Ripper Nerdology

A friend of mine pointed me to the following post about book recommendations concerning the Ripper case. I figured it might be best to just post it up here as well since it offered me one of the few chances I've had in a while to discuss Ripper-related stuff (hence it reads as if directed at one person as it was and the tone/feel/whatnot is a bit informal). I've been toying with adding some Ripper-related discussion into an upcoming article (for Helvete), but it is not easy task given that ripper studies can be so sensationalist and I don't want to make light of the material as some have done in the past. After owning my own book store I count being a proper ripperologist (tour-guide or author or whatever) as the job I'd most like to have.

Ripper books can be either atrocious or endlessly fascinating. There is no in-between. The golden rule in rooting out the good stuff is to avoid suspect-driven studies (or narratives) since these often give a skewed version of events with obvious Ripper murders pushed aside or witness testimony downplayed or exaggerated. The more dispassionate the better and anything that even mentions members of the Royal Family, freemasons and other assorted fairy tales are best avoided. They belong strictly to the Ripper-industry which, in much the same way putting Hitler on the cover of a book will generate sales, leads to publishers simply paying some quack to piece together Ripper romps to coincide with television screenings by relatively famous ripperologists such as Jeremy Beadle (who is actually himself quite decent on the topic believe it or not).

I do not want to offer too many suggestions since half the fun is making one’s way through the voluminous ripper output and you can do this fairly cheaply. Second-hand paperbooks of even the hardest to find classics in the genre can be found on Amazon and ebay for next to nothing.

Now to get started you should begin with the following authors and these are all non-controversial, non-sensationalist fact-driven ripperologists. If ripperology was a proper academic subject then they would be the Professors making sure the young upstarts don’t get too wild. Paul Begg is a wonderfully forensic student of the case and his various books all attempt to act as guidebooks for other rippologists. The tone is professional and objective: see his The Complete Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History, and then later to his broader works on Scotland Yard and the history of East End crime.

In the same genre is Steward Evans and Donald Rumblebow’s Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates – a modern classic and there is more to come from these guys who often participate on many ripper forums. My absolute favourite book on the ripper is Philip Sugden’s The Complete History Jack the Ripper – as close as I have found to a learned, fact-based reading of the case that offers some tentative conclusions as to the possible identity of the ripper focusing not on personalities or names, but on what we can discern about the *kind* of person the ripper might have been – to me this is a much better use of our time since we will not likely find the suspect we should focus on the sheer significance of the emergence of the world’s first serial killer – why it happened, why he had so much hatred for women, whether social conditions had a role, or whether it was a purely anomalous event.

That is quite a lot for now perhaps, but if you grab these texts you will gain a foundation from which you can launch into the scene according to your own interests. Just as in academic texts you will find in most decent ripper books bibliographies emphasizing different aspects of the case. Some people prefer social histories that anchor themselves in the case, some prefer psychologically dense readings and so on.

I have been fascinated with this case since I was roughly 13 years old and the shock of reading about these events has never left me – especially the final murder of Mary Kelly. Kelly was an Irishwoman who, from what we can gather, lived a (very!) difficult life in dire conditions.

What is perhaps even sadder is how she has earned such a disreputable place in history as one of the first photographed murder victims to be gaped at forever and in our internet age these images are easily found [not for the faint of heart to say the least] – and perhaps the final sting in the tail is that we do not have a single picture of her alive. To me this is an astoundingly tragic life and afterlife to lead.

There are a million and one different avenues I could bring up, but I think it will prove much more fascinating for you to immerse yourself in the topic free from outside influence at first and then start to engage with other ripper nerds.