Patricia Cornwell - Portrait Of A Killer - Jack The Ripper - Case Closed

"That's not your way," shouted the tall man, "you'll come along the road with us," and he laid his hand on my collar. I shook him off, and informed him that he had now committed an assault, for which I could myself give him in charge. Perhaps it was only post hoc ergo propter hoc, but at any rate, he made no further attempt to prevent me and my friend from ascending the byway. He stuck to us, however, he and his mates; swearing that he would follow me all the night, if need were. We were soon on the top of the col, if I may so call it, from which the pitmen's cottages, lighted within, were visible in the darkness against a starry sky.

"That is where I am going," I said aloud. To my surprise, the tall man answered in a somewhat altered tone, "How long shall you be?" "That depends," I replied, "you had better come to the house with me." "No," said he, "I shall wait for you here;" and the forgeman and I walked up to the cottage together. At its door I dismissed my ally with thanks and a grateful coin; and entering in, I told my tale to my friend the stout pitman and his hearty wife, who heard it with indignation. In less than a minute, he and I sallied from his dwelling in search of the fellows who had dogged me. But they had vanished. Seeing me received and welcomed by people whom they knew, they doubtless felt that pursuit was futile and suspicion vain.

Now, I do not object to adventures, even in the decline of life; nor do I much blame my antagonists, whether their motive were righteous indignation, or, as is more likely, the hope of reward. But I think them guilty of a serious and even dangerous error of judgment in not distinguishing between the appearance of Jack the Ripper and that of your obedient servant, AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN

There may have been a reason that escapes me for this elderly "gentleman" traveling through the country and the mining district, and omitting his name and the names of the places. I suppose there may have been a reason why a "gentleman" in those very class-aware days would have friends who were pitmen or forgemen. But I am at a loss when I try to figure out why anyone would assume that Jack the Ripper was an "elderly gentleman," and why a paper as respected as The Times would publish such a sophomoric tale, unless upper-level journalists were being infected by Rippermania and were grabbing after any Ripper tidbit they could find.

But there are details in the letter worth noting. The author claims to have been traveling a lot of late, and Ripper letters indicate the same. The "gentleman" mingles with the working lower class, and Sickert was known for that. The letter reminds readers that the Ripper is feared not just in London, but everywhere, and this would be a self-serving assertion if the "elderly gentleman" were really Walter Sickert. In his role as Jack the Ripper, he wanted to frighten as many people as he could.

"If the people here only new who I was they would shiver in their shoes," the Ripper writes in a letter mailed from Clapham on November 22, 1889. And as an additional "ha ha" he uses the return address of "Punch amp; Judy St." Sickert would have been familiar with Punch and Judy. The puppet plays were wildly popular, and his idol Degas adored Punch and Judy and wrote about the violent puppet plays in his letters.

Granted, acceptable humor in the Victorian era differs from what is acceptable today. Some people find Punch and Judy to be offensive. Punch beats his infant daughter and throws her out a window. He repeatedly cracks his wife, Judy, on the head, "fairly splitting it in two." He kicks his doctor and says, "There; don't you feel the physic in your bowels? [Punch thrusts the end of the stick into the Doctor's stomach: the Doctor falls down dead, and Punch, as before, tosses away the body with the end of his staff.] He, he, he! [Laughing.]"

In Oswald Sickert's Punch and Judy script, "Murder and Manslaughter or, The Devil Fooled," the puppets' cruel antics go beyond Punch's spending all the household money on "spirits."

Punch dances around with the child.

(hits the child's head against the railing, the child cries)… Oh don't… be quiet my boy (puts him in the corner}.

I will get you something to eat (exits}.

Punch returns, examines the child very closely.

Have you already fallen? Be quiet, be quiet (exits, the child continues to cry}

Punch with porridge and spoon Son of my quiet love do not make me stroppy. There, now be quiet.

(Feeds the child porridge non-stop} there-you go,

there you go. Good heavens!… don't you want to be quiet? Quiet, I say! There you go, there's the rest of the porridge.

(Turns the bowl upside down into the child's face!} Now I have nothing left! (Shakes it crudely} You still won't be quiet?

… (throws the child out of the box}

Oswald may have been writing and drawing Punch and Judy scripts and illustrations for the magazine Die Fliegende Blatter, and Walter eagerly anticipated every copy of the comical magazine the instant it came off the press. I am reasonably certain Walter Sickert would have been familiar with his father's Punch and Judy illustrations and scripts, and several Ripper letters include Punch and Judy-like figures. Consistently, the woman is on her back, the man leaning over her, poised to stab her or strike a blow with his raised long dagger or stick.

The author of the "Elderly Gentleman" letter to The Times may have been using the silly notion of an elderly gentleman being mistaken as the Ripper as an allusion to police and their desperate herding of great masses of "suspects" into police stations for questioning. By now, no East End male was immune from being interrogated. Every residence near the murders had been searched, and adult males of all ages - including men in their sixties - were scrutinized. When a man was taken to a police station, his safety was immediately compromised as angry neighbors looked on. The people of the East End wanted the Ripper. They wanted him badly. They would lynch him themselves if given the chance, and men under suspicion, even briefly, sometimes had to stay inside the police station until it was safe to venture out.

East End bootmaker John Pizer - also known as "Leather Apron" - became a hunted man when the police found a wet leather apron in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, where Annie Chapman was murdered. The leather apron belonged to John Richardson. His mother had washed it and left it outside to dry. Police should have gotten their facts straight before word of this latest "evidence" rang out like a gunshot. Pizer may have been an abusive brute, but he was not a lust-murderer. By the time it was clear the leather apron in the yard had nothing to do with the Ripper murders, Pizer dared not leave his room for fear of being torn apart by a mob.

"That joke about Leather apron gave me real fits," the Ripper wrote to the Central News Office on September 25th.

The Ripper was quite amused by many events he followed in the press, and he thrived on the chaos he caused and adored center stage. He wanted to interact with police and journalists, and he did. He reacted to what they wrote, and they reacted to his reactions until it became virtually impossible to tell who suggested or did what first. He responded to his audience and it responded to him, and Ripper letters began to include more personal touches that could be viewed as an indication of the fantasy relationship the Ripper began to develop with his adversaries.

This sort of delusional thinking is not unusual in violent psychopaths. Not only do they believe they have relationships with the victims they stalk, but they bond in a cat-and-mouse way with the investigators who track them. When these violent offenders are finally apprehended and locked up, they tend to be amenable to interviews by police, psychologists, writers, film producers, and criminal justice students. They would probably talk their incarcerated lives away if their attorneys permitted it.