This is the full-text of A.P. Wolf's Jack the Myth, originally published by Robert Hale in 1993. It is reprinted here in its entirety, with new revisions, by the kind permission of A.P. Wolf. You may start reading it from the beginning, or you can jump to specific chapters by clicking the links below.
Introduction
It is baffling that some of the finest crime writers of our century
have busied themselves for years with the horrific crimes committed
in Whitechapel in 1888 by Jack the Ripper, and in reality have not
come one inch closer to the identification of the killer or his
obscure motives. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that we are
now, over one hundred years later, further away from the truth of the
matter than ever before.
The majority of `Ripper' writers are responsible for this sad and
confusing situation, for it is they who have portrayed the killer as
some kind of superhuman monster. Almost the Invisible Man claims one
famous writer on the subject - capable of deadly acts bordering on
the supernatural, striking out at will against harmless prostitutes
with terrifying force and speed. A black-caped demon clutching a
black bag full of horrors and capped with a deerstalker, prowling the
darkened streets of Whitchapel, dismembering and disemboweling - in
one case almost utterly destroying his victim beyond all
recognition - when he will, how he will, and without let or
hindrance from a helpless and seemingly immature police force.
Jack the Ripper.
A name to chill the blood, an elusive black wraith of murder and
mayhem who still eludes, deludes and fascinates us today. That is the
image we are constantly given by some authors and it is these same
authors who have, to a certain extent, been guilty of mystifying and
magnifying the case of Jack the Ripper out of all proportion to what
was really a serious murder inquiry. To their credit some of them may
well have captured the soul and the spirit of Jack the Ripper, but in
doing so they have irretrievably lost their man. They have
concentrated on the myth and so enlarged it that the man himself
disappears from the pages of history and we are left grappling with a
character from fiction much like Count Dracula or Frankenstein.
Ripper literature has evolved over the years into some kind of super-
pornography, designed to titillate the discerning reader - the
sophisticated armchair murderer - with much, much more than standard
pornography can ever offer, with its elaborate theories of forbidden
sex and bodily destruction. To take but one lurid example which has
the impotent killer substituting his penis for a knife and then
thrusting it into the reproductive organs of his victims as an act of
sexual finality.
The details of the horrific murders are mulled over in a serious
crime-writer style of language as is appropriate to this peculiar
form of high-class pornography, but the sexual connotations which
probably sell the books in the first place are still there. For
example:
Was Mary Jane Kelly buggared before being ripped to pieces?
Did the Ripper cut the throats of his prostitute victims while they
were bent over in front of him exposing their backside for sex or did
he lay them on the ground, have them raise their skirts for sexual
intercourse and then plunge his knife into them?
Even Donald Rumbelow - a policeman who is considered to be the
leading authority on the Ripper murders - in his otherwise serious
examination of the case `The Complete Jack the Ripper' couldn't
resist the temptation to inform his readers that the killer most
likely struck from behind as most prostitutes in those days preferred
anal intercourse rather than normal intercourse to prevent unwanted
pregnancies. He then goes on to reveal that the majority of
prostitutes are able to bring a man to climax without any insertion
at all, merely grasping the offending object between their thighs to
satisfy their customers. One is left wondering exactly what these
choice snippets concerning the sexual behaviour of prostitutes in
1888 and today have to do with a murder case, and where the author
gleaned his astonishing information from in the first place? Perhaps
Rumbelow could explain to his readers why he chose to include in his
book horrifying pictures of the bloody remains of the victims of the
Ripper?
It is well worth looking at some of Colin Wilson's comments in his
latest effort - as he is one of the most prolific Ripper writers of
all time - to come to grips with `his' Ripper. In describing the
Ripper about his task of killing Annie Chapman, Wilson equates the
killer's behaviour with that of a dog copulating with a bitch on
heat. Mary Jane Kelly's murder has blood spurting over walls and
Wilson postulates that the Ripper must therefore have been naked when
he discovered the `ultimate thrill', a 3-month-old foetus in the
victim's womb. When it comes to Catherine Eddowes' murder Wilson uses
words like `delight' and `delicate' to describe the horrifying attack
and then goes on to make the curious statement that the killer `went
almost insane' when he found another victim to murder and mutilate.
That is an odd way to describe the actions of a knife-wielding maniac
with a bent for murdering and then cutting the insides out of women.
Surely the Ripper was already insane before he began his attack on
Catherine Eddowes?
In the case of Annie Chapman's sad and brutal murder Wilson's choice
of words is particularly painful. After all what on earth have
copulating dogs got to do with the callous murder of a woman? And
Wilson's `ultimate thrill' of the Ripper discovering the foetus of a
child in the womb of Mary Jane Kelly is a bit of a damp squib. Dr
Thomas Bond's extensive post-mortem carried out the day after Kelly
was murdered makes it absolutely clear that she was not pregnant.
There was no foetus to provide Wilson's Ripper with the ultimate
thrill.
As an aside to the main story Colin Wilson throws in a case where the
victim's intestines were torn out through her vagina, and keen to
show us that his Ripper is no ordinary mass murderer he launches into
a dramatic and bloody description of his Ripper at his gruesome work.
He reveals that the Ripper was not content to merely stab and maim
his victims but achieved his pleasure from delving into the bodies
and extracting the bloody contents. He then goes on with what almost
seems admiration for his Ripper when he describes the killer as being
as skillful as a butcher who would never have left a woman dying and
performed his mutilations by touch alone.
We will have much more to say about Wilson's opinions and his general
influence on the subject of murder, past and present, later, but for
now this illustrates the `stuff' that is the `Ripperologist's' bread
and butter. This is the type of fictional trivia that is constantly
dished up in ever-increasing portions by these people. Armchair
detectives writing about the activities of the Ripper for their
specialized readers, armchairs murderers. In this curious and quite
unique literary vacuum the roles become strangely reversed with the
armchair murderers becoming the helpless victims of their armchair
detectives and crime writers.
