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Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 2771
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 11:20 am: |       |
The American Murders of Jack the Ripper
R. Michael Gordon
ISBN: 0-275-98155-X
Praeger Publishers
Publication Date: November 30, 2003
Endorsement From Virginia McConnell author of Sympathy for the Devil:
...Readers will enjoy Gordon's meticulously detailed background of New York City at the end of the 19th century and the fascinating tidbits unearthed by his research into the private holdings of those who were on the scene in Whitechapel in 1888.
Description:
For the first time, the American murders of Jack the Ripper are revealed in the 1891 and 1892 crimes of Severin Klosowski (a.k.a. George Chapman, the Borough Poisoner), a prime suspect in the Ripper case. After his narrow escape from Scotland Yard, the killer would travel to the New York City area where four high-profile murders took place soon after his arrival. With Victorian era New York as his backdrop, Gordon recounts the gruesome scenes. He also details Klosowski's subsequent return to England where he would eventually be convicted and executed for another murder spree, this time with poison as his weapon of choice!
Readers will learn about these unknown Ripper victims: Carrie Brown, an aging prostitute, was brutally slashed and mutilated in her hotel room in 1891. Hannah Robinson, a servant girl, was found strangled to death at a construction site on Long Island that summer. Early the following year, 73-year-old Elizabeth Senior struggled bravely against an intruder who stabbed her multiple 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 with her throat cut. How could the Ripper evade capture so easily? Why did the American connection remain hidden for so long?
Subject Category: History
Sub-Category: American History -- Nineteenth Century
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 69
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 5:53 pm: | |
What is Virginia McConnell's "Sympathy for the devil"? I have given that title to one of my courses (on literary treatments of the devil) luring unsuspecting students in with the false premise that having heard of Mick Jagger I can't really be an antiquated pedant.
All the best,
Martin F |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 2774
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 8:25 pm: | |
Hi Martin -
The full title is: Sympathy for the Devil: The Emmanuel Baptist Murders of Old San Francisco
From Amazon: "McConnell uncovers details of the 1895 arrest and trial of a medical student for the grisly murder of two young women inside San Francisco's Emmanuel Baptist Church in what the press of the day characterized as a reenactment of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Contradictions in evidence, outlandish media coverage, and the complex mind of accused are explored. "
Actually quite favorably reviewed, might pick myself up a copy. Its done by the same printing house as R. Michael Gordon's forthcoming book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=027597054X/casebookjackth01A/
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 72
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Friday, July 11, 2003 - 3:36 am: | |
Oh, right! Thanks, Spry. Is she the loon who suggests that Theodore Durrant (the Emmanuel Baptist church murderer) might have been the Ripper?
All the best,
Martin |
Christopher T George
Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 232
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, July 11, 2003 - 11:32 am: | |
Hi, Martin:
I believe you are thinking of Robert Graysmith's The Bell Tower: Jack the Ripper in San Francisco which dealt with the Theo Durrant case but that found the reverend in the situation to be the killer not Durrant.
Actually Graysmith's thesis seems about as good as R. Michael Gordon's. We have had several good articles on the Carrie Brown case in Ripper Notes and Ripperologist, by Wolf Vanderlinden and Michael Conlon, respectively. Both authors have emphasized that the man seen with Brown before her murder, described as a man with a light blond mustache, which does not in the least resemble the heavily dark mustached Severin Klosowski (George Chapman).
So it appears that the R. Michael Gordon industry has churned out yet another book, his third (!) after Alias Jack the Ripper and The Thames Torso Murders, both from McFarland, on George Chapman full of wishful thinking. Actually, I suppose we should have suspected a book on Chapman's supposed American murders would not be far behind.
Wolf Vanderlinden has written that Chapman was likely not in the United States at the time of the murder of Carrie Brown at the East River Hotel on the night of April 23/24, 1891.
Best regards
Chris George |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 2860
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Friday, October 24, 2003 - 10:13 pm: | |
This is R. Michael Gordon's third book on the Whitechapel Murders, and through each of them runs a common thread - George Chapman, a.k.a. Severin Klosowski. For Gordon there is no question - Chapman and the Ripper were one and the same, and both names are used interchangeably throughout the text.
This book focuses entirely on a series of four murders committed in the New York/New Jersey area during 1891 and 1892. One of those names is familiar to the Ripper audience - Carrie Brown - but the other three are "newcomers" to the field: Hannah Robinson, Elizabeth Senior and Mary Anderson. All four, according to Gordon, were slain by George Chapman - alias, Jack the Ripper.
In the case of Carrie Brown there are, as other researchers such as Michael Conlon have shown, enough similarities to support some slight connection to the Ripper series. Not so for the remaining three. For Gordon the connection seems to be that they were murdered in the same general area and timeframe that George Chapman was known to have been living there. Elizabeth Senior was strangled, with her throat cut and several stab wounds to the chest... sounds promising at first, but she was 73 years old. Robinson herself was strangled and left for dead beside a railroad, while Anderson was shot in the back with a revolver (her throat was then cut with a razor, post-mortem). Superficial similarities exist, to be sure, but hardly enough to definitively state that these were The American Murders of Jack the Ripper.
In the end your opinion of this book will likely hinge on your opinion of George Chapman as a suspect. If you champion his candidacy as the Ripper, this book would be an important addition to your Ripper library. Others may not agree, though Gordon's in-depth analyses of these three relatively unknown Victorian murders does provide for interesting reading, even if it has nothing at all to do with Jack the Ripper.
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper |
Natasha Evans
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 - 5:11 pm: | |
Can anyone lead me in the right direction for sources directly apertaining to the media coverage and sensations caused by such at ANY period of history to do with the Jack the Ripper case? I need a strong literary critique of the media and its' purposes/effects on popular opinion.
Thanks! : )
Tasha |
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