One of the most absurd theories involving the Whitechapel murders is that the killer was none other than Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence (1864-1892), heir to the English throne. Today few students of the case give this theory any credence.
First, the Prince was demonstrably not in London during some of the murders. Second, the entire theory suffers from an urgent need to make the JTR “solution” as shocking as possible, as if the murders weren’t sensationalized enough already.
There are a host of other reasons for why “Eddy” could not have been the Ripper, but there is no reason to address them here. This suspect, like most celebrity candidates, can be dismissed easily.
In the coming days, I will review the major and minor suspects in the JTR crimes. I won’t spend much time on those individuals whose connection to the crimes is unlikely at best. By contrast, I’ll dwell at length on the major suspects: men whose states of mind, behavior, whereabouts, and professions all enhance — rather than diminish — their candidacies.
Some of the “major” suspects, I should note, are not really deserving of much attention within the context of the JTR crimes. But because Ripperologists have at times lavished attention on unlikely suspects, I’ll be certain to acknowledge when I’m dealing with a person who has attracted a good deal of interest from buffs and scholars alike.
First up will be the Victorian celebrities — including the Prince himself. More soon!
I have been re-reading Philip Sugden’s The Complete History of Jack the Ripper (1994; 2002), as I try to do each year. Sometimes folks ask me to recommend a book on the murders, and this is always the first title that comes to mind. Not only is the work authoritative, but the clarity of Sugden’s prose is as impressive as his logic. No other book is as thorough.
I’m eager to learn what other subjects Sugden has written about, and where he’s located at present.
Probably my favorite Jack the Ripper film is the 1979 “Time After Time,” starring Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, and Mary Steenburgen. Certainly the Ripper is not the true focus of the film (that role falls to McDowell as H.G. Wells), but JTR functions as the villain in a fantastical plot offering humor and suspense in equal portions.
When discovered by police in 1890s London, Jack secrets himself away in Wells’s time machine and ships off for 1979 San Francisco. In modern America, Jack finds himself quite at home — he sees it as a world far more corrupt, debauched, and violent than the Victorian England he had escaped.
The plot involves Wells’s pursuit of the Ripper, his inevitable love affair with a twentieth-century woman (Steenburgen), and many amusing incidents involving culture shock. Wells’s visit to McDonald’s is a particularly memorable scene.
Perhaps some will object to this work of science fiction and fantasy, saying that it has little to do with the reality of JTR, his victims, and their culture. All true. Nonetheless, this film has some interesting things to say about why the Ripper crimes still have meaning for us over one hundred years later — and what they can teach us about mankind’s capacity for both evil and sympathy.
Far better than the film version of From Hell (2001), this is a movie one can easily pick up via Netflix. It’s a rewarding feature with top-notch actors and an arresting story. Have a look.
IN MY LAST POST, I expressed my frustration with those detectives and forensic scientists who say that Jack the Ripper, were he killing today, would be captured by the police easily. Laura Richards and her colleagues suggest as much in the 2006 documentary JTR: The First Serial Killer. In America, John Douglas has said the same thing in his book The Cases that Haunt Us (2000). This kind of talk is somehow meant to reassure 21-century audiences that these horrific crimes could not go unsolved in today’s world. Supposedly our new understanding of the criminal mind, taken with advances in forensic science, would tip the balance in favor of the police. But that’s just hubris talking. In The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, Philip Sugden explains why:
“[Jack the Ripper] generally struck at night, in out-of-the-way places and so efficiently that his victims were unable to scream or cry out. In no case did he leave at the scene of his crime a weapon or any other object that might be traced back to him. And although he was not a random killer in that he exclusively targeted the prostitutes of Whitechapel and Spitalfields there was nothing to suggest a previous relationship with any of them. There was thus no accomplice that might betray him, no witness or clue that could identify him, no clear motive that might suggest a profitable avenue of investigation. Even today, with all the benefits of modern forensic science, the police find parallel cases very difficult to solve, the killers sometimes either remaining uncaught or being delivered into their hands by chance” (135-6).
I am not at all celebrating JTR’s elusivity, just pointing out what seems to be an unfortunate trend in recent commentary about the Whitechapel murders. I see no reason for us to condescend to the past, nor to assume we would be able to capture a killer whose MO is nearly identical to those of modern-day criminals who evade the law.
In a recent post, I noted that in 2006 Scotland Yard created a composite picture of Jack the Ripper based on old eyewitness testimony. That image was crafted, in part, for the documentary Jack the Ripper: The First Serial Killer which aired on [Channel] Five in the U.K. As far as documentaries go, it’s not a bad one. The ridiculous errors that so often appear in such films are largely absent here, and the detectives employ some new strategies to determine the identity and likely residence of the Ripper. An attempt to identify him via DNA falls short, but the specialists believe that geographic profiling has pinpointed the Ripper’s likely base of operations. Yes, the computer graphics look convincing, but I’m not sure how persuaded I am that we can now narrow our suspects to those living in Flower and Dean Street.
I was also winced a bit upon hearing lead detective Laura Richards say this about the Ripper: “He’s certainly no Einstein.” She may well be right, but I’m not sure I understand why 21st-century writers and police go on and on about how dim JTR was, or dwell on how lucky he was to escape capture. Ultimately, where does such posturing get us today? And what good does it do, really, to say that we would surely catch him were he killing in 21st-century London? Perhaps that idea is a nice one to carry around, but it doesn’t change the fact that he murdered several women and was never brought to justice. Sadly, no modern technology or police work can change any of that.
The YouTube version of the documentary is grainy and jumpy, but the version on GUBA is crystal clear. Watch here:
In 1967, the British actor James Mason (one of my favorites) hosted a TV documentary titled “The London Nobody Knows.” In one scene, he visits 29 Hanbury Street — the site of the Annie Chapman murder. Mason takes a camera into the backyard, where debris and a dog are all that’s left to recall the crime scene. As Philip Sugden points out in The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, the house has long been demolished. The clip below provides the only footage I’ve seen of the residence and backyard.
Whitechapel Society 1888
Short Story Competition 2009
The Whitechapel Society invites you to take part it their Short Story Competition 2009.
WINNING PRIZE – £100.00!
Competition Judge, Brian L. Porter
(Author of the award winning ‘A Study in Red’, soon to made into a feature movie!)
Your story must use the following sentence at the start of your entry:
“The day after the murder everyone was talking about Jack the Ripper…”
Back in November of 2006, Scotland Yard detectives used modern profiling and computer imaging to produce a picture of Jack the Ripper. Obviously, no one knows for certain who the Ripper was — but various witnesses in 1888 offered descriptions of men seen with some of the victims before the murders. By bringing those divergent descriptions together, detectives crafted the composite image below (click here for a larger view).
Laura Richards, of Scotland Yard’s Violent Crime Command, was quoted by the BBC as saying, “For the first time, we are able to understand the kind of person Jack the Ripper was. . . . We can name the street where he probably lived; and we can see what he looked like; and we can explain, finally, why this killer eluded justice.”
Clearly the image in question doesn’t alone explain where JTR lived (more on that in a forthcoming post). And we can’t be positive that the eyewitness accounts themselves were accurate, owing especially to the dark and to faulty human memory. But if accurate, perhaps the image does explain why JTR eluded justice: simply put, the man featured here looks about as nondescript as possible. Yes, there is the mustache — but such facial hair was common in the East End in the late nineteenth century. The other details seem fairly commonplace, and I would think several thousand East Enders may have borne a strong resemblance to this picture.
So would the image have helped police, in 1888, to identify the killer or at least narrow their search? Perhaps, but I can’t bring myself to believe that the picture would have done enough to reduce the field of inquiry to just a few suspects.
Still, Scotland Yard’s computer image is a step up from the standard, cartoon image of the Ripper: a razor-toothed madman in a tophat, carrying the obligatory Gladstone bag.
In my last post, I noted Alan Moore’s point that the Ripper’s final canonical victim, Mary Kelly, stands at the center of many theories about the murders. Not only was she the last victim, suggesting to some that the killer had “finished” once he dispatched her, but she was also the most terribly mutilated. For these reasons, many theorists have decided that she was the true object of JTR’s fantasy and rage — the target he was gearing up for in earlier weeks and months.
I don’t personally buy the argument that Kelly was of any special interest to JTR, despite her young age and alleged beauty. The extent of her wounds instead reflected the fact the the killer could take his time, and see by firelight, when inside her room in Miller’s Court. The other assaults all occurred outdoors, where the Ripper had to work quickly and in the dark.
The indoor factor, however, did keep the public away from the crime scene. As a result, the authorities had time to photograph the body. And what a ghastly photograph. Far more than any other image, this one speaks to the Ripper’s savagery and completely undercuts any romantic notions one might have about JTR as a shadowy “ladykiller.”
All of this leads me to the following question. Would the Jack the Ripper crimes have gripped the 21st-century imagination without the murder of Kelly? The earlier killings surely whipped England into a frenzy in 1888, but would they have fascinated us today without the macabre photograph of Kelly to demonstrate the horrific nature of her assailant? While true that other photos of the Ripper’s deceased victims exist, none (not even those of Eddowes) come close to portraying the terribly realities of these crimes. And considering that we live in a world saturated and obsessed with images, I can’t help but think that this single victim, and the pitiful image of her remains, are largely responsible for sustaining interest in JTR.
For evidence that this photograph has become an iconic image in 21st-century culture, one needs look no further than Britains’s Tate museum.
_by_William_(1829-18_)_and_Daniel_Downey_(18_-1881.jpg/210px-Prince_Albert_Victor,_Duke_of_Clarence_(1864-1892)_by_William_(1829-18_)_and_Daniel_Downey_(18_-1881.jpg)
One of the most absurd theories involving the Whitechapel murders is that the killer was none other than Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence (1864-1892), heir to the English throne. Today few students of the case give this theory any credence.
In the coming days, I will review the major and minor suspects in the JTR crimes. I won’t spend much time on those individuals whose connection to the crimes is unlikely at best. By contrast, I’ll dwell at length on the major suspects: men whose states of mind, behavior, whereabouts, and professions all enhance — rather than diminish — their candidacies.
Probably my favorite Jack the Ripper film is the 1979 “Time After Time,” starring Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, and Mary Steenburgen. Certainly the Ripper is not the true focus of the film (that role falls to McDowell as H.G. Wells), but JTR functions as the villain in a fantastical plot offering humor and suspense in equal portions.
Laura Richards, of Scotland Yard’s Violent Crime Command, was 
In my