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Chris Scott
Chief Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 941
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 02, 2004 - 12:04 pm: |       |
I read the excellent dissertation on the Whitechapel Club at
http://casebook.org/dissertations/rip-whiteclub.html
This mentions that "Governors William McKinley of Ohio and Theodore Roosevelt of New York enjoyed the club's fellowship. So did the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, humorist Bill Nye...."
I have recently found a column by Bill Nye in an English language Mexican paper (The Two Republics) in the issue dated 19 April 1891. The column in entitled "Chicago Thoughtlets" and contains a long section on the Whitechapel Club which I am currently transcribing for the Press Reports section, One part caught my eye. The club acknowledged jack as its founder and in one section of the article attributed words to him explaining its foundation. Thought these might of of interest!
The Whitechapel Club of Chicago was endowed some two years ago by Jack the Ripper for the purpose of engendering a more fraternal feeling toward humanity, and also to advance intellectual refinement and to encourage thought waves.
Realizing the uncertainity of life, he desired, he said, to perpetuate his name in this way.
"I might be cut down at any time," said he, "as my night work , of course, is one of constant exposure to the unwholesome atmosphere of London. Besides," he added, "there is a growing feeling of antagonism toward me here.Sometimes I think I would like to try the climate of America, but I am afraid I would get run over and killed by the professional drunkards who drive drays over people in New York city, or if I came to Chicago I might get 'bindged' (sic) and die of pneumonia. So perhaps I am as well off here among friends, suppressing vice and evading the keen eyed police, as I would be in America, where the social evil does not as yet own the town."
"Do all that you can," he said, "to make the club cheerful and bright. I send by this steamer a gray plaid shawl, stiff with the gore of No. 3. It will make a nice piano cover, I think. Could you not arrange with the city to combine your dining room with the city morgue, so that rent could be saved and your dingin hall have about it a homelike air which money alone cannot procure?"
"I am almost discouraged at times when I see how slowly I am getting along with my great work looking toward the suppression of vice, but I will not give up. I am determined to press on and carve my way to fame. Keep up the kindest club spirit, and yet admit no one who has ever led a life of shame. We cannot be too careful, I think, in this regard."
"I am going out again this evening to see if I can catch up a little with my work. I am now a way behind. When I get this job done I am thinking of operating on a few titled Englishmen who need killing very much. I am very anxious to be through with my work. for, as I say, it keeps me away from home so much at night. Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time, and bring the welcome day!"
"Miss Bompard of Paris wishes to contribute to the club a trunk, scarf, etc., for our dining room. They will be sent within a few weeks."
PS: I have no idea who the Miss Bompard referred to in the last parageraph is - any ideas?
CS
(Message edited by Chris on March 02, 2004) |
Julia
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 11:14 pm: | |
Hi, Chris,
I plugged "Bompard" into a Google.fr search and got the following website:
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/detective/ABookofRemarkableCriminals/chap19.html
It contains a very colorful account of the murder of a Monsieur Gouffe in Paris in 1889 by Gabrielle Bompard and her lover/accomplice Michel Eyraud. Apparently, Gabrielle and Michel were a sort of Parisian Bonnie and Clide for a brief period.
It's an interesting story...The reference to a trunk in your post is explained, but I don't know where the scarf comes in.
Julia |
Jeffrey Bloomfied
Inspector
Username: Mayerling
Post Number: 338
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 8:59 pm: | |
The scarf remains an unknown quantity in this case. A red and white girdle, playfully put around the aroused (and unfortunate) M. Gouffe's neck was the murder weopon of Mlle. Gabrielle Bompard and her accomplice, M. Michel Eyraud. Eyraud was hiding behind a curtain that Gouffe was dumb enough to let Gabrielle lead him to.
That wonderful Sherlockian (and founding father of the Baker Street Irregulars) Christopher Morley
wrote an interesting and lively account of the Gouffe Affaire, which in world wide search rivals the shenanigans of Deeming (England and Australia), Cream (Canada, the midwest United States, and England), and the somehow forgotten Reginald Birchall (England and Canada). Bompard and Eyraud fled to North America, and had some lover's quarrel. She met a Frenchman in the diplomatic service, went to Niagara Falls with him, and then returned to France to stand trial.
Eyraud went to Mexico, then San Francisco, then went to Cuba where he was arrested). At the trial both tried to blame each other - the fascinating Gabrielle won, getting only a twenty year prison sentence. Michel got the big razor.
Morley's essay, "THE RED AND WHITE GIRDLE" appeared in his collection FIFTH AVENUE BUS (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1931). My copy is in an old anthology THE INDISPENSIBLE MURDER BOOK edited by Joseph Henry Jackson (New York, the Book Society, 1951). However it is identical to THE PORTABLE MURDER BOOK, by Viking Press.
There is a connection between Eyraud and Bompard and Jack, besides being contemporary killers. The body of Gouffe was found in a sack near Lyons.
It was taken there by Eyraud and Bompard in the trunk. The body of Gouffe was to be examined by the noted forensic expert, Prof. Laccassagne, who later examined Joseph Vacher, and wrote that book about Vacher including the photos of Mary Kelly's remains.
Jeff |
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