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What do you think is the most likely ?

  • The Ripper was a Freemason?

    Votes: 7 9.7%
  • The Ripper had medical knowledge?

    Votes: 10 13.9%
  • It was Maybrick?

    Votes: 4 5.6%
  • The Ripper was 'of the same class' as his victims?

    Votes: 9 12.5%
  • The Ripper was foreign?

    Votes: 2 2.8%
  • It was Druitt?

    Votes: 2 2.8%
  • None of the suspects yet put forward?

    Votes: 17 23.6%
  • It was a woman?

    Votes: 2 2.8%
  • Another?

    Votes: 19 26.4%

  • Total voters
    72
I doubt it. The passage of time isn't the only issue here. The whole thing with Jack the Ripper is the mystery and legends surrounding it. The Yorkshire Ripper was caught, hence there's no mystery and therefore a very different kind if interest. If JTR had been caught, I seriously doubt there would be any tours, let alone a museum.

Having said that, the mystery alone doesn't explain how the JTR phenomena seems to have melded into the fabric of local and poular legend or gained a foothold in fiction (and therefore its status as a tourist attraction). Looking at the sign above the door, you can see how the character has become almost romanticised; top hat, cape etc. Even the protesters dressed like extras from a school play! It seems that the fabled foggy streets of victorian London and our modern-day misconceptions of what life was like there and then is just more 'Hollywood' than Yorkshire in the 70s. A Bible John tour in Glasgow anyone? Perish the thought!

I can't imagine anyone other than the most ghoulish being interested in visiting locations associated with any other serial killer, but for whatever reason, Jack seems to be different in the public consiousness... Or at least to some / a lot of people. The reasons why aren't clear cut though (No pun intended!)

Yes, I think you're right. The 1888 is an unsolved mystery. Plus, the end of Victorian England - easy to romanticise... In, say, 2077, 1977 Yorkshire might look equally fascinating but the crimes themselves hold very little mystery to us, any more (if you ignore theories that Sutcliffe wasn't acting alone, etc). It's not likely Sutcliffe's crimes will gather more mystery with the passage of time. Although I guess there must be entire forums where folk argue which 'non canonical' murder should be 'in the canon', etc. It's not just that the 1888 murders were unsolved but the mystery surrounding the fact they stopped so abruptly. Add in the lack of forensics, etc. The story is compelling.

I was around in Leeds during Sutcliffe's reign of terror, and women marching to reclaim the night was a very real thing. Somehow I think we took them more seriously than these women.
 
Plus, the end of Victorian England - easy to romanticise...In, say, 2077, 1977 Yorkshire might look equally fascinating but the crimes themselves hold very little mystery to us,

Victorian London - or at least the literary portrait of Victorian London - seems to have become firmly ingrained in our national psyche. I suppose that will continue as people keep reading- or watching adaptions of - Dickens, or the Sherlock Holmes stories, or early HG Wells etc. I wonder what it is about this particular era that seems to fascinate us so?
 
When I was growing up, we inhabited a world the Victorians had designed and we talked daily with people who had been born in that era. The culture of that period was out-of-copyright and pre-sold; I don't think young people were particularly drawn to it.

In recent years, the period has been a happy hunting-ground for the Gothic and Steam-punk genres; we also like to flatter ourselves that we know the Victorians better than they knew themselves. I think they produced so much that we are still in the process of digesting it! :cool:
 
Yes I agree. Does this mean that in a 100 years time there will be Yorkshire Ripper tours in operation.

Ffs
The total lack of mystery
There will still be people alive who are family members of the victims.
We don't celebrate this sort of shit anymore?
 
Surely part of the reason Saucy Jacky is still a source of interest and dare I say inspiration is that his crimes were utterly shocking at the time? Far more shocking than they are to us now, when serial killers abound and unfortunates have experienced even bloodier deaths. It may be only a small mercy but at least his mutilations were post-mortem.

They may even have had a benefit in drawing attention to the plight of 'fallen women' in the East End. (I hate the term 'East London'). I doubt the ladies protesting in their cartoon Victorian costumes have any ability to comprehend what life might have been like for themselves if they had been caught up in the lifestyle of the Ripper victims. I at least have some second-hand idea, since my mum's dad was born in Whitechapel in the 1890's and was a genuine East End barrow boy before WW1.

The human race is very fond of horror - at a safe distance. Not only works of fiction but most religions make use of that fact in one way or another.
 
The way I see it - from a great distance and having no personal connection whatever to the place or people - is that the crimes were associated with two important things, cultural and otherwise - the creation of Scotland Yard and the rise of detective fiction. These are both things that seem quintessentially British. (I know Edgar Allan Poe is supposed to have written the first detective story, but it's the British who are far and away the best at that particular genre.)
So in addition to being an unsolved mystery, could it also be a kind of cultural touchstone, weird as that may sound?

The intensive coverage in newspapers at the time may have something to do with it as well (again, this coming from a foreigner's perspective). I've noticed that newspapers figure prominently in mystery/detective fiction in British books and television shows, even modern ones. It really stands out. The characters are always eagerly waiting the newest edition of the paper to find out the latest details of the crime, or the nervous traveler recognizes the front-page police sketch of the murderer as the man sitting across from her on the train. You just don't find that in works from other countries. Perhaps that's another "quintessential" cultural element?

It's just an idea, but maybe these and similar elements work to keep the story "alive" even from the safe distance of time?
 
Rarely has a book on Jack the Ripper been written with such visceral anger as this one by Bruce Robinson, the director and screenwriter of Withnail and I: anger at Jack, at “Ripperology”, at the establishment, and anger at the police cover-up that allowed one of the world’s most infamous serial killers to remain free.

From the outset, Freemasons and their secretive organisation are central to Robinson’s narrative: “Masonry permeates every fibre of this conundrum.” In the 19th century, virtually everyone who was anyone was a Mason, including the Metropolitan police commisioner, Sir Charles Warren. Robinson blames “Her Majesty’s executive” for the concealment of Jack the Ripper, all the members of which happened to be Masons: “It was a conspiracy of the system.”


http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...sting-ripper-bruce-robinson-review-withnail-i
 
Just got that book through yesterday so I'll post up a review when I finish. First impressions he seems intent on distancing himself from the current suspects/theories, be interesting to see what he has to replace them.
 
Wow, a lot of developments here recently.

I've only just acquired Craig's book on MJK, and then by chance saw a documentary on TV about Charles Allen Lechmere (Cross) the witness who found Polly Nichols and how he lied about his identity and his timings and appears to have been a likely suspect for the whole canonical five.

Cross is th ename he gave police, which was a name he had used before bu census data shows him as Lechmere and he survived until the 1920s.


Anyone else seen the doc?

Was on Channel 5 in the UK, I think, from a series called "Missing Evidence"
 
I used to religiously watch Channel 5 documentaries as they often covered some very Fortean subjects but they started to annoy so I've tended to have an occasional look at Channel5 catch up instead (by religiously I mean quite a lot, rather than watching whilst wearing a cassock and burning incense of course). They have a habit though of making a huge claim at the top of the show, which they usually don't even attempt to prove and then bloat the show with a reiteration of everything before the ad break, immediately after the ad break.

Zahi Hawass also seemed to be the only person available to comment on any Channel 5 doc regarding anything remotely Egyptian, however hatstand. He disappeared under a cloud in the recent unpleasantness, but oddly he's back again and apparently back in his job as minister of antiquities, plus ca change!
 
It was an interesting watch.

The 'evidence' is certainly intriguing, but nowhere near conclusive and I remain unconvinced.
 
Zahi Hawass also seemed to be the only person available to comment on any Channel 5 doc regarding anything remotely Egyptian, however hatstand. He disappeared under a cloud in the recent unpleasantness, but oddly he's back again and apparently back in his job as minister of antiquities, plus ca change!

He's also the only Egyptian ever quoted in any school textbook article on Egypt or Egyptology.
I'm convinced it's because his name is so damned Egyptian.
 
...They may even have had a benefit in drawing attention to the plight of 'fallen women' in the East End. (I hate the term 'East London')...

As I'm sure you know, but some people - particularly non-Brits - might not, the East End is not geographically synonymous with east London.

Annoyingly, there doesn't appear top be a universally accepted definition, and those that do exist tend to differ somewhat in detail, although the River Lea is generally used as the eastern boundary. When I lived for a while in Bethnal Green and later Whitechapel, I was in the East End - in Leyton and East Ham, I was not. My ex was born a Mile End girl and it was a matter of some regret to her parents that when they moved, probably less than three miles out, they could no longer call themselves East Enders. (And Hackney, despite what a lot of new Hackneyites will tell you, is not considered the East End by East Enders.)
 
...From the outset, Freemasons and their secretive organisation are central to Robinson’s narrative...

Oh, bugger...not the masons again; I was hoping for some fresh meat.

Rewinding a bit – having recently watched a Cornwell/Sickert=Ripper documentary:

I’ve always thought that the obsession with ‘celebrity’ suspects is a fascinating psychological subject in its own right - one which has, to my mind, two overriding and connected factors at its heart and, when you boil it down, nothing much else. And those are that many people abhor loose ends in the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, and that the famous rather conveniently leave a footprint. (And maybe professional writers – in thrall to the three/five act structure and the paradigms of Hollywood are especially prone to this.)

Sickert left a footprint. People knew who he was and what he did in his own lifetime - he was written about, and he wrote about himself; he was documented - and because of who or what he was, that information was preserved. His life, like those of other famous or influential ‘suspects’, was illuminated, and remained so beyond the physical dates that bracketed it - whereas a very large portion of humanity hardly possessed a shadow to leave behind: a single mention on a parish register; workhouse, police and court records; a death certificate - barely a whisper, and sometimes, nothing at all.

Sometimes, in these latter cases, a good researcher can glean information from standard records - but the result is almost always bare bones without any flesh to fill out the story; very often the best you can hope for is a series of dots the joining up of which can, in many cases, never constitute much more than educated supposition.

In popular culture the Ripper’s shadowy existence is seen as an intrinsic and self-conscious part of his character – a kind of semi-supernatural mantle of invisibility - whereas the likely reality is that it is a simple manifestation of a statement of fact regarding the majority of the population of the time.

Many of those who want to make a name following the trail ignore the fact that it’s a very muddy field which has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of souls, and that the clearest footprints are simply those left by the biggest feet.
 
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Oh, bugger...not the masons again; I was hoping for some fresh meat.

I'm about halfway through the Robinson book and it's one of the best I've read on the Ripper. There is some genuinely fresh thinking (and indeed research) in there, so despite my cynicism as I hovered over the buy button on Amazon, I'm very pleased I did.

Still waiting for him to name his suspect, so the money shot may well disappoint however.
 
I used to religiously watch Channel 5 documentaries as they often covered some very Fortean subjects but they started to annoy so I've tended to have an occasional look at Channel5 catch up instead (by religiously I mean quite a lot, rather than watching whilst wearing a cassock and burning incense of course). They have a habit though of making a huge claim at the top of the show, which they usually don't even attempt to prove and then bloat the show with a reiteration of everything before the ad break, immediately after the ad break.

Zahi Hawass also seemed to be the only person available to comment on any Channel 5 doc regarding anything remotely Egyptian, however hatstand. He disappeared under a cloud in the recent unpleasantness, but oddly he's back again and apparently back in his job as minister of antiquities, plus ca change!

"Hatstand"? Please explain. (This sounds like an expression I may want to pick up :D)

I haven't seen any programs on Jack the Ripper in ages. I think the subject is out of vogue in the states.
Could be Patricia Cornwell annoyed most everyone past the breaking point.
 
As I'm sure you know, but some people - particularly non-Brits - might not, the East End is not geographically synonymous with east London.

Annoyingly, there doesn't appear top be a universally accepted definition, and those that do exist tend to differ somewhat in detail, although the River Lea is generally used as the eastern boundary. When I lived for a while in Bethnal Green and later Whitechapel, I was in the East End - in Leyton and East Ham, I was not. My ex was born a Mile End girl and it was a matter of some regret to her parents that when they moved, probably less than three miles out, they could no longer call themselves East Enders. (And Hackney, despite what a lot of new Hackneyites will tell you, is not considered the East End by East Enders.)

Stratford is pretty much the border, I think, although its changed tremendously in the last couple of decades. The last place I lived in the Smoke was Manor Park, and that is definitely not East End. The East end doesn't go north very far either. Nor is it synonymous with being a Cockney, the definition of which gets broader the further away you get from London :)_

Oh, and it doesn't include flippin' Walford, either.
 
Stratford is pretty much the border, I think, although its changed tremendously in the last couple of decades...

I used to walk through Stratford from Leyton on my way to a mate's workshop at Pudding Mill Lane. You could virtually see Bow Church just at the turning to the workshop but it still didn't quite feel like the East End, more like a borderland - which I suppose it was, as the River Lea ran right by the workshop walls.

Quite an odd place that whole area, before they built an Olympic site on it, of course; known to certain locals as the 'gangsters graveyard', because quite a few ex players were rumoured to be have buried around there - without benefit of clergy.
 
Hatstand, completely bonkers, way out woo, usually expressed by a gibbering shitgibbon.

From a comic character called Roger Irrelevant:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hatstand
I immediately understood the use of the term, recognising it instinctively, but I'd almost fogotten its origins. When one's been schooled in the classics, it becomes a habit to use these expressions without prejudice against their birthplace (as Roger Mellie himself would doubtless have said)
 
Roger Irrelevant wasn't as good as Gilbert Ratchet but I liked him ... *wibble wibble*

rogerirellivent.png
 
The masonic thing has always bothered me.

The English consitution underwent major revision and diverged from the other sister constitutions, that of Ireland and Scotland, which were arguably older anyway. For example, the UGLE was actually formed from other bodies,one of which was known as the Lodge of Antients, which was primarily made up of masons from the Irish constitution.

But the so called legend of the Jewes (Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum) does not exist in the other two consitutions. THe three conspirators, as they are known, are not refered to in any of the general workings under either the collective names of the Jewes, or the individual names in Ireland or Scotland.

Now, there is no denying that Sir Charles Warren was a mason and that several of the high ranking police officers, including Melville MacNaughten, were too, but to attribute a conspiracy based on this, is dubious at best.

As regards the Channel 5 doc and Lechmere, it is all very convincing, the fact that he was found near a victim, lied to the police and lived, worked or socialised near each one of the murder sites. Also, as a delivery driver for a chandler, would have been able to go about the streets with a certain amount of gore on him without arousing suspicion.

But then again, that could be said for many at the time.

In much the same way as Mei Trow's suspect, the mortuary attendant Mann, fits well, Lechmere from this distance also appears to fit, but without the context of the day, is hard to properly evaluate. One thing that does rankle though is his family situation. He was married with several children and appears to have lived for quite some time after the Whitechapel series.

I've never heard of this type of killer, as in the disorganised asocial type, who led a sucessful family life.

Anyone else have an example of such?

LD
 
The masonic thing has always bothered me.

Yes, me too. I do see aspects of ritual to these murders, although if so - I don't think that the killer was a regular mason, but rather a dangerous lunatic who happened to be a mason.

One point against those local suspects, is that the "From Hell" letter, with its contrived misspellings, is the work of an educated person, who knew how to hold a pen and write fluently. Unlikely to be a working class man.
 
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