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Robert Hale 1993 (hardcover)
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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.
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.