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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
GEORGE GISSING, novelist: Ripper suspect?
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
GEORGE GISSING, novelist: Ripper suspect?
Author: Peter Morton
Wednesday, 13 December 2000 - 10:47 pm |        | I'm investigating the claim, first made, I believe, by R. Whittington-Egan in his 'Casebook' that the late-Victorian novelist George Gissing was a suspect or at least was interviewed by the police about the Ripper murders. I'd particularly like to know:
1. Where did the W-Egan information come from? Are there any earlier references in print to this matter?
2. Has the matter been referred to by any subsequent Ripper historian in any more detail than that supplied by W-Egan?
There are no mentions on this website of Gissing, who wrote several 'slum' novels in the 1880s-90s, including the masterly 'The Nether World'.
Any information sent to me privately or in this forum will be gratefully received. |
Author: Judith Stock
Thursday, 14 December 2000 - 12:33 am | | Dear Peter,
After checking the ULTIMATE RIPPER SOURCEBOOK, I can find no mention of Gissing, nor have I seen him either named or accused as a suspect, other than by RWE. I can't imagine that Stewart and Keith would miss a suspect who was both famous and supposedly interviewed by the police. I'm also unable to find RWE's source from my copy of his book. Hmmm,
curiouser and curiouser....this sounds like a case for Stewart and/or Paul Begg. Since both have been known to appear, phantom-like, on these boards, maybe they will stumble across your post and have an answer.
Sorry I couldn't be of any help.
Regards,
Judy |
Author: Paul Begg
Thursday, 14 December 2000 - 03:40 am | | Hi all
I know Gissing is mentioned as a suspect by RWE, but don't know RWE's source. I'll see if I can find out.
Cheers
Paul |
Author: Peter Morton
Sunday, 17 December 2000 - 08:30 pm | | I'm grateful for the offers from Paul Begg and from Stephen Ryder to try to locate RWE's source for the Gissing story. I wonder if there is any way of contacting him directly?
There are two other points I forgot to mention in my first posting.
Gissing was in Italy during the murders; there is a casual brief mention of them in his letters. He could, of course, have been interviewed on the basis of his special knowledge of East End life after he returned to England at the end of the year.
There seems to be some echo of the RWE assertion in Peter Ackroyd's novel 'Dan Leno' where a fictional version of Gissing appears, although that 'Gissing' is an innocent party. It would be interesting to know where Ackroyd got the idea from. |
Author: Martin Fido
Monday, 18 December 2000 - 02:08 pm | | Back when we were first compiling the A-Z I telephoned RW-E with a couple of questions about material in 'The Casebook'. One was the source of the Gissing suspicion, (and another the precise source of the alleged journalistic start of the pile of coins and rings under Annie Chapman, since nobody has ever been able to find it in British Library copies of the Pall Mall Gazette). Richard, alas, could no longer remember in either case. I must add, given the occasional snideries occurring on the board, that his integrity is beyond question: there is no doubt at all that some time, somewhere he really did see a charge laid against Gissing. But he is (apart from Tom Cullen)the oldest and wisest of us all, and those of us who are seeing the age of 50 recede sadly into the distance can only agree that excellent memories become hopeless sieves as time goes by. The reason for Gissing's being suspected is easier to see than the source. While a student, he imprudently married a prostitute. This proved disastrous - not because she was immoral or unfaithful, but because whatever the erotic charms that had infatuated him, she simply lacked the social, educational and intellectual skills to be a longterm companion fitting for a writer who veered between the airy-fairy quasi-aesthetic belle-lettrist and the harshly realist. He portrays just such an unhappy mismatch in his best-known novel, 'New Grub Street'. (Possibly twice over, as he portrays a minor character who has a coarse and socially inferior wife, while the protagonist is destroyed by a materialist wife who cannot appreciate his artistic needs). It seems certain that somebody who knew of Gissing's private unhappiness, and maybe disliked the 'naturalist' style of fiction (equivalent to 'brutalism' in its day) thought that he had just the personality and experiences to go about slaying slum-dwelling whores.
Martin F |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Monday, 18 December 2000 - 03:01 pm | | I can only endorse Martin's comments and say that he is correct regarding the reference to Gissing. I have spoken with Richard this evening and he confirms what Martin says, he cannot remember where he read the reference to Gissing as a 'Ripper' suspect, but he definitely did read it somewhere, about 40 years ago. Richard says he will be very pleased if someone is able to enlighten him. He thinks it would have been in the writings of one of the popular authors, such as Colin Wilson, or one of the other early 'Ripper' authors.
Gissing, as Martin notes, was an unhappy character whose pessimism was reflected in his novels. Another of his novels, The Nether World, 1889, was a story of lower class life and was told in his characteristic morose style. |
Author: Peter Morton
Tuesday, 19 December 2000 - 07:58 pm | | Thanks for the additional information - it looks as though the trail has gone cold and I'll have to give up on this pursuit.
The following material on Gissing and the Ripper allegation is condensed from my website. Gissing did indeed have an unrivalled knowledge of slum London, and both a personal and professional interest in prostitutes, and many of his novels do provide some colourful background to the Ripper territory. Moreover, there are some 'mad coincidences' in Gissing's biography for 1888 which may have given rise to the story. None of these facts were known generally until many years later, however.
***
The ridiculous idea that Gissing might have been Jack the Ripper, or had some connection with the Whitechapel murders, seems to have taken on a life of its own; I have heard it mentioned by students who know almost nothing else about Gissing's life. . . .
Ludicrous though the idea is, it does have a certain historical interest. The story must have come from somewhere, and it does raise the possibility that Gissing was perhaps questioned by police after he returned from Italy. If this really happened, it may of course only have been because the authorities knew about his professional interest in low life London, especially as this was presumably around the time of the publication of The Nether World. . . .
There is sort of mad coincidence in the Ripper assertion, though. Nell (G's first prostitute/wife) dies in misery in Lambeth in February of '88, and gives rise to the famous agonised Diary entry made after G. was called to identify the body. Gissing writes The Nether World between then and July. As his biographer Halperin says, he was in a state of 'savage moodiness and misanthropy' and probably at this time was using the services of prostitutes. Unfortunately for the theory, he went off to Italy on 16 September . . .
The Ripper is usually assumed to have been consumed by a psychopathic resentment towards women, especially prostitutes. There is no hint of that in Gissing's biography. Though he is often savagely satirical about women -- especially lower middle class, vulgar women -- he is I think invariably pitying towards 'unfortunates' - though it goes along with a certain erotic fascination with them. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 02 January 2001 - 04:43 pm | | Hi, Peter:
The following information probably will not answer your query on the origins of the alleged connection of Victorian novelist George Gissing with the Whitechapel murders and Richard Whittington-Egan's mention in his 1975 book A Casebook on Jack the Ripper. However, after you posed your query some weeks ago I did a bit of digging and came up with the following reference to an article which I have not had time to locate. Possibly the article might (or might not!) prove useful since it was published about the same time as Richard's book, and RWE being an erudite gentlemen may have known of the article and possibly read it.
The following reference comes from the website for Special Collections at the Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which additionally lists a number of references to the many fictional treatments in which Holmes tackles the Ripper. See http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/ush/06F4.html#Gissing The blurb following the reference is quoted verbatim from the website and is evidently a synopsis of the essay which discusses the fictional Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation) and the real-life writer George Gissing. I wonder if in this essay there could be some mention of the Ripper and of the allegations against the novelist?
Cohen, Saul. "Sherlock Holmes/George Gissing," The Baker Street Journal, 25, No. 2 (June 1975), 94-97. "From 1884 to 1890 the eminent Victorian novelist George Gissing lived on Baker Street. For some mysterious reason, the relationship between Gissing and Holmes has never been discussed. This essay details the many curious circumstances linking these two men."
Peter, good luck with your enquiries and do keep us posted on whether you track down the origin of the allegations against Gissing.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Jacunius
Friday, 11 January 2002 - 03:18 am | | Dear Mr. Peter Morton,
Only a few moments ago, until I found this, I was just about to open the same conversation that you did, but with different questions.
I am also a little bit interested in George Gissing, imagine, slashing a knife instead of a pen through the East End of London!
I have noticed there is a website that may be of use to those who are interested in this famous novelist, it can be found at: George Gissing & Jack the Ripper
However, there is not that much to be found at that link that has not already been discussed here. For instance it has always been stated that the rumour of Gissing being a suspect first appeared in Richard Whittington-Egan’s book; 'A Casebook on Jack the Ripper',(London: Wiley, 1975), and has been cited by authors as being the source ever since.
In fact as Author: Stewart P Evans, notes in his message above of Monday, 18 December 2000 - 03:01 pm:
“…he [Richard. W-E] cannot remember where he read the reference to Gissing as a 'Ripper' suspect, but he definitely did read it somewhere, about 40 years ago.”
Well I’m just about to burst his and many people’s bubble, and perhaps give you Peter a much more realistic even historical correctness on this matter. Richard W-E was definitely not the first person or Ripperologist to print this suspicion of Gissing as the Ripper. It was in fact stated five years earlier in the new and revised Donald McCormick book; ‘The Identity of Jack the Ripper’, 256 p. Arrow Books Ltd. (London, 1970). In this paperback (there was also a hardback version brought out simultaneously by John Long Limited) it is said on page 170:
“Pat Pitman, who collaborated with Colin Wilson in an Encyclopaedia of Murder, has even mentioned the idea that Jack was George Gissing, the novelist—while even so benevolent a character as Dr. Barnardo has been named on the grounds that he was devoted to waifs and strays and that most of the unwanted children in his district were the offspring of prostitutes.”
For me personally, the paragraph by the some time notorious late Mr. McCormick offers a lot in respect to research. For a start, he is quoting that Patricia Pitman had in fact came up with the idea first that Gissing was Jack--and also perhaps that the good old Doctor Barnardo himself was Jack. However, no where in the Encyclopaedia of Murder (published in 1961) does Pitman make any remark to Gissing or Barnardo for that reason? McCormick was also the first to mention, as far as I can account for, Dr. Barnardo being a suspect, unless as he ambiguously seems to put it, Pitman was also the first to mention Barnardo?
So the question remains ‘where did McCormick get his information from?’ Obviously Pitman must have had some publication containing the accusation of Gissing and perhaps Barnardo printed sometime between 1961, and 1970. Apart from Gissing, I myself must now admit, that like Gary Rowlands in his superb thesis of Barnardo entitled ‘The Mad Doctor’ printed in The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999), believe and have done so since 1993, that Barnardo was the Ripper. Yes, Jacunius has finally let the cat out of the bag on this one…umm perhaps I should create a new suspect conversation?
So there you go Mr. Morton, Evans, Fido, Begg, Stock and Chris George, I hope this clarifies a few things that R. W-E was not the first, even at a flying jump to have suspected or even printed that Gissing could have been the Ripper. Therefore, to hunt down publications/articles by Patricia Pitman from the 1960’s, might well become a significant leap towards the beginning of an end of this issue.
Yours Obligingly,
Jacunius. |
Author: Stan Russo
Friday, 03 January 2003 - 03:36 am | | Dear all,
Better late than never. Pat Pittman's belief that George Gissing was 'JTR' is stated as a positive fact by Colin Wilson.
Wilson states that Pittman's belief regarding Gissing's guilt is based on "no discernable grounds". This statement appears in The Mammoth Book of 'JTR', p. 431.
STAN |
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