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

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

    The following book is scheduled for release Jan. 2010. Here's a description:

    Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession David Monaghan
    Decoding the sexual confessions of the real culprit for the Whitechapel and Thames Torso murders. While Jack the Ripper spread fear throughout the East End of London in 1888, another man stalked the streets hunting flesh. He called himself “Walter”. He was a rapist, voyeur, and fetishist obsessed with prostitutes. Walter was not only a wealthy man, but a literary one. In the same year as the Ripper killings, Walter first printed up his vast memoir of sex and perversion under the title My Secret Life. Fewer than 20 sets were struck off on a secret Amsterdam press between 1888 and 1894.

    Long banned for obscenity, only censored excerpts of Walter’s masterwork were seen for a century. One of the few complete sets not destroyed by the authorities was locked away in the British Library’s closed cupboard. This is the story of the volumes in that locked room and the horrific clue they contain – a clue that unlocks the diary as the final confession of Jack the Ripper.

    Jack the Ripper: A Secret Life shows how this notorious work of Victorian pornography reveals that its author had the means, the motive and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper. As importantly, it delves into dark psychiatric motives within the text, to show Walter possessed the unique psycho-sexual fingerprint of a knife killer.

  • #2
    Now this sounds like an interesting theory. Has anyone ever made the link between Walter and JtR before? If someone did, I must have missed it.

    Comment


    • #3
      oooo

      this sounds very interesting.

      Unless it's Walter Sickert that is meant? Surely it wouldnt be him would it?
      babybird

      There is only one happiness in life—to love and be loved.

      George Sand

      Comment


      • #4
        No, it's not Walter Sickert.

        I don't think Paul Begg would mind me quoting what he said about this new book at JtR Forums:

        "The man in the photograph on the front cover of the book is Henry Spencer Ashbee who is widely thought to have been 'Walter', the author of My Secret Life. The most recent book to advance this theory is Ian Gibson's The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry Spencer Ashbee. As far as I can recall there is no mention of Jack the Ripper therein, but My Secret Life is often cited by people writing about attitudes to women, sex and prostitution in the mid to late Victorian period.

        "Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession is evidently suggesting that Ashbee was Jack the Ripper and My Secret Life his confession. At first blush it seems a highly unlikely theory, but interesting nonetheless.

        "Nigel Cawthorne wrote a foreword and afterword to a recent edition of Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution."

        Chris
        Christopher T. George
        Organizer, RipperCon #JacktheRipper-#True Crime Conference
        just held in Baltimore, April 7-8, 2018.
        For information about RipperCon, go to http://rippercon.com/
        RipperCon 2018 talks can now be heard at http://www.casebook.org/podcast/

        Comment


        • #5
          It's curious that in some listings for this book Nigel Cawthorne is listed as co-author along with David Monaghan, although possibly as with the reissue of the Knight book, Cawthorne wrote the introduction. I don't know.

          See the Constable & Robinson publishers website which gives details of the book and just lists David Monaghan as the author.

          In any case, the book they are spinning off, the Victorian book by "Walter", My Secret Life can be sampled on Google books.

          As the Constable & Robinson site says the book "reveals that its author had the means, the motive and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper." Of course any amount of individuals in London "had the means, the motive and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper" as numerous authors have argued over the years for their chosen suspects... so that doesn't mean much. Also note that the publisher appears to give two different names for the book: Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession and Jack the Ripper: A Secret Life!

          Chris
          Christopher T. George
          Organizer, RipperCon #JacktheRipper-#True Crime Conference
          just held in Baltimore, April 7-8, 2018.
          For information about RipperCon, go to http://rippercon.com/
          RipperCon 2018 talks can now be heard at http://www.casebook.org/podcast/

          Comment


          • #6
            Hi chaps,

            This seems to me to be another step into the beyond. Gibson makes a case for Ashbee having been the author of My Secret Life, but, as I recall, this is far from a proven case. Then there is the question of his identity with Jack the Ripper, which, unless my understanding of My Secret Life is very much the wrong one, is presumably assumed through textual interpretation. So there are two conditions attached to this theory, one more than in many suspect theories: if Ashbee was the author of My Secret Life, then he could have been Jack the Ripper.

            I don't care who Jack the Ripper was, but I do seem to care who he wasn't, and forays into the wilderness of this sort just seem to me to be reductive and detrimental to the whole field of study.

            Regards,

            Mark

            Comment


            • #7
              Hi All,

              I did wonder, years ago, whether Walter and his secret life could have been connected in any way with the Whitechapel Murders. I may even have voiced as much on the message boards at some point.

              I just hope the latest theory in print has something more behind it than "this author reckons...".

              At least it might make a refreshing change, in the run up to a decade of 'minimalist ripperology', to revisit the funny old idea that one man was repeatedly acting out extreme fantasies about what can be done with and to the female body that he would not have been able to see in print or share with another living soul.

              Love,

              Caz
              X
              Last edited by caz; 05-18-2009, 12:49 PM.
              "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." Peter Ustinov


              Comment


              • #8
                'WE WEREN'T JACK THE RIPPER' (Vol. I)

                Originally posted by m_w_r View Post
                I don't care who Jack the Ripper was, but I do seem to care who he wasn't
                Regards, Mark
                Hi, Mark!
                Now you've said that, some publisher is bound to push a new book called
                ''WE WEREN'T JACK THE RIPPER.''


                - Or has that been done too? ...Hmmm... Best regards, Archaic

                Comment


                • #9
                  I'm reading this at the moment. Can't say I am convinced so far but certainly giving me food for thought.....
                  Best regards,
                  Adam


                  "They assumed Kelly was the last... they assumed wrong" - Me

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Sh*t.
                    Another book to buy.
                    And still I have no shoes.

                    Amitiés,
                    David

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I'm two thirds of the way through this book right now and I have to say it is probably one of the (if not THE) most awful things I've ever read.

                      As far as the Ripper theory is concerned there is NOTHING to merit it as an even lacklustre one. In fact the link with the murders is so tenuous as to be non-existent.

                      What is worse is that most of the text is just quotes from Walter's pornographic 'memoirs'. And quite frankly, it is revolting. You'd have to read the book yourselves to see how shocking, unerotic and downright sickening some of the stuff is. And belive me, I'm no prude.

                      Personally, unless you really have to own every Ripper book going, don't even bother pulling this one off the shelf. In fact I'm THAT CLOSE to just giving up.

                      Blechh!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Ironically considering my last post, the Ripper link is now being explored in the last third of the book, though it's still rather ropey.

                        But the rest of it is still horrible.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Hi John,

                          But you're a Robert Mann guy, aren't you?

                          Yours truly,

                          Tom Wescott

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Tom_Wescott View Post
                            Hi John,

                            But you're a Robert Mann guy, aren't you?

                            Yours truly,

                            Tom Wescott
                            Good heavens, no. Where do you get that idea from?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              I heard you were in a documentary about him. Just last week I ordered a stack of Ripper books, so I wouldn't be completely behind the loop as far as suspects go, and Secret Confessions is one of them. Here in the states it doesn't ship until tomorrow. I also ordered Andrew Cook's book (for the great cover art), The Ripper Code, and your buddy Trow's book. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm a masochist.

                              Yours truly,

                              Tom Wescott

                              Comment

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