What are you currently reading?

[BomberPat]

I love From Hell, and I think it benefits from the fact that Moore doesn't believe it - he's not framing it as "JACK THE RIPPER REVEALED", he's just told the story. The "Gullcatchers" short at the end of From Hell is probably my favourite part, looking at all the various absurd suspects that have been posited over the years.

I like Sugden's book, and several like it, as they tend to examine the facts of the case rather than work to fit them to their narrative, or their suggestion of who it must have been. When you have people suggesting that the Ripper was Lewis Carroll, or Arthur Conan Doyle, or a Royal, or really any known Victorian figure, I get the impression they came up with the suspect first and retrofitted the "evidence" to fit.

Robinson's book is interesting in part because it's less about the murders themselves and more about the incompetency of the police, and the suggestion of an extensive cover-up. It takes the Masonic angle, which I'd normally roll my eyes at, and turns it on its head by suggesting that rather than the From Hell angle of the murders themselves having Masonic significance, the Ripper was subverting Masonic imagery specifically to taunt Charles Warren.

It requires some logical leaps, but it's pretty exhaustive, and controversial in that it expands the Ripper's kill count well outside of the usual "canonical" murders, and reassesses which of the Ripper letters were determined to be fakes. Robinson's suspect is Michael Maybrick, and Robinson manages to tie many of the supposedly fake Ripper letters with non-London postage stamps to times Maybrick would have been on tour in the relevant towns, and points out where information in some of the "fake" letters accurately predicts the Ripper's next actions - if you accept Robinson's expansion beyond the canonical murders.

It's a hefty tome - some 800 pages or so - and gives probably the most convincing account I've read anywhere, though I still have my doubts that Maybrick was the Ripper. As with any of the suspects, it all seems very convenient for the Ripper to have been a public figure we have countless records of, slumming it in Whitechapel, rather than a random itinerant we know nothing about.

[Chris B]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I love From Hell, and I think it benefits from the fact that Moore doesn't believe it - he's not framing it as "JACK THE RIPPER REVEALED", he's just told the story. The "Gullcatchers" short at the end of From Hell is probably my favourite part, looking at all the various absurd suspects that have been posited over the years.

Totally agree. The 'Gullcatchers' short is superb. On a linked topic, I actually liked the film more than most. The Hughes Bros could never capture that exploration of a subject in the way Moore did, because it would have had to have been as experimental as hell, but the idea that they were looking at the Victorian Slums as being similar to the ghettos, and looking at those kind of links, was really interesting. I also read that Robbie Coltrane was their preferred casting for Abberline, so they expanded the role they cast him in to give him more screentime.

 

18 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I like Sugden's book, and several like it, as they tend to examine the facts of the case rather than work to fit them to their narrative, or their suggestion of who it must have been. When you have people suggesting that the Ripper was Lewis Carroll, or Arthur Conan Doyle, or a Royal, or really any known Victorian figure, I get the impression they came up with the suspect first and retrofitted the "evidence" to fit.

Have you read Patricia Cornwell's book? She puts forward that it was the painter Walter Sickert, and it's hilariously biased. My favourite bit is when she says 'well, there was a person seen nearby in military garb, so that couldn't have been Sickert, as he wasn't in the military... but he did paint someone in the military. So is it farfetched to suggest he bought the uniform to paint? And is it too farfetched to suggest he would have dressed up in the uniform and walked around at night?'. Then, later, she calls back to it, pointing out 'But of course, Sickert was mad - we can see this because he dressed up in military uniform to go walking, and only someone mad would do that'.

She bought one of his paintings and sliced it up looking for clues. And all because she got an uneasy feeling from one of his paintings. Utter fucking lunacy.

[BomberPat]

Yeah, I've read that one. Pretty indicative of the circular reasoning a lot of these books rely on, and it's baffling to me how often Sickert comes up as a possibility.

I've long been attempting to write a book in which Ripperology, and the idea of Jack The Ripper, more than the Ripper or the murders themselves, is a key component, so I spent a good year reading way more of this stuff than is probably good for me.

[Otto Dem Wanz]

Currently on Six Days by Jeremy Bowen - although its probably a bit dated (2003 my edition was published I think) I'm fed up of reading shite on social media about the current Middle East conflict and want to understand it better from a reliably sourced and fully contextualised point of view. Hope its worth sticking with!

[Brewster McCloud]

On 6/19/2019 at 5:14 PM, BomberPat said:

The book's being attacked by a lot of the name "Ripperologists" for this point, most of whom are absolute hacks trying to cling to their boys' club, and refuting anything that doesn't fit their narrative, regardless of evidence. I saw one of them on Twitter saying something like, "she was seen talking to a man with a moustache at night, only a prostitute would have been out at night talking to strange men when a murder had happened recently". As if the rest of Whitechapel shut down and stay indoors after the first killing.

"Ripperology" is built on a lot of received wisdom and agreed narratives, and tends to shut down anything that sits outside of that, it's a real oddball discipline. 

Bruce Robinson's "They All Love Jack" is by far my favourite Ripper take, and really challenges a lot of those assumptions, though makes a fair few logical leaps of its own.

And what evidence has Rubenhold given for her extraordinary claims that Ripperologists are just a bunch of lazy misogynists who couldn't be bothered looking into the lives of the canonical five victims and that she was the first to do so? Furthermore, what evidence has she supplied to support her bizarre claim that the victims were sleeping when they were murdered? Which of the "name Ripperologists" who you consider absolute hacks, Pat, refute anything that doesn't "fit their narrative", as far as this kerfuffle concerns? Paul Begg? Don't lump in hacks who write suspect books with people who have a scholarly, historical bent. There's a world of difference between, say, Martin Fido, and some nincompoop with a publishing deal pointing the finger at some innocent guy whose relatives have to deal with the stigma. 

The reason she was "attacked", or was, more accurately, criticized, isn't because she's a woman or a feminist historian, but rather because she said some stupid shit in the course of promoting her book and in the book itself. Any author playing fast and loose with valid sources should expect to receive the same. Yeah, yeah, "she started it miss!" and all that. However! To say that no one had previously bothered to look into the lives of the victims before her is absolute twaddle; Philip Sugden, for one, wrote extensively about their lives after doing an extensive amount of research. Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner also raised the issue of whether or not the women were prostitutes in the Jack the Ripper A to Z, published long before Rubenhold waded in. It's not just that she wants to argue that the first 3 canonical victims weren't prostitutes, it's that she ignores all the evidence that suggests that they were, if not full time hookers, at least had to sell themselves for doss money in moments of desperation. There are records of people who knew the victims making statements to the police stating exactly that, albeit in euphemistic Victorian terms. Now, maybe they were lying - it's possible, but you can't just completely ignore such documents. Rubenhold did to support her peculiar thesis. 

How can you possibly say that Ripperology is "based on received wisdom and agreed narratives"? The popular conception of Jack the Ripper is, certainly - the top-hatted dandy gliding through the foggy streets of London with his Gladstone bag full of tricks in hand - but you can't just write off the field as a bunch of prurient cranks clinging to myths. If you listen to the Rippercast podcast, as I do, you'll know it's pretty much people with an interest in Victorian history trying to evaluate the available sources using reason and, more often than not, your old pal Ockham's razor. When Rubenhold's book was discussed* (by male AND FEMALE Ripperolgists!) they dealt with it in a balanced and critical manner, praising it for the context it provided, and the few new factual details uncovered, but slamming it for falderal like claiming the victims were sleeping when they were murdered. As if that's a more likely theory considering the bodies were found in notorious areas where prostitutes would take their clients - it seems far more likely to me that the Ripper posed as a customer and let the women lure themselves to their own deaths, safe in the knowledge that he would be undisturbed as he mutilated the bodies. After all, where's the fun in killing a sleeping woman? Or, yeah, maybe he was the only serial killer who got a kick out of attacking sleeping women who had weirdly chosen to sleep in notorious soliciting locations...

As for Bruce Robinson's book, much as I like him, I can can't be bothered going through 800 pages of acerbic insults and putdowns just to end up at another conspiracy theory. The only debate about the Maybrick diary is whether it was a contemporary forgery or a modern one. Slagging off the police? What more could they have possibly done given the methods available at the time?

*https://www.casebook.org/podcast/listen.html?id=222

"

[Chris B]

Yeah, like that, basically.

[Devon Malcolm]

45 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

Gladstone bag full of tricks in hand

[Chris B]

Man, I was so accurate, it's creepy. 

On 6/19/2019 at 11:11 AM, Chris B said:

I think it's possibly because it removes some of the salaciousness from the story and just renders it more sad and tragic, and also because it removes some of the perceived 'genius' of the murderer - he wasn't gliding in and out like a ghost, silently slaughtering prostitutes after taking them down dark alleys... he was just a bloke who carved up sleeping homeless women, and that's not as much 'fun'.

55 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

After all, where's the fun in killing a sleeping woman? Or, yeah, maybe he was the only serial killer who got a kick out of attacking sleeping women who had weirdly chosen to sleep in notorious soliciting locations...

[Brewster McCloud]

16 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Man, I was so accurate, it's creepy. 

Before you congratulate yourself too much, let's consider that I was being sardonic in using the word "fun" rather than actually endorsing some murderous swine. Can you point me towards anyone who has claimed that Jack the Ripper was a "genius"? Certainly nobody sane. He was brazen and reckless and very lucky not to get caught. The "Fun" in question relates to the vast majority of serial killer's MOs - the feeling of power they get when they see the fear in the face of their victim. If you think Jack the Ripper was "just a bloke who carved up sleeping homeless women" then fine. I don't, because it would make him a complete anomaly in the world of serial killers. But, if that's what you want to believe, then go for it. I wonder why it would be considered more "sad and tragic" for someone to murder a sleeping non-prostitute than to murder an awake prostitute? That I can't fathom.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Brewster McCloud

[Chest Rockwell]

Where have you been recently,  @Brewster McCloud .

Any chance you could go back?

Edited June 20, 2019 by Chest Rockwell

[Keith Houchen]

1 minute ago, Chest Rockwell said:

 

Any chance you could go back?

 

[Brewster McCloud]

3 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Where have you been recently,  @Brewster McCloud .

Any chance you could go back?

You could always just ban me if I bother you that much, dude. Makes no difference to me.

[Keith Houchen]

[Chris B]

5 minutes ago, Brewster McCloud said:

Before you congratulate yourself too much, let's consider that I was being sardonic in using the word "fun" rather than actually endorsing some murderous swine. Can you point me towards anyone who has claimed that Jack the Ripper was a "genius"? Certainly nobody sane. He was brazen and reckless and very lucky not to get caught. The "Fun" in question relates to the vast majority of serial killer's MOs - the feeling of power they get when they see the fear in the face of their victim. If you think Jack the Ripper was "just a bloke who carved up sleeping homeless women" then fine. I don't, because it would make him a complete anomaly in the world of serial killers. But, if that's what you want to believe, then fine.

Well, a quick google shows the 'complete anomaly' of serial killers targeting sleeping homeless people happening multiple times in the last couple of years alone. But I'm sure that's a complete fluke and there were no more in the last century or so.

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/serial-killer-targeting-pretorias-homeless-report-20190613

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ramon-escobar-latest-serial-killer-arrest-murder-homeless-california-a8555421.html

[Brewster McCloud]

3 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Well, a quick google shows the 'complete anomaly' of serial killers targeting sleeping homeless people happening multiple times in the last couple of years alone. But I'm sure that's a complete fluke and there were no more in the last century or so.

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/serial-killer-targeting-pretorias-homeless-report-20190613

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ramon-escobar-latest-serial-killer-arrest-murder-homeless-california-a8555421.html

That's interesting. Those links are about male killers targeting male victims, though. I wonder if it's a different psychology? Has there ever been a male serial killer who preyed on sleeping women before, supposedly, Jack the Ripper? You've got me interested and I'm happy to admit if I'm wrong.