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Ripperologist 78
Ripperologist 78
RIPPEROLOGIST MAGAZINE
Issue 78, April 2007
QUOTE FOR APRIL:
Somehow, and [Manager] Alan Curbishley’s sheepish look on Saturday night suggested he wasn’t sure either.
West Ham are threatening to usurp Harry Houdini. Quite how they managed to defeat Arsenal despite only escaping their penalty area
twice in 90 minutes is a mystery to be bracketed alongside the whereabouts of Lord Lucan and the identity of Jack the Ripper.
football365.com’s report on West Ham United’s 1-0 win over Arsenal on 7 April 2007.
Features Books
Editorial: Paradise Lost On the Crimebeat
Adam Wood discovers murder doesn’t just live in the city. Wilf Gregg reviews the latest additions
From Who You Would Like To Know to the True Crime bookshelf.
Deborah Dobbins on why a poscard sent to Colonel James Fraser might not be so
We would like to acknowledge the valuable assistance given
insignificant after all. by the following people in the production of this issue of
Ripperologist: Maggie Bird, Stephen Ryder, Keith Skinner,
“Mister, I Met a Man Once When I Was a Kid...” and Eduardo Zinna. Thank you!
Timothy Riordan looks at the mysterious life of Mary Jane Kelly. The views, conclusions and opinions expressed in signed
articles, essays, letters and other items published in
“Two Most Peculiar Characters” Ripperologist are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views, conclusions and opinions of Ripperologist
Andy Aliffe with random observations of Francis Tumblety and Joshua Norton. or its editors. The views, conclusions and opinions expressed
in unsigned articles, essays, news reports, reviews and other
Charles Cross was Jack the Ripper? items published in Ripperologist are the responsibility of
Michael Connor returns with more on the man in Bucks Row. Ripperologist and its editorial team.
We occasionally use material we believe has been placed
A Tale of Two Farthings in the public domain. It is not always possible to identify
and contact the copyright holder; if you claim ownership of
Kevin Michael in (mdest) defense of Sir Henry Smith. something we have published we will be pleased to make a
proper acknowledgement.
“Mister, I Met a Man Once When I Was a Kid...” The contents of Ripperologist No. 78 (April 2007), including
Timothy Riordan looks at the mysterious life of Mary Jane Kelly. the compilation of all materials and the unsigned articles,
essays, news reports, reviews and other items are copyright
Obituaries: Bob Clark and Michael Dibdin © 2007 Ripperologist. The authors of signed articles,
essays, letters, news reports, reviews and other items
Eduardo Zinna remembers the lives of two gentlemen of retain the copyright of their respective contributions.
the entertainment industry. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or
otherwise circulated in any form or by any means, including
I Beg to Report
From Edvard Munch to Mary Poppins, if it happened, you’ll find it here.
Ripperologist Magazine
PO Box 735, Maidstone, Kent, UK ME17 1JF. [email protected]
At the beginning of this month I had the pleasure of spending a fortnight as the guest of the
Ghost of Ripperologist Past, Eduardo Zinna, at his house on the Kenyan coast. Spending our early
mornings putting the world to rights as we strolled lazily along the white sand in the shadow of
palm trees, I wondered if it was possible to find a scene any further removed from the back streets
of London’s East End; the crimes of Jack the Ripper seemed a very long way away indeed.
Waiting for a connecting flight in Nairobi a few days later, however, I read a newspaper report of the
rape and murder of a two-year-old girl and, to quote Mr Monk Goes to Hawaii, “realised that danger, like
dirt, lurks everywhere.”
Lee Goldberg’s 2006 novel took the US TV private detective to many people’s idea of paradise, and
indeed the concept has featured in many fictional crime dramas, from Murder She Wrote to Hawaii Five-
O. In real life, while the population of Hawaii more than doubled from 632,772 in 1960 to 1,275,194 in
2005, and violent crime increased by more than 2,000%, murder itself remained very low, in double figures,
peaking at 84 in 1980*.
Just hearing the word ‘Jamaica’ conjures up images of a palm-lined Caribbean paradise, but according
a report in 2006 by the Caribbean Media Corporation, it’s now the murder capital of the world. In 2005
alone, over 1,600 people were killed - more than five each day.
Kenya was the scene of the infamous murder in 1988 of Julie Ward, whose dismembered, burned body
was discovered a week after she went missing on safari in the Masai Mara game reserve.
In Guanajuato, Mexico, sisters Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales were sentenced in 1964 to 40 years
each for 91 murders; Ahmad Suradji admitted in 1997 murdering 42 women and girls over a period of eleven
years.
Even the Ripper was, for a while, feared to have made an appearance in Nicaragua. The world’s press
in February 1889 reported on the supposed murder and mutilation of six women in Managua, although it
was later claimed that the killings were hoaxes ‘put in circulation by Scotland Yard detectives... with the
strategical idea... of lulling to sleep the vigilance of the real monster’.
And three months earlier, the murder of Estina Crawford in Jamaica on 27 December 1888, was linked
to the Ripper in the press - even going so far as to be named ‘The Jamaica Ripper’ - simply because the
victim’s throat had been cut. The actual killer, Benjamin Ranger, confessed and was hanged on 5 February
1889.
Perhaps, with our focus on the damp, dirty slums of Victorian Whitechapel, we are conditioned to
automatically picture that landscape when thinking of murder and mayhem, so that dark deeds become
synonymous with dark places. And the truth is somewhat unsettling.
* www.disastercenter.com/crime
Ripperologist 78 April 2007 1
From Who You Would
Like To Know
A seemingly insignificant postcard sent to Colonel James
Fraser of the London Police is not so insignificant after all
By DEBORAH K DOBBINS
It is almost guaranteed that the first pieces of evidence a new Ripperologist examines are the
25th September Dear Boss letter, the Saucy Jacky postcard, the Lusk (From Hell) letter, and
perhaps the 6th October threat postcard. The Dear Boss letter, after all, gave birth to the name
Jack the Ripper which inevitably made the Whitechapel murders global news. From a pen filled
with thin red ink, the news sensation ‘Jack the Ripper’ was born. In the private investigations of
each individual hobbyist or serious researcher, the taunting letters are often regarded as hoaxes
written by an enterprising journalist, Thomas Bulling, and his boss at the Central News Agency,
John Moore. The authorship of Dear Boss, however, is debated as much now as it was then. Even
though it is more likely than not that the real Jack the Ripper didn’t write the ‘Ripper’ letters,
there remain unanswered questions and misconceptions as to the meaning of these letters and
the author’s purpose behind each one.
About halfway through Letters From Hell by Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner, I was taken aback by a postcard
addressed to Col James Fraser, Commissioner of the City of London Police. Signed only ‘Written from who you would
like to know’, it shared a remarkable number of personal handwriting traits with all three of the famous Dear Boss
communications – and there my work began.
I started this project fully prepared to do a complete handwriting analysis of each of the four letters which would
tell what the slant means, what each individual letter formation means, and so on. In other words, printing means this,
cursive means that, or if cross your dot your I and cross your ‘T’ a certain way it is indicatory of neurosis, etc. Early on
in the message boards it was quite clear that the audience was full of skeptics who would have a field day with this type
of analysis. I would like to make it clear that I have chosen not to go that route at this time. The purpose here will be
to analyze the text of these letters to discover the Dear Boss author’s individual personal handwriting characteristics
and get a better handle on the tone and purpose behind each one as well as that of the Fraser postcard.
So with the following document examination, I beg to offer modern Ripper detectives a new perspective in which
to view each letter, while also inviting the reader to accept the lesser known Fraser postcard as being the first of the
Dear Boss communications.
Further Reading
Anyone wishing to learn more about the topics discussed in this article is encouraged to check out these excellent
publications for further study: Ron N. Morris, Forensic Handwriting Identification: Fundamental Concepts and
Principles. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2000 (ISBN 0-12-507-640-1); Herb Kaufman and Geri Homelsky, Calligraphy
in the Copperplate Style. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1980 (ISBN 0-486-24037-1); Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner,
Letters From Hell. Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2001 (ISBN 0-7509-2549-3); Michelle Dresbold with James Kwalwasser,
Sex, Lies, and Handwriting New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006 (ISBN 0-7432-8809-2).
Barber (John) The Camden Town Murder new hb/dw signed by the author £20
Begg/Fido/Skinner The JtR A to Z p/b signed labels Begg, Skinner and Rumbelow £20
Eddleston (John J.) Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopaedia (2002) softcover £9
Fairclough (Melvyn) The Ripper & The Royals (2003, 2nd edn.) p/b signed label £8
Feldman (Paul H.) Jack the Ripper: The Final Chapter
hb/dw presentation copy to Anne (Graham)
+ signed labels Anne Graham and Paul Begg £25
MAIL ORDER ONLY
Harrison (Paul) Jack the Ripper. The Mystery Solved hb/dw £25
24 Grampian Gardens, Irving (H.B.) Ed. by: Trial of Mrs. Maybrick (NBT series) h/b G+ £25
London NW2 1JG Kelly/Sharp/Wilson JtR. A Bibliography and Review of the Literature (1995 edn.)
Tel 020 8455 3069 p/b with signed label Colin Wilson £15
www.laybooks.com Kendell (Colin) Eye On London new p/b signed £8
In the 120 years since the Whitechapel murders, researchers have dug deeply into every aspect of
the Ripper murders. Minute details are known about the lives of most of the victims, the suspects,
and the investigating officers. Seemingly, every nook and cranny of the Whitechapel district has
been explored, detailed and reported on. An extensive and voluminous literature discusses all
aspects of the case.
Amidst this wealth of detail, the one glaring exception is the personal history of Mary
Jane Kelly, the last of the canonical victims. Despite testimony from her friends and
acquaintances, very little can be verified about her life before her date with destiny.
Several excellent researchers have intensely scrutinized her story, yet the meager facts of
her life remain obscure. Christopher Scott, in Will the Real Mary Kelly...?, wrote a detailed
account of the pitfalls and frustrations of trying to identify this woman from the story
published in 1888.1 At least twice, her shadow should have been captured by the census
takers in Wales or England. The indexing and digitization of the census returns has not
yielded any person who fits the story. Not one verifiable fact can be positively associated
with the woman who died in Miller’s Court before the mid-1880s.
Why is Mary Jane Kelly the only Ripper victim who remains so unknown? Even the early
life of Elizabeth Stride, who was born in Sweden, is better documented than Kelly. There
are probably several reasons for this. Almost everything we know of her life comes from
Joseph Barnett, her last live-in lover. Barnett did not keep a detailed diary of what Kelly
told him, but remembered parts of casual conversations, undoubtedly some held while they
were both drunk. We should also keep in mind that Kelly told Barnett what she wanted him
to know of her previous life. Although they lived together for 20 months, there were likely
things she did not want him to know about her life and family.
A related problem is the lack of testimony from any close relatives. According to Barnett,
she had a number of brothers, a sister and both her parents were probably still alive. None
of these people showed up at the inquest, at her funeral, or appear to have said anything to the press. Given her less-
than-respectable lifestyle, this is perhaps understandable. There was a report that her father came looking for her
in London, but that she hid so that he would not find her.2 If true, this indicates a high level of estrangement on her
part. Her desire not to be found by her father may have implications for what she told people about her previous life.
Without any known relatives, it leaves us depending on the memories of people who only knew her in the last years of
her life.
1 Christopher Scott, Will the Real Mary Kelly...?, PABD Publishers, 2005, presents the most complete assessment of the traditional story.
The web site Casebook: Jack the Ripper also details this story and presents transcripts of the relevant newspaper accounts of the
murder and the inquest.
2 Penny Illustrated Paper, Nov. 17, 1888. This and most other references to newspaper articles come from transcripts posted on the
Casebook website.
We need to parse Mary Jane Kelly’s story in light of the several filters through which it has come down to us. The first
level is what Kelly herself hoped to gain or hide. She only told Barnett and others what she wanted them to know. The
second filter is Barnett’s recollection of what he was told and his desire not to harm her memory after her death. It is
likely that he told only the things that were necessary. Also, as he never expected to testify to any of the story, he might
not have remembered it in detail. Finally, we have the filter of what was recorded in the newspapers. Even a cursory
examination of the accounts of Barnett’s inquest testimony shows inconsistencies and different word choices with
subtly different meanings. These filters are one of the reasons why it has been so hard to identify Mary Jane Kelly.
For example, one of the issues where this may be important is that of Kelly’s age. She told Barnett and others that
she was in her mid-20s and that is an accepted part of the story. In her profession, youth was always a premium and
staying young meant a place to stay and food to eat. Being old meant the streets and hunger or worse. John McCarthy,
her landlord, said she was 25 but looked 30.3 One could attribute this to a hard life and too much drink, or perhaps
she was older than she told people she was. Her recent lover, Joseph Barnett, was 30 years old and she probably would
not want to be older than him. Still there is nothing in the story that demonstrates she was older than the generally
accepted age of 25.
3 In both the Washington Evening Star, Nov. 10, 1888 and the Syracuse Herald, Nov. 11, 1888, John McCarthy is reported to have said
he rented a room to Kelly, who “looked thirty.”
4 All references to the census or the indexes of births, marriages and deaths were consulted at the Ancestry.com website.
5 In the index to the 1881 census, this is listed as 3 “Raily” Cottages, which has been interpreted as “Railway” Cottages. However,
looking at the actual image, it is clear that this is “Bridge” cottages, an address that still exists in Hawarden.
By ANDY ALIFFE
Some time ago in these pages I recounted the legend of Wild West prostitute Sadie Orchard,
whose story I found in Bowler Hats and Stetsons, a book bought for $1 in the Strand, New York
City’s famous second-hand bookstore. It is an illustrated, biographical collection of stories of the
English who made ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in America during the late 19th Century. Two of the biographies
were of interest because of East End connections. Sadie’s account has been told [Ripperologist
71, September, 2006], which leaves me with the strange story of Joshua Abraham Norton, an East
End born Jew who, under the delusion of ‘temporary madness’, proclaimed himself ‘Norton the
First, Emperor Of America and Protector of Mexico’.
Born in London in 1819, Joshua Norton had in fact arrived in
America via South Africa and settled in California during the first
‘Gold Rush’ of 1849, but after a failed business venture, a loss of
thousands of dollars and a mental breakdown, he became bankrupt
and fell on hard times.
I had come across Norton’s name before in connection with Ripper
suspect Francis Tumblety, in a posting on the Casebook message
boards, back in 2004, by San Franciscan Joe Chetcuti, who wrote:
Ironically, not only were both Tumblety & Emperor Norton
doing their thing in San Francisco in the summer of 1870, but
it turns out the Emperor lived a short distance from Tumblety’s
2nd medical office on Kearny Street. So the idea of the 19th
century’s two most peculiar characters meeting in the street or
in a local pub could actually have occurred.
Strikingly alike I would say. Perhaps the ‘peculiarities’ of Tumblety’s own latter day ‘mode’ were inspired by the
Emperor’s own ‘eccentric fashion’?
It was through the pages of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin that both Tumblety and Norton made their first
published introductions to the citizens of the Bay area. Tumblety’s successful sales technique for his herbal remedies
relied solely on appealing to the gullible masses through false personal testimony, as printed in the pages of the local
press. A San Francisco contemporary of Tumblety’s was quoted as saying: ‘While here he stated to me that his stay in
this city would be governed by an arrangement he was trying to effect with the Bulletin about advertising’. Indeed a
productive promotional arrangement was duly made.
Tumblety’s autobiographical pamphlet, A
Sketch from an Eventful Career, meanwhile
proclaimed:
Without egotism I may say that no medical
practitioner ever visited San Francisco who so
speedily established as enviable a reputation
as myself. The success of my practice speedily
spread; for no advertising is so valuable as
the grateful expressions of those who have
been rescued from pain and suffering by the
administering of the physician. My office
daily presented the appearance of a ‘levee’,
an assembly of visitors and guests. So far
as the realization of a golden harvest was
concerned, at no previous epoch of my life
did fortune favour me with so favourable an
opportunity’.
Norton and canine friends So said he, with his usual air of modesty! Tumblety and canine friend
Thus his empire was established, his reign begun, and the Bulletin
continued to be the ‘official mouthpiece’ for both Tumblety and Norton.
All cities have a singular class of eccentric, and San Francisco had perhaps
more than its fair share during the mid to late 1800s (and, some would
argue, still does!). Their popular ‘promenade’ was through the streets of
Montgomery and Kearny. Here in the late afternoon might be seen a most
unusual procession of ‘individuals’. Some were impoverished, soiled and
ragged; some in their personal appearance were fantastic or picturesque with delusions of grandeur; others were those
who retained the gentility of their happier days with dignity to the end. In the heart of this ‘cacophonous catwalk of
crazies’ were Tumblety and Norton.
Listed since the 1862/63 San Francisco City Directory as ‘Emperor, by obliging and sympathetic officials, Joshua
Norton was first listed as living at the Metropolitan Hotel, but his bohemian palace of 14 years became the ‘Eureka
Lodging House’ at 624 Commercial Street. Here again, in the 1870 census, under the heading of occupation, official
recognition was given to his status as Emperor, noting also that he was ‘insane’!
His ‘imperial’ apartment was not palatial.
It was a room of 6 x 10 feet in dimensions,
with a threadbare carpet, a bed and a
few other dilapidated furnishings. The
main decorations were portraits of foreign
rulers, pasted news clippings of his royal
exploits and a collection of hats, swords
and walking sticks.
Norton’s residential section adjoined the
parallel ‘promenading’ thoroughfares of
Kearny Street to the west and Montgomery
Street to the east, and was only a few
blocks away at each end from Tumblety’s
‘sometimes’ business addressees of 30
Kearny Street and 20 Montgomery Street,
with Tumblety’s residential address in the
Occidental Hotel also only a couple of
blocks to the south of the ‘Imperial Palace’
of Emperor Norton. So, for almost all of
1870 they were very near neighbours,
624 Commercial Street moving in close proximity on a daily basis.
HIBERNIA BANK
TUMBLETY’S OFFICE
Tumblety would certainly have known about ‘Norton the First’ as the Emperor was a very familiar figure on the
streets and was seen and recognized everywhere. Indeed, the Emperor’s routine would have taken him past both
Tumblety’s offices, while happily engaging anyone in conversation on ‘issues of state’ or news of the nation.
With a ceremonial sword at his side and an umbrella or walking stick as his sceptre, the Emperor strolled about
his domain. During his daily patrol, Norton made certain that all pavements were unobstructed. He reviewed the
police to see that they were on duty. He checked on the progress of needed street repairs, inspected buildings under
construction, and in general saw to it that all of the city’s rules were enforced. This was not from idle curiosity but
from genuine interest.
Two stray mongrels, Bummer and Lazarus, became associated with the Emperor and were dubbed his ‘canine
courtiers’, who were supposedly seen to follow him everywhere. These mutts roamed the streets of San Francisco in the
early 1860s, exempt from a strict city ordinance that forbade dogs without a leash or muzzle. Any other dog attempting
this would have been captured and taken off to the pound, but Bummer and Lazarus gained the respect and attention
of the townsfolk because of their expertise at killing rats as well as their unique bond of friendship.
Much to the Emperor’s annoyance, he and the dogs
became the subject of a series of cartoons by the San
Francisco-based French artist, Edward Jump. One
depicted all three eating at a free luncheon table.
Another showed Bummer and Lazarus ambling along
Montgomery Street at the heels of Norton, while
yet another featured Norton giving the blessing at
Lazarus’ funeral while Bummer looked on, mournfully.
Newspapers constantly reported their escapades,
whether it was stealing a bone from another dog or
stopping a runaway horse.
At a later date, when Bummer lay dying in the
streets, local press vied with each other in updating
the news. The young reporter Mark Twain, who
worked a few doors away from the Emperor’s
lodgings in Commercial Street, as a reporter for
the San Francisco Morning Call, eulogized Bummer,
saying that he ‘died full of years, and honour, and
The Funeral of Lazarus, by Edward Jump disease, and fleas.’
Headstone marking
the second resting place of Norton I
Acknowledgements
My greatest thanks go to San Franciscan, Casebook poster and published ‘Ripper Lore’ contributor, Joe Chetcuti for
his invaluable help. Joe did all the legwork and much of the research in the States, which has added colour and depth
to this article. Also to contributing authors to the Casebook, Ripperologist and Whitechapel Journal.
Bibliography
Norton 1st, Emperor of the United States by William Drury; Emperor Norton-Mad Monarch of America by Allen
Stanley Lane.
Emperor Norton Related Web Sites: sparkletack.com - an excellent, and recommended, audio documentary of the
Emperor; emperornorton.net; molossia.org.
If any of our American readers has an opportunity to record or find a copy to buy, of the Emperor Norton episode of
the TV series Bonanza in the US, I would be most grateful. Please email me with details.
By KEVIN MICHAEL
After the second crime I sent word to Sir Charles Warren that I had discovered a man very likely
to be the man wanted. He certainly had all the qualifications requisite. He had been a medical
student; he had been in a lunatic asylum; he spent all his time with women of loose character,
whom he bilked by giving them polished farthings instead of sovereigns, two of these farthings
having been found in the pocket of the murdered woman. Sir Charles failed to find him. I thought
he was likely to be in Rupert Street, Haymarket. I sent up two men, and there he was; but,
polished farthings and all, he proved an alibi without the shadow of doubt.
Sir Henry Smith, From Constable to Commissioner (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910), pp147–148.
History has not been kind to Sir Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of
the City of London Police at the time of the Ripper murders, at least in
regard to his recollections of the Ripper crimes. Of all the police memoirs
and reminiscences that have survived, few are viewed with more derision
or less credibility than those of Sir Henry, ‘good raconteur and good fellow’
though he was.
The ‘myth’ of the polished farthings has done much to bedevil Ripper
researchers over the decades. Arguments over the very existence of such
farthings at the scene of Annie Chapman’s murder in the backyard of 29
Hanbury Street in the early morning hours of 8 September 1888 still appear
on a semi-regular basis with little chance of resolution.
My purpose, however, is not to rehash the arguments for whether the
farthings were in the yard of Hanbury Street. Greater minds than mine have
grappled with the issue. I am content to accept that they may have been
there. Or not. Certainly there is no mention of the farthings in any surviving
inquest material. Some take the lack of mention of the farthings in the
inquest testimony as proof that the farthings were never there, others that
the information was ‘held back’ by the police. Both scenarios are possible
– certainly knowledge of the farthings would have had little influence on
the outcome of the inquest, while keeping such evidence in reserve could
have advantages. Given the prevalence of mentions of the farthings in the
press, it’s somewhat disappointing that during the Chapman inquest no-one
enquired about them directly and settled the matter once and for all.
My interest is, again, limited to whether the ploy of passing off farthings
as gold coins is as implausible as some Ripperologists have claimed. Sir Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner
of the City of London Police in 1888
Objections to the Theory
Numerous authors have objected to the very idea of polished farthings being passed as coins of a higher value. Tom
Cullen, for example, claimed that no streetwise person would be duped by such a trick, while Patricia Cornwell says
with equal certainty that it is absurd to believe that a Victorian streetwalker could command a gold half-sovereign
Coppers on coppers
Although Smith was the most prominent Police official to mention the polished farthings in connection with the
Ripper murders, he was not the only one.
Walter Dew wrote concerning the murder of Alice Mackenzie:
Underneath the body was found a brightly polished farthing. This in the
dim light might easily have been mistaken for a half-sovereign, and the
theory held was that Mackenzie had been lured to her death by the offer
of a gold coin.
This was probably the true explanation, for another woman came forward
to say that the offer of a similar coin had been made to her, but she had
discovered the trick and had run away. Her description of the man was ‘a
dark foreigner, speaking good English’.1
It should be noted that no only did Dew not believe Mackenzie to be a Ripper
victim, he states that he did not believe the Ripper used false coins to lure his
victims. Nevertheless this streetwise policeman of many years experience does
not dismiss either the possibility of a bright farthing being mistaken for a half-
sovereign or that a streetwalker would be suspicious of such a high price being
offered to her.
In fact if the other woman who he claims came forward with a similar story
did so after Mackenzie’s death,2 then he supports the reports of at least three
woman – not including Chapman - who encountered this subterfuge between
September 1888 and July 1889.
Inspector Reid testified at Mackenzie’s
inquest that a farthing was found when
the corpse was moved, and connected
the discovery to coins found at Hanbury
Chief Inspector Walter Dew Street.3 Apparently he reiterated the
story of the coins during interviews
published in 1896.4 Again, as with Inspector Dew, Reid’s years of experience
did not seem to prevent him accepting the idea of the farthings being used
fraudulently.
1 Walter Dew, I Caught Crippen. London: Blackie and Son, 1938. Available at www.
casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.walterdew.html
2 That is, if Dew is not misremembering the accounts of Emily Walton that surfaced after
Chapman’s death.
3 The Times, 19 July 1889.
Inspector Edmund Reid
4 I have found references to such interviews, but have yet to find the actual transcripts.
Often mentioned in tandem with Chapman is the strange case of Emily Walton, who was reported to have accepted
brass medals or farthings from a punter, thinking they were half-sovereigns. The man then apparently attacked her,
although she was able to escape:
Soon after this murder was reported, a woman reported to the police that a man, who spoke to her in the
streets of Spitalfields at an early hour that morning, gave her two half sovereigns, but she refused to do
what he wished. Thereupon he commenced to knock her about; she screamed, and he ran off. She afterwards
discovered that what he said were half sovereigns were brass medals.8
Within twenty-four hours, the press was already backpedaling on the accounts of coins being found on Chapman’s
body, although still mooting Walton’s attacker as a potential Ripper suspect. Referring to the description of William
Henry Piggott, the nervous man who was briefly detained as a suspect, the Daily News stated on 11 September:
That description applies, as well as can be gathered, to the man who gave the woman Emily Walton two
brass medals, or bright farthings, as half sovereigns when in a yard of one of the houses in Hanbury street at 2
a.m. on Saturday morning, and who then began to ill use the woman. The police attach importance to finding
the man, but it is not true that two farthings were found in the dress pocket of the murdered woman, which
would have been an important corroboration of Walton’s story.9
While it is reasonable to assume that the story of Emily Walton may have seeped into the accounts of Chapman’s
death (perhaps even being the source for the story of farthings being found on Chapman’s body) and vice versa, there
is nothing to suggest that the incident didn’t happen. After the ‘Double Event’ The Times of 30 September printed yet
another tale of farthings:
Last night a correspondent furnished us with another strange story of an incident occurring early on Thursday
morning, near to the scene of the four murders. He states that early in the morning a woman was sitting
sleeping on some steps in one of the houses in Dorset-street, when she was awoke by a man who asked her
whether she had any bed to go to, or any money to pay for a lodging. She replied that she had not, upon which
he said he had money, and then gave her what she thought was two half-sovereigns. She went with him down a
passage, and when there he seized her by the throat and tried to strangle her. A scuffle ensued between them,
in which she screamed and got away. The next morning she found that what he gave her was two farthings
machined round the edge like gold coins. She described him as being a man with a dark moustache, and dressed
in a rough frieze blue overcoat.10
This clearly appears to be a retelling of Walton’s story, although there are significant differences. The important
thing is that The Times did not dismiss the story as absurd, further evidence that the practice was not considered
implausible at the time.11
So was it possible?
So having shown that contemporary accounts of such a swindle do exist, let us set aside the ‘common sense’ claim
that such a ruse is absurd and see for ourselves. First an overview of just what a farthing was.
The farthing, a denomination worth a quarter of a penny, prior to 1860 was made of copper. However, in that year,
the British government switched from copper, which tended to be a softer metal for coinage, to more durable bronze
for the penny, halfpenny, and farthing. Thus, the 1888 farthing was a bronze coin made up of 95 per cent copper, 4 per
cent tin, and 1 per cent zinc. When in mint condition, the coins had a smooth, bright finish that could reasonably be
mistaken for gold, especially in poor lighting.
The reverse side (‘tail’) of the farthing showed Britannia and the word ‘FARTHING’, the obverse side (‘head’) showed
the profile bust of Queen Victoria and the inscription ‘VICTORIA D G BRITT REG F D’ standing for ‘Victoria Dei Gratia
Brittaniarum Regina Fidei Defensor’ or ‘Victoria by the Grace of God, Queen of Britain, Defender of the Faith.’
On the gold and silver coins of Victoria, several
portraits appeared, beginning with the Young Head
portrait (1838-1887), followed by the Jubilee Head
design commemorating the 50th year of Queen
Victoria’s rule (1887-1893) and the Veiled Head
design (1893-1901) which features the mature
Victoria. The young head on the half sovereign
was thus similar though not identical to the young
head on the farthing. The penny, halfpenny, and
farthing did not feature the Jubilee head but
retained the young head until 1893 when the
veiled head was substituted.
Obverse and reverse of Victorian farthing in mint condition
Gold and silver coins of the time had milled
edges to prevent the practice of ‘shaving’ or
removing small amounts of the precious metal from the edge. The farthing, like all smaller denominations, lacked this
milled edge. This could account for why Walton noticed the deception after accepting the coins.
Certainly the Royal Mint felt that the similarities between the farthing and the half-sovereign were resulting in
confusion, whether accidentally or by design. An attempt was made in 1896 to differentiate between the two coins by
making changes to the obverse side of the farthing.12 The changes never passed the trial stage, and the next year the
Mint approached the problem from an entirely new direction.
The solution was a chemical process that artificially darkened the surface of the farthing, so that it looked flat
and worn immediately upon issue. This solved the problem and the practice of darkening farthings would last until
1917 when the half-sovereign ceased production. It did not eliminate the deception entirely; however, from this point
onward bright farthings were limited to a few removed from the mint prior to darkening, or else older (or in some cases
darkened) farthings specifically polished for such a purpose – requiring much time and effort to be effective.
Conclusion
To be sure, Smith’s memoirs do little to counter the Col. Blimpish characterization that has attached itself to his
participation in the case. Factual errors, self-aggrandizing, and groundless speculation render his account virtually
useless as a serious tool for research. However, in the case of the ‘polished farthing’ story, other than confusing a
sovereign with half-sovereign, Smith’s account is by no means baseless. Other policemen, the press, and even the Mint
concur that the method of deception (if not the specific events) described by Smith was not only plausible, but actually
happened.
12 C Wilson Peck, English Copper, Tin, and Bronze Coins in the British Museum, 1558-1958, 2nd ed. London: British Museum, 1964.
Press Trawl
Manitoba Daily Free Press
3 November 1888
JACK THE RIPPER
London, Nov. 2.
The city police have received a post card on which the following was written:-
“Dear Boss, On Saturday night I will do two more murders on a man and a boy. I am Jack the Ripper.”
The police at Rotherhithe had a letter which was found on Anchor street, Rotherhithe, at 5.30 Saturday afternoon,
handed to them and it is dated the 12th, and contains the following:-
“I’ll be over here soon, I’ll have you. My knife is a sharp one. Jack the Ripper.
I am up in the City and Bermondsey every day.
Good old Leather Apron.”
Another letter, bearing a Kilburn post mark, was written to Mr. Lusk of the Whitechapel vigilance committee, as
follows:-
“I write you a letter in black ink, as I have no more of the right stuff. I think you are all asleep in Scotland Yard
with your bloodhounds, as I will show you tomorrow night (Saturday.) I am going to do a double event, but not in
Whitechapel. Got rather too warm there; had to shift. No more till you hear from me again,
Jack the Ripper.”
The Times
9 January 1889
MURDER AT GODALMING.
Yesterday the shocking murder of a woman at Godalming was brought to light. It appears that on Monday evening an
artist, named Jenkins, enticed his sweetheart, named Emily Jay, into his studio, which is situated in a garden almost
in the middle of the town. He there first seduced her, and then strangled her and made off, locking up the place.
Yesterday he walked into the Punchbowl Inn, about ten miles distant, and confessed the deed. The landlord at once
took him to Guildford and handed him over to the police, to whom he made a statement. Two constables were sent
over to Godalming, and found the body as described by the prisoner, the face being a horrible sight, a handkerchief
being stuffed into her mouth and a boa tied tightly round her neck. The body awaits an inquest.
The murderer, Ebenezer Jenkins, on being questioned by Superintendent Berry, of the borough police, stated that
he had committed the murder about 8 o’clock on Monday night, and that his victim was his sweetheart, Emily Jay by
name, and about 19 years of age. Jenkins further said that he was an artist, and had resided with the girl’s mother, and
had kept company with the deceased, to whom he was engaged. He had enticed her into his studio, which was situated
some distance from the house, and had ravished her and strangled her. Jenkins then handed over the key of the studio
to Superintendent Berry. After making this statement Jenkins became very excited, and expressed a hope that he might
be hanged. He was detained in custody, and was later on handed over to the county police, who were quickly on the
spot, together with Deputy Chief Constable Barker, who has charge of the case. The news of the murder soon spread,
and the spot was visited by hundreds of persons during the evening. A doctor who was called in declared from a casual
examination of the body that death was due to strangulation. Much sympathy is felt for the relatives of the deceased
girl, her mother being a widow. The deceased and Jenkins appeared to be on most affectionate terms, and were seen
walking in the direction of the studio about 7.30, or half an hour before the time Jenkins says he committed the deed.
The studio, it may be mentioned, is only about 200 yards from the principal street of Godalming, and it is situated
within a few yards of a main road, while it is also surrounded by cottages. It is thought strange that no cries for help
were heard. The victim was a quiet and steady girl and well known in the town. Jenkins is an artist by profession, and
is well connected. He was always fashionably dressed and mixed in good society. He is about 21 years of age. Half an
hour after committing the deed he appears to have entered a public house close to where he lives, and had something
to drink, which he paid for with a jubilee half crown. The coin has since been identified as the one which the deceased
wore in her brooch, and this Jenkins has admitted. After leaving the public house he appears to have made his way
towards Haslemere and to have slept the night at the Seven Thorns public house, about eight miles distant. The Coroner
for West Surrey has been communicated with, and the inquest will probably be held today.
The prisoner was last night brought before one of the county magistrates, and, sufficient evidence having been given,
he was remanded until Saturday next.
Some blood has been found on the prisoner’s shirt sleeves and the front of his shirt, which he says came from a bite
which the girl inflicted on his finger. The prisoner also states that he prayed for the girl after he has murdered her.
No motive has been assigned for the crime, but it is believed the prisoner’s mind had been affected by reading the
accounts of the Whitechapel murders.
At the Thames Police court, Hans Bure, a well dressed German, was charged with assaulting Elizabeth Jennings, of
37 Duckett street, Stepney. Prosecutrix said that about 12.30 on Saturday night she was walking along Harford street,
on an errand, when the accused came up, caught hold of her arm, which he pinched, and said, “Come along with me.”
Witness was frightened and screamed. She stood by a young man whom she knew, when prisoner followed and she ran
into the road. Prisoner ran after her, but saw another lady coming, and then caught hold of her shawl. Several men
caught hold of the accused and detained him until a constable came, when he was given into custody. Mrs. Matilda
Beck said the accused caught hold of her shawl, but she released herself and ran away. He followed, but some men
stopped him. Witness was very much frightened. Constable 150E said that when arrested the accused said he did not
mean anything. He was under the influence of drink. Prisoner, through an interpreter, said he took the prosecutrix to
be a prostitute and did accost her. She screamed and ran away, and he followed to give an explanation, when he was
detained. He did the same to the other woman. A witness for the defence, named Webb, said he saw the prisoner just
touch the women. They screamed, and a mob of men got round the prisoner calling him “Jack the Ripper.” Mr. Saunders
said the accused had frightened the women and at a time when they would be easily frightened. He would be fined 40s
or undergo one month’s hard labour.
Aspen Weekly
26 January 1889
A Jack the Ripper.
New Haven, Jan. 21.
A man recently wrote the postmaster saying he was about to begin slaughtering women, and signed “Jack the
Ripper.” The police arrested F.R. Harrison on a charge of forgery. Letters in the same handwriting as that received by
the postmaster were found on him.
Who is C.M. Duncan, the detective, who has made himself famous by arresting the celebrated Whitechapel
murderer?
At a recent fancy dress ball at Clifton, England, one of the men present was costumed as “jack the Ripper.” How in
the name of goodness did he know what old Rip looked like?
Michael Dibdin
Crime Novelist; 21 March 1947 - 30 March 2007
American film director Bob Clark and British crime novelist Michael Dibdin, who died within days of each other,
were both accomplished craftsmen in their own fields. From 1973 to 1983, Clark dominated commercial filmmaking
in Canada. His productions were not only among the most financially successful Canadian films of all time; they were
also first-rate, and often groundbreaking, whether they were slasher films, teenage comedies, sentimental dramas
or Christmas tales. Dibdin also spent time in Canada, but it was a four-year sojourn in Italy which provided him with
the background of his detective novels featuring gloomy, cynical Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen. As far as it’s
known, Clark and Dibdin never collaborated, never met and never even discussed each other’s work. Why are they
then remembered in Ripperologist not separately but together? Not because of their major accomplishments, which
have been the subject of long, scholarly and well deserved essays elsewhere, but because early in their careers both of
them created Sherlock Holmes adventures pitting the great detective against Jack the Ripper. In 1978, Dibdin wrote his
first crime novel, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, about the deadly encounter between the eccentric sleuth and the
elusive killer. In 1979, Clark directed Murder by Decree, in which Holmes pursues the Ripper and winds up uncovering
a heinous conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of the British government.
It is often said that many believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person while Jack the Ripper was an imaginary
character. It is not too difficult to see why this should be so. Much is known about Holmes, from his deductive methods
to his misogynism, from his violin playing to his drug addiction, from his London address to his tart remarks. His features
are well known - though some think he looked like William Gillette, some that he looked like Basil Rathbone and some
that he looked like Jeremy Brett. By contrast, virtually nothing is known about Jack the Ripper. His most widespread
image, complete with opera cloak, top hat and Gladstone bag, is a purely fictional invention. Yet both detective
and murderer were, each in his own way, products of the Victorian era, living side by side against a background of
Hansom cabs, music-hall songs and yellow fog rolling heavily along cobble-stoned streets. They were well matched and
destined to meet. Holmes’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, declined to send Holmes after the Ripper. Others were not so
restrained. The first pastiches where the most celebrated detective of his time tackled its most notorious criminal saw
the light early in the 20th century. Since then, they have faced each other, with varying success, in Spanish lampoons,
American parodies and Nicaraguan spoofs. The full history of their rivalry still remains to be written.
Both Clark’s film and Dibdin’s novel are sound contributions to the Holmes-Ripper saga, this sub-genre within a
sub-genre. Of the two, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story is at the same time the most classical in style and the most
unconventional. Dr Watson’s narrative voice sounds genuine and affecting and the plot rushes to its conclusion with
grim inevitability. Some believe the novel can be truly enjoyed only by experiencing the full impact of its surprise
ending; some believe that the book’s many virtues will render it rewarding even if the final twist in the tale is known
beforehand. Ripperologist doesn’t believe in spoilers and won’t disclose why this is truly the last Sherlock Holmes
– and the last Jack the Ripper - story. Clark’s film, Murder by Decree, derives its plot from now well worn-out tales of
Masonic conspiracies combined with anti-Monarchist agitation and budding Republicanism. While its central hypothesis
may no longer be adequate, it was acceptable enough at the time, just a few years after the publication of Stephen
Knight’s The Final Solution. The film benefited from fast pace, evocative photography and a first-rate cast, including
Christopher Plummer as a surprisingly emotional Sherlock Holmes, James Mason as Dr Watson, Anthony Quayle as Sir
Charles Warren, John Gielgud as Lord Salisbury and Donald Sutherland as clairvoyant Robert Lees.
Benjamin ‘Bob’ Clark was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 5 August 1941, but grew up in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. Instead of playing professional football he completed a drama major at the University of Miami and became
a film-maker. After working as director or assistant director in several low-budget films, he hit it big in 1972 with a
horror film, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. The following year he moved to Canada, where he made Black
Christmas, a seminal film and box-office hit about a psychopathic killer stalking sorority girls which was a template
for later efforts such as Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth. Clark subsequently directed Murder by Decree, Tribute,
with an Academy-Award-nominated performance by Jack Lemmon, and the
phenomenally successful teen comedy Porky’s, which launched a thousand
imitators, from Police Academy to American Pie and There’s Something About
Mary, and still remains the highest-grossing Canadian film ever made. Clark
based Porky’s coming-of-age plot on his experiences as a teenager in Florida
in the mid-Fifties, spicing it up with much-imitated locker-room and shower
scenes and the casting of Kim Cattrall as Miss Honeywell, the high-school teacher
known, for good reason, as ‘Lassie’, and Susan Clark, who had played haunted
Mary Kelly in Murder by Decree, as the far happier hooker Cherry Forever.
In 1983, Clark co-produced, co-wrote and directed A Christmas Story, adapted
from Jean Shepherd’s short story In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, about a
nine-year-old boy desperate for an official Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot,
range-model air rifle. With a voice-over by Shepherd himself, A Christmas Story
has become a staple of holiday television viewing – rivalling It’s a Wonderful
Life for repeated showings – and is remarkably true to the spirit of its original source material without being overly
sentimental or phoney.
One year later, Clark returned to the United States, but he seemed to have lost his touch. His productions pleased
neither the public nor the critics. No-one ever had a good word to say about, for example, Rhinestone, a 1984 musical
featuring Dolly Parton as a country singer trying to turn cab-driver Sylvester Stallone into a star. Although his former
success continued to elude him, Clark remained active. At the time of his death he was due to start production on three
different projects, including a remake of his 1972 film Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. On 5 April 2007, he
was killed, along with his son, Ariel Hanrath-Clark, when a drunk driver struck his car head on while travelling on the
Pacific Coast Highway north of Los Angeles.
Michael John Dibdin was born on 21 March 1947 in Wolverhampton,
Staffordshire, England. His father was a physicist-cum-folklore
expert who for years dragged his family round Britain so that he
could collect folk songs. At the age of seven, Dibdin insisted that
they settle down in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, where they were at
the time. His father exchanged folklore for the rigour of a physics
lectureship and Dibdin attended school, where he developed a keen
interest in modern jazz, James Joyce and the thrillers of Raymond
Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Len Deighton.
in 1968, Dibdin earned an undergraduate degree in English
literature from the University of Sussex and the next year a master’s
degree from the University of Alberta, Canada. In the early 1970s he
returned to London. A friend with an enthusiasm for Jack the Ripper
dragged him to all the murder sites. At the same time, Dibdin’s wife
was reading Sherlock Holmes. Bringing them together seemed like the logical thing to do. The Last Sherlock Holmes
Story appeared in 1978 to mixed reviews. Dibdin moved to Italy, where he spent four years teaching English and
wrote yet another Victorian pastiche: A Rich Full Death (1986), featuring Robert Browning as an amateur detective in
Florence.
Returning to England, he settled in Oxford. Inspired by his Italian experience, he wrote Ratking, published in 1988,
which signalled the first appearance of brooding police detective Aurelio Zen. Dibdin wrote 11 Zen novels, the latest and
most likely the last of which, End Games, is scheduled to be published this autumn. Each novel took Zen to a different
part of Italy, from his native Venice to Rome, Milan, Naples, Perugia, Tuscany, Sicily and Sardinia. Reviewing Blood Rain
(1999) in the New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio wrote: ‘Dibdin has always been a master at adapting his style
to the various Italian provinces where he sets his stories. In Piedmont, his voice was elegiac; in Venice, menacing; in
Rome, cynical and sad. Sicily, where life is lived as ‘ritual theater,’ brings out the Greek tragedian in him.’ Sicily also
gave Zen an opportunity to die and be reborn – just like Sherlock Holmes. Blood Rain, his Sicilian adventure, ends with
a bridge exploding as the car where Zen is travelling crosses it. In And Then You Die (2002), however, Zen is revealed to
have miraculously escaped death, a neat trick he would perform again. Dibdin alternated his Zen novels with English-set
novels such as The Tryst (1989) and Dirty Tricks (1991), while The Dying of the Light (1993) was a send-up of country-
house mysteries and Dark Specter (1995) and Thanksgiving (2001) were American-based thrillers.
In the mid-1990s Michael Dibdin moved to the United States to be near his third wife, crime writer Kathrine Beck.
He died in Seattle on March 30 after a short illness.
All the news that’s fit to print...
I Beg to Report
FAREWELL BURGHO, GOOD BYE BARNABY. As we reported in ‘I Beg’ in
Ripperologist 71, Whitbread, a leisure company, wants to demolish the ruins
of Scalby Manor in Burniston Road, Scarborough, Yorkshire, including the
kennels where Barnaby and Burgho, the bloodhounds sent after Jack the
Ripper, were bred. The company intends to build a 37-bedroom hotel on the
location.
Little remains of Scalby Manor, formerly a stately home called Wyndyate which
was built in 1885 for Edwin Brough. Sir Charles Warren, Metropolitan Police
Commissioner at the time of the Ripper Murders, heard of Brough’s reputation
as a bloodhound breeder and requested that two trained bloodhounds be
taken to London for trials in Regent’s Park. Contrary to popular belief, the
results were encouraging. Unfortunately, the Ripper’s next victim, Mary Jane
Kelly, was found late on the day after her murder, when the trail was already
cold. The story, credited by many as having helped lay the foundations of
the police dog section, has led to objections against the kennels and stable
becoming casualties of the hotel scheme.
Elen Richards, of the Blood Hound Club, said: ‘The property has great
importance to the Club since it was the home of Edwin Brough, the foremost
breeder of bloodhounds of his time. It is a good example of a gentleman’s
Edwin Brough at Scalby Manor
house in the late 19th century especially due to the survival of the
outbuildings, which include the kennels where the dogs were kept.’
David Crease, of the Association of Bloodhound Breeders, added: ‘The outbuildings are important historically as well as
architecturally as the property was built by Edwin Brough, the foremost bloodhound breeder of the time and prominent
local figure. Such a complete survival of domestic livestock buildings is rare and these are an interesting set of what
were model buildings for the time. No others survive as far as is known.’
The Scarborough Civic Society said it considered ‘the whole ensemble worthy of retention as an uncommon local
survival of a modest 19th century gentleman’s estate’. Scarborough Council planning officers, on the other hand,
say the proposed hotel would be a valuable new tourist facility and, while the Scalby Manor outbuildings are of local
historical significance, it has not been sufficient for them to be listed – that is to say, protected.
Mark Branagan, Bloodhounds may fail to save manor under threat, Yorkshire Post, Leeds, Yorkshire, UK, 27 March 2007
OUT OF AFRICA. Move over, Kosminski. Step aside, Cohen. Eat your heart out, Pizer. There is a new Ripper suspect in
town. South African academic, historian and writer Charles van Onselen claims Jack the Ripper was a Polish Jew called
Joseph Silver - a white slaver, pimp, police informer, gang boss and overall bad mensch. In The Fox & the Flies - the
World of Joseph Silver, Racketeer & Psychopath, van Onselen chronicles Silver’s life from Poland to London – where
he lived at the time of the Whitechapel murders – New York, South Africa, German South West Africa, Paris, Chile and
back to Poland, where he met his end.
Silver was born in Kielce, Poland, in 1868. His birth name was Lis, which means fox in Polish – hence the title of van
Onselen’s book. This was not an oddity, since many Jewish surnames derive from the name of an emblematic animal,
including Hirsch (deer), Löwe (lion), Adler (eagle) and Füchs (fox again). From an early age Silver embarked on a
criminal career. He delved in gun-running, jewel-theft, safe-cracking and burglary, but his preferred métier was white
slavery, whether as procurer, brothel-keeper or vice czar. He specialized in seducing women, mainly from Eastern
Europe, and forcing them into prostitution. He was not above using rape and physical violence to achieve his ends.
JACK THE RIPPER MEETS EDVARD MUNCH. New York Times literary critic Joe
Queenan admits to a weakness for thrillers of the historical-character-meets-
historical-character variety. He was most recently impressed by Grim Legion:
Edgar Allan Poe at West Point. Shortly before being expelled from the United
States Military Academy in 1831, Poe stumbles upon a monstrous plot by a
shadowy organization called the Helvetian Society, which he frustrates with the
help of fellow West Pointer Robert E Lee, the future head of the Confederate
armies. Not likely, but entertaining.
As a fan of the genre, Queenan says he would ‘love to see more novels that unite
historical figures whose paths would almost certainly never cross in real life,
not because they lived in different eras but because they traveled in completely
different social circles.’ He offers a few plot lines for fictions of this type which
include Joseph Stalin meeting child prodigy Sting at the Moscow Zoo, Edgar Degas
having a tooth plucked by Doc Holliday, Jane Austen getting involved in a ménage
à trois with Aaron Burr and Davy Crockett, Harvey Lee Oswald becoming pals with
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, Calamity Jane bearing Kaiser Wilhelm’s
love child and Babe Ruth and Ethel Merman investigating mysterious goings-on
aboard the Lusitania in 1915. There is of course a special place for our Jack in this
extravaganza. Queenan’s proposed plot line: ‘An Etude in Scarlet: Jack the Ripper
and Erik Satie are actually one and the same person, and only Edvard Munch, who
supplements his paltry income as a painter by moonlighting as a private detective,
knows it.’ Eric Satie? Edvard Munch? Definitely one for the Ripperati.
Joe Queenan, Fancy Meeting You Here, New York Times, New York, 8 April 2007. Edvard Munch, fictional Ripper-catcher
JACK THE RIPPER MEETS LULU. ‘So is there a “eureka” moment when one key idea unlocks a show and becomes the
driving force for it? No response. He looks at me quizzically. I remind him of the central revelation that made his
ENO production of Berg’s Lulu such a startling departure from tradition. For the first time in my experience, Lulu
was a survivor not a victim of her sexuality. “Ah yes, she was a sex worker, wasn’t she?” says Jones, downplaying the
ingenuity. I, on the other hand, can still remember watching open-mouthed as she played out her snuff-movie fantasy
with Jack the Ripper, collected her earnings, and left work at the end of the show.’ From Edward Seckerson’s interview
with opera director Richard Jones, ‘who put Valkyries in latex suits and provided scratch ‘n’ sniff cards to accompany
Prokofiev.’
Independent, London, UK, 26 March 2007.
JACK THE RIPPER MEETS LULU – AGAIN. ‘Femme fatale as a descriptor for this concupiscent little cutie just won’t do
as she wraps herself tightly around her doomed lovers. A heart attack drops one. Another ends up an especially messy
suicide. And that’s just the beginning.’ This is how critic Wayne Myers describes Lulu, the wicked muse of German
playwright Frank Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit 1895) and Pandora’s Box (1903). This April, Yale Repertory Theatre of
New Haven, Connecticut, staged both plays combined into Lulu, a Mark Lamos-Drew Lichtenberg adaptation with a Carl
R. Mueller translation directed by Lamos. ‘The phantasmagoric-like staging moves quickly from Lulu’s early swath of
sexual destruction to her sexual height in a scene with her coterie and an array of creamy desserts to her brutal end
in a London garret,’ writes Myers. In the last scene, Jack the Ripper butchers Lulu on stage as he holds her down on a
filthy mattress, mirroring Lulu’s earlier masturbation scene. ‘As Lulu’s death moan fills the stage,’ adds Myers, ‘Jack
yanks out her uterus and holds it up, stringy and glistening with blood, like a trophy, as he admires its beauty. The
reaction in the house was awesome. Everyone was effectively shut up, no longer tittering or gasping with mirth over
Lulu’s behavior.’ The reviewer considered this staging of the play superior to the Almeida Theatre’s Jonathan Kent-
directed Lulu of a few years ago with Anna Friel in the title role. His conclusion: ‘Yale Repertory Theatre’s lurid Lulu
only increases the playwright’s reputation.’
Wayne Myers, Yale Rep Stages Ribald Lulu, Oneida Dispatch, Oneida, NY, USA, 17April 2007.
JACK THE RIPPER MEETS MARY POPPINS. ‘It might say something significant about you,
or your mood at least, depending what side you choose to play in this foosball game
that takes “lights versus darks” to a whole new level. In Good versus Evil Foosball team
players that have never met before get to battle it out for the win, some of the most
interesting being (to me anyway) Mary Poppins and Christopher Robin on the good side
versus Jack the Ripper and Hitler on the evil side, to name just a few.’
Rigel Gregg, The ‘Good versus Evil’ Foosball Table, Luxist, Santa Monica, CA, USA, 12
April 2007.
SEX IN THE CITY. History of Sex Work: Vancouver is a new art installation consisting
of photo collages, ‘soundscapes’ from around Vancouver over the last 120 years and
interviews with project participants designed to give artistic expression to the so-
called world’s oldest profession. A group of former and current sex-trade workers have
designed the installation as a means of addressing public misconceptions, promoting
understanding and initiating change on issues from law enforcement to workers’ rights Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:
movements. Mary Poppins tackles the RIpper
Jennifer Allan, a former sex-trade worker, is one of the contributing artists. Her work, entitled ‘100 Years of Insecurity
for Sex-Trade Workers,’ focuses on the similarities between London’s sex-trade scene at the time of Jack the Ripper,
Seattle’s at the time of Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, and Vancouver’s at the present time, when Robert Pickton
is on trial for the murder of women from the Downtown Eastside. Ms Allan had to turn tricks to meet her most basic
needs such as food and shelter. ‘[Survival] sex work is not glamorous, it’s not a great lifestyle,’ she says. ‘This exhibit
shows society how they’ve allowed predators to target sex-trade workers.’ Survival sex-trade workers represent about
10 per cent of the city’s sex-trade industry.
BLUE JACK. British children’s television programme Blue Peter was supposed to be one
of the more wholesome programmes of its kind. On 14 March 2007, however, the BBC
issued an apology after Blue Peter was tainted by a live studio phone-in scandal. But
that was not the first Blue Peter scandal. In October 1998, the programme had just
celebrated its 40th birthday and was about to collect a prize at the British Academy
Children’s Awards when it became known that a Blue Peter presenter, Richard Bacon,
had ended a 12-hour drinking session by snorting cocaine. Bacon was sacked, but took
it on stride. ‘Where I stand is that I’ve done this, I am sorry, but it’s really nothing to
do with being a children’s presenter,’ he said. ‘I’m not Jack the Ripper. I want to lie
low for a while and then rebuild my career.’ Bacon currently has a show on BBC Radio
Five Live.
Richard Bacon: not Jack the RIpper Phone-in rip-off, Independent, 15 March 2007.
PARANORMAL JACK. ‘Ghost Hunters, a series about paranormal-hunting plumbers, returns to Sci Fi with 13 new episodes
next year. Sci Fi has also expanded its third season to include six new episodes this spring and six more in the fall. New
episodes of the hour-long weekly show feature the pair, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, exploring Ireland’s Lisheen
Ruins, London’s Jack the Ripper haunts, and other potentially supernatural-touched places.’
Anne Becker, Sci Fi To Run Show with Mentalist Derren Brown, Bring Back Ghost Hunters, Broadcasting & Cable, New York,
NY, USA, 21 March 2007.
CUTE JACK. ‘Ironclad law: When an American runs into a Brit, the American, particularly if he or she is a woman, will
say, “Gee, I just love your accent” - unless the Brit happens to be the Queen or Jack the Ripper Jr. It rarely dawns on
Americans that we have accents, too, or that the English don’t think their accent is particularly cute.’
Peter Leo, Morning File: Accent on British: Kiss me, I’m British, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, USA, 23 March 2007.
MANGA JACK. The Ripper plays a supporting role in the latest episode of the Cain Saga, a Japanese
manga. Reviewer Holly Ellingwood writes: ‘To quell the rumors surrounding the Hargreaves family,
an arranged marriage has been determined for young Cain. These pending nuptials won’t lead
to bliss for the cursed Cain, but to more bloody tragedy, death, horror and Jack the Ripper!...
Emiline, Cain’s fiancée, also proves to be the next victim of a serial killer when she falls victim
to the one and only Jack the Ripper... IN SUMMARY: Thrilling and terrifying both. This is the
penultimate volume of the Gothic manga series. This time Cain appears to be going up against an
old enemy, more family secrets, and perhaps his worst foe to date, Jack the Ripper.’
Holly Ellingwood, The Cain Saga (Vol. 4), Active Anime, USA, 27 March 2007.
JIHAD JACK. In ‘The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood’, published in the March-April issue of Foreign
Affairs, Robert S Leiken and Steven Brooke wrote: ‘In the anxious and often fruitless search
for Muslim moderates, policymakers should recognize that the Muslim Brotherhood presents a
notable opportunity.’ They added that the Brotherhood does not preach jihadism, though it ‘does
authorize jihad in countries and territories occupied by a foreign power. Like in Afghanistan under
the Soviets, the Ikhwan views the struggles in Iraq and against Israel as “defensive jihad” against
invaders, the Muslim functional equivalent of the Christian doctrine of “just war.”‘ Commentator Joshua Muravchik
remarks that ‘This is rather like saying that the acts of Jack the Ripper were the “functional equivalent” of courtly
love.’
Joshua Muravchik, The Brotherhood’s Creed, Commentary, New York, NY, USA, 9 April 2007.
MASSAGE PARLOUR JACK. ‘Though some have called it satirical, [American conservative political commentator Ann]
Coulter writes satire like Jack the Ripper gives knife massages, even as propaganda, which surely Coulter does not set
out to write, the writing is too reactionary and laughably confrontational to be persuasive or even easily distinguished
from the output of a high school propaganda-writing exercise or some sort of Propaganda3000 automatic bile-producing
computer program.’ Ms Coulter made the remark that triggered off these comments on 2 March 2007. She said: ‘I was
going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have
to go into rehab if you use the word “faggot,” so I... can’t really talk about Edwards.’
Jason Gilbert, A few comments on Ann Coulter, Daily Princetonian, Princeton University, New Jersey, 27 March 2007.
COLLEGE JACK. The death of a University of California at Merced freshman was most likely the result of an accidental
fall, Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin announced during a press conference on 19 March. ‘We are 98% sure there was
no foul play involved,’ Pazin added. ‘My sole purpose here today is to assure the faculty, the students and the family
there is no Jack the Ripper lurking here on the confines of UC Merced. It appears that this was one-in-a-million trip
and fall.’
The Fresno Bee, Fresno, CA, USA, 20 March 2007.
PRIME TIME JACK. ‘Most likely, the issue isn’t that there’s that much more to be scared of out there but that thanks to
the media, horror stories are in our faces almost as soon as they happen. After all Jack the Ripper and others like him
have been around for eons. Even when Paul Bernado and Karla Homolka made headlines more than 10 years ago, the
details of their horrid crimes weren’t blasted all over the net and on TV in seconds. That’s what’s changed i.e. not so
much the amount of crimes and the perversion out there, but the immediacy with which it is all reported... and not
just once, but over and over, update after update.’
Cruiseroo, Are we bubblewrapping our children?, Digital Journal, Canada, 10 April 2007.
BAROQUE JACK. ‘With a glint of delirium in his eyes — stemming from sleep deprivation and that imported absinthe
— [producer Griffin] Rodriguez cues up the baroque ballroom waltz beginning of “Poor Jackie,” about a female Jack
the Ripper. For six Technicolor minutes, several different moods and sonic reference points flicker on by like a film reel
reeking of dread, ghastly gaslights and death. And then, the sudden climatic coup: a head-circling blues riff, beyond-
the-grave Beach Boys harmonies and horns that sound as if they should be streaming through stained glass windows.’
Andrew Parks, Stillborn Again, What to do when you’re stranded in Chicago for a week with Man Man, Philadelphia
citypaper.net, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 17 April 2007.
JACK AND THE JACKAL. ‘The left-right combination with a contrasting modus operandi making a killing, the West Indies
were caught in the dark alley with Jack the Ripper at one end and Jackal at another.’ Sounds like some sort of political
thriller, but actually it is a comment on the victory of Sri Lanka over the West Indies at the Cricket World Cup.
Sandeep Dwivedi, Jack the Ripper and Jackal in their zone: Jayasuriya scores his 25th century and sizes up the situation
well with Jayawardene to propel Lanka past 300, Indian Express, New Delhi, India, 2 April 2007
JACK WHO? Jack the Ripper finds himself in increasingly mixed company these days. There is reportedly a scandal
of sorts in Coral Gables, Florida, where Granada LLC, the operator of the Coral Gables Country Club, isn’t making
payments for the city’s $4-million investment in the club’s reconstruction. So City Commissioner Ralph Cabrera proposes
to ask one Hernandez – who approved the city-Granada contract - to study how to deal with that non-paying entity. Says
local commentator George Volsky: ‘Cabrera’s idea is like asking convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to teach him political
ethics, or suggesting that Jack the Ripper investigate crime.’ Jack the Ripper we understand, but who is Jack Abramoff
and what has he done to deserve such kudos?
George Volsky, Corrigan Masters Debate, Coral Gables Gazette, Coral Gables, FL, USA, 6 April 2007.
THERE GOES THE OTHER BLAIR. ‘Doubts have been cast on the veracity of
Sir Ian Blair’s account of dodging IRA bullets as a young copper in 1975.
The author of a new book on the siege of Balcombe Street says the Met
Commissioner’s story doesn’t add up. I have no doubt Sir Ian will clarify
the matter in his memoirs, Mind How You Go - How I Nicked The Kray
Twins, Tracked Down The Great Train Robbers, Solved The Mystery Of Jack
The Ripper and Brought Dr Crippen To Justice.’
Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, London, UK, 3 April 2007.
A LIVERPUDLIAN RENAISSANCE. Liverpool will celebrate the £23m restoration of its neo-classical masterpiece - St
George’s Hall - by hosting twice-nightly Son et Lumière displays recounting the city’s past 800 years from 23 April.
Devised by the Liverpool Culture Company and Ross Ashton, who lit up Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Jubilee and
80th birthday, the 30-minute showcase will be projected on to the rear of the Grade I-listed building. Audiences will
be able to see it from a special 500-seater, tiered grandstand in St John’s Gardens.
After a massive, five-year makeover to a leaking roof, crumbling walls and rotten fittings as well as the installation
of several new features, the re-opening on St George’s Day - 23 April - is one of the highlights of Liverpool’s birthday
celebrations, which will culminate on 28 August, the 800th anniversary of the granting of its first royal charter by King
John.
The re-opening of St George’s Hall will be marked by a series of spectacular events. The rarely seen, 30,000-piece
hand-crafted Minton tiled floor in the Great Hall will be on display. Last unveiled in 1997, it will be on show from 10am
to 8.30pm every day until 29 April. A series of concerts by Liverpool musicians, such as the 2006 BBC Young Musician
and Composer of the Year Mark Simpson, will be held in St George’s Concert Room. A new work of art interpreting the
city’s coat of arms by the acclaimed Singh Twins will go on show, as will a new sculpture of St George slaying the dragon
with a Liver Bird rising as a phoenix.
First opened in 1854, St George’s Hall was the result of two design competitions for a civic and court venue, both won
by architect Harvey Lonsdale Elmes for his ‘Acropolis-like’ vision. Queen Victoria described it as ‘worthy of ancient
Athens’. Fitted with the world’s first modern-air conditioning system and largest piped organ at the time, it hosted
famous cultural events such as Charles Dickens’s world premiere reading of A Christmas Carol.
A PARDON FOR FLORIE MAYBRICK. An online petition is in course to obtain a posthumous pardon for Florence Chandler-
Maybrick, who, following a controversial trial in 1889, was convicted of murdering her husband, James Maybrick, in
Liverpool. Mrs Maybrick served 15 years in prison for a crime many believe she did not commit and of which she was
allegedly convicted on the most minute and flimsiest evidence with important evidence that could have exonerated
her withheld.
JUST DON’T ASK FOR MORE. Who needs Cinderella when you can have Little Nell? Who needs Donald Duck when you
can have the Artful Dodger? Who needs Captain Hook when you can have Uriah Heep? Goodbye, Disneyland, hello
Dickens World! No, we are not joking. A theme park called Dickens World built at a cost of 62 million pounds in a
modern, aluminium-clad hangar on the Chatham Maritime estate in Kent is scheduled to open at the end of May. Charles
Dickens’s father once worked as a clerk in the Navy pay office at the dockyard in Chatham and Dickens himself spent
part of his childhood there. After the naval dockyards closed in the 1980s,
Chatham became plagued by unemployment. The park is part of efforts
to rescue the area through the encouragement of tourism. Dickens World
was the dream of the now deceased Gerry O’Sullivan-Beare, a theme park
designer who worked on Santa’s World and Andersen (as in Hans Christian)
World, among others.
Dickens World creators promise a flavour of ‘dark, smoky, moody London,
full of smells and mist’. Visitors – of whom they expect to attract as
many as 300,000 a year - will be able to take the Great Expectations
boat ride, based on the escape of the convict Magwitch, through a
Thames whose waters have been dyed brown. Other attractions include
Ebenezer Scrooge’s Haunted House, Quilp’s Creek, Newgate Prison, the
Britannia Music Hall, the Dotheboys Hall Victorian classroom, the Six
Jolly Fellowship Porters bar and Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shop. Jolly good,
what?
But the idea has met with opposition from some quarters. ‘Is the world
ready for a Dickens theme park?’ asked the Observer. ‘There is a lot
to fear here,’ echoed the New York Times. ‘There is the prospect that
characters from Dickens’ novels - Mr Pecksniff and the Artful Dodger, Mr
Pickwick and Uriah Heep - will wander through Dickens World the way
Goofy and Mickey walk the streets of Disneyland,’ the paper said.
‘We are not Disneyfying Dickens,’ replies Dickens World manager Ross
Hutchins. ‘If Dickens was alive today, he would probably have built the
place himself. In fact, if Dickens was alive today, he would probably
have been working for television as a scriptwriter. He was very much a
populist. If we were Disneyfying Dickens we wouldn’t be talking to people
LONELY AS A CLOUD, MAN. Is there nothing sacred? In an attempt to increase publicity for the Lake District, the
Cumbrian tourist board have produced a video featuring a hip hop squirrel, known as Mc Nuts, rapping Wordsworth’s
poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ first published 200 years ago. The video was reportedly designed to introduce
Wordsworth to a new generation of kids more influenced by hip hop than poetry. It was filmed by the banks of Ullswater,
the second largest lake in the Lake District, where Wordsworth was inspired to write his poem when he came across a
‘long belt’ of daffodils on its shores. If you have not read the poem for some time and would like to be reminded of it,
click here; you can actually see and hear the rapping rodent. Be warned; some viewers have complained that Mc Nuts
looks more like a donkey or a deer than like a squirrel.
THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN. You have the victim: an 82-year-old World War II veteran who was found
decapitated in his backyard. You have a suspect: a schizophrenic with an interest in headless bodies and Jack the Ripper
who has absconded from a mental institution. Some people might wonder what the police are waiting for. Indeed, so
do the residents of Armidale, a quiet university town in New South Wales, Australia, where elderly Mark Hutchinson
was found dead last January and the main suspect is roaming free. The town’s Mayor, Peter Ducat, told the Australian
newspaper on 19 April: ‘The community is concerned that the murder is unsolved.’ Yet matters are turning out not to
be so simple.
It was revealed during proceedings before the NSW Supreme Court that police had apprehended the suspect after staff
at a country mental health facility contacted them, concerned the patient may have been Mr Hutchinson’s killer. The
suspect was a long-term patient with chronic schizophrenia. He was found loitering near a school with scissors, and a
tomahawk was lying on the ground. Mental health staff notified police and the health service’s security on January 7
that he was ‘AWOL’.
Justice Carolyn Simpson said that when the suspect was apprehended on January 17, a few days after the murder, ‘his
shirt appeared to be heavily bloodstained’. The suspect’s defence team has challenged this finding. Police told the
court there were red stains on his shoes ‘presumptive for blood.’ The suspect’s sketches and writings shown to the court
‘included a drawing of a headless torso, a reference to Jack the Ripper, a drawing of a hand ashing a cigarette, another
depiction of a body with the head separated ... and much, much more that would require an expert to analyse,’ Justice
NOT JOAN OF ARC’S BONES AFTER ALL. Subjects on which the English and the French
have not always seen eye to eye include escargots, frog’s legs and Joan of Arc. The
French cause has recently sustained a blow as research revealed that bones thought
to be the remains of the 15th-Century heroine belonged in fact to an Egyptian mummy
and a cat. A jar found in a Paris pharmacy attic in 1867 bore a label claiming it held
Joan’s relics. But forensic tests suggest that the remains date from between the third
and seventh centuries BC, hundreds of years before Joan was born. Forensic scientist
Philippe Charlier, who led the investigation into the relics, told Nature, the journal that
published its results: ‘I’d never have thought that it could be from a mummy.’
Joan of Arc, who was canonised in 1920, was convicted of heresy and witchcraft in
1431. The relics were said to have been found at the stake in the Normandy town of
Rouen where she was burned alive, aged just 19. They consisted of a charred-looking
human rib, chunks of what appeared to be blackened wood, a 15-centimetre fragment
of linen and a cat thigh bone, which seemed to reinforce their authenticity since in
medieval Europe it was common practice to throw black cats into the pyres of supposed
witches. Recognised as genuine and sacred by the Church, the remains were housed in
a museum in Chinon belonging to the Archdiocese of Tours.
Dr Charlier, from the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Garches, near Paris, obtained
permission from France’s Catholic Church to study the relics. He used a range of
scientific tests, such as spectrometry, electron microscopy and pollen analysis, which
dated both the human rib and the cat bone, which also was mummified, to between
Philippe Charlier with the relics
the seventh and third centuries BC. The researchers also found pollen from pine trees, thought to have been Joan of Arc
probably from resin used in embalming in ancient Egypt. Pines did not grow in Normandy
during the 15th Century.
Dr Charlier recruited two smell experts, Sylvaine Delacourte and Jean-Michel Duriez, from the perfume industry. They
were independently asked to sniff the relics as well as nine other samples of bone and hair without being told what they
were. Both smelled hints of ‘burnt plaster’ and ‘vanilla’ in the samples. The plaster smell would back up claims that
Joan was burnt on a plaster stake, to make the spectacle last longer. But a vanilla smell is inconsistent with cremation.
It comes from the compound vanillin, which is released during the decomposition of a body.
Analysis of the black crust covering the rib and the cat bone showed that it was not caused by fire, but was a mix of
wood resins, bitumen and chemicals, such as malachite, used for embalming. Dr Charlier told the Associated Press that
from medieval times on, powdered mummy remains were used for medicinal purposes, ‘to treat stomach ailments, long
or painful periods, all blood problems’.
He also said that the researchers’ assumption is that a 19th-Century apothecary transformed the remains of an Egyptian
mummy into a fake relic. Why it was done remains a mystery, though it was probably not for money. ‘Perhaps it was for
religious reasons,’ added Dr Charlier. ‘Perhaps it was created to increase the importance of the process of beatification
in 1909.’
BBC News, Joan of Arc remains ‘are fakes’, 4 April 2007.
I’LL NEVER FORGET WHAT’S HIS FACE. Won’t you now? Would you really remember what the person who attacked and
robbed you looked like? Would you really remember what the person you saw attack and rob someone else looked like?
Sussex DC Clifford Clark is an expert on the subject. He has been interviewing witnesses and victims to produce E-FIT
images of criminals since the early 1990s. He is a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ facial identification
group and a former chairman of the national E-FIT User Group. Still, enthusiastic as he is about the employ of E-FIT to
help fight crime, he knows asking victims and witnesses to describe the face of the criminal they saw is asking a lot.
‘When did you last remember the component parts of a face?’ he says. ‘You recognise people you know by component
parts, not studying the shape of their eyebrows or ears!’ Yet there have been a number of cases where an E-FIT image
of a suspect derived from witness testimony has helped to bring an offender to justice.
The police officer who interviews victims or witnesses must carefully unlock their memory, so that details unfold
naturally, rather than using a set series of questions. DC Clark says: ‘We use the way memory works to extract
information. It’s been shown to be one of the best, if not the top way to interview witnesses in the world.’ The police
officer takes notes and then uses a computer programme to produce an E-FIT. The computer offers an index of facial
features originally designed by psychologists at Aberdeen University and Home Office. Starting with a blank oval face,
it is possible to import eyes, nose, mouth, hair, eyebrows, moustaches and beards, hats, glasses, and even shoulders,
so as to give a hint of collar and tie or other clothing. The victims don’t have to trawl through thousands of options,
but just a selection matching their initial description.
The interviewing police officer must be careful not to lead the witnesses. Instead they must faithfully follow the details
described by the witnesses, even if they sound ridiculous!
DC Clark says: ‘If they say put the eyes in the wrong place, even if it’s not physically possible, we have to oblige on the
E-FIT according to what we are told. People enlarge the eyes for example, because that’s what they remember but in
reality there are certain restrictions to the maximum size.’
He adds: ‘The image stays very flexible all the way along. There are lots of chances to make sure the emerging face
is what the witness wants, not what we want it to be. The last stage is for the detective to use a “blending” tool in
Photoshop, to blur any confusing edges where the features join.’
AND FINALLY, A TEST OF YOUR RIPPER KNOWLEDGE. The question: The husband of
which major American film star likened John Wayne to Jack the Ripper? The answer
will appear in the next edition of I Beg to Report.
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David, thank you for your illuminating letter. In answer to your point about the figure of 25,000 inquests carried
out by Sir Samuel Brighouse in his career of 56 years (1884-1940) being, in your view, credible because he could have
carried out a number of inquests in a single day, you could well be correct now that I think about the matter some
more. Particularly, that is, if some of those inquests, as they probably were, concerned small matters similar to the
treasure trove inquest I mentioned that was carried out in June 1940 by his son Robert Wales Brighouse about a gold
sovereign found by a schoolboy. While Sir Samuel we know held some major inquests that took more than one day if
many of the more minor inquests took only minutes he could have racked up such a total during his long career.
In addition, David, in the matter of Brighouse being a part-time coroner, it occurs to me that the same was true of
Wynne Baxter, since they both retained their positions with their law firms. This would be possible for a solicitor or
“legal coroner” but not so feasible for a “medical coroner”, ie, a physician, who could less easily handle a medical
practice while carrying out the duties of coroner.
CTG