Ripper Conference?
icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/content_objectid=13305203_method=full_siteid=50061_headline=-Ripping-time-for-amateur-sleuths-name_page.html
I'm sorry, can't seem to get the url to work, it's an article from Regional News at the I.C. Liverpool site.
Ripping time for amateur sleuths
Aug 18 2003
By Matt Withers Daily Post Staff
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HUNDREDS of amateur historians, would-be sleuths and armchair detectives gathered in Liverpool this weekend for the national conference of Jack the Ripper fanatics.
It is 115 years since the five grisly slayings of prostitutes in London's Whitechapel, but people across the world still have a macabre fascination in the case.
Devotees even have an academic name for themselves - ripperology.
The event, held every two years, took place in Liverpool this year because of a string of connections the city has with the murder.
Several of the key suspects had lived on Merseyside, while a diary was discovered in the early 1990s in which a Liverpool merchant apparently admitted to the killings.
Liverpool - born Christopher George, the North American editor of Ripperologist magazine, said: "It's quite possible that the Ripper, whoever he was, may well have travelled through Liverpool.
"We do have major Ripper suspects from the city.
"William Gladstone, the former Prime Minister, was born here. He may be kind of unlikely because he was 80 years of age, but they do say he was very robust and able to chop trees down at his country estate in Chester.
"Dr Francis Tumblety, an American suspect, tried to set up a medical practice here in 1874, but was attacked by the Liverpool press, while a lot of people think that Frederick Deeming, who murdered his wife and four children in 1874, could have been the Ripper.
"The major development of recent years was the Maybrick Diary, which came to light in Liverpool in 1993, and in which James Maybrick confessed to the killings. My personal view of that was that it was a practical joke."
The three-day conference, held at the Britannia Adelphi Hotel, is an opportunity for ripperologists to get together and argue about theories and evidence. It is also a money-spinner for a healthy Ripper industry, with everything from books to dolls available.
The event is hosted by TV presenter Jeremy Beadle, himself an expert on the killings, and was attended by people from as far afield as the US and Germany.
Ripperologist editor Paul Begg says the appeal of the case was its mystery.
He said: "I think there's an element for a lot of people of liking to play armchair detective - reading the books, getting the evidence and putting it together like some sort of jigsaw. Some people specialise in one area of ripperology, such as pubs in the area."
CITY LINKS TO MURDERS
THE Jack the Ripper conference is held every two years, each time in a different location connected to the infamous killings.
Liverpool has a string of links to the murders, for whom the number of suspects long ago surpassed the number o f victims.
The most famous is the socalled 'Maybrick Diary', the diaries of Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick, in which he apparently confesses to be the Ripper. Maybrick, pictured, died in mysterious circumstances in Aigburth in 1889.
The diary appeared in 1993, five years after the centenary of the killings. Michael Barrett, then a 40-year-old unemployed scrap dealer from Anfield, claimed that the diary had been passed on to him by Tony Devereux, a drinking friend.
The diary purported to cover a year in the life of Maybrick, in which he killed the prostitutes as a sort of revenge for his wife having an affair.
The general feeling in the ripperologist community is that it is a forgery. The Poste House pub in Cumberland Street is mentioned, for example, even though it bore a different name when the diary is supposed to have been written.
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). He also hosted 'You've Been Framed'; one of those awful collections of clips from home made videos, showing brides falling in the wedding cake, skateboarding dogs, and children falling over in amusing ways (well - okay - the skateboarding dogs are funny). As you can tell, a true class act, and a positive vaudevillian in talent.