A Ripperologist Article

This article originally appeared in Ripperologist No. 80, June 2007. Ripperologist is the most respected Ripper periodical on the market and has garnered our highest recommendation for serious students of the case. For more information, view our Ripperologist page. Our thanks to the editor of Ripperologist for permission to reprint this article.

Jsfmboe?

Change each letter for its predecessor in the alphabet, and you have Ireland.

This not very challenging cypher was one of the great secrets of the Fenians in the 1870s. Fenians were Irish nationalists who plotted against the British government, and it was active government work against them that brought Dr Robert Anderson into the business of policing and allied him with James Monro. Commentators who wish to undermine the weight some of us give to Anderson’s opinions on the Ripper case almost invariably cite Liberal and Irish Nationalist politicians who detested (or, in Winston Churchill’s case, were embarrassed by) Anderson’s entrenched Unionism. But very few have understood exactly what was at issue: why Anderson was accused of hubris or duplicity, and how he managed to persuade himself that he had always acted with integrity. To understand Anderson and Monro and the extraordinary Jubilee plot they agreed they had foiled, one needs some knowledge of Jsfmboe.