesting and thought-provoking, nevertheless (even if I can't forgive the statement that Barnett had been gone for over a month at the time Mary Kelly was killed...).

Dear Claire,

I hear your point on Walter's My Secret Life as fiction. But I must say I could not find any in depth scholar or writer on the subject that puts MSL as fiction. There is undoubtedly fictionalised, camouflaged, and conflated elements to his memoir. At the time it was first subtlely marketted in 1894, it was done so as "real". It was considered as much in the 1969 Leeds trial of Arthur Dobson for publishing it. Neither defence nor prosecution considered it fiction, and it was not put it in the same class as Lady Chatterly, the fiction most famously tried as obscene nine years earlier. Rather than literature, MSL is best compared to works as Danny Rolling's Making of a Serial Killer, and the more fantastic, but nevertheless confessional writings of Gerard Schaeffer. I do understand the urge to dismiss it - MSL is a horrible work, and all biography,m as has been said, must be considered fiction. But even it one did believe it fiction, understand contemporary fantasies about prostitutes and violence toward them would be worthy of study for understanding the Ripper crimes.

regards

David Monaghan
Author
Jack the Ripper's Secret Confessions

[Uncle Jack]

Just finished the book. The points about the possible connection to Mary Kelly are intriguing and worthy of further research in my opinion. It was disappointing that the true identity of Walter was not settled but that is one of the little annoyances of Ripper research - we just cannot find everything! Lol. All in all I enjoyed the book and it certainly requires more recognition.

[Tom_Wescott]

I'll be fascinated to see the fruits of your research. The pimp angle sounds very interesting. We do have much in common, as it would seem to me these type of crimes had almost universally been committed by men very intimate with this class of women - and pimps and punters being closest to them.

Hi David. The research is going pretty well. A number of contemporary detectives seem to have thought my guy the Ripper, so that helps. LOL. It's funny that in your book you talk about Cavendish Bentinck and how he was suspected of being the 'London Minotaur', because my suspect threatened to kill his mother!

I thought your page on the Torso victim (the only such murder mentioned by Walter) was creepy to say the least, as well as the Mary Kelly stuff. There were some factual errors throughout, namely on Stride and Kelly, but nothing that effected your overall thesis, and of course those can be corrected if you do a 2nd edition, which I think the book certainly deserves.

I'll need to send you an e-mail sometime because I might have some leads and info for you.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Trevor Marriott]

Tom,
thanks for giving the book a chance. Jack The Ripper's Secret Confession is a pretty tough read and is meant to be. It's tells two colliding narratives - the arrival of a new era of sexual control with the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885 raising the age of consent to 16 years, and the the psychological signs of the unravelling of Walter that point to him as the Ripper. Reading Walter's My Secret Life is a horror show. Not only is it badly and confusingly written (sometimes purposely so), the deep meaning of the need to psychopathically control and hurt women is deeply unpleasant. I've put together a short primer of the points raised to guide debate. You may food for thought.

Jack
The Ripper's Secret Confession
30 points to Walter, author of "My Secret Life"
as Jack the Ripper
Geographic profile, links to crime scene
evidence, motive, means, claimed connection to
victims and, primarily, a unique and extreme violent
fetish pattern make Walter as Jack the Ripper.

1) Walter uses “low whores”
in East London during bouts of poverty. He hates himself for
doing so.
2) Walter is a violent sexual
sadist.
3) Walter is a blood fetishist.
He describes causing bloodshed of 20 women and girls during
sexual acts.
4) Walter uses knives for sex
purposes, carrying blades to make peep
holes.
5) Walter sexualised slit
throats. In 1888 he likened female genitals to “the slit
throat of a dog”.
6) Walter commits his first
rape, of a servant, at 16.
7) Walter became a serial rapist
of country girls in his early 20s.8) At age 21, Walter rapes an
unconscious women later found “half murdered” in East
London.
9) In middle age, piercing
female flesh – the hymen – becomes Walter’s
obsession
10)
Walter threatens prostitutes with weapons. He wields a
poker to “smash” a dress lodger and her madam during a
row
.11)Walter is fascinated by blade-wielding rape. On hearing of a
rapist who subdued his victim by holding a razor to her
throat, he acts out the scenario on a sex partner. When he
learns another paramour had been threatened with murder by
sword during a gang raped by soldiers, he obsessively seeks
out details of the attack.
12) Walter has homicidal urges. He rapes he wife while imagining
“murdering her” after running from the police following
rough street sex,. Walter “determined to murder” the
child Pol during her rape, and tells her he will kill her.
After paying for buggery, Walter wants to kick the man he
had sex with and swears to kill anyone who learns about
it.
13) Walter knows Whitechapel. He had based
himself at the Gunmaker’s Proofhouse in Commercial Road
Aldgate for stalking women and voyeurism. This is within a
four minute escape radius of all Whitechapel murder
sites.
14) The Ripper was said to have medical
knowledge. Walter bys medical books and repeatedly pretends
to be a doctor. He studies female sex organs, sketching
internal genitalia with a surgeon who had “dissected
virgins”. He acts as a surgery assistant in live
examination of two women.
15) Walter developed a fetish for having prostitutes directly
after they had been serviced during street sex. His practice
is to shadow women to places of assignation
unseen
.16) Walter associated pursuing street prostitutes with
bloodsports, wearing a hunting outfit to trawl for sex in
Dundee. He describes being sexual aroused while out killing
Game
.17) Walter disguised his identity while pursuing prostitutes in
Tower Hill, dressing as a sailor and in working man’s cap.
Men wearing similar clothes were seen on the night of the
murder of Stride and Eddowes
.18) Martha Tabram is killed in a George’s Yard stairwell.
Walter describes stalking a short, “hook nosed” older
prostitute, who he previously threatened “to smash”, to
a secluded spot in order to frighten her.
19) Mary Ann Nichols was found with an unexplained bonnet.
Walter details his tactics of giving bonnets as sexual
inducements.
20) Mary Ann Nichols had a clean white handkerchief, and Liz
Stride had two handkerchiefs. Walter would offer
handkerchiefs as payment to destitute
prostitutes
21) The Ripper used a scarf worn by Liz Stride to align the cutting
of her throat. Walter used scarves as sexual presents,
positioning them on women’s neck as a lever for sexual
groping.
22) Annie Chapman carried pills at her death provided apparently
by an unknown doctor. Walter’s pretended to be a doctor,
and had a prostitute use pills to subdue the virgin Emma,
who he wished to rape.
23) Ripper victim Mary Jane Kelly and Walter’s prostitute
lover Mary Davis, share the same name. Mary Davies (or
Davis) was Mary Jane Kelly’s married name, under which she
was buried. Both Mary’s were Irish. Both lived in
single, ground floor rooms where they serviced clients,
entered by long corridors. Both rooms were in the East End.
Both Mary’s paid rent to a married couple who lived in the
same building. Both were behind in their rent, one 25
shillings, to other 29 shillings. Both were thought
attractive enough to be able to have worked in the West End.
Mary Davis refused to provide a child for sex to Walter.
Walter then hears that she has “died”.
24) Mary Jane Kelly was found murdered some reports said the
door appeared to be locked and the key missing. Walter
describes his tactics as a key stealer, taking keys to keep
raped victims locked in.
25) Walter links himself to a murdered
women’s corpse found on the Thames in 1889, postulating
she is Sarah Mavis, a prostitute who spurned him after
extracting a large loan. He describes her identifying
features as a star-shaped mark underneath her breast.
The corpse found on the Thames had two ribs below the breast
cut away, obliterating where Walter’s identifying mark
would have been.
26) Walter suffered “defloration mania”, the virgin breaking
sex craze of the 19th century. In 1886, psychiatrist
Krafft-Ebing linked defloration mania to a specific type of
female mutilation murders that involve stabbing at the lower
abdomen and removal of body parts: the marks of the
Ripper.
27) Walter feared being blackmailed by those
who knew of his sex life. He had been subject to anonymous
letters to his wife. He said he would kill a woman if his
long term relationship was threatened.
28) Walter suffers from “brain whirls” -
memory lapse - during rage and extreme sex. These are
symptoms of homicidal epilepsy, noted at the time as
possible driver for the Ripper’s murders.
29) Women out to expose the child sex trade in Whitechapel for
targets for murder. A letter by Josephine Butler in 1885
says Rebecca Jarrett, a prostitute living in the Hanbury
Street who had revealed the child sex trade, was pursued by
“four brutal brothel keepers” out to kill her.
This specific motive for terror murder of Whitechapel
prostitutes, recorded shortly before the Ripper killings, is
ignored. The Attorney General orders Rebecca Jarrett herself
prosecuted for buying a child as part of a newspaper expose
on the child sex trade.
30) Walter’s privately printed sex memoir My Secret Life is
dated 1888, the year of the Ripper killings. He says it as a
contribution to psychology for a sexual aberration he cannot
understand. Walter speaks of 80 pages of diary entries -
worse that the rapes, child abuse and sex crimes he includes
- that are "consigned to the flames”.

David Monaghan
Author
My Secret Life

And he committed all of those crimes and never once got caught, now that what I call one lucky man. There is a saying "If something sounds to good to be true then it probably is"

[Tom_Wescott]

There is a saying "If something sounds to good to be true then it probably is"

That's a well-known quote from the book Things Burned Out Pessimists Say. Not recommended.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Trevor Marriott]

That's a well-known quote from the book Things Burned Out Pessimists Say. Not recommended.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Its a good job that i am the ever eternal optimist then

[Gman992]

What about books on the Kennedy assassination?

[Tom_Wescott]

Trevor,

You're a good guy, who gives as well as he gets. I respect that.

G-Man,

What about them?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[David Monaghan]

Just finished the book. The points about the possible connection to Mary Kelly are intriguing and worthy of further research in my opinion. It was disappointing that the true identity of Walter was not settled but that is one of the little annoyances of Ripper research - we just cannot find everything! Lol. All in all I enjoyed the book and it certainly requires more recognition.

Dear Adam,

thanks for the good thoughts on the book. I knw I would have a problem with recognition for it, as it takes the study of the crimes is a far different direction taht it had been heading. After the Ripper/royals period, the Maybrick diary debacle, there had been a return to Police Belief - that is that Scotland Yard Must Have Known. From this has come very good scholarship on what the police did do and suspected. The problem I found is that this presumes the police were investigating from a level playing field. My discovery of the 1885 "four brutal brothel kepers" assassiantion squad letter, which police had no intention of following up because of the political decision to jail the messengers of the Maiden's Tribute investigation, casts a different light on the effectiveness the police knew. If anything, studying Walter brings us back the the very unpleasant but necessary task of looking at motives and meaning within the mileau - the interaction between Whitecahpel prostitutes and their users in 1888. I have been working on who Walter is, got that pretty much nailed down, and have come up with some interesting stuff. So stayed tuned.
Regards
David Monaghan
Author
Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession

[belinda]

That's a well-known quote from the book Things Burned Out Pessimists Say. Not recommended.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Where can I get a copy of that book

[doris]

Interesting to hear that this book has been conected with JTR.
I read it some years ago and found some bits very gruesome, yet some bits made me laugh out loud, in fact I still remember laughing over the description "lapped cunts with flappers" which was one of the 5 types of ladies parts, accoroding to his physiognomy of cunts chapter.

If you are intrerested the whole book can be read here-

http://www.my-secret-life.com/contents.htm

And it is alarming to learn that in 1969 a publisher in Blighty got 2 years in the clink for publishing the book!

doris

[HollyDolly]

Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession-(Monaghan,2010)

I would suggest seeing if your local library has a loan policy with other libraries.

In my area of America, if there's a known book title and author, usually, it can be located and mailed, so I just pick it up at the library. I don't even have to pay postage.

Then, once you know whether the book is worth buying or not . . . you can purchase it if you choose.

curious

I do this all the time. And you are right.Sometimes after i get these loan books from the library, I'll buy a copy for myself, and sometimes not.
I've done this also with out of print books, some even from the 1900s.Lot cheaper than paying 50 dollars or more for a used book.

[HollyDolly]

Jack the Ripper's Secret confession

Hi David. The research is going pretty well. A number of contemporary detectives seem to have thought my guy the Ripper, so that helps. LOL. It's funny that in your book you talk about Cavendish Bentinck and how he was suspected of being the 'London Minotaur', because my suspect threatened to kill his mother!

I thought your page on the Torso victim (the only such murder mentioned by Walter) was creepy to say the least, as well as the Mary Kelly stuff. There were some factual errors throughout, namely on Stride and Kelly, but nothing that effected your overall thesis, and of course those can be corrected if you do a 2nd edition, which I think the book certainly deserves.

I'll need to send you an e-mail sometime because I might have some leads and info for you.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Tom, Who was Cavendish-Bentinck?When trying to find out, Wikepedia have quite a few people listed with that last night,Like the Duke of Portland,etc,many members of the nobility.Also who was the London Minotaur, and what did he do?

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Holly.

I know what you mean! It's hard to nail down the right guy, but Cavendish Bentink was a Member of Parliament who strongly opposed W.T. Stead's movement, apparently because he enjoyed prostitutes. According to Monaghan, he was implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal. I need to learn much more about this, as my interest lies in the fact that his stepmother in 1891 became a victim of my preferred Ripper suspect, who threatened her with blackmail and murder, in letters and postcards written in red ink, referencing the Whitechapel murders. It seems he knew her personally, and possibly her stepson. Since he was a pimp, I wonder if he didn't provide Cavendish Bentink with women or underage girls. I'm also curious to know if there's a connection to the Cavendish murder victim of Phoenix Park fame.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott