Talking of Bazalgette in the last post got me wondering where the old sewage works, that my little Edwardian pile was built on, moved to. The likeliest candidate was Beddington a few miles south of here. Whilst I was nosing around the local bird group's site, I came upon this photograph taken in 2006 in Richmond Park. (One of the royal parks just south of the river - huge - where
Henry VIII used to go deer hunting.) It's amazing what you can see in London! (It was however a long, long way from home!)
Now one of the effects of a stroke, besides the immediate effects of aphasia, word-blindness, paralysis and other such symptoms, is an overwhelming sense of tiredness. The need for sleep. While the reasons for it may be conscious, trying to learn how to move limbs again, which resolutely refuse to do so, or trying to say 'continually' by practising out loud ad infinitum, the 're-mapping' of neural pathways to make up for the brain cells which have died, is, I think, a largely 'unconscious' affair which makes the tiredness all the more difficult to comprehend. You know that there are rational reasons for it but it is, nevertheless, all a bit mysterious.
As an avid reader of books, usually one or two per week, I have managed one and half in two months, despite having my days (and nights) largely to myself, ie not working. The effort to read perhaps 40-50 pages per hour (my usual speed) is just too much. I find myself, most times, giving up after half an hour or so. Painting is even more difficult!
This is where the internet comes in!
The medium is only effective in imparting information when everything is broken down into 'bite-sized' chunks. In general, no more than 1 or 2 sides of A4 typescript per topic. No more than a thousand words. Less is even better. (Do word counts on this blog; you'll see what I mean). At least that is the advice which most 'internet stylists' give! As a result, the internet, at the moment, is far easier to 'read' than some 400 page book, however interesting. This is where Jack enters the scene, stage right.
What makes Jack the Ripper so enduring? There will always be people who write about a single subject, devote an enormous amount of time researching a single subject, until they have exhausted all original documents and spend their time waiting for new ones to come to light. There will always be those that Bernard Levin called 'single issue fanatics'. That is to be expected. But why is Jack so enduring in the 'public eye'. Each new book, speculating a different identity for the 'Leather Apron', for the instigator of the 'Whitechapel murders', can almost be guaranteed a place on the best seller lists.
Is it because the crimes were never solved? Not a remarkable event in the nineteenth century. Is it the morbid fascination with the manner of the killings? Possibly although only two of the purported victims were actually eviscerated. Is it because they suddenly stopped, as suddenly as they started? Is it because it is widely believed that this was the first 'serial killer'? Again possible, but this was largely due to the hostility of the press towards the police at the time; any stick was good enough to beat them with, so publicise it! In spades! Is it because so many original documents have 'disappeared' that it all smacks of a conspiracy in high places? Undoubtedly! Especially after Stephen Knight's book was published. (I actually have a copy of that somewhere. I gave it as much credence as 'The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail', ie none!)
I suspect that it is at least a combination of all these, plus many others, not the least of which is the belief that, this far removed in the time from the actual events, any theory has just as much validity as any other. (Not quite true, some theories can be disproved quite easily but, still, why let facts get in the way of idle speculation? And who's got the time to argue? Only the 'Ripperologists'.)
Unless some long-missing document(s) come to light (and the 'Ripper diaries' are not one of them - forgeries!) which provide(s) evidence that the police 'solved' the case back in 1889, and if they did why no-one was prosecuted, with incontrovertible evidence, of the perpetrator's guilt that would have held up in court, we will always be in the realms of speculation, however well researched.
However, this has not stopped us before and will not do so in this case. How many times have we argued for the existence or non-existence of God through the centuries? By some pretty learned and astute thinkers to boot. This is just one more, albeit on a 'less important level'. We all love a good mystery!
For anyone interested, there is a good site here, which marshals conflicting theories and presents pro and cons for all them. It makes little secret of the fact that, in the light of current evidence, no one theory is likely to be favoured other another when it comes to the ‘definitive’ identity but it is a good resource for ‘evidence’ and links to primary sources and so is to be recommended.
Footnote:
What is perhaps so remarkable about the whole case, to my eyes at least, is the diligence which the Metropolitan (the Met), and City, Police appear to have applied to attempting to solve the case, even if co-operation between the forces was nigh on non-existent. Whitechapel at the time was home to the poorest of the poor, little helped by the wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe at the time. They were crammed together in appalling conditions. ‘Lodging houses’, sometime holding as many as 350 people at a time; squalid housing, ‘one up’, ‘one down’ (rooms that is) terraced slums with shared outside ‘privies’ (WC’s), if they were lucky; at the mercy of ‘slum landlords’ charging exorbitant rents for a single room which whole families would have to share; unemployed; malnourished; their children wandering the streets, rife with garbage, rats and disease and the ever present spectre of violent crime (not just the Ripper).
Added to that, the victims were known prostitutes, the poorest and most destitute of all. Their services could be got for as little as the price of a large glass of gin (about 2 or 3 old (pre 1970) pennies, £0.01p, one or two cents – about £2.50, €2.40, $1.75 today) and gin was what many of them chose to spend the money on!
Granted, there was much press and political pressure to solve the case and the Met didn’t have the most wonderful reputation amongst the general public but nonetheless.
Interestingly, about ten years ago, I was once told that the going price for a ‘blow job’in Kings Cross in London, before they ‘cleaned it up’, was £1.50. The whores, a lot of them, teenaged drug addicts.
Nothing much changes, ay? At least among the poor and the desperate.
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