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Hi folks, been a while since I worked on anything ripper related, but have tried to make amends. This is a piece I wrote for a discussion in another forum, but I am trying to retool it as a blog. However, I would hate to post it if I have made any glaring mistakes, or given credit to the wrong folks for the wrong work. I hope you enjoy it, and if I am wrong about anything please, do not hesitate to let me know before I blog it. Though, erm, don't for a second think that is me expecting anybody to do my fact checking or research for me. If the whole thing is flawed I am willing to scrap it before I post the blog and upset anybody. (And yes, I unreservedly appologise for my sycophantic groveling in paragraph two).
First of all, let's get one thing straight, after you have read this page you must go to casebook. It is brilliant. You will lose days there reading about suspects, theories and conspiracies, then even longer uncovering the facts and evidence carefully put together over decades of hard work by rival scholars and amaeture detectives. Anything and everything that may or may not be connected to the Ripper is there.
Second of all, I have to admit I have no idea who Jack the Ripper was. Because the chances are he was not William Sickert (who Patricia Cornwell claims, on the basis that his paintings include "secret" knowledge known only by him, the Ripper, and anybody able to read a newspaper in the 1890s) Prince "Eddie" Albert Victor (who happened to be several hundred miles away for at least two murders) or any other "Celebrity Suspects". I think Jack was a nameless, faceless citizen, a nobody, who was neither famous nor infamous in his time and certainly not in who's who. Like Fred West or Sutcliffe, he would have been entirely forgotton were it not for his bad habit of killing people...
Almost exactly 100 years after the crimes Martin Fido identified a suspect in Colney Hatch Assylum who he considered the most likely suspect. As did other writers also trying to prepare books celebrating the centinary. He had been led there by a list of prime suspects found in the margins of a book, scrawled there by hand by a senior Police Officer. The book was about Jack the Ripper, and the senior officer, Donald Swanson, had made notes for his own use, based on conversations long past, with out researching the claims made. He had named a different man, Aaron Kominski, who he claimed had been very violent, dragged to the assylum in restraints and died shortly after. There was even a cryptic reference that he had been identified. Kominski was a real suspect at the time of the murder. But he had not been violent. He had not died "shortly after", and had not been the killer. He also, Fido deduced, was not the man the notes reffered to. There was a Polish jew from Whitechappel in the assylum. Who was brought in restrained. Who was violent and suffering "brain fever". Who did die shortly after, and was a very possible candidate for being the Ripper. His name was recorded as David Cohen or Coen, and Fido as well as others built an impressive case against him. If I were to name a likely suspect, he would be the most likely. But of course, we can not solve a case so old, with complete conviction.
But look at narrative here: Secret notes found in old books. A list of suspects the Police were taking seriously. A mysterious man with a name that at first, seems little like Kominski. But his alias? Nathan Kaminski. Ah... What we have here is a gripping tale of historian versus history, puzzles and intrigue that beat anything Dan Brown could find in old paintings and his copy of Holy Blood Holy Grail. What we have here is a real mystery, the likes of which we can find nowhere else.
Donald Swansons notes were the first step in a chain of documents, including the Macnaghten Memorandum, a document from 1894 in which the chief investigators tried to narrow the list of suspects to the most likely, so the limited resources of the Police could be utilised effectively. The list includes a "mad russian doctor" who happened to be a homicidal maniac, and a disgraced teacher who commited suicide to avoid scandal. Tell me one other mystery with a suspect list that great? You aren't going to find them sitting around the fire in a cosy sunday afternoon Agatha Christie mystery are you?
Since then the Myth has expanded into a Mythos. In the seventies there was a book that offered "Jack the Ripper: the final solution" to the mystery. It claimed that Prince Eddie, in the care of William Sickert had secretly married a prostitute and born a child. The author, Stephen Knight, span a yarn where to protect the throne from blackmailing prostitutes the royal surgeon, William Gull, and his coachman kill the prostitutes to form a Masonic message. Gull, apparently, was driven barmy by a stroke. Handily all these deep secrets were well known by a descendent of Eddies, Joseph Sickert (please don't ask, but you may notice the main witness in the case is also "rightful" heir of the throne). Amazingly the worst "true story" of the Ripper spawned the best Ripper Fiction. The Michael Caine tv mini-series and the Alan Moore graphic novel "From Hell" (which restored karma by spawning the single worst Ripper film ever).
But ignorin g the fact that neither Gull or his henchman match the only witness description of the Ripper we have (average height, middle class dress in the fashion of a sailor, deer stalker cap, carroty 'tash) this conspiracy has entered the popular vision of the Ripper. Now days he is almost always a doctor with a silk top hat, or working for the Masons, or sharing some secret black magic agenda. Or in fiction at least. The suspects in the real world keep growing in all directions, from the perfectly rational, to the sublimely silly, to the genuinely ingenius.
But the case has not stopped. new books with new theories, motives or suspects are published each year. the Ripper has been resurected in films, tv shows, namesakes and pop culture like no other murderer. You can go on the Ripper Walk, listen to Ripper Music, go visit the Ripper Experience in London Dungeon and indulge in a fantasy of London that never really existed, more Hammer Horror than Sherlock holmes.
And it is this fact that keeps us talking about Jack. We know he can't be proven to be any one person. Sure, he might be most likely to have been Cohen, or some other regular nobody, but why settle for a faceless jewish tailor when you are free to name any suspect you like knowing it can not be disproven with absolute certainty. An idea, even an absurd idea can exist happily in the wiggle room that a fraction of a percent of doubt allows. If the mystery is unsolved we can indulge in the idea of swirling cloaks and fog and guiltily imagine the Royal doctor, the decadent actor, Lewis Carrol, William Sickert, morbid poets, wife poisoners or spies. Our imaginations can run riot in the realms of fantasy, just so long as we are never required to prove the idea with any kind of certainty.
Which is a shame, as the five women who were killed in the most horrendous ways, and the shock, the horror and the tragedy that reigned for one terrible autumn was all too real. Perhaps I have done us all an injustice. Perhaps the reason we still talk about Jack is because we all know people like him are still real. Perhaps the indulgence in the fantastic is the only way we can bare to acknowledge this.
Or maybe the myth outlives us all because it has a very odd life of its own.
The Undying Jack
It has been said that the myth long outlives the man or the truth. And five(ish) killings in the seediest streets of London have sparked a myth that has certainly outlived the man, and in all probability out lived the "truth". Which is strange, as the most infamous and most studied murder cases of all time are the ones you would expect to have the most evidence and therefore be closest to the truth. Allow me to offer you two options, you can go in search of truth and evidence right now at www.casebook.org and try your hand at solving the crime, or you can hang about here for a little longer while we look at a far more perplexing mystery: Why the hell are we still talking about Jack?First of all, let's get one thing straight, after you have read this page you must go to casebook. It is brilliant. You will lose days there reading about suspects, theories and conspiracies, then even longer uncovering the facts and evidence carefully put together over decades of hard work by rival scholars and amaeture detectives. Anything and everything that may or may not be connected to the Ripper is there.
Second of all, I have to admit I have no idea who Jack the Ripper was. Because the chances are he was not William Sickert (who Patricia Cornwell claims, on the basis that his paintings include "secret" knowledge known only by him, the Ripper, and anybody able to read a newspaper in the 1890s) Prince "Eddie" Albert Victor (who happened to be several hundred miles away for at least two murders) or any other "Celebrity Suspects". I think Jack was a nameless, faceless citizen, a nobody, who was neither famous nor infamous in his time and certainly not in who's who. Like Fred West or Sutcliffe, he would have been entirely forgotton were it not for his bad habit of killing people...
Almost exactly 100 years after the crimes Martin Fido identified a suspect in Colney Hatch Assylum who he considered the most likely suspect. As did other writers also trying to prepare books celebrating the centinary. He had been led there by a list of prime suspects found in the margins of a book, scrawled there by hand by a senior Police Officer. The book was about Jack the Ripper, and the senior officer, Donald Swanson, had made notes for his own use, based on conversations long past, with out researching the claims made. He had named a different man, Aaron Kominski, who he claimed had been very violent, dragged to the assylum in restraints and died shortly after. There was even a cryptic reference that he had been identified. Kominski was a real suspect at the time of the murder. But he had not been violent. He had not died "shortly after", and had not been the killer. He also, Fido deduced, was not the man the notes reffered to. There was a Polish jew from Whitechappel in the assylum. Who was brought in restrained. Who was violent and suffering "brain fever". Who did die shortly after, and was a very possible candidate for being the Ripper. His name was recorded as David Cohen or Coen, and Fido as well as others built an impressive case against him. If I were to name a likely suspect, he would be the most likely. But of course, we can not solve a case so old, with complete conviction.
But look at narrative here: Secret notes found in old books. A list of suspects the Police were taking seriously. A mysterious man with a name that at first, seems little like Kominski. But his alias? Nathan Kaminski. Ah... What we have here is a gripping tale of historian versus history, puzzles and intrigue that beat anything Dan Brown could find in old paintings and his copy of Holy Blood Holy Grail. What we have here is a real mystery, the likes of which we can find nowhere else.
Donald Swansons notes were the first step in a chain of documents, including the Macnaghten Memorandum, a document from 1894 in which the chief investigators tried to narrow the list of suspects to the most likely, so the limited resources of the Police could be utilised effectively. The list includes a "mad russian doctor" who happened to be a homicidal maniac, and a disgraced teacher who commited suicide to avoid scandal. Tell me one other mystery with a suspect list that great? You aren't going to find them sitting around the fire in a cosy sunday afternoon Agatha Christie mystery are you?
Since then the Myth has expanded into a Mythos. In the seventies there was a book that offered "Jack the Ripper: the final solution" to the mystery. It claimed that Prince Eddie, in the care of William Sickert had secretly married a prostitute and born a child. The author, Stephen Knight, span a yarn where to protect the throne from blackmailing prostitutes the royal surgeon, William Gull, and his coachman kill the prostitutes to form a Masonic message. Gull, apparently, was driven barmy by a stroke. Handily all these deep secrets were well known by a descendent of Eddies, Joseph Sickert (please don't ask, but you may notice the main witness in the case is also "rightful" heir of the throne). Amazingly the worst "true story" of the Ripper spawned the best Ripper Fiction. The Michael Caine tv mini-series and the Alan Moore graphic novel "From Hell" (which restored karma by spawning the single worst Ripper film ever).
But ignorin g the fact that neither Gull or his henchman match the only witness description of the Ripper we have (average height, middle class dress in the fashion of a sailor, deer stalker cap, carroty 'tash) this conspiracy has entered the popular vision of the Ripper. Now days he is almost always a doctor with a silk top hat, or working for the Masons, or sharing some secret black magic agenda. Or in fiction at least. The suspects in the real world keep growing in all directions, from the perfectly rational, to the sublimely silly, to the genuinely ingenius.
But the case has not stopped. new books with new theories, motives or suspects are published each year. the Ripper has been resurected in films, tv shows, namesakes and pop culture like no other murderer. You can go on the Ripper Walk, listen to Ripper Music, go visit the Ripper Experience in London Dungeon and indulge in a fantasy of London that never really existed, more Hammer Horror than Sherlock holmes.
And it is this fact that keeps us talking about Jack. We know he can't be proven to be any one person. Sure, he might be most likely to have been Cohen, or some other regular nobody, but why settle for a faceless jewish tailor when you are free to name any suspect you like knowing it can not be disproven with absolute certainty. An idea, even an absurd idea can exist happily in the wiggle room that a fraction of a percent of doubt allows. If the mystery is unsolved we can indulge in the idea of swirling cloaks and fog and guiltily imagine the Royal doctor, the decadent actor, Lewis Carrol, William Sickert, morbid poets, wife poisoners or spies. Our imaginations can run riot in the realms of fantasy, just so long as we are never required to prove the idea with any kind of certainty.
Which is a shame, as the five women who were killed in the most horrendous ways, and the shock, the horror and the tragedy that reigned for one terrible autumn was all too real. Perhaps I have done us all an injustice. Perhaps the reason we still talk about Jack is because we all know people like him are still real. Perhaps the indulgence in the fantastic is the only way we can bare to acknowledge this.
Or maybe the myth outlives us all because it has a very odd life of its own.