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.

Shadowplay - Joseph O'Connor

 

Modern fiction at its very best, Shadowplay is the story of the triumvirate that brought London's Lyceum Theatre its greatest days at the very end of the 19th century - Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Bram Stoker, their general manager, who knocked off his best-known novel in his spare time.  One theory maintains that Count Dracula was based on Irving, so the vampire theme lies across O'Connor's story.  There are also fun jokes - for example, Jonathan Harker, the young scenic whizz hired by Stoker, turns out to be a cross-dressing young woman, thereafter known as 'Harks'.  Mina is the name given to the theatre ghost and some of the best writing here is about the ephemeral jaunts of the long-dead spirit.  Mina's room is the abandoned space inside the theatre where Stoker does his writing.  This being the 1880s, for the most part, Jack the Ripper is here too.  But at heart it's a three-handed love story; for all their wildly inappropriate behaviour the three principals are all emotionally tied to one another for life.  O'Connor brings their world beautifully alive.  He is a major contemporary writer.  As a token of how good he is, I draw your attention to the end Coda - totally unnecessary, far too long, and yet so achingly written I wouldn't want to lose a single word.

The Five - Hallie Rubenhold

This book bills itself as "The Untold Lives of the Five Women killed by Jack the Ripper", which is not strictly true as the excellent bibliography demonstrates. What it is, however, is the breakthrough book on the subject, and it is done very well indeed. Rubenhold's thesis is that the canonical five victims (not including Martha Tabram) were not 'just prostitutes'. Even the two who were without doubt prostitutes (Stride and Kelly) were not only prostitutes, but women who had substantial lives, children in some cases, and certainly partners. They might be remembered today solely as Ripper victims but they left traces at the time for other reasons as well.

Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman were both respectable married women before misfortune struck. Drink was Polly's downfall and Chapman lost everything when her husband died. Rubenhold is right to point out that neither was ever arrested for prostitution and both had legitimate ways of making the few pence needed to fund a bed in the doss house. Today they would simply be regarded as legally homeless and we do not automatically assume that middleaged homeless women are necessarily prostitutes. I can assure you that we see a dispiriting number of them in court and prostitution is never assumed and rarely alleged. Rubenhold's secondary theory is that the Ripper was able to dispatch his victims swiftly and silently not because they were stupid enough to solicit his custom but because he searched them out while they slept rough, in yards and dark corners - compelling reasoning in both the Nicholls and Chapman cases.

Liz Stride probably wasn't a Ripper victim and was certainly an occasional prostitute - she had a conviction for it back in Sweden, and about the only thing eyewitnesses seemed to agree upon was that she was touting for trade on the night of the so-called 'Double Event'. Kate Eddowes, the other victim that night, was a traveller, a female tramp, and an epic drinker. When she was turned out of the police station in the small hours she cheerfully announced that she would soon get her doss money. This has long been assumed to refer to prostitution, but again, relying on my personal court acquaintance with many contemporary women in her position, I would favour either petty theft or plain outright begging.

The weak link in Rubenhold's argument is the final victim, Mary Jane Kelly. For a start, that almost certainly wasn't her name - which Rubehold herself points out - and she was definitely a prostitute with no other means of support, who claimed (unreliably at best) to have recently been a much higher class courtesan with experiences of the maisons closes of Paris or perhaps Antwerp. Clearly the Ripper vented every last vestige of rage on Kelly's corpse. The extent of the injuries suggests, in  modern theories of violence on women, personal acquaintance, a relationship betrayed; but since we haven't a clue who Kelly was, and uniquely among the five no one ever came forward to claim her, we cannot follow up on any leads.

A fascinating book - a rare serious addition to the field of Ripperology and highly recommended. I have read dozens and dozens of books on the subject and put in hundreds of hours of personal research, which I will now have to go through again in light of Rubenhold's propositions.

Jack and the Thames Torso Murders - Drew Gray and Andrew Wise

A new Ripper, the subtitle asks? A new suspect, certainly, and a lot of impressive investigation of themes rarely tackled before (the use of rail, trams and buses; the possibility that the killer worked for a firm that had cornered the market in horse butchery and had depots all over London) but for me the fundamental premise - that 'Jack' was responsible for both series of murders in London in 1888 - falls flat. It was the one thing that police and experts agreed on at the time: whoever dumped the torsos was not the same person who slashed up women on the streets of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. It strikes me, moreover, that their motives were different. For example, the torso killer was not greatly interested in the reproductive system of his victims whereas Jack seems to have been interested in nothing else.

Overall, though, this is a highly commendable addition to the field of Ripperology with a refreshing academic sub-structure. The new suspect is credible for one or the other series (more likely the torso murders), certainly lived locally and died at the right time. The last chapter alone, surveying the growth of the Ripper industry, is worth the price. The annoying thing for me is the selectivity of the sources surveyed. The old Ripper hands who co-operated with them are beyond reproach, many other significant contributors are ignored entirely. Leonard Matters, the first in the field, is dismissed because of 'errors' that are never specified. For me, too much credibility is given to geographic and psychological profiling, techniques which have rather fallen from favour since their heyday in the late 20th century. That said, any theorist really has to opt for a local or an incomer. Gray and Wise, go with the majority nowadays, and go for a local. Once you've done that, geographical profiling is always going to be a strand of your thesis.

There is, ultimately, a lot here that is new. New means of getting from A to B in and around the murder ground are brought to light. Convincing arguments are made in favour of including more victims in both series and I for one won't be satisfied until I have followed these up myself.

If you're interested in the Ripper, you have to read this.

The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders - Saul David

I'm a thoroughgoing Ripperphile and therefore could not resist this fictional version.

It's a Zulu Hart novel. That gave me pause. Zulu is actually Major George Hart VC, son of an Irish actress with Zulu blood and the Duke of Cambridge. No, not the current one - this is George, 2nd duke of Cambridge, Field Marshal and cousin of Queen Victoria. As such Zulu George is recalled from Gibraltar and offered two clandestine tasks - the first is to infiltrate the Fenian movement that is terrorising London, the second to keep and eye on the second in line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, and wean him off his homosexual friends. This is complicated when prostitutes start being 'ripped' in Whitechapel and clues point to the prince's involvement.

The adventure clips along nicely. Young George is a splendid character for an adventure series, brave, honest and just sufficiently conflicted to spice things up. The plot is cleverly worked and gives what is probably a fair portrayal of the young prince - thick as a plank, sexually conflicted, but not a danger to society. I won't say who David puts forward as his murderer but I will reveal that he goes for one of the rarer ploys, which is that the Ripper was a two-man operation. This relies on two of the murders, Liz Stride and Martha Turner, neither of whom are always canonical. But it also reflects a number of more recent serial killer cases in which two men were involved, for example the John Duffy railway murders.

Interesting ideas, entertainingly deployed.

Jack the Ripper - Daniel Farson

Farson's 1972 book introduced the barrister Montague Druitt as Number One Suspect. Actually - as is so often the case with this fascinating work - he put the name to the suspect that Leonard Matters had known about and dismissed in the first ever Ripper book (1928). Farson claimed to have seen the famous Macnaghten Memorandum, a note written by the man who took over as head of the Met immediately after the murders ceased. Farson would have us believe that Macnaghten wrote in his official capacity, a summary document to close the file. Actually what Macnaghten did (and Matters proves beyond reasonable doubt) is copy out Major Arthur Griffiths' suspect list from his 1898 Mysteries of Police and Crime (Part 1). Griffiths had overseen prisons but had never served with the police. He did, however, have extensive police contacts and it may well have been that both Griffiths and Macnaghten got their information from the same source. Was that source authoritative? Probably not, given the insistence that police inquiries wound down after Druitt's body was fished from the Thames on December 31 1888, when in fact key frontline investigators believed the Ripper continued killing. Inspector Reid turned up at various prostitute murders well into 1889 and 1890, and Inspector Abberline was apparently convinced that George Chapman (caught and hanged 1903) was the Ripper.


Farson's book is frankly nowhere near as good as Matters' original. Farson never gives us sources we can check whereas Matters always does. Again, the fact is, Matters shows us, almost half a century earlier, how weak Farson's theory really is. Farson's suspect is a reasonable candidate, whereas Matters' nominee is well nigh ridiculous; on the other hand, Matters' research is thorough and documented whereas Farson in the end resorts to absurd assertions. Farson also claimed (I haven't yet checked if the claim is true) that he is the first to produce a photograph of Druitt. He then goes on to shoot himself in the foot. Is that a glint of madness in the eye, he asks. Answer: no it isn't. Is that an incipient moustache? Absolutely not.


Actually, Farson's research, such as it is, was done for a pair of TV documentaries aired over a decade before the book came out (Farson was an early star of ITV). While the programmes were still be edited, the research dossier mysteriously disappeared, which raises rather obvious suspicions. Nevertheless the book was a big success (as the TV version had been) and really ushered in the great wave of Ripperology that persists to this day. It is essential and enjoyable reading. Farson has an engaging style - but I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him.

Jack the Ripper- Terry Lynch

I picked up this book as part of an Amazon bundle. I simply couldn't resist. Why had I never heard of it before? Because it is published by Wordsworth in their series 'Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural' and received minimal promotion, most people assuming, no doubt, that it was slasher fiction. Lynch doesn't use the usual publicity device of naming a new suspect so even the tabloids passed it by.

It is, however, an essential read for the dedicated Ripperologist. Lynch is no prose stylist (and I don't suppose he would claim to be); he has been poorly served, if at all, by an editor. Yet he does a strong line in good old-fashioned logic. Rather than structure everything around a theory of who did it, he does a thorough job of reviewing and mostly sidelining the theories of others. The truth is, we don't know who did it and in all probability will never know. For me, Lynch finally demolishes the notion that Elizabeth Stride was a Ripper victim. Once this is out of the way, the time pressure is off for the murder, an hour so later, of Catherine Eddowes. Likewise, Lynch has convinced me that the supposed Ripper letters are all irrelevant nonsense.

He also offers a valuable reminder that the Ripper was not as extraordinary as we often assume. He wasn't the only uncaught London serial killer of 1888, nor the most prolific, nor even the first. Whilst the East End was terrorised by Jack, someone was dumping female torsos in the western reaches of the Thames. The torso killer started in 1887 and was definitely still killing and dissecting in 1889. There is even a theory that he deliberately dumped one torso in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, in order to put the blame on his knife-wielding rival.

I would not recommend Lynch's book to someone dipping a toe into Ripperology, but I would strongly commend it to anyone who finds themselves convinced by the better written works of Stephen Knight or Tom Cullen. And no one who has read as many Ripper books as I have can consider themselves a completest without it.

White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings - Iain Sinclair

Now this is a challenging read, worked and reworked until it resembles a palimpsest of interwoven narratives.

Sinclair is best known today as a psycho-geographer, exploring the effect of the deep past on contemporary cityscapes, in particular London, specifically London's East End, where he lives. When White Chappell was written in 1987 he was best known as a cutting edge modernist poet. Indeed, White Chappell combines the past and present of the author himself. It is thus a career crossroads for Sinclair.

Given the East End and the date of writing, it is no great challenge to work out what White Chappell refers to. As for Scarlet Tracings, I still have no idea. Blood trails, perhaps? Certainly that must be one interpretation. But why the medieval spelling of one and not the other...? We are not necessarily meant to know.

On one level it is about the antique book trade in the 1980s. At least one of the book scouts, Nicholas Lane, is a portrait of a real, crazed ex-rock musician who took to book dealing and who died late last year. His obituary sparked my interest in the book though I'm damned if I can find my note of his actual name. Sinclair, we must assume, is the narrator of these passages, who refers to himself as the Narrator. Here the writing is dense and poetic, almost brutalist. The seedy dealers come upon an early edition of Conan Doyle's Study in Scarlet, worth a fortune, which contains references to the Ripper murders.

The dealers do not investigate the Ripper leads, but the book does. It is established early on that Sinclair's favoured suspect is the royal physician Sir William Gull - also favoured by the legendary Stephen Knight, whose work is discussed by the dealers. To what extent Sinclair's Gull is historical, I do not know. Was he really the son of a Thames lighterman? I think we can say for sure that the way Sinclair handles his exposure and ultimate death is not historically accurate - but, wow, it is a passage that will live with me for a very long time.

Also interspersed is the story of James Hinson, a historical character who seems to have been both Gull's protege in surgery and his mentor in philosophical terms. Hinson's paganistic philosophy, available on many archival websites, is extreme to the point of derangement, but he certainly wasn't involved directly in the Ripper murders by virtue of the simple fact that he died ten years too soon. These passages are handled in letter form - letters from Hinson to his 'sister-wife' and her sister, the love of his life. Also included is a letter from Sinclair' friend and fellow poet Douglas Oliver, regarding an earlier novel, Suicide Bridge (1979), which Sinclair says is the second part of the 'triad' that closes with White Chappell, You see what I mean by palimpsest?

I know it sounds impossibly experimental but I have to say I loved it. It is absolutely up my alley in so many respects. To me, it was inspirational. I have to have more.

ANNO DRACULA - Kim Newman

Anno Dracula (1992) is the first volume in what became a series of the same name.  Kim Newman is one of the best-known British authorities on horror films, horror stories and pulp fiction.  Anno Dracula  is all these and more.  The 'more', essentially, is that it is an alternative world story of a fictional world.  In this made-up world, Count Dracula did not die at the hands of Van Helsing and his crew but survived to marry the widowed Queen Victoria and invite all his vampire friends over to England.

It is 1888 and Jack the Ripper is slicing up vampire prostitutes.  Charles Beauregard is instructed by the Diogenes Club (chaired by Mycroft Holmes) to put a stop to Jack's japes.  Shortly thereafter he is forcibly impaneled by the Limehouse Crew  (chaired by one Fu Manchu) to do the same thing.  And so the story unfolds, not so much horror or detective yarn as a pastiche of both.  It's meant to be fun and half the fun comes from spotting literary cameos among the walk-ons.  I am a fan of both forms and doubt I got more than half of them.  Fortunately Newman provides end notes to ensure we know what we missed.  Less happily, this 2011 reissue (with the fabulous cover art) also includes several other slabs of Newman which are less enlightening.  Still, no one is forced to read them and a novel of more than 400 pages scarcely shortchanges the consumer.

A clever romp, witty, effectively-written and great fun.  I shall certainly keep an eye out for Volume 2, The Bloody Red Baron.

The Ripper's Apprentice - Donald Thomas

1986 classic from the author also prolific as Francis Selwyn.  As the image suggests, this belongs to the Inspector Swain series and concerns a serial killer loose in London three years after the Ripper's Autumn of Terror.  I'm not sure whodunit will be much of a surprise to fans of the form but for me the pleasure was entirely in the writing - from the mystery man's ramblings, written in his own urine, to the horse-faced Inspector's surprisingly lively sex life.  The case is a real one but I have no idea whether the blackmail aspect is historical or not.  Does it matter?  Not a jot.  Reading this was pure unadulterated delight.  Can't wait to get my hands on another.