| Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide |
This text is from the E-book Jack the Ripper: A Suspect Guide by Christopher J. Morley (2005). Click here to return to the table of contents. The text is unedited, and any errors or omissions rest with the author. Our thanks go out to Christopher J. Morley for his permission to publish his E-book.
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Sims was born in 1847 and educated at Bonn University. He took up journalism in 1874 and enjoyed wide popularity as a novelist, playwright and poet. He is perhaps best remembered as the author of the much parodied ballad, It Is Christmas Day In The Workhouse. He used his excellent police contacts to write about the Ripper murders for the publication The Referee, under the pseudonym Dragonet. Sims claimed that in 1888 a coffee stallholder in Whitechapel saw a portrait of Sims advertising his latest book, and believed he was the likeness of a suspicious man with bloodstained cuffs who had come to his stall shortly after the double murder, and announced to the stallholder that he would hear of two more murders the following day. Sims would make frequent references to this story, and appeared to believe the Ripper looked exactly like himself.
A successful playwright, his most notable success was The Light of London, his autobiography My Life - Sixty Years Recollections Of Bohemian London, was published in 1917. Sims later came to believe the rumours that the Ripper was Montague John Druitt. In 1913 to counter these rumours Inspector John Littlechild wrote to Sims naming Dr Tumblety as a more likely suspect, this became known as the Littlechild letter. Sims died in 1922.
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