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UBC: Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell
May. 18th, 2011 01:02 pmEvans, Stewart P., and Keith Skinner. Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001. [library]
It feels weird to be describing a book about Jack the Ripper as beautiful, but, in fact, this is a beautiful book. Also fascinating. It's about the letters--some 200+ in all--sent to the police and newspapers and, of course, the Central News Agency--purporting to be from Jack the Ripper. Evans and Skinner have transcribed all of them and photographed many of them and written a quiet, careful assessment of what these letters do and do not tell us.
They do not tell us anything about the actual murderer. Evans and Skinner see no reason to think any of the letters (including "Dear Boss" and "From Hell") are from the murderer, and I have to admit I agree with them. But the letters tell us a lot about the police investigation, and even more about public response. They also tell us a lot about the more unpleasant parts of human nature: Evans and Skinner discuss the two letter-writers who were actually caught, both women, both with no better motive for writing letters purporting to be from Jack the Ripper than "for a lark." And the letters themselves range from barely literate, barely intelligible scrawls from people who were clearly about as badly off, sanity wise, as the murderer himself, to hoaxes like the "Dear Boss" letter which were written by someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing.
The photographs of the letters are beautifully done. Some of the letters are themselves lovely--there's one in particular, written in October 1889, which looks more like an example in a handwriting manual than anything else--and even the ugliest of the letters (either in terms of aesthetics or contents) are fascinating to look at.
Evans and Skinner did a marvelous job with this book. If I had a coffee table, I'd totally put this on it.
It feels weird to be describing a book about Jack the Ripper as beautiful, but, in fact, this is a beautiful book. Also fascinating. It's about the letters--some 200+ in all--sent to the police and newspapers and, of course, the Central News Agency--purporting to be from Jack the Ripper. Evans and Skinner have transcribed all of them and photographed many of them and written a quiet, careful assessment of what these letters do and do not tell us.
They do not tell us anything about the actual murderer. Evans and Skinner see no reason to think any of the letters (including "Dear Boss" and "From Hell") are from the murderer, and I have to admit I agree with them. But the letters tell us a lot about the police investigation, and even more about public response. They also tell us a lot about the more unpleasant parts of human nature: Evans and Skinner discuss the two letter-writers who were actually caught, both women, both with no better motive for writing letters purporting to be from Jack the Ripper than "for a lark." And the letters themselves range from barely literate, barely intelligible scrawls from people who were clearly about as badly off, sanity wise, as the murderer himself, to hoaxes like the "Dear Boss" letter which were written by someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing.
The photographs of the letters are beautifully done. Some of the letters are themselves lovely--there's one in particular, written in October 1889, which looks more like an example in a handwriting manual than anything else--and even the ugliest of the letters (either in terms of aesthetics or contents) are fascinating to look at.
Evans and Skinner did a marvelous job with this book. If I had a coffee table, I'd totally put this on it.
