Rivals of the Ripper - Jan Bondeson

 It has been a while since I indulged my addiction to Ripperology.  In that time the Swedish researcher Jan Bondeson has staked out a niche in the field for himself.   To begin with, Bondeson is much better qualified as a scientist and researcher than most others.   It might equally be a bonus that he is not British nor even a native speaker of English.   This enables him to cut through some significant swathes of nonsense.

Essentally Bondeson is fascinated by the odd and the extreme.   I am particularly attracted by his The Great Pretenders (2003).   In the meantime I found this, from 2016/   The title is a bit of cheat, really.   None of these murders have anything to do with Jack the Ripper; most of them are nowhere near his period of activity.   Some of the victims are full or part-time prostitutes but it is surely no surprise that sex workers have always been especially vulnerable.

The subtitle is exactly what the book is about: Unsolved murders of women in late Victorian London.   We have murders on trains, in old Euston, and even in a milk shop.   None of the perpetrators were ever caught though Bondeson makes a good case for them have being correctly identified by the police.   Few of the investigations can be criticised, although there is one by the City Police, which overlaps with some aspects of Ripperology, where those in charge were so utterly incompetent that the Square Mile would have been a lot safer had they been locked up.

Otherwise we have murderers who were plainly mad, undermining my pet theory that Victorian asylums were better than our contemporary mental health services.   On the other hand, Bondeson seems to endorse my other theory that mass transportation enabled predatory killers.

What I especially enjoyed about this book was the depth in which Bondeson scrutinises the evidence.   He is especially good at setting the scene, which in itself can be an important clue to what happened.   In one of my research projects I have unearthed the seamy side of Victorian Bloomsbury; Bondeson has done likewise.   I have learned much I didn't know.   I enjoyed the process.   I shall be on the lookout for more Bondeson.