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Jack The Ripper (Compendium Thread)

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
Ascalon said:
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
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In the context of the times? Victorian Britain, the male being in sole control of the family, children "seen but not heard" etc.
Escargot, (her area of expertise), would be able to give more examples but I don't think it's uncommon for serial killers to be fathers and husbands.

Keith Jesperson for example http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29835159
 
I just watched another JTR prog on the box. It had a suspect new to me as someone with only a layman's knowledge of the case. A man named Charles Lechmere.

Solid evidence places him at the scene of Polly Nicholls murder, circumstantial evidence connects him with the others. As with most of these progs it painted a credible scenario.

I know there's a few ripperologists here who may be able to tell me it's crap.
 
I think the linked Daily Mail article is about a year old and coincided with the first screening of the show you saw. So he is in the records but fairly new to being in the frame, I think. :cool:
 
Heckler20 said:
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...
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I gave in. I found a ten quid voucher I'd forgotten about, and with the fiver off the book that Waterstones are doing at the moment, I got this breezeblock for a mere ten pounds. No argument really.

Anyway, the reviews I checked out were almost all positive - and many claim the book is a very worthwhile investment of time even if you don't agree with the premise or the conclusion, and that's always a plus point to me; I kind of like books I can argue with, that I can get to the end of without suspecting that I've just indulged in an extended exercise in confirmation bias. Somehow very satisfying.

Looking forward to it.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I gave in. I found a ten quid voucher I'd forgotten about,...

Looking forward to it.
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I was the same. I gave in - I was drifting about a bookstore, while on a shopping break on an interstate trip. I am always very much inclined to give in to myself and get yet another book. So I left with that book, and a few other choice items. I have started reading it, and find the style in the opening chapters a bit wild - lots of diversions, and swearing. But it seems to become more fluent as it goes on.

Just a whisper ... a rumour ... there might be an article about the Ripper in a forthcoming edition of the Fortean Times. It may come out soon.
 
Well, it looks like the JTR roundabout goes on and on.

As well as the Francis Craig suspect, along with the driver Charles Allen Lechmere, there is now the poet Francis Thompson, as argued by Richard Patterson.

We seem to be in a particularly fruitful period of Ripperology.

BTW, just finished the Weston Davies book on Mary Kelly, and the Francis Craig suspect and to be honest, it is stretched a bit. While the argument for MJK being Elizabeth Weston Davies is actually quite good, the argument for Francis Craig being her killer, let alone the killer, is weak at best.

Good book, well written though and streets ahead of the likes of the Cornwell travesty.
 
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I've just finished the Bruce Robinson book. What a fantastic read. Beyond impressive. I was really hoping to see a Fortean Times review, or at least a mention. FT does seem to consider the Whitechapel murders a 'fortean' subject, based on previous coverage (including the last one that made the news, the 'conclusive DNA evidence' that it was Kosminski...).
 
Expect the Daily Mail* will be claiming Tony Blackburn was JTR by this time next week.

*substitute any other newspaper you distrust.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I'll ask Spookdaddy . . .



Did you get it and like it? :confused:
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Yes, bought it and started it - but only just. Real life took over after a chapter or two and it's been sitting on a bookshelf winking at me since then.

From what I read I think I'm pretty clearly going to enjoy it. One early reservation I would mention is that there seems to be a lot of 'weren't the Victorians awful' going on at the start of the book, and I'm not sure Robinson doesn't overegg that pudding a bit. Victorian society was complex, and diverse, and a seemingly staid exterior was actually seething with progressive ideas, radical thought and everyday protest - Victorian people were not sheep to be led; the author's views look on the monolithic side to me.

However, that's unfair of me, as I'm basing it on a very partial reading. It's also not necessarily an outright criticism - I often tend find that the books I most enjoy reading are those whose author's I don't entirely agree with. Sometimes that kind of read sets up a kind of discussion in your head which a more 'comfortable' one does not. (If that makes sense.)
 
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This report on the detection of a "Chinese J-t-R" may fit in here.

DNA evidence has been used and the man has confessed to 11 murders in the period 1988 to 2002.

It tends to be very much a fixed idea in the minds of Ripperologists that serial-killers cannot stop of their own accord. It has driven a few theories about whether the original "Jack" could have shifted his location, been incarcerated for other crimes, died or committed suicide.

I have yet to see the Robinson book but I have read enough about it to know that his candidate died in bed in Buxton in 1913, having, supposedly, framed his brother by faking the notorious diary!

How does Robinson account for the retirement years? Were there unattributed crimes or was the reign of terror staunched by the death of his hated sibling?

Meanwhile, details of the Chinese case are sparse and of doubtful relevance but the power of the name lives on in the headlines! :oops:
 
Is the Robinson book worth reading?

I'd be tempted, but don't want to waste it if it is a Cornwell-type treatment.
 
A colleague recommended this, couple of years old I think so may have been already discussed. The suspect's name doesn't show up on search though…


Suspect found the body of one victim and his route to work would have taken him past the sites of several others at the same hour. Not conclusive but very interesting, would certainly be someone you'd want to question further in order to rule them out.
 
MikeCovell said:
Very few relatives survive, and those that do are quiet happy to let bygones be bygones. It's Trevor Marriott that is persuing the opening of the Special Branch ledgers.
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I'll be blunt as there's little point in being otherwise, but Trevor Marriott comes over (at least to me) very badly in text/interviews.

Quite aside from his arguments, he plays his 'I used to be a police detective' card like a Get out of Jail Free Card whenever he's stumped.

Was there also not some accusation of overt plagiarism?
 
Yithian said:
I'll be blunt as there's little point in being otherwise, but Trevor Marriott comes over (at least to me) very badly in text/interviews.

Quite aside from his arguments, he plays his 'I used to be a police detective' card like a Get out of Jail Free Card whenever he's stumped.

Was there also not some accusation of overt plagiarism?
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Never heard of him before but this comment on youtube is quite interesting.

"Had the misfortune to see this rather unpleasant man on a Cunard cruise. The "Ripper" lecture was a mostly his personal opinion with nothing new. His serial killer talk was a mass of information gleaned from the internet, illustrated with gratuitous photographs of victims. He discredited the British police force by making numerous tasteless remarks. He struck me as a typical example of the old style copper who I wouldn't trust to tell me the time".
 
Yes, I've seen that before--lots of 'I believe'.

He got his own little turn here, too:


It's in interactions with other ripperologists (the more knowledgable ones) that his true colours are unfurled, however.

Ha! He got a cross-pollination promo slot on Fox News:

 
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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.

The mystery of Jack the Ripper solved: not one killer but two​
23 JUNE 2017 • 5:00PM

It’s a bold claim, but I am going to make it: I believe I have solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

Between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891, 11 women were brutally murdered in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London. Most, if not all, were prostitutes. One survived long enough to reveal that she had been the victim of more than one assailant. Another was stabbed 39 times. Seven had their throats cut. Four suffered grotesque abdominal mutilations. Two were killed on the same night. One was beheaded.

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.

But who was he? For more than a century, speculation has been rife and the scores of those accused range from a simple-minded Whitechapel barber to Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland; from Queen Victoria’s doctor (Sir William Gull), to her surgeon (Sir John Williams), to her eldest grandson (Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale). Recently the American crime writer Patricia Cornwell has convinced herself (if few others) that the perpetrator was the celebrated artist Walter Sickert.

I now believe I know the truth. I have stumbled on it, almost by chance, partly through exploring the papers of one of my forebears (my grandmother’s first cousin), the Victorian journalist and social reformer, George R Sims, and partly through my interest in Oscar Wilde.

Continued in a non-revealing, book-plugging fashion:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/mystery-jack-ripper-solved-not-one-killer-two/
 
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?
 
Yeah, there have been theories along those lines for a while. Basically with these murders, there's a theory for every occasion, so pick and choose. The truth has been theorised into oblivion.
 
GNC said:
Yeah, there have been theories along those lines for a while. Basically with these murders, there's a theory for every occasion, so pick and choose. The truth has been theorised into oblivion.
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I've read a few of the famous ones, notable Fido and Sugden. Paul Begg is another good 'un for marshalling information.

I quickly discovered that once you have the 'main' 'facts' down (plenty of dispute about almost any 'fact' and its degree of relevance) about the actual murders and the suspects, it's the milleu in which the ripper(s) did his/their work that holds most of the fascination. Whitechapel itself is the main character in the best of the literature--almost like a chapter in Ackroyd's London: The Biography.

Edit: i had no idea that Philip Sugden died in 2014 - RIP.
 
Yithian said:
I've read a few of the famous ones, notable Fido and Sugden. Paul Begg is another good 'un for marshalling information.

I quickly discovered that once you have the 'main' 'facts' down (plenty of dispute about almost any 'fact' and its degree of relevance) about the actual murders and the suspects, it's the milleu in which the ripper(s) did his/their work that holds most of the fascination. Whitechapel itself is the main character in the best of the literature--almost like a chapter in Ackroyd's London: The Biography.

Edit: i had no idea that Philip Sugden died in 2014 - RIP.
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A very worthy observation.
Having read much literature, reference and outright fantasy in this area, I too am much saddened to hear of the passing of Philip Sugden. His sane, careful and measured approach was most refreshing amid the reputation bssed assertions of many so called experts and ex-law enforcement in the field.

As for Mr Brandreth, I am loath to purchase, but just as I had to buy the Cornwell tour de farce, if only for refutation purposes, so I may have to do here.
 
It's a plug for yet another book. The story of its discovery beneath the floorboards of the Maybrick house has been around since the start. :cool:
 
There's quite a nice twist on the Maybrick story if you read 'They all love Jack'.
 
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