Jack The Ripper (Compendium Thread)

[Kingsize Wombat]

Jack The Ripper Identified? Diary Containing Confessions Proven Authentic, New Research Claims

For the last 120 years, his crimes have endured as some of the most grisly in the history of serial killing, and his identity has remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of its time.

But now, thanks to groundbreaking new research, Jack the Ripper’s identity may be a mystery no more.

Author Robert Smith is set to publish a new book, 25 Years of The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The True Facts, in which he claims to have verified the authenticity of a document containing one man’s confession to being Jack the Ripper.

The man in question is Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick and the document is believed to be his diary, first discovered 25 years ago, but finally perhaps proven authentic now.

Source: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/james-maybrick-jack-the-ripper-identity-revealed

 

[escargot]

Didn't another writer (years and years ago ... ) promote a theory that the Ripper murders had to be the work of more than one assailant?

We don't even know for sure which murders are the work of any single or otherwise 'Ripper'. While Ripper 'experts' tend to agree on a handful of victims as being killed by the same hand/s, there were similar murders both before and after the 'agreed' ones and some in other places than London.

Also, it's generally accepted that serial killers work up to their murders with lesser crimes. Some observers have pointed out that it's unlikely for a person to commit such horrific mutilations without some practice beforehand. This may have been done on animals rather than women and so not been connected to the later murders.

 

[Ascalon]

Irrespective of the authenticity of the Maybrick diaries, his candidacy for being JTR remains weak.

While he may have written the diaries and even made the engravings on the watch, there is very little direct evidence of his involvement.

Indeed, some scholarly work cast doubt on his presence in London for one, if not two of the canonical five.

So, once again, this is far from a solution.

 

[UnknownUnknown]

Then, and ever since, some or all of these horrific crimes have been ascribed to an unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. He has become the most notorious felon in the annals of crime. More books have been written about him than any other murderer.

So why him? Why has 'Jack' (and I think that the Jack that has become 'the most notorious felon in the annals of crime' is now entirely a constructed fiction) captured the imagination in this way?

 

[Ascalon]

So why him? Why has 'Jack' (and I think that the Jack that has become 'the most notorious felon in the annals of crime' is now entirely a constructed fiction) captured the imagination in this way?

Fortunately, that is not as hard to answer as the identity of JTR himself.

It was a combination of things.

Anti-monarchy protests creating a general feeling of unease in city.

A police force on the verge of scientific methods, with a society struggling with the rapid pace of change.

A burgeoning press, hungry for sensation and intrigue.

An opportunistic scribe who penned the letters, and came up with the sobriquet and the origin "From Hell".

A public that thrived on sensation and tales of wrongdoing and depravity that deflected from their own downtrodden lives.

And finally, the utter tragedy of these poor women, who all fell on hard times, struggled to survive, and in doing so, found themselves preyed upon by the product of the new, grinding, industrialised, uncaring society where to be poor was to be guilty.

All of these things conspired to ensure that a killer would become one of the most notorious names in history.

 

[UnknownUnknown]

That's interesting. I suppose I feel like Jack is a good story. A story that 'needed' to be told at that time, for some of the reasons Ascalon hits on above. The murders seem to be a synecdoche for the social experience somehow.

What's that phrase - if it didn't happen, we would have had to invent it? Sorry, head full of the cold tonight. I don't mean this to sound like I'm glossing over the horror of it.

There's an interesting book on Google Books about other murders from the same year. It's a similar theme - painting a portrait of a society through its brutal transgressions. https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/1888.html?id=QZ87AwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en

 

[Ascalon]

I've been watching the American Ripper in London series that postulates the US killer HH Holmes too a short sojourn in London to become JTR, and went back to the US and built a purpose built 'hotel' to kill in private.

So far, the evidence is thin, circumstantial and being drawn out to a degree that Peter Jackson would have been proud of.

 

[Kingsize Wombat]

I've been watching the American Ripper in London series that postulates the US killer HH Holmes too a short sojourn in London to become JTR, and went back to the US and built a purpose built 'hotel' to kill in private.

So far, the evidence is thin, circumstantial and being drawn out to a degree that Peter Jackson would have been proud of.

I listened to a Podcast on that theory recently, and it came to pretty much the same conclusion.

 

[Ascalon]

Watched it again last night and despite there being the involvement of an ex-law enforcement professional, I find myself shouting at the television as they make statements of fact which are clearly anything but.

For example, they used modern computer imaging to get a composite from eye witness reports of Jack.
They then produce a picture which is remarkably similar to HH Holmes. But, despite the law enforcement lady saying that the reports came from 11 eye witnesses, and saying that was unusually high for such a case, she does not mention that the eye witness testimony in the JTR case generally describes three very distinct individuals, most of whom are too old for the supposedly 27 year old Holmes to match. Therefore, however they arrived at their composite image must have been selective indeed.

They then conclude that this is very strong evidence that Holmes was JTR.

Similarly, they find ship manifests from Liverpool to NYC with a H Holmes and another alias that Holmes is known to have used to indicate his travel and say this is evidence that he did so - no it isn't!

This kind of thing undermines the entire premise and it is a classic example of forming a theory and then finding evidence to fit, instead of the other way around.

 

[PeteS]

Personally I always treat writers and TV programmes claiming to have "finally solved the mystery of" (insert JTR, Titanic et al) with a huge degree of circumspection.

 

[Jape89]

Gyles Brandreth (yes, you read that correctly), has Jack (well one of them) as an anarchistic psychopath working as an informal agent for the British government.

Right.

Jesus.

Brandreth is one of those respectable nano-celebrities I'm well aware of but had to google to remember his face.

I write Victorian fan fiction about a Doyle-Wilde team up and Oscar lived near a doctor who died around the time the murders stopped so he did it because Jack used a knife.

Great stuff.

 

[Bigphoot2]

Another day another booking "proving" the Ripper's identity. Interesting name for a Ripper suspect though...

Final resting place of Jack the Ripper 'has been uncovered' after years of painstaking research
In his new book, The Man Who Would Be Jack, David Bullock sets out his case for believing Thomas Cutbush was the gruesome serial killer

• COMMENTS

BYCHIARA GIORDANO

• 17:39, 14 SEP 2017
• UPDATED07:52, 15 SEP 2017

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An author believes he has uncovered the final resting place of Jack the Ripper suspect Thomas Cutbush after 26 years of tireless research.

David Bullock was still a teenager when he began delving into the case of Cutbush, whom he regards as the most "viable" Ripper suspect.

His research led to him gaining unique access to Cutbush's files from his time in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital and uncovering his family plot in Nunhead Cemetery, near Lewisham in South East London where he believes Cutbush is buried.

In his new book, The Man Who Would Be Jack, Bullock sets out his case for believing Cutbush was the gruesome serial killer , and describes his resting place for the first time.

etc

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/final-resting-place-jack-ripper-11171325

 

[Heckler]

That book has been out since last year at the least. Of all the suspects that traditionally get dredged up, Cutbush is one in the extremely unlikely box. He was violent towards women and wound up in Broadmoor (IIRC) where he was described by the staff as 'very insane' but the assaults on women that lead to his being committed were closer to The London Monster of the previous century than the ripper, in that he stabbed them in the buttocks. It's a bit of a stretch to suggest him tearing through five women in a short time then two years later being content with stabbing them in the buttocks.

One interesting point it's belived his insanity was a result of syphilis, however his commitment papers list 'heredity and overstudy' as the reason. Be advised, too much reading can give you syphilis!

 

[GerdaWordyer]

I just finished listening an interview with the purported Holmes descendant who claims Holmes was JTR, on the ever-silly U.S. radio show "After Dark." Sounded like he just wanted to be money spinning with a silly new theory. Odd, one would think the horrors of documented Holmes' trails would be enough of a money spinner for that fellow.
My word for the day is "silly."

 

[Bigphoot2]

I just finished listening an interview with the purported Holmes descendant who claims Holmes was JTR, on the ever-silly U.S. radio show "After Dark." Sounded like he just wanted to be money spinning with a silly new theory. Odd, one would think the horrors of documented Holmes' trails would be enough of a money spinner for that fellow.
My word for the day is "silly."

I watched the TV series and thought Holmes was interesting enough without the tenuous links to JTR - JTR wore a hat, Holmes wore a hat....lots of meaningful looks and gasps of astonishment as the investigation team realise they are onto something. That's a little bit of an exaggeration but only just

 

[WanderingFox]

Well, what an odyssey of a thread that was! Definitely worth reading. Ol' Jack's a fascinating creature, and no mistake, no least for how much of an inkblot test they - if there even truly was a single serial killer - continue to be. They almost literally could have been anyone.

When I started this thread, I selected "None of the suspects yet put forward" in the poll, and still think that most likely. If there really was a sole, tangible Jack the Ripper, then they were a nobody, just another face in the busy, many-textured milieu of the East End. Someone who lived, worked and - at least on the surface - seemed to belong there. Just to speculate a while, it was mentioned at some point that butchery was a common line of work in the Whitechapel area - given the Ripper's proclivities, surely it makes sense that he was a slaughterman?

That way he - for simplicity and likelihood's sake we'll say he, and for sake of argument we'll call them Jack - could have satiated his dark desires through his job. They certainly wouldn't have spawned fully formed from nowhere; they'd have grown and been nurtured, even wrestled with, and work that helped deal with them makes sense. Of course, at some point, butchering wouldn't, for want of a better phrase, have cut it any more...

So Jack moves from animals to humans, as many an escalating psychotic has. Why prostitutes? Being mercenary about it, they wouldn't have been in short supply, they'd have been vulnerable, and often solitary, and would be among the least likely to draw the full attention of the police. A suitably Victorian measure of misogyny would have helped his choice, too. Maybe that was exacerbated by having contracted syphilis from a lady of the night? I've little doubt a hatred of women in general and prostitutes in particular was part of Jack's psychological make-up.

None of that's to say his new course would have been easy, mind. He likely took a fair while to build up to actually killing, with many a false start, and many an attempt aborted through loss of nerve. Even when he did finally take a life - Mary Nicholls - fear of interruption, maybe someone starting moving too close by for comfort, prevented him from truly satisfying his needs. Annie Chapman was the first time he truly got to indulge his hungers, and it sated him...for a while.

When they inevitably came back he went hunting again, possibly with a shorter, easier to conceal knife along with his trusted friend, found Liz Stride, but was spooked away before he could get started. Maybe that, and the shorter knife proving inadequate, provoked a great frustration in him, ensuring that when he came upon Catherine Eddowes, he threw caution to the wind and didn't hold back.

Maybe that led to him coming within a whisker of being caught; when her body was found he could have been but a street or two away, where he found some freshly daubed graffiti; in a panicked attempt to confuse matters he dropped the piece of apron he'd taken near it, then continued to flee.

By this stage the Ripper was real and feared, and the East End must have been buzzing about it, fueled by the media (the more things change...) so he lay low, kept to himself, stayed as quiet as he could for more than a month. Then the needs came back, and he knew he needed to go further, but how? Then he hears, in the blizzard of rumours and fears the area must have been swirling with, of a prostitute of near-identical name to one used by his last victim, who has secluded lodgings in Mitre Square...

This time, indoors, where he won't be interrupted, he indulges completely, savours every slice. He even poses her remains for one last rush as he passes the window on leaving. Maybe, by this stage, he's growing confident, starting to believe the luck of the Devil is with him, and wants to taunt people, taunt the police, so makes a show of his work. Jack's a legend, now.

Maybe, for a while, he believes his urges have been so satiated they're gone for good, but they're not. They return, but now, he has no idea what more he can do. He's experienced his ultimate high; where to go from there, especially given the whole city's on high alert? The hungers give no quarter, though, and in the end there's only one person he can take his knife to - himself. No-one notices - what's one more sad little suicide in the East End, not least when the Ripper's still abroad?

Whoops - got carried away. Then again, that seems to happen to a lot of people where Saucy Jack's concerned...

 

[Ascalon]

Caught up with the American Ripper series again and I'm increasingly baffled by it.

[Spoiler alert]
The intrepid pair have exhumed the body buried in HH Holmes' grave.

However, they also mentioned that they found a package of documents, mostly photos, left behind in a house that had been a noted bolt hole of HHH. The package consisted of a lot of pictures of people closely associated with HHH, including what appears to be the only surviving photo of a chief accomplice.

Then among them, they find one of the known and verified pictures of Liz Stride.

They then jump merrily on to another element of their increasingly wild hunt.

Now, they did not go into the origin of the image, where it came from, how it could have ended up in Holmes' possession in the 1890s, when it became known to the general public etc. So one of the only bits of evidence that could have been argued to be slightly above circumstantial and they just glossed over it entirely.

It had me shouting at the TV in frustration.

 

[Victory]

I think Bruce Robinson's case for Michael Maybrick being Jack is the most persuasive I have read so far.

But it is far from the last word.

Has anyone else been to Mitre Square, scene of the Catherine Eddowes murder (or at least the scene where her corpse was discovered if it had been moved from elsewhere.)

I find it very creepy there, I feel a real sense of unease.

 

[Yithian]

I think Bruce Robinson's case for Michael Maybrick being Jack is the most persuasive I have read so far.

But it is far from the last word.

Has anyone else been to Mitre Square, scene of the Catherine Eddowes murder (or at least the scene where her corpse was discovered if it had been moved from elsewhere.)

I find it very creepy there, I feel a real sense of unease.

Yes, and I was there on the gloomiest-sun-never-seemed-to-really-rise November day. I was hunched over a small paper guide in late-afternoon drizzle and seemed to be the only person there.

Agreed: creepy.

 

[Ascalon]

Has anyone else been to Mitre Square, scene of the Catherine Eddowes murder (or at least the scene where her corpse was discovered if it had been moved from elsewhere.)

I find it very creepy there, I feel a real sense of unease.

Indeed, this.
Got a day once upon a time to tour the sites, including Goultson Street and what's left of Flower and Dean Street.
I retired to the Ten Bells for a pint and a ponder feeling most accomplished and yet deeply disturbed.

 

[Heckler]

That reminds me, yonks ago we had a Fortean meet up event in the Ten Bells of people from this very forum. I'm probably the last person from that meet still posting which is a rather sad thought.

 

[maximus otter]

...yonks ago we had a Fortean meet up event in the Ten Bells of people from this very forum.

Time for another one?

maximus otter

 

[Heckler]

Oh yeah for sure, we had a few in London and one extraordinarily drunken one in Brighton. The latter one was a two day pub crawl.

Always up for a couple of shandies with Fortean folks.

I'll start a thread over on chat.

 

[Yithian]

I enjoy the HistoryBuffs content: analyses of the historical accuracy/background of films. Today he's talking about from From Hell, an enjoyable but not overly accurate play on the Jack the Ripper mythology.

 

[escargot]

That reminds me, yonks ago we had a Fortean meet up event in the Ten Bells of people from this very forum. I'm probably the last person from that meet still posting which is a rather sad thought.

Didn't you nearly get murdered?

 

[Heckler]

Didn't you nearly get murdered?

A handbag got stolen from one member that night (no longer posting, not due to said theft).

At another London meet we discovered the 'Spankorama' in Soho (but made our excuses and left).

There was an unfortunate outbreak of faux Irish dancing in a dog rough Irish gay pub that almost got another member of this forum killed at another meet in Brighton.

The meet you're thinking of was just a couple of folks from here met up with another person who used to post here and said person turned out to be not quite as good company as we'd hoped for and to cut a long story short we barely escaped with our lives.

 

[escargot]

The meet you're thinking of was just a couple of folks from here met up with another person who used to post here and said person turned out to be not quite as good company as we'd hoped for and to cut a long story short we barely escaped with our lives.

Heh, that the night I was thinking of!

 

[Yithian]

A handbag got stolen from one member that night (no longer posting, not due to said theft).

At another London meet we discovered the 'Spankorama' in Soho (but made our excuses and left).

There was an unfortunate outbreak of faux Irish dancing in a dog rough Irish gay pub that almost got another member of this forum killed at another meet in Brighton.

The meet you're thinking of was just a couple of folks from here met up with another person who used to post here and said person turned out to be not quite as good company as we'd hoped for and to cut a long story short we barely escaped with our lives.

That's three names you need to PM me.
:wear:

 

[escargot]

To be clear, I was not involved any of the above.

 

[Mythopoeika]

A handbag got stolen from one member that night (no longer posting, not due to said theft).

At another London meet we discovered the 'Spankorama' in Soho (but made our excuses and left).

There was an unfortunate outbreak of faux Irish dancing in a dog rough Irish gay pub that almost got another member of this forum killed at another meet in Brighton.

The meet you're thinking of was just a couple of folks from here met up with another person who used to post here and said person turned out to be not quite as good company as we'd hoped for and to cut a long story short we barely escaped with our lives.

WTF!