|
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Author |
Message |
    
Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 454
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 01, 2003 - 1:26 pm: |       |
I have found the full version of Osbert Sitwell's story which Sickert told him of the Ripper suspect and the note Sickert made of it in a book of his. This is from a book called Noble Essences published in 1950
Noble Essences: A Book of Characters
Book by Osbert Sitwell; Little, Brown & Company, 1950
pp 211-213
The Tichborne Case and the mystery of Jack the Ripper constituted two such monuments.
The first, which had come into the headlines when Sickert had been a boy of eleven, had always maintained its interest for him; a special interest, due to the fact that he believed the rejected claimant, who had come back out of the sea, to have been the rightful heir. . . . As for the second, apart from the intrinsic and abiding horror of that extraordinary series of crimes, it interested him because he thought he knew the identity of the murderer. He told me -- and, no doubt, many others -- how this was. . . . Some years after the murders, he had taken a room in a London suburb. An old couple looked after the house, and when he had been there some months, the woman, with whom he used often to talk, asked him one day as she was dusting the room if he knew who had occupied it before him. When he said "No" she had waited a moment, and then replied, "Jack the Ripper!" . . . Her story was that his predecessor had been a veterinary student. After he had been a month or two in London, this delicate-looking young man -- he was consumptive -- took to staying out occasionally all night. His landlord and landlady would hear him come in at about six in the morning, and then walk about in his room for an hour or two until the first edition of the morning paper was on sale, when he would creep lightly downstairs and run to the corner to buy one. Quietly he would return and go to bed; but an hour later, when the old man called him, he would notice, by the traces in the fireplace, that his lodger had burned the suit he had been wearing the previous evening. For the rest of the day, the millions of people in London would be discussing the terrible new murder, plainly belonging to the same series, that had been committed in the small hours. Only the student seemed never to mention it: but then, he knew no one and talked to no one, though he did not seem lonely. . . . The old couple did not know what to make of the matter: week by week his health grew worse, and it seemed improbable that this gentle, ailing, silent youth should be responsible for such crimes. They could hardly credit their own senses -- and then, before they could make up their minds whether to warn the police or not, the lodger's health had suddenly failed alarmingly, and his mother -- a widow who was devoted to him -had come to fetch him back to Bournemouth, where she lived. . . . From that moment the murders had stopped. . . . He died three months later.
Before leaving the subject, I may add that, while I was engaged in writing this account of Sickert, my brother reminded me that the painter had told us that when his landlady had confided in him that morning, in the course of her dusting, the name of Jack the Ripper, he had scribbled it down in pencil on the margin of a French edition of Casanova Memoirs which he happened to be reading at the time, and that subsequently he had given the book away -- we thought he had said to Sir William Rothenstein. Sickert had added, "And there it will be now, if you want to know the name." Accordingly, I wrote to Lady Rothenstein: but neither she nor Sir William remembered the book. On my consulting Mrs. Sickert, she maintained that her husband had told her that he had given the volume to Sir William's brother, Mr. Albert Rutherston. And this proved to have been the case. My friend Mr. Rutherston informed me that he lost the book only during the bombing of London, and that there had been several pencil notes entered in the margin, in Sickert's handwriting, always so difficult to decipher.
|
Mark Starr
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 4:13 pm: | |
Sickert said he knew the identity of Jack The Ripper. He said his landlady had told him that Jack was a young, male veterinary student. And evidently, Sickert must have been convinced that her story was true, from the details about the burnt clothes. Sickert told Sitwell that Jack stayed a month or two at this suburban London rooming-house. He said Jack's mother lived in Bournemouth. He said this frail youth died from consumption (tuberculosis) three months after the murders stopped -- so that means he probably died three months after Mary Kelly's murder.
Doesn't anyone else see that something is incredibly wrong with this story?
First, the landlady and her husband never called the police while Jack The Ripper was living in their house. They never called the police during the months after the mother brought the ailing youth back to Bournemouth and before his death. {How did they find out about his death in Bournemouth?) They didn't tell the police despite the documented fact that there was lots and lots of reward money posted from various sources for any information about Jack's identity that turned out to be true. And the landlady and her husband never called the police or told the press about their roomer even after he died -- and presumably could not seek revenge on them. But she told Walter Sickert???? Word of this landlady's knowledge never leaked through her neighbors into any investigation or account.
Second. Walter Sickert may have told this story to Sitwell, and Sitwell says Sickert told it to others as well as him. But Walter Sickert, who claims he had the name of The Ripper and wrote it down in a book, never told this story to the police. He never told it to the police while he lived in London or Camden Town. He never told it to the police in the decades between the time he learned the name from the landlady and the time he told the story to Osbert Sitwell. Here is the most highly publicized crime in British history, Walter Sickert had the name of Jack The Ripper, and Walter Sickert never told this story to the police or the press?????
Third. Even without the name of the veterinary student, it would have been child's play for the police to have tracked down the student's identity around 1906 when Sickert supposedly learned the Ripper's name -- if only Sickert had let them know what he knew. Only 18 years after the Whitechappel student, either surviving records or the recollection of someone in Bournemouth would have dredged up the name of a family with a young veterinary student (enrolled in a London school of veterinary medicine) who died of tuberculosis in early 1889. With all those TRACEABLE clues, even Inspector Clouzot could have tracked this dead student down. With all this evidence, the police could probably have tracked him down decades later, and perhaps enough evidence remains today that the police or some sleuth still can. However, I have never heard of the Scotland Yard ever investigating this clue, even after Sitwell's account was published in 1950. Has anyone ever looked into the identity of this veterinary student? It does not seem that we are talking about Alfred Hitchcock's "Lodger" here.
Fourth. This student was delicate and frail, dying of consumption. And he is supposed to have perpetrated all these violent crimes by himself, never being resisted or overcome by any of the victims????
Of course, this entire house of cards is balanced on the flimsy premise that Walter Sickert told the truth when he told this story to Sitwell and others. Now why would Walter Sickert ever tell a lie?
Regards,
Mark Starr |
Mark Starr
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 5:55 pm: | |
I hasten to add to my previous post that while Sickert's story resembles in some parts the Lodger in Alfred Hitcock's film, it would seem to be independent of the Lodger tale. Hitchcock's 1926 film was based on a story by Marie Belloc Lowndes entitled "The Lodger," published in 1911. Aside from differences in key details, Sickert told his story in the first person: the landlady had told the story to him (around 1908) because he, Walter Sickert, was then sleeping in Jack The Ripper's Bedroom. And indeed, Sickert painted one of his most suspicious paintings soon after, entitled Jack The Ripper's Bedroom.
According to the article on The Lodger on this website: "Mrs. Belloc Lowndes is supposed to have gotten the idea for this story by overhearing a snatch of dinner conversation wherein one guest was telling another that his mother's butler and cook claimed that they had once rented rooms to Jack the Ripper. But the story of the Lodger appears well before Mrs. Belloc Lowndes and, as recently put forward by Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey in their book, "The Lodger, The Arrest & Escape of Jack the Ripper" it may very well have more fact behind it than originally thought. Prior to Belloc Lowndes the story had already been put forward by at least two people: Lyttleton Stewart, Forbes Winslow and the painter Walter Sickert. Both of these tales contain the same essential ideas and "facts" and suggest that the story had reached the level of urban myth within a few years of the Whitechapel murders."
If Sickert was telling this story as his own true experience back in 1908, then why didn't also tell the police and the press?
As for investigating Sickert's roomate JTR:
"In 1889 Forbes Winslow connected with a Finsbury Street lodging house keeper named Callaghan who told him of a former lodger, G. Wentworth Bell Smith, who had rented a large room from him in April 1888. According to Callaghan, Smith was a Canadian and he went on to describe him as 5' 10" tall, dark complexioned with a full mustache and beard worn closely cropped. He walked with a curious weak-kneed, splay-footed gait. Smith's dress and manners suggested a man of some gentility. Callaghan also said that Smith was multilingual and had a foreign appearance. The landlord was told by Smith that he was in England on business and might stay an indefinite period of time."
Obviously, this Smith was not Sickert's veterinary student. As detailed on Casebook.org, any investigation of Forbes Winslow's suspect by the press and police was farcical and irrelevant.
Donald McCormack tried to link Sickert's roomate with Montague Duittt. But there is no link, just a vague story told to McCormack by an unnamed doctor.
"Research by N. P. Warren, editor of "Ripperana, The Quarterly Journal of Ripperology" shows that the only student at the Royal Veterinary College whose name is close to Druitt is George Ailwyn Hewitt."Hewitt would have been 17 or 18 years old in 1888 and he died in 1908."
Sickert never said a word about Druitt or Hewitt -- as far as anyone knows. So this is a wild goose chase.
"Only one student who failed to follow a career beyond 1888 came from Bournemouth. His name was Joseph Ride who was 27 in 1888."
Oh? So did anyone investigate Joseph Ride further? Did he die of tuberculosis in early 1889?
It would seem apparent that there never was in London a veterinary student from a family in Bournemouth who died of TB in early 1889. Walter Sickert's landlady never had such a lodger and never told him he was sleeping in Jack The Ripper's Bedroom. Walter Sickert made up this incredible story, told it to his friends but not the police or press. He tried to give it the stamp of authenticity not once but twice. First he painted Jack The RIpper's Bedroom. Second, he scribbled an illegible name into his valuable copy of Casanova's memoirs, gave it away to an established painter with a Sir in front of his name, and later deliberately gave clues to Sir Osbert Sitwell how to find this book and check out Sickert's story.
The question to resolve is not who was this veterinary student?
The questions to answer are: why did Sickert lie to Sitwell and his friends? Why did Sickert set up this elaborate ruse extending from 1908 when he painted Jack The Ripper's Bedroom through the 1930s when he spoke with Sitwell? Why did Sickert put himself into this patently phoney story. Why did Sickert paint Jack The Ripper's Bedroom?
Regards,
Mark Starr |
RosemaryO'Ryan
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 5:32 pm: | |
Dear Mr Starr,
Once again, I must congratulate you on your relentless research. One reason I was p**ssed off
with the editors of the "A-Z" was due to their own agenda vis., the painting, "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom". But on reflection...they were only doing their best at the cutting edge of modern 'ripperology'. Anyway, the journey will be different for everybody.
So, what else have you figured out?
Rosey :-) |
Dan Norder
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 2:25 pm: | |
Mark wrote:
"Doesn't anyone else see that something is incredibly wrong with this story? "
Yeah, namely that it's all unsubstantiated rumor with no bearing on Sickert's guilt or innocence. |
ERey
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 4:38 pm: | |
Mark Starr wrote:
"The questions to answer are: why did Sickert lie to Sitwell and his friends? Why did Sickert set up this elaborate ruse extending from 1908 when he painted Jack The Ripper's Bedroom through the 1930s when he spoke with Sitwell? Why did Sickert put himself into this patently phoney story. Why did Sickert paint Jack The Ripper's Bedroom?"
I think you might find the answer to these questions if you ask yourself these: Why was this story made into a movie several times, once by no less a filmmaker than Alfred Hitchcock? Why did Marie Belloc Lowndes write the short story on which the movies were based? Why did Belloc Lowndes's fellow dinner guest (and who knows how many other people) tell the story at a dinner party?
A single answer can satisfy all these questions: It's an awfully good story, if you like that sort of thing.
And by all accounts, Sickert did like that sort of thing. This article helps put the lodger story, and other "evidence" against Sickert, in context:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2073560 |
Mark Starr
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 10:55 pm: | |
Erey wrote:
>A single answer can satisfy all these questions: It's an awfully good story, if you like that sort of thing. And by all accounts, Sickert did like that sort of thing. This article helps put the lodger story, and other "evidence" against Sickert, in context.
Sorry, your explanation holds no water. Sickert didn't write a story that was published He didn't provide Hitchcock with the plot for the film the lodger. Sickert did not even recount the same story that Mrs. Belloc Lowndes told in her published story -- and it was Mrs Belloc Lowndes story, not Sickert's -- that was made into the screenplay for Hitchcock's film. Sickert never tried to capitalize on this story in any way. His painting Jack The Ripper's Bedroom was given to artist Cicely Hey, and it only surfaced after Sickert's death. All we know for sure is that Sickert told the story to one person a few years before he died, four decades after the Whitechapel murders. And that person, Sir Osbert Sitwell, was not only a person of impeccable character (not because he was a Sir, by the way), he was also one of Britain's finest writers and poets between the wars. Moreover, Sitwell described this story in his memoirs using Sickert's words in the first peron in quotation marks, recalling them exactly. With such a master of the written word as Osbert Sitwell, there is no reason to doubt that these were Sickert's exact words during the meeting between Sickert and Sitwell. The idea that Sickert would have told Sitwell about the previous occupant of his own rented bedroom, Jack The Ripper, just because it was a jolly good yarn to spin during dinner is absurd on its face. In order to accept your explanation, one has to forget Sickert's 1908 painting Jack The Ripper's Bedroom -- which tells the same story as he told Sitwell. One has to overlook the part of Sickert's story in which he recounts how he wrote down the name of the lodger in his copy of Casanova's memoirs, how he gave that valuable book to another major artist, Sir Jack Rothstein, and how he gave Sitwell just enough information to check out for himself the veracity of this tantalizing story.
Your casual dismissal of Sitwell's account is a good example of someone who will not come to grips with the documented facts. The documented facts are not in Sickert's story. As I said at great length, Sickert's story is demonstrably phoney. The researchers in Ripper Notes proved that when they looked into all the veterinary students in London in 1888. The documented and relevant facts are in Sitwell's account of how Sickert told Sitwell this story. Sickert told Sitwell a lie, that he learned the identity of Jack The Ripper from his landlady. Sickert may well have known the true identity of Jack the Ripper -- but it definitely was not because he learned it from his landlady. Why did Sickert lie?
Regards,
Mark Starr |
ERey
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 12:34 pm: | |
Mark,
There is some good information on the "lodger" urban legend, its possible origins and early permutations (a version of the "brunt clothes" detail dates back at least to 1890) elsewhere on this message board, under Suspects > "Lodger, The".
Other than mentioning that, I'll leave you to your fun.
|
IVAN
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 11:11 am: | |
I'M A ITALIAN STUDENT AND I'M LOOKING FOR SOME SITE WHERE I CAN FIND THE COMMENT/ANALYSIS OF "THE MODERN ABRAHAM" BY OSBERT SITWELL. ANYONE CAN HELP ME, PLEASE?!?!?! |
Mark Starr
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 5:29 am: | |
Ivan wrote:
I'M A ITALIAN STUDENT AND I'M LOOKING FOR SOME SITE WHERE I CAN FIND THE COMMENT/ANALYSIS OF "THE MODERN ABRAHAM" BY OSBERT SITWELL. ANYONE CAN HELP ME, PLEASE?!?!?!
Caro Ivan,
Questo scritto di Sitwell, The Modern Abraham's Offering, si puo trovare nell'edizione dell'Opera Completa. Esiste una copia all'Universita di Texas. Ecco le informazioni:
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/sitwello.works.html
Purtroppo, non credo che sia un'analasi, almeno di uno scrittore importante. Esiste un legame con questo scritto di Sitwell ed i quadri di Walter Sickert?
Auguri,
Mark Starr
|
|
Use of these
message boards implies agreement and consent to our Terms of Use.
The views expressed here in no way reflect the views of the owners and
operators of Casebook: Jack the Ripper.
Our old message board content (45,000+ messages) is no longer available online, but a complete archive
is available on the Casebook At Home Edition, for 19.99 (US) plus shipping.
The "At Home" Edition works just like the real web site, but with absolutely no advertisements.
You can browse it anywhere - in the car, on the plane, on your front porch - without ever needing to hook up to
an internet connection. Click here to buy the Casebook At Home Edition.
|
|
|
|
