I Know Who Didn't Do It

You may remember me getting in a grump over Vic walking the Jack the Ripper tour with Sara and Stasher, whilst I had to stay at home revising.

In order to answer some of the questions posed by the tour, I bought her John J. Eddleston's Jack the Ripper An Encyclopaedia for Christmas.

True Crime is not a genre I'm really interested in, and thought this Ripper book would be -- like most media on the subject -- rather sensationalist and tabloid.

I was wrong. I've been reading the book for the last couple of weeks (it's the sort of book you can pick up and put down, rather than having to blitz read it in one session), and have been really impressed by it. The author has gone back to the original source material -- much of which is reproduced in the book -- and structured the analysis as a critical case review of the kind that is now used to scrutinise unsolved crimes. His aim is to clear up a century of misinformation and myth surrounding the subject, and he's very successful, pouring scorn on the majority of the half-baked theories out there.

From a "historian" point-of-view, I acknowledge that the author has summarised the facts, conjectures and eyewitness reports -- subjective intrepretation on his part - but as he keeps his own views on whodunnit to a minimum, he comes over as a credible writer.

A favourite passage from the book (with my scene setting):

Elizabeth Stride was murdered on Sunday the 30th of September 1888 at around 12.58 a.m. Her throat was cut, but Jack was disturbed before he could mutilate the body. Elizabeth was discovered at 1.00 am, but in that time had bled to death. An Inspector Edmund Reid arrives on the scene much later at 1.45 a.m.

At 4.30 a.m. Elizabeth's body was moved to the mortuary in Cable Street, and Reid followed it there to take down a description. According to his notes, the dead woman was about 42 years old, 5 feet 2 inches tall with curly dark-brown hair. Her complexion was pale.

She had bled to death Inspector - of course she looked pale!

Tomorrow I shall reveal who Mr. Eddleston believes was Jack the Ripper (I'm just getting to his conclusion).

And don't ever bother watching the Jonny Depp Ripper movie From Hell on DVD: The plot is complete fantasy and the Hollywood depiction of Victorian London is woeful. As is Depp's english accent.