| Author |
Message |
    
Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 2269
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 8:26 pm: | 
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I am attaching below an article regarding a book of 1893 which is described as a psychological study of the Ripper by a Belgian writer named Le Monnier. This book was seized by the police but as the writer was acquitted it would be fascinating to know if the book was subsequently relased for sale and if any copies survive
Chris
Newark Daily Advocate
19 October 1893
Tried for Analyzing Jack the Ripper
Brussels. Oct. 19.
Camille le Monnier, a conspicuous Belgian critic and novelist, was tried behind closed doors, for having committed an offense against morality in publishing a psychological study of Jack the Ripper. The book was seized by the police. The prosecution urged that it was obscene. They all agreed that his study of the Ripper showed high motives and was instructive reading. Le Monnier was acquitted.
(Message edited by Chris on January 03, 2006) |
Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 2270
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 8:31 pm: |
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Here is a pic of the gentleman
An article about him and a list of his publications (which does not appear to mention the Ripper book) can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Lemonnier |
Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 2271
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 8:36 pm: |
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International Herald Tribune
Saturday, October 16, 1893
BRUSSELS - M. Camille Lemonnier, the well-known novelist, appeared to-day [Oct. 16] before the Assize Court on a charge of outraging public decency by the publication, on Feb. 19, of his story, "L'Homme qui Tue les Femmes," which was inspired by the exploits of "Jack the Ripper." The presiding judge decided, at the outset of the trial, that the hearing should take place within closed doors, and the court was accordingly cleared of all but the principal witnesses and barristers. |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3341
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 8:37 pm: |
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Hi Chris -
Great find!
Looks like he was tried for something similar in Paris just a few years earlier.
- Stephen
Stephen P. Ryder, Exec. Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
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Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 2272
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 8:40 pm: |
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http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:QUpm2mFQWvEJ:alpha.qmul.ac.uk/~uglf028/Downing_beast.pdf+camille+lemonnier+ripper&hl=en
This academic article comments on the Le Monnier book and draws parallels with Zola |
Thomas C. Wescott
Chief Inspector
Username: Tom_wescott
Post Number: 524
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 12:40 am: |
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Hi all,
I looked into this a few years ago, and ended up getting an article by Le Monnier. From what I learned he never actually published a book, or even wrote one. Just an article that was published IN a book or journal. I got all this from a French professor who wrote a paper on Le Monnier that mentioned the Ripper. I contact the prof. and that's what he told me. He ended up mailing me the article and I've got it around here somewhere I think. Unfortunately, all my communications with this guy were on an old computer that went kaput. But anyway, it doesn't appear there was ever a book.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Chris Scott
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Chris
Post Number: 2274
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 3:39 am: |
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Hi Tom
Many thanks for that. The work in question appears to be a short story that was actually published in 1888. The academic article mentioned above includes this:
Geoff Woollen (1995) and Philippe Hamon (1994) have pointed out the probable influence on Zola of a short story by the Belgian petit naturalisteCamille Lemonnier, ‘L’Homme qui tuait les femmes’, which appeared in Gil Blason 2 November 1888, and which was also inspired by the Whitechapel killings. Lemonnier’s treatment of the subject matter is, however, very different from Zola’s. The first-person narrative is voiced by the murderer, who comments at one point: ‘Je lègue à la science […] l’être pervers et compliqué qui pour moi demeura un insondable problème’. (cited in Hamon 1994,135). Lemonnier’s hero expresses a dissociation from the unknowable part of himself that feels the need to kill, while Jacques Lantier asks endless questions about the cause of his condition, expressed via style indirect libre. Musing on the origins of his sexualinclination, Jacques wonders : ‘cela venait-il donc de si loin, du mal que les femmes avaient fait à sa race, de la rancune amassée de male en male depuis la première tromperie […]?’ (62). Where Lemonnier’s text is keen to leave intact the mystery of homicidal desire, and issues (what we may read as) a challenge to science to explain it, Zola’s text attempts to take further scientificunderstanding of the phenomenon of inherited criminality, by inserting partial answers consistent with the ideologies of heredity and degeneration into the formulations of Jacques’s self-interrogation |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 5498
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 7:14 am: |
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Hi guys
"The Man Who Kills Women" can be read in Rip 46.
Robert |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 3555
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 2:00 pm: |
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Er.....I think he looks more like Theodore Roosevelt as played by the mad brother in 'Arsenic and Old Lace', who was building the Panama Canal in the cellar!!! 'Oh Bully!!!!!!.....Charge!!!!'
Suzi |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 3556
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 2:07 pm: |
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Hi Tom ,Chris and all
Hope there was a book !!!!!!!We'll find it!!!!!
Suzi |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 3557
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 2:35 pm: |
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The nephew!!!!!! was called Teddy!!!! In Copra's wonderful film made in 1941 and not released until 1944 owing to his film efforts during the war!
Am sure the Brewster Sisters have something to answer for!!!!
Sorry Chris to lighten your thread!
Suzi |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 3558
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 2:49 pm: |
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Have a look at
http://www.servicedulivre.be/fiches/l/lemonnier.htm
AND press for the translation unless your french is better than my O Level!
Suzi |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 1046
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 10:47 pm: |
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Hi Suzy and all,
The actor who played "Teddy" Brewster, was John Alexander. He also played President Theodore Roosevelt (whom he really looked like) in the 1949 Bob Hope - Lucille Ball - Bruce Cabot comedy FANCY PANTS (a type of remake of RUGGLES OF RED GAP). Alexander played other roles. He was the fireman who marries Joan Blondell and gives her a baby in A TREE IN BROOKLYN, and he is an important character in that underrated film noir by William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES.
But he does look like Monnier too. I looked into Monnier's career about seven years ago. I think he died in 1908. He is still considered a leading literary figure in Belgium's history.
Best wishes,
Jeff |
Suzi Hanney
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Suzi
Post Number: 3561
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 6:39 am: |
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Hi Jeff-
Blimey what knowledge!!!! Thanks for that!
Suzi |
Rosey O'Ryan
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 5:48 am: |
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Hi Chris,
"...the unknowable part of himself". Do you think that Lemonnier is expressing an aetiological 'case solution' based on the emerging phenomenological and existential movements in psychology, and later, psychiatry?Hmm...contra the neo-Freudian's hypothetical checklists, re, psychopathy via United States clinicians?
Is there a phenomenologist in the house?
Rosey :-) |
