Max Markham is the author of Indigo Bird – An Erotic Novel. For more information on the author and his work, please visit Max Markham’s Section on this website.
J. K. Stephen
This title is deliberately provocative. Plainly, Jack the Ripper must have existed: he was a serial killer who committed at least five gruesome murders in the Whitechapel area of London, starting in 1888. But equally, it is almost certain that we shall never know who he was; still less why he committed his murders, although there was plainly a psycho-sexual element in them. Everything else about him is largely speculation.
The very name of “Jack the Ripper” originated in a letter sent to Scotland Yard by someone claiming to be the murderer and the nickname was disseminated by the media. But was the letter really sent by “Jack”? It has been plausibly suggested that the letter was a hoax, sent by a journalist to boost circulation figures. The same writer, or other writers, sent other letters to newspapers; to Scotland Yard; and to Mr George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilante Committee. Some of these letters were written in verse. One contained a piece of preserved human kidney, which was said to have been taken from one of the victims, and probably was.
Attacks attributed to Jack the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes, whose throats he cut before inflicting abdominal mutilations. The deft removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to speculation that the murderer must have had anatomical or surgical knowledge. The extraordinarily brutal character of the murders led the public to believe that they were the work of a single killer. Extensive newspaper coverage ensured widespread and enduring international notoriety for the Ripper. A further series of brutal killings in 1891, again in Whitechapel, led to speculation that the Ripper had returned to his gruesome business, having been lying low for two or more years. However there is no real evidence, other than circumstantial, to connect the two series of murders. The 1891 murders could have been “copy cat” crimes. So could some others. On the other hand, that possibility cannot be excluded, either. It is a fact that prostitution was (and is) a high-risk profession. Even without the Ripper, prostitutes were frequently murdered in Whitechapel; sometimes in horrific circumstances. This means that, above the “canonical five” murders, which are generally admitted to be Ripper murders, you can to some extent pick and choose which others you consider to be authentic Ripper murders; whichever suit your pet theory. In the relative absence of fact, there is no shortage of theories. Since the mystery has never been solved, a body of legend, “ripperology”, has grown around the identity of the murderer: a potent mix of genuine historical research, folklore, rumour and – misleadingly – pseudo-history. Unsurprisingly, the Ripper’s story has inspired numerous works of fiction. It can sometimes be hard to judge where fact ends and fiction begins. Equally unsurprisingly, there are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper’s identity.
Jack the Ripper Puck
The canonical five Ripper victims are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelley. Nichols’ body was discovered at about 3:40 a.m. on Friday 31 August 1888 in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel. The throat was severed deeply by two cuts, and the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. Several other incisions on the abdomen were caused by the same knife. She was the first Ripper victim, but who would be the last?
The suspects are even more numerous than the probable victims. They range from HRH the Duke of Clarence, Queen Victoria’s grandson and heir presumptive to the throne; to Sir William Gull, Queen Victoria’s Physician-in-Ordinary; to Lewis Carroll; to the artist Walter Sickert; to an assortment of Jewish slaughter-men, sailors and shady cosmopolitans who lived in Whitechapel at the time and were suspects mainly because of their exotic origins and unknown histories.
Some theories attribute seven, eight, or even ten, murders to the Ripper. This theory may be based on a poem ascribed to the Ripper and sent to one of those searching for him. Some regard this poem as another hoax. Others are convinced of its authenticity:
Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,
Gladstone may save one; then there’ll be seven.
Seven little whores begging for a shilling,
One stays in Heneage Court, then there’s a killing.
Six little whores, glad to be alive,
One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.
Four and whore rhyme alright,
So do three and me,
I’ll set the town alight
Ere there are two.
Two little whores, shivering with fright,
Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.
Jack’s knife flashes, then there’s but one,
And the last one’s the ripest for the Jack’s idea of fun.
The interest of this chilling poem is not simply that it might have been written by Jack the Ripper. It also uses an unusual device: the double internal rhyme: Four and whore rhyme aright; so do three and me. One contemporary writer who still used this rather precious conceit in 1888 (You must attend, my worthy friend; I solve it ambulando) in his published verse was James Kenneth Stephen, the author of Lapsus Calami and Other Poems, a Cambridge friend of the Duke of Clarence and a member of a brilliant but unstable dynasty: the Stephen family. His cousin Virginia became Virginia Woolf after her marriage. She too was brilliant, unstable and suicidal. The handsome and athletic J K Stephen was a notorious woman-hater. This is perfectly clear from his poems. He may have been unstable and homicidal. After a riding accident (referred to obliquely in Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves), J K Stephen became increasingly erratic and became a resident patient of Sir William Gull, who may well have been recommended to his father, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, by the royal family. From time to time he would escape; perhaps coincidentally, there was sometimes a murder when he did so. An exceptionally strong man; a distinguished athlete both at Eton and Cambridge; he also had the necessary knowledge to have carried out the mutilations. As for motive, some writers have suggested that there was a gay relationship between J K Stephen and the Duke of Clarence. Certainly, Clarence seems to have been panerotic and oversexed. He has been credited both with an illegitimate son and with involvement in the notorious Cleveland Street homosexual scandal.
Surgical skills were not necessary for the Ripper murders: a high quality blade was, and some knowledge of deerstalking. A gentleman who knew how to gralloch a deer could gralloch a woman as well. Gralloch is a Gaelic verb meaning the act of disembowelling a deer killed in a hunt. J K Stephen had this knowledge; indeed he seems to have been a guest at Balmoral and no doubt other Scottish deer forests as well. It is a near-certainty that he possessed the requisite equipment: not just the physical strength and the high-quality sporting guns but the fine hunting knife that was part of the ensemble. The suspicions around him might possibly explain the apparent interest that the Queen and royal family appear to have taken in the case, and the fact that the files, which were unusually embargoed for 100 years after the events, had been thoroughly “weeded” before being made public.
J K Stephen remains my favourite suspect, although I admit that there are many others; some almost equally plausible. One of the best theories is that Jack was a foreign sailor, who was never caught because, while the hunt was on for the Ripper, he simply was not there: he was at sea somewhere between London and Hamburg, Danzig, St Petersburg, or wherever he happened to be based; at any rate, he was out of the country. A few weeks later he would return and again enjoy his version of a “run ashore”. Some slight evidence for this theory is that one of his victims was seen talking to a “foreign looking” bearded man, who looked like a sailor, a few minutes before her murder. This was at a time when merchant seamen wore distinctive and easily identifiable uniforms when they went ashore.
It has been suggested that the Ripper transferred his activities to the USA after he had made London too hot to hold him. Or did he simply switch to another shipping line? A series of possible Ripper crimes (or copy cat crimes) occurred around New York in 1891 and 1892.They have been tentatively attributed to Severin Klosowski (a.k.a. George Chapman, the Borough Poisoner), a suspect in the Whitechapel Ripper case. According to this theory, after his narrow escape from Scotland Yard, the killer travelled to New York, where four high-profile murders took place soon after his arrival. Klosowski is suspected of a subsequent return to England, where, as “George Chapman”, he would eventually be convicted and executed for another murder spree; this time with poison as his weapon: a neat theory, if only it could be proved.
The alleged American Ripper victims include: Carrie Brown, an ageing prostitute, brutally slashed and mutilated in her room in 1891; Hannah Robinson, a servant girl, found strangled at a construction site on Long Island that summer; and elderly Elizabeth Senior who struggled bravely against an intruder who stabbed her numerous times in her New Jersey home. Finally, the body of a teenager, Herta Mary Anderson, a New Jersey hotel maid, was found in a wooded area near Perth Amboy, dead from a bullet wound and with her throat cut.
Even more intriguing is the latest theory, which we owe to British TV director David Monaghan and Nigel Cawthorne, whose books include The Mammoth Book of Killers. They have come up with this theory, in Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession: The Hidden Testimony of Britain’s First Serial Killer (Skyhorse Publishing). In 1888, the year of the first Ripper murders, an anonymous erotic memoir appeared in print. This was My Secret Life, by “Walter”: the memoir of a Victorian gentleman’s sexual development and experiences. It was first published, needless to say, in a private edition, of eleven volumes, which appeared over seven years beginning around 1888.
The work is enormous; over one million words. The text is boring, repetitive and disorganised, but its frank discussion of sexual matters and other hidden aspects of late Victorian life make it a rare and valuable social document. It has been described as “one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written”. The true identity of “Walter” has never been discovered. The most frequently cited likely author is Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834 – 1900), a book collector, writer, and authority on erotic literature. If Ashbee was not the actual author, he may well have been the compiler of the work’s lengthy and extremely detailed index, and have provided other editorial assistance and help in getting the book into print. Naturally, other and more distinguished authors have also been suggested.
Steven Marcus, in his influential The Other Victorians (1966), concluded that the balance of known facts was against this “shrewd and ingenious guess.” But more recently, Ian Gibson’s The Erotomaniac: the secret life of Henry Spencer Ashbee (2001) provides a detailed review of evidence arguing that Ashbee did indeed write My Secret Life; possibly weaving fantasy and anecdotes from friends into his own authentic experiences. Gordon Grimley’s introduction to the 1972 edition of My Secret Life is sceptical of Ashbee’s candidacy as the main author and makes a case for William Simpson Potter, a known associate of Ashbee’s.
“Walter” has now been firmly added to the canon as a possible Ripper. He was undoubtedly an unpleasant character, whoever he was. “Walter” tended to regard women, and the lower orders in general, as livestock intended to serve his personal needs and whims. He was apparently born into a wealthy upper-middle class family, but spent himself close to bankruptcy several times, blowing his money on prostitutes. Even worse, in contemporary eyes, he could, by his own admission, be brutal, and did not think that “No” meant “No.” Evidently “Walter” was a pervert; probably a rapist; and a complete and utter cad. He even had sex with underage girls. But was he a killer? There is circumstantial evidence in his writings for repressed anger and aggressiveness in My Secret Life; a love of blood sports, which was common for English gentlemen of his time and class; and a marked lack of empathy that at least borders on the psychopathic. Is it odd that, in all his conversations with prostitutes, streetwalkers and naughty girls that Walter reproduces, none of them reportedly ever mentions Jack the Ripper? Perhaps, and perhaps not.
The Ripper has now passed into legend. He is part of the folklore of London, along with such purely fictional men as Sherlock Holmes and Sweeney Todd, in whose reality many people now seem to believe. But unless some revelatory, and hitherto unknown, diary or memoir from an unimpeachable source comes to light, we may continue to enjoy our theorising and get a frisson of horror while exploring the East End of London. We shall not however arrive at any firm conclusion.
For more information on the topic see:
The Indigo Bird
An Erotic Novel by Max Markham
James Graveney, a young Major in a respectable regiment, is outwardly conventional. In private James is bisexual, with a strong urge for his own sex. Gay sex, however, is illegal in the Army, so he is discreet about this.
James’ world is turned upside-down when he meets Lieutenant Richard Finch. Richard is intelligent, charismatic and exceptionally handsome. He doesn’t mess around. He gets what he wants, and is completely unscrupulous about how he gets it. Richard will stop at nothing to achieve this, including Machiavellian deception and a cunning and brutal murder. James starts responding to Richard, cautiously at first, then gets swept along on the great love affair of his life.
The Indigo Bird is a rollercoaster of surprises set against backdrops varying from the jungles of Belize to London, the English countryside, and Ireland, and the scene is set for more shocks and adventures. [Read more...]
The Indigo Bird is available through Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle US, Amazon Kindle UK, and any other good bookstore.
