JTR: The Final Solution

[LynnTammy]

Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight.

i am just barely into this book and i am already finding that i am not agreeing entirely with it. has anybody else read this book and feel the same way? i guess i feel as if the author is either stretching the facts or twisting them so they have the outcome he wants them to take..

-Lynn

[Phil H]

Lynn,

Stephen Knight's book was discredited many years ago. the author (who died tragically young) knowingly published information which he had been told was not true or could be disproved - such as the fate of Annie Crook.

I remember reading the book when first published in the late 70s almost at a sitting - I was, I recall - staying with friends and was quite rude, I was So intrigued by the ideas. (This was the time of watergate and the thesis seemed relevant and not impossible.)

I was devastated to discover that I had been misled (deliberately and flagrantly). I did not, and do not, have the leisure to study the primary sources first hand, to rummage in archives and devil things out or check that authors have got it right. Thus I am dependent - as I suspect are many others - on the writers of published works being accurat, reliable and trustworthy. If that breaks down it is almost literally unforgiveable.

Knight based his research on work done initially by the BBC for a 1973 drama-documentary series, and thus on testimony from the (to say the least) eccentric Mr Gorman (Gorman Sickert as he later referred to himself) who claimed to be an illegitimate son of the artist Walter Sickert.

Mr Gorman misled knight - and later retracted his evidence in a major UK Sunday newspaper - and later influenced Melvin Fairclough with an almost laughably fraudulent "Abberline Diary" (the supposed writer transposed his initials and got names wrong). Sickert, of course, has been separately fingered as JtR by Overton Fuller and more recently Cornwall - on no real evidence it seems to me.

Finally, IMHO, there is absolutely no basis to the so-called "royal conspiracy" theory as promulgated by Knight and others. Prince Albert Victor was an oddity and a problem even to his family, but even if he had married a Catholic commoner, there would have been no constitutional crisis - the marriage was illegal under the Royal Marriages Act.

Gull had had (I think from memory) two strokes and again there is no evidence of his involvement.

The whole Juwes "thing" has been shown to have no basis in Masonic ritual or doctrine.

I could go on. Your instincts are right Lynn - Knight's book is not "true bill". Your judgement is much better than mine so many years ago.

Phil

[bolo]

Hi Lynn, Phil, all,

it should be noted that Stephen Knight also did quite some research for his book and was the first to unearth a few interesting bits of information regarding the Ripper case.

I don't believe in his version of the royal consipracy theory at all and pity the time that has been wasted on it over the decades but think we should give credit where credit is due.

Of course The Final Solution is a slippery slope, specially for people new to the case who happen to read it as their first Ripper book, some of them got spoiled by it forever.

Regards,

Boris

[LynnTammy]

thank you very much for the information. i think i shall put this book down now and go back to the library. they only offer a few books on JTR and this one was the only one in the day i went. maybe by now another has been returned and i can get a book thats a bit more fact based. dont get me wrong i enjoy even fiction based JTR book put i do not like it when somebody tries to claim their fiction work is non-fiction.