Saucy Jack - Woods & Baddeley

[The Grave Maurice]

Saucy Jack: the Elusive Ripper, by Paul Woods and Gavin Baddeley. Hersham: Ian Allan Publishing, 2009.

Feckin' cold here tonight, so I'm staying close to the fire and catching up on my reading. I'm sure this book must have been discussed before, but, if so, I can't find the thread. It has much to recommend it, and I'll get back to that later, but I notice, on p. 130, that the authors quote Bobby Wayman, a former owner of the Ten Bells, saying that Truman's had the door of 29 Hanbury Street in their museum. If that bit of info is common knowledge, I somehow missed it.

Anyone know if it's true?

[Phil Carter]

Hello GM,

Thats a new one on me too. I haven't got this particular book, and would be interested inhearing what you have found that may also nudge our collective grey cells a little. Looking forward to hearing more.

best wishes

Phil

[John Bennett]

It has much to recommend it, and I'll get back to that later, but I notice, on p. 130, that the authors quote Bobby Wayman, a former owner of the Ten Bells, saying that Truman's had the door of 29 Hanbury Street in their museum. If that bit of info is common knowledge, I somehow missed it.

Anyone know if it's true?

I too read this with great interest and had a bit of an investigate. I remembered that the author Iain Sinclair worked at the brewery with sculptor Brian Catlin in the early 1970s and mentioned an old man who took pictures of the unchanged murder sites with a plate camera - after getting in touch I received this reply from Brian:

"There was a elderly man, who i think was called Mr. Day who kept a very unofficial archive up in his room below the bell tower of the stable (garage )Block. He had photographs from Hanbury Street.
In my first years 29 was still there and the back yard intact. Mr. Day's private museum had many scraps and pictures , but I never saw the door. When Truman's was taken over by the Maxwell Joseph Group. Hanbury street was bulldozed. Mr .Day retired and I imagine his collection of local wonders was skipped. There was no ripper industry then. Sorry to tell such a bleak story.
BC"

That's as far as I got at the time (Jan 2010) and haven't followed it up since.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

I wondered about this as well.

Years ago someone came onto the boards and said that a local policeman had saved "the door" from 29 Hanbury Street and took it with him when he retired to the country. Exactly which door (two front, one back) wasn't explained. I wondered, after reading the book, whether two doors from #29 still exist.

My thoughts on the book itself:

"Although littered with errors an entertaining read. The book is not a look at the Ripper, per se, (annoyingly the murders are presented fictionally) but more a look at the history and sociology of the murders and of Ripperology. Chapters look at contemporary literature, Ripperature, Victorian values, films, Ripperology itself etc. The final chapter looks at various suspects along with the views of Jon Ogan and Laurence Alison who offer their psychological expertise and opinions."

Wolf.

[The Grave Maurice]

I finished this last week and can't really add much to Wolf's perceptive comments.

The fictional presentations of the murders didn't bother me as much as they did Wolf. In fact, I thought it was a rather clever device. (The book is not aimed at novices and, really, how many more times can most of us read the facts of the case unless they are done in a novel manner?)

I did find the book to be quite uneven: clever insights were combined with glaring errors and far too many typos. And the text says, on several occasions, "in the opinion of this author" --- however, since there are two of them, I never knew who was speaking.

Still, given the quality of most other non-fiction JtR books in the last couple of years, I'm surprised that this one attracted so little chatter.