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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 **
Claude Conder
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
Claude Conder
Author: Kevin Mitchell
Saturday, 11 August 2001 - 02:46 am |        | In this week's edition of my local paper, The Surrey Advertiser, there is an article suggesting that Jack The Ripper was `living in or about' Guildford in 1888 and was one Colonel Claude Reignier Condor, a 39 year-old British intelligence officer.
The article is based on a claim by crime writer Tom Slemen and criminologist Keith Andrews. They say that Col Conder was a close friend of Sir Charles Warren, who knew him to be the Ripper.
BBC Radio Merseyside have already broadcast a documentary on this theory. Has anyone here heard the documentary, or would anyone like to know more about the article?
Kevin |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Saturday, 11 August 2001 - 06:12 am | | Kevin:
Tom Slemen seems to have vanished from these pages and hasn't replied to my emails for some time. As to whether he's a "crime writer" most of his previous works have been on ghosts in and around Merseyside and "unsolved mysteries" in the vein of the late Frank Edwards. As to whether Keith Andrews qualifies as a criminologist, maybe someone out there has heard of him? One of the main planks in Tom's theory seemed to have been that Conder lived at an address in London close to Whitechapel. Regretfully that proved to have been a mistake caused by a street name in East London similar to the street in Guildford where Conder demonstrably lived with his wife about 1881.
Apart from this, there is no more evidence fingering Conder as JtR than there is for Weedon Grossmith or indeed any of the other residents of England at the time.
Stories about mysterious middle-Eastern symbols scratched on the face of Eddowes may appear in Tom's forthcoming book (if it is published) but should be taken with as much salt as would make a Lott's wife as large as the Statue of Liberty.
In short, this is another case of picking someone at random and then fitting them up as Jack. For other examples, see Barnett, Maybrick, Clarence, Carroll - the list goes on. I would advise anyone interested in the Conder story to think carefully before putting too much faith in it. |
Author: The Viper
Saturday, 11 August 2001 - 06:28 am | | Anybody wishing to read the article in this week's Surrey Advertiser can do so. Simply click Here; select News & Sport from the menu on the left; select News Search (on the right); search for the word Ripper and bingo!
Regards, V. |
Author: Kevin Mitchell
Saturday, 11 August 2001 - 08:20 am | | Peter
Familiar with the Surrey Ad as I am, I would consider anything in it to be a load of old tut until proven otherwise, period. However, I would be a poor Ripper enthusiast not to inform others about the article. Just don't waste 50p buying a copy!
Kevin |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Sunday, 12 August 2001 - 07:22 am | | Kevin:
It's probably the same as the 13th April 01 piece from the Gloucestershire Echo and Citizen Online.site which should be read by those beloved of conspiracy theories.
The thing will probably get published, sell millions, gain the interest of producers of video tapes and provide gainful employment for an army of researchers.
Conder does have descendents unlike the late-lamented Maybrick. I wonder what they think of this? |
Author: Tom Wescott
Sunday, 12 August 2001 - 11:42 pm | | Hello all,
I thought Slemen had some big publishing deal and we could expect the book shortly? What happened? Lots of hoopla and then POOF! he's gone quicker than a Casebook newbie. Does it turn out that there's no publishing deal at all? Who would put that much press into something that's not ready to come out? Wierd.
Tom Wescott |
Author: Tom Wescott
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 12:20 am | | Hello all,
I have been reading 'Sickert and the Ripper Crimes' by Jean Overton Fuller. I'm not quite half-way through yet, but I've seen a few mentions of a man named Charles Conder who was apparently good friends with Walter Sickert. Could this guy be the same as Claude Conder, or a relation? Is yet another Walter Sickert link the basis for Slemen's theory? If you can shed some light on this theory (anyone!) for me, please do.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 01:33 am | | Tom - The following is the brief article on
Charles Conder in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"CONDER,CHARLES (1868-1909), English artist,
son of a civil engineer, was born in London, and spent his early years in India. After an English
education he went into the government service in
Australia, but in 1890 determined to devote
himself to art, and studied for several years in
Paris, where in 1893 he became an associate of
the Societe Nationaled des Beaux-Arts. About
1895 his reputation as an original painter, particularly of Watteau-like designs for fans, spread among a limited circle of artists in
London, mainley connected first with the New
English Art Club, and later the International
Society; and his unique and charming decorative
style in dainty pastoral scenes, gradually gave
him a peculiar vogue among connoisseurs. Examples
of his work were bought for the Luxemburg and other art galleries. Conder suffered much in later years from ill-health, and died on the 9th of February 1909."
He was a friend, not only of Walter Sickert but
of the writer, critic, and caracaturist Max Beerbohm. You may recall that Beerbohm had been
told a Jack the Ripper story by Sickert, another
friend of his. In LETTERS OF MAX BEERBOHM: 1892-
1956 (ed. Rupert Hart-Davies) (New York, London:
W.W.Norton and Co., 1989)there is a letter by
Beerbohm, to his first wife, Florence Kahn, dated
Friday, 11 May 1906, on page 50. In discussing
what Beerbohm was currently doing, he writes,
"I am going to call on the Conders this afternoon.
Conder had an exhibition in Paris lately - not a
success, I am sorry to say. But his wife has been
ill, also, having fallen down in a sudden faint
and cut her cheek seriously."
There is more on Conder in THE LETTERS OF ERNEST
DOWSON, Collected & Edited by Desmond Flower and
Henry Maas (Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck, New
Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1967). On pages 264-265 is the following:
"In 1895 Arthur Symons met [Leonard] Smithers,
and persuaded him to start a new magazine to replace THE YELLOW BOOK as a vehicle for [Aubrey]
Beardsley. Thus THE SAVOY was conceived and by the time of its birth a few months later there had gathered round Smithers a group of the most
original younger writers and artists of the 'nineties including besides Symons and Beardsley,
Dowson, Conder, [William] Rothenstein, Max Beerbohm, and W.B.Yeats."
Dowson was a close friend of Conder, and in the
summer of 1897 they met Oscar Wilde at Arques,
France. Wilde is quoted in a letter (dated 19 June 1897) from Dowson to a friend, Conal O'Riordan, describing Conder this way:
"When Conder had left he [Wilde] described, by the way, Conder's delighfully inconsequential
mind & manner of conversation, which you will remember to perfection. Conder's conversation
he [Wilde] said "is like a beautiful sea-mist."
N'est ce pas, que c'est le trait?" [P. 384-385].
Like many of the figures of the Yellow Decade,
Conder's work and personality seem to have fallen
into obscurity. But he seems to have been a
charming, if ultimately unlucky man.
Jeff |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 05:40 pm | | Hi, Jeff:
Thanks for enlightening us further about Conder's life and achievements. The question remains was Conder an artist, public figure, and friend of Sir Charles Warren's and Jack the Ripper all at the same time? It seems to me to weaken Slemen's case that Conder appears to have lived on as a public figure in the decades after the Ripper murders ceased, and also, unless Slemen is able to prove different, that there was no breath of suspicion that he was the murderer. Mixing in the same circles as Warren and Sickert hardly makes him a suspect.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 07:03 pm | | Hi Chris,
I have no opinion one way or another on the
Claude Conder theory. But it is curious that
for some time now there have been undercurrents
about Ripper relationships (for want of a
better description) between police figures and
people somehow connected to literati, especially
those connected to Yellow Book artists. Back in
1976, when Donald Rumbelow wrote his Ripper book,
he mentioned a new theory regarding Frank Miles,
a friend of Oscar Wilde, who did not die in the
year he was supposed to, but in an asylum in 1891.
Miles was supposed to be the candidate for the
Ripper. It was pointed out then that Sir Melville
MacNaughten was Wilde's neighbor on Tite Street
in London. Elements of the murders were supposed
to be in Wilde's writings (i.e., the murder of
the painter Basil Hallward in THE PICTURE OF
DORIAN GRAY - though I can't really see this).
The "Sickert" revelations, actually go back to
1949, when Osbert Sitwell wrote his NOBLE ESSENCES, and there was said to have told the
story of the Ripper suspect who lived in a
boarding house. In the 1970s came the other
Sickert story about Mary Kelly, the Masons, the
Royal Family, and Gull and Netley. One of these
Sickert tales was related to Max Beerbohm, and
William Rothenstein. Now we have Claude Conder
and his cousin Charles.
Have we been looking at this the wrong way, and
ignoring that the literati do occasionally pick
up on crimes, and use them in their stories or
poetry, without getting involved in them? A few
years after Whitechapel, Martial Bourdin tried
to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, but was
killed instead. Joseph Conrad took this event
and turned it into his excellent novel, THE
SECRET AGENT. So far nobody has suggested that
Conrad was a co-conspirator with Bourdin (which
is not my suggestion at all), but in his day a
sorry side effect of the book was the number of
"nice people" who thought that Conrad, being a
Polish immigrant, obviously knew many nasty,
foreign spies and anarchist types. He really
didn't.
Jeff |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 09:34 pm | | Hi, Jeff:
I think too much can be read into the fact that people knew each other or lived in close proximity to each other and may know each other (which we cannot know for certain). Was there something connecting these artists to the Ripper murders? Probably not. More likely they all lived in London at the same time and had the same passing interest or maybe even fascination with the murders that the general public had. There is also the idea that artists (i.e., visual artists and writers) do sometimes use violent crimes in their art, although that should not necessarily implicate them in the crimes either. I know you are not suggesting otherwise, but I think it would do us well to keep things in perspective. I keep coming back to the idea that these murders were mysterious and everyone is clutching at anything that will make sense of them, even if the pieces don't fit, which is usually the case with these theories!
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Tom Wescott
Sunday, 19 August 2001 - 11:15 pm | | Hello all,
Jeff, thanks for the bio on Conder. I remember reading most of that on a thread a long time ago and thinking that such an accomplished man shouldn't have his name besmudged by half-baked accusations, but was willing to hold off until I knew more about the theory. After I signed off last night I opened my new issue of Ripperologist and read Des McKenna's summary of the Tom Slemen radio broadcast in which he has Annie Chapman and Mary Kelly drinking together and then ripping off Conder's house along with the other victims! He also says that 'Juwes' means 'twos' in some odd language that both he and Sir Charles Warren spoke and it was supposed to be a clue for his comrade, Warren. All I can say is that his sources had better be DAMN good!
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott
P.S. Are there any friends/acquaintences of Walter Sickerts that haven't been named the Ripper yet? If so, who would like to collaberate with me on a book of them?  |
Author: Qbase
Monday, 20 August 2001 - 09:43 am | | Hello,
Here is a picture of Mr Claude Conder which can also be seen in this months Ripperologist Magazine.
G |
Author: graziano
Monday, 20 August 2001 - 10:00 am | | Hello Qbase,
nice picture, but behind which tree is he hiding exactly ?
Bye. Graziano.  |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Monday, 20 August 2001 - 11:25 pm | | Tom,
I got it. The mysterious yellow nineties writer,
Enoch Soames, who was the subject of an essay
by Max Beerbohm in his book SEVEN MEN, vanished
toward the end of the year 1897. Beerbohm claimed
Soames had sold his soul to the devil, but this
could have been false. Maybe he was the Ripper!
We have to first locate his very rare book of
poetry, FUNGOIDS!
Let me know if you are interested.
Jeff |
Author: Tom Wescott
Tuesday, 21 August 2001 - 12:01 am | | Jeff,
Sounds promising, but I've got a better theory. We know our Jack was handy with the knife, right? It's been suggested that he may have been a barber (ala Chapman). Walter Sickert MUST have had a regular barber. If we track him down we've got our man! Are you up to the challenge?
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Author: Grailfinder
Tuesday, 21 August 2001 - 04:45 am | | Hi all
All this talk of Yellow Books has brought to mind a question I first asked myself a few years ago with regards to Oscar Wilde.
Wilde's writings (i.e., THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY etc.) have long been rumored to hold clues to the Whitechappel mystery.
It was whilst reading one of Wilde's short stories (Sorry but I have forgotten the Title) that the above mentioned question jumped into my mind.
The question was this, Why was the main character (a Lord somebody?) so scared to get into a Yellow and Black Cab? what was it about these colours or this Cab Company, that so disturbed him? And what, if anything was Wilde implying?
Ideas anyone?
LnH GF. |
Author: marion rough
Tuesday, 15 January 2002 - 10:16 pm | | | Condor wasn't just friends with Charles Warren he was his right hand man, and they also wrote a book together. Condor lived where the murders were committed, and was trained how to kill quickly, and without a sound when he was in palestine discovering the language that was written on the wall that only he and Warren knew, because they had just discoved the ancient hebrew language. The clues were not left for the police they were left for Warren, so that he could cover Condor's tracks for him. It's a pretty good theory if you ask me, I wouldn't go knocking Tom Sleman until you actually hear his theory. His website is www.ghostcity19.freeserve.co.uk/ The guy has some good theories, he's got me thinking. |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Wednesday, 16 January 2002 - 06:40 am | | Marion:
"Condor
lived where the murders were committed,"
He didn't. He lived near Guildford, an area far,far away both in distance and circumstances from Whitechapel. Tom Slemen confused addresses and if he is still saying that Conder lived at Waterden Road Hackney, he must have forgotten what I told him about 9 months ago:
"Hi Tom:
Thanks for the info and photo of Conder. His eyes look pretty sinister! I have to tell you though that you have the wrong Waterden Road. Conder and his family together with the visitor Miss Alexander lived in Surrey near Guildford not in the Waterden Road just behind Hackney Greyhound Stadium which was not there as far as I know in 1881." PRAB email 19/04.2001
"Thanks for clearing up the Waterden Road mystery. I still have several Whitechapel connections with Conder. " Slemen reply 19/04.2001..
The cuts on the face (not surely on the wall if you mean the Goulston graffiti) seem more likely to be meant to signify tears or possibly clown make-up. Perhaps if we have a Hebrew scholar available they could verify whether these marks actually mean anything. |
Author: Kevin Mitchell
Wednesday, 16 January 2002 - 07:30 am | | Waterden Road is not `near' Guildford, it is in Guildford, being only a couple of hundred yards from where the Epsom and London roads converge at the western end of the High Street.
Be excellent to each other
Kevin
(Guildford resident) |
Author: Peter R.A. Birchwood
Wednesday, 16 January 2002 - 10:05 am | | Thanks for the correction Kevin: it's often difficult for someone reading the 1881 census to tell exactly where a road is in connection to the modern town.
Have you any idea how Waterden Road looked in the 1880's? I would presume it to be fairly prosperous. Perhaps a hunt could be made there for Claude Conder's collection of materia medica! |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Wednesday, 16 January 2002 - 02:20 pm | | | Peter, Having lived in Guildford for over 50 years I know the area rather well. Kevin has given the corrct location.The nearest Railway station to Condor's house is London Rd Station which is only several minutes walk away.The area regarding the houses is as it was in the 1880s.The main difference being is that Watenden Rd and the area is now well known for flats and bed sits.Around the 1880's it was a middle, and upper middle class area.When Condor lived there most of the people living in the area had servants.Two seperate murders of young women in that area took place in recent years both unconnected. Both killers were caught and given life. |
Author: Dan Norder
Thursday, 21 November 2002 - 05:47 am | | To go with the current trend to resurrect dead threads...
Anyone interested in hearing the BBC Radio Merseyside radio documentary mentioned in the first post can go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/realmedia/radiomerseyside/rip.ram
or just click that link on the authors' website:
http://www.geocities.com/johnkennedyzap/ripper.html
The author narrates his own theory, but of course doesn't separate known facts from wild speculation. The other voice talents seem pretty competent.
I have to admit that the idea of "a real-life British Ninja-like intelligence agent" and Satanist who left coded messages in supposed ancient Hebrew writing in the Goulston Grafitto and Eddowes' face is interesting... though solely in a "they can't be serious, can they?" sort of way. Those bloody British ninjas are always getting into trouble.
Dan |
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