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A Ripper Notes Article
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This article originally appeared in Ripper Notes. Ripper Notes is the only American Ripper periodical available on the market, and has quickly grown into one of the more substantial offerings in the genre. For more information, view our Ripper Notes page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripper Notes for permission to reprint this article.
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Jack the Ripper: What's in a Name?
by Paul Begg
There are a number of people throughout
history whose names have become part of everyday speech, and the
anonymous murderer known to us as Jack the Ripper is one. Another
example is Hobson in the expression "Hobson's choice."
This expression, commonly used in Britain, means accepting what
you are given or what you are doing without. In other words,
having no choice. The term derives from 16th century Cambridge
stable-keeper Thomas Hobson. This man hired out his horses in
strict rotation, so you either accepted the animal nearest the
door or didn't hire a horse at all. Thomas Hobson is one of a
select group of people who have given their name to a deed,
thing, or type of behavior. Similarly, Giacomo Casanova gave his
name to a seducer. Niccolo Machiavelli has given his name to
duplicity, deception, and a preference for expediency to
morality, a type of behavior we also recognize in the
catchphrase, "The ends justify the means." In terms of
hatwear, William Bowler lent his name to a type of hat also
referred to as a "billycock hat"-a term that crops up
in the descriptions given by witnesses in the Whitechapel
murders. To my knowledge, Jack the Ripper is the only murderer
among this illustrious and select group of people whose names
have become commonplace in the English language.
The use of the name "Jack the
Ripper" in an allusive sense began soon after the murders.
On 7 March 1890, the Pall Mall Gazette referred to a "Jack
the Ripper outrage at Moscow." In Cocktails (1919), the
story of a Royal Flying Corps officer in World War I, C. P.
Thompson wrote, "If only the officer would let him have a
whack at her over the open sights, he'd do the Jack-the-ripper
act on her in half a tick."
In the Max Hayward and Manya Harari
translation of Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago (Collins &
Harvill Press, 1958), one of the characters says, "I
expected to see a bashi-bazook or a revolutionary Jack the
Ripper, but he was neither."
H. Carmichael in Stranglehold in 1959
wrote, "I had to obtain a Home Office permit. And in case
you still think I'm Jack the Ripper, here it is." A. E.
Lindop in Journey into Stone (1973) "There's a lousy fog._
It's a Jack the Ripper's paradise." In the World War II
movie, The Longest Day, two soldiers are bitching about their
commanding officer, played by John Wayne, who had been riding
them rather hard. One soldier observes in mitigation, "He
knows his job." To the other soldier this was no mitigation
at all. "So did Jack the Ripper," he replies.
In the first episode of the British
television comedy series Only When I Laugh, which is set in a
hospital ward, the character Roy Figgis (James Bolam) welcomes a
new patient to the "Jack the Ripper ward."
And so it goes on. Reference after
reference showing how Jack the Ripper very quickly entered the
public imagination and has come to represent something to the
common psyche.
In all these instances, the name Jack
the Ripper conveyed a meaning which was not dependent on knowing
anything about the deeds of the person behind the name. Just as
it isn't necessary to know that Machiavelli was a Florentine
politician who is today often called "the father of modern
political theory" to know what "machiavellian"
means, it isn't necessary to know what Jack the Ripper did for
his name to convey a clear and precise meaning. What is important
to note is that none of the references to Jack the Ripper say who
he was or what he did. And they didn't need to. It didn't matter.
Jack had become an image. He was undefined evil, the grownup
version of the bogey-man of childhood, the thing that lurked in
the shadows.
The Ripper was important in Police
history, of course, and, in 1894, Chief Inspector John
Littlechild indicated the immense weight accorded the crimes by
Scotland Yard when he listed the Ripper crimes along with the
Fenian dynamite conspiracies and the Great Turf Frauds (in which
senior C.I.D. officers were shown to be corrupt) as crimes of the
greatest importance to Scotland Yard. The Ripper therefore
features in several police memoirs, albeit often mentioned in
passing, as by Littlechild. The crimes were also kept alive by
various journalists, notably the many references by George R.
Sims.
No book-length examination of the crimes
in English appeared until 1929, when Leonard Matters wrote an
account in which he advanced the pseudonymous "Dr.
Stanley" as the Ripper. Then ten years passed before another
book appeared. In the meantime, it was the "image" of
the Ripper which continued to attract attention, largely through
Mrs Belloc Lowndes' novel The Lodger and the many stage and film
adaptations of it which have appeared over the years, including a
1926 movie by Alfred Hitchcock.
Not until the late 1950s and more
particularly the 1970s did the mystery of Jack the Ripper's
identity come to the forefront of the public mind, first with
Daniel Farson's "discovery" of what is now called the
Macnaghten Memoranda written by Sir Melville Macnaghten in 1894
and then with the Royal conspiracy theory advanced first by
Thomas Stowell and later by Joseph Sickert--a theory that was
given great currency by the best-selling book by Stephen Knight,
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976).
The Macnaghten
Memoranda is important because, to our knowledge, it was the
first time that anyone seriously advanced the name of a suspect
for Jack the Ripper, or in this case three names, the suspects
Kosminski, Ostrog, and most importantly, Montague John Druitt,
whom Macnaghten himself favored.
For all its faults, the Royal conspiracy
theory is hugely important in any consideration of why the Ripper
is famous today. Although at this date it has largely been
discredited (although still providing the basis for films), it
attracted worldwide media interest, which in turn brought the
name "Jack the Ripper" and the mystery surrounding his
identity to public attention. In fact, many of the tourists who
today take a walking tour around the Ripper sites, do so because
they have heard of the Ripper's name only in connection with
Royalty.
Recently, of course, the so-called
Maybrick Diary has attracted a lot of media interest with several
books, a video, talk of a movie, and most recently author Paul
Feldman's book having been picked up by CBS. And while we purists
may deplore the popularity of the Royal conspiracy theory and the
Maybrick Diary, it is perhaps worth remembering that without them
Jack the Ripper might be forgotten. Indeed, for example, Stephen
Ryder has said that his interest was piqued by the Diary, and in
consequence he launched the hugely influential Casebook: Jack the
Ripper website on the Internet. Without the Casebook, there would
probably have been no Casebook Productions. And without Casebook
Productions, there would be no Ripper Notes and no Conference
2000 and none of you would be reading these words!
For those of us who enjoy delving into
the facts of what Christopher-Michael DiGrazia has dubbed the
"Great Victorian Mystery," the myths and fictions serve
only to muddy the waters of historical research. They irritate,
annoy, and even generate anger. Yet, the fact remains that Jack
the Ripper is remembered today because those myths and fictions
gave substance to the insubstantial. They gave dimension to the
"lurker in the shadows."
