Our thanks to Martin Fido for providing copies of the Blackwood's Magazine article.
In 1910, Sir Robert Anderson published his memoirs, entitled "The Lighter Side of My Official Life," first as a series of articles in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and soon after in a book of its own. Both versions were more or less verbatim, though slight differences in word-usage and connotation pop up from time to time. In the case of Anderson's statements on the Ripper murders, some of these differences can be considered important and worthy of closer study.
Apart from unimportant changes in punctuation, there are six sentences which differ in both versions. They are reprinted below to allow for a side-by-side comparison.
The full-text of The Lighter Side of My Official Life (book version) is also available for viewing on the Casebook. Click here to read it. Or, you can read only the Ripper-related portions of Chapter Nine.
| Blackwoods (March 1910) | The Lighter Side of My Official Life | |
| 1. | I am here assuming that the murder of Alice M'Kenzie on 17th July 1889 was by another hand. I was absent from London when it occurred, but the Chief Commissioner investigated the case on the spot. It was an ordinary murder, and not the work of a sexual maniac. | I am here assuming that the murder of Alice M'Kenzie on the 17th of July, 1889, was by another hand. I was absent from London when it occurred, but the Chief Commissioner investigated the case on the spot and decided that it was an ordinary murder, and not the work of a sexual maniac. And the Poplar case of December, 1888, was a death from natural causes, and but for the "Jack the Ripper" scare, no one would have thought of suggesting that it was a homicide. |
| 2. | And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were low-class Polish Jews... | And the conclusion we came to was that he and his people were certain low-class Polish Jews... |
| 3. | The subject will come up again, and I will only add here that the "Jack-the-Ripper" letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist. | So I will only add here that the "Jack-the-Ripper " letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising London journalist. |
| 4. | Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I should almost be tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to, provided that the publishers would accept all responsibility in view of a possible libel action. | Having regard to the interest attaching to this case, I am almost tempted to disclose the identity of the murderer and of the pressman who wrote the letter above referred to. |
| 5. | I will only add that when the individual whom we suspected was caged in an asylum, the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer at once identified him; but when he learned that the suspect was a fellow-Jew he declined to swear to him. | I will merely add that the only person who had ever had a good view of the murderer unhesitatingly identified the suspect the instant he was confronted with him ; but he refused to give evidence against him. |
| 6. | ... | In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute. |
