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truepennySugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994. [library]
This is the best book on Jack the Ripper I have read thus far. Sugden can lay out a clear, coherent narrative of what we know about each crime, he is adamant about relying on primary sources, and when he doesn't know something, he says so flat out. He treats everything we "know" about the identity of Jack the Ripper with rigorous skepticism (including, thank goodness, the claims of Sir Robert Anderson that seem to have hypnotized so many Ripper historians), and the only time I caught him yearning, like a dog on a leash, after a crazy-ass theory was at the very end of the book.
Sugden badly wants George Chapman (the murderer not the Elizabethan poet) to be a viable suspect for the Ripper, mostly because Inspector Abberline thought he was. And I'm sorry, Chapman's just not. Yes, the dates match up. Yes, he seems to have been consistently and casually abusive toward his wife and the succession of women he lived with and murdered. And yes, of course, he murdered three women by the prolonged administration of antimony. But--and Sugden even reluctantly admits this--there's a yawning chasm of difference between slow poison and frenzied knife work, between Chapman's sadistic hypocrisy (he was noted for the care with which he tended each of his victims as she was "mysteriously" dying, and I wonder if there was a little Münchausen by Proxy going on there, too) and the Ripper's M.O. The Ripper never really went to town until after his victims were dead.
But that's the last chapter in the book, and Sugden's inherent honesty won't let him off the leash. He wants it to be true, but he never claims it is.
There are, of course, criticisms I can make.
But the only one I can think of that actually affects whether or not this is a good gateway for people interested in Jack the Ripper is that, by the nature of the historiography of Jack the Ripper, Sugden spends a lot of time demonstrating that earlier historians are wrong. He has to, because so many of their claims have become things "everybody knows" about Jack the Ripper. But if you don't know the earlier theories, you may be baffled as to why the various subjects even come up. All historiography is a conversation, but the historiography of the Ripper is a party in an over-crowded room, where somebody starting shouting half an hour ago, and now everybody's talking too loudly. It can be hard to hear anything over the din.
This is the best book on Jack the Ripper I have read thus far. Sugden can lay out a clear, coherent narrative of what we know about each crime, he is adamant about relying on primary sources, and when he doesn't know something, he says so flat out. He treats everything we "know" about the identity of Jack the Ripper with rigorous skepticism (including, thank goodness, the claims of Sir Robert Anderson that seem to have hypnotized so many Ripper historians), and the only time I caught him yearning, like a dog on a leash, after a crazy-ass theory was at the very end of the book.
Sugden badly wants George Chapman (the murderer not the Elizabethan poet) to be a viable suspect for the Ripper, mostly because Inspector Abberline thought he was. And I'm sorry, Chapman's just not. Yes, the dates match up. Yes, he seems to have been consistently and casually abusive toward his wife and the succession of women he lived with and murdered. And yes, of course, he murdered three women by the prolonged administration of antimony. But--and Sugden even reluctantly admits this--there's a yawning chasm of difference between slow poison and frenzied knife work, between Chapman's sadistic hypocrisy (he was noted for the care with which he tended each of his victims as she was "mysteriously" dying, and I wonder if there was a little Münchausen by Proxy going on there, too) and the Ripper's M.O. The Ripper never really went to town until after his victims were dead.
But that's the last chapter in the book, and Sugden's inherent honesty won't let him off the leash. He wants it to be true, but he never claims it is.
There are, of course, criticisms I can make.
- Why are we listening to anything Walter Dew has to say? His memoirs are every bit as untrustworthy as any of the other police memoirs, if not more, since he is DEMONSTRABLY making shit up to inflate his own importance.
- Why will you not admit that Mrs. Long's description of the man she saw the morning of Annie Chapman's murder is useless? She said he looked "foreign," which every book I've read on the murders admits is code for Jewish, which therefore means nothing more than that the man Mrs. Long saw looked like what she thought a Jew should look like. So there's no earthly reason to say, as Sugden persists in saying even in his summing up, that the murderer might look "continental."
- And if you're going to make a case that the Stride and Eddowes murders (the "Double Event") show signs of clumsily orchestrated anti-Semitism (both victims murdered near Jewish clubs, Israel Schwartz's suspect shouting "Lipski!" at him, the Goulston Street graffito, which is a whole can of cthulhus all by itself), you have to explain why the other Ripper murders show no such signs, instead of just ignoring your own thesis for the rest of the book.
But the only one I can think of that actually affects whether or not this is a good gateway for people interested in Jack the Ripper is that, by the nature of the historiography of Jack the Ripper, Sugden spends a lot of time demonstrating that earlier historians are wrong. He has to, because so many of their claims have become things "everybody knows" about Jack the Ripper. But if you don't know the earlier theories, you may be baffled as to why the various subjects even come up. All historiography is a conversation, but the historiography of the Ripper is a party in an over-crowded room, where somebody starting shouting half an hour ago, and now everybody's talking too loudly. It can be hard to hear anything over the din.
