Fun and Games With Jack the Ripper
I once made a good deal of money and had some fun with a course I taught for American undergraduates over eleven weeks on the history of London crime up to the mid-twentieth century. Out of three hours, I'd talk on Sping-Heeled Jack, or the London Monster, or the Krays, or so on, for about an hour and a half, students would ask questions, and papers would be written. It was ghoulish fun, and we'd get paid to go on trips around the east end. Inevitably, we would play the fun Victorian parlour game of 'who was Jack the Ripper?'
I always had to remind myself that it was a game for me, and a source of very lucrative income for others. I remember walking down the back of Liverpool Street Station, near where Mary Kelly's hovel once stood, and being assured by a guide that 'royals were involved in the horrible events that occurred in that car park'--he paused and nodded, with a sad look on his face and an Emile-Zola style finger--'over there'. Then he cheerily greeted another of the dozens of guides who take tour groups around the sites of the deaths of the 'canonical victims' and who turn some of the squares into scenes from The Life of Brian in the summer.
Everyone involved in the crimes is now of course dead. It is still necessary, though, to have some human feeling for the way they died, and only human if you feel a slight sadness over it. At the same time, for all the work of social historians and biographers over the years, we know more about those women who died, and their lives, than any others in the nineteenth century.
I was always struck by the possibility of two things. One was that, given the level of misogyny, poverty and violence in England at the time of the killings in 1888, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that any number of killers, acting separately and alone, could have done what was done, though there are reasons to disbelieve that. For instance, the violence done to the ears of one of the victims--I think it was Liz Stride--corresponds to a tradition of pimps 'clipping' those of whom they wanted to make an example that goes back at least to the days of Jonathan Wild.
Secondly, I always thought that the Ripper as an idea was a press-driven compound that emerged out of the now (almost) forgotten stories of Spring-Heeled Jack and the London Monster whom Jan Bondeson wrote so brilliantly about a few years ago. It also struck me that there was a good bit of money and individual obsession or validation tied up in the 'Ripper industry'. It paid some of my bills.
So the controversy currently exercising people at the 'Ripper Casebook'--which also carries discussion of modern crimes--over Andrew Cook's forthcoming new book is predictable and interesting. If you are 'skint' or escaping the collection departments this weekend and don't want to go out on Monday, you could do worse than waste some time by having a look at it. Be careful with the pictures though....
I once made a good deal of money and had some fun with a course I taught for American undergraduates over eleven weeks on the history of London crime up to the mid-twentieth century. Out of three hours, I'd talk on Sping-Heeled Jack, or the London Monster, or the Krays, or so on, for about an hour and a half, students would ask questions, and papers would be written. It was ghoulish fun, and we'd get paid to go on trips around the east end. Inevitably, we would play the fun Victorian parlour game of 'who was Jack the Ripper?'
I always had to remind myself that it was a game for me, and a source of very lucrative income for others. I remember walking down the back of Liverpool Street Station, near where Mary Kelly's hovel once stood, and being assured by a guide that 'royals were involved in the horrible events that occurred in that car park'--he paused and nodded, with a sad look on his face and an Emile-Zola style finger--'over there'. Then he cheerily greeted another of the dozens of guides who take tour groups around the sites of the deaths of the 'canonical victims' and who turn some of the squares into scenes from The Life of Brian in the summer.
Everyone involved in the crimes is now of course dead. It is still necessary, though, to have some human feeling for the way they died, and only human if you feel a slight sadness over it. At the same time, for all the work of social historians and biographers over the years, we know more about those women who died, and their lives, than any others in the nineteenth century.
I was always struck by the possibility of two things. One was that, given the level of misogyny, poverty and violence in England at the time of the killings in 1888, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that any number of killers, acting separately and alone, could have done what was done, though there are reasons to disbelieve that. For instance, the violence done to the ears of one of the victims--I think it was Liz Stride--corresponds to a tradition of pimps 'clipping' those of whom they wanted to make an example that goes back at least to the days of Jonathan Wild.
Secondly, I always thought that the Ripper as an idea was a press-driven compound that emerged out of the now (almost) forgotten stories of Spring-Heeled Jack and the London Monster whom Jan Bondeson wrote so brilliantly about a few years ago. It also struck me that there was a good bit of money and individual obsession or validation tied up in the 'Ripper industry'. It paid some of my bills.
So the controversy currently exercising people at the 'Ripper Casebook'--which also carries discussion of modern crimes--over Andrew Cook's forthcoming new book is predictable and interesting. If you are 'skint' or escaping the collection departments this weekend and don't want to go out on Monday, you could do worse than waste some time by having a look at it. Be careful with the pictures though....
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