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Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3040
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Saturday, April 10, 2004 - 10:03 pm: | 
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DEAR BOSS: HOAX AS POPULAR COMMUNAL NARRATIVE IN THE CASE OF THE JACK THE RIPPER LETTERS
By Ted Remington
University of Iowa
ABSTRACT
This essay explores the phenomena of hoaxes as communally constructed narratives by
examining the series of letters sent to authorities claiming to be from Jack the Ripper. The study looks at how and why the character of Jack the Ripper was created through these letters, and why this figure became a site of public fascination at the time (and remains so today). More than simply the work of cranks or psychotics, a study of the letters reveals them to be a way of articulating and managing collective anxieties. Through the work of Kenneth Burke, the essay suggests that the "Ripper letters" provided a symbolic way of dealing with the social trauma and complex emotional responses triggered by the brutal murders of several prostitutes that gripped London's East End in the autumn of 1888.
Full article available at:
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol10is3/remington.pdf
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1023
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 1:38 pm: |
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Stephen
I tried to access this article but had all sorts of problems. Eventually I got it but than was told it would take me four hours to download it.
If I had four hours to spare I'd go to St Malo and get drunk.
As I would dearly love to read it, any suggestions?
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Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3041
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 1:46 pm: |
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Hi AP -
Its an excellent article, and very much worth the effort to download and read. 
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to open the file, however. It is a free software which you can download at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Try installing that software on your PC, and then you should be able to view the article correctly.
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
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Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 722
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 3:19 pm: |
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Hi, Stephen
Many thanks for drawing our attention to this very interesting article. I disagree with the author Ted Remington that Jack the Ripper himself was a hoax, though I might agree that the name was made up by someone other than the killer and that all or the majority of the letters allegedly from the killer were hoaxes.
Indeed, in this respect, it is cogent that Mr. Remington agrees with Jack the Ripper letters experts Stewart Evans and Keith Skinner that with the possible exception of the Lusk ("From Hell") letter, there is no evidence that the letters came from the murderer--a view diametrically opposed to the recent view put forward by Patricia Cornwell and Mark Starr on these boards that their suspect, Walter Sickert, wrote most of the letters. As Mr. Remington well states, the great variety of handwriting styles, levels of literacy displayed, and so on, preclude the somewhat absurd notion that one person could have written all or even the majority of these missives.
Best regards
Chris George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
(Message edited by ChrisG on April 12, 2004) |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3042
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 3:42 pm: |
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Hi Chris -
What I found most interesting was Mr. Remington's theory that the phenomenon of the "Ripper letters" was sort of an unplanned social collaboration, in which dozens of people felt compelled to craft this 'fictional' Ripper personality out of thin air. He suggests that this might have been a large-scale subconscious move to create an identity for the killer, as a means of 'collective healing' - i.e. they created a tangible character, a scapegoat, who could become the target of society's anger, frustration and fear, where previously there had been only spectres and shadows. At the conscious level I'm sure the hoaxers were just motivated by mischief, but subconsciously there may have been a grander, psychological motive behind the phenomenon as a whole.
Food for thought.
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1026
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 5:13 pm: |
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Stephen
thanks for that, but I do have that thing you mentioned, but still not working. It must be the brandy.
If either you or Chris could mail me this I'd be so very grateful, as it sounds like something I could really enjoy.
You see I have always felt that Jack's crimes were 'a sort of unplanned social collaboration' that were prompted by 'a grander, psychological motive behind the phenomenon as a whole'; and I would seriously like to argue the toss with this fast-selling razor.
No matter. I'll go to St Malo instead. |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1027
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 5:21 pm: |
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Thanks Stephen
I really appreciate that and will get back with my comments soonest. |
Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 648
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 6:47 pm: |
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Flowing on from that the other social phenomena that may play in these murders is the communal hysteria at the time and the possibility that there was more than one "Jack" at work copycat killing.We know of the Loudun 1643 "Devils" [Europe]and the Witches of Salem[America] to name two such cases of collective mania.Maybe these murders were created by a similar phenomena?
Natalie |
David O'Flaherty
Inspector
Username: Oberlin
Post Number: 271
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 6:56 pm: |
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Hi, Stephen, All
Although I think they were smaller in number than the letters, it seems like false confessions could also fit in here somewhere.
Dave |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 724
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 11:24 pm: |
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Hi, David
Yes, I agree that the phenomenon of false confessions has a relationship to the Jack the Ripper letters. At least both to an extent show a desire in the person who comes forward to confess or write a letter to jump on the bandwagon or seek attention, for whatever underlying psychological reason.
Certainly in stark relief to what Patricia Cornwell and Mark Starr claim, that the Ripper himself was a publicity seeker, it does seem as if the real truth is that there were scores of private citizens or troublemakers who joined in the game of sending letters that they claimed came from the murderer.
It might not be too far-fetched to think that the new, readily accessible newspapers and a new reading public played into the hands of these people, i.e., they suddenly had a national forum to get the attention they evidently craved. And contrary to the Cornwell-Starr theory that it was Walter Sickert who wrote the letters, why would Sickert need to get such attention when he already got attention as an actor, artist, and bon vivant?
Best regards
Chris George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
(Message edited by ChrisG on April 12, 2004) |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1028
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 1:36 pm: |
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I enjoyed my first reading of this article by Remington.
It is always refreshing to find someone who is prepared to stand back a bit and then consider the deeper and wider implications of events and paraphernalia associated with specific circumstances… and then weave a radically different pattern of thought, behaviour and implication that actually moves the reader away from the specific circumstance to look at the events and paraphernalia from a social order point of view.
This the author did admirably.
However I do get the feeling that this chap has cast his rod into the ocean and got a healthy bite but hasn’t quite landed his fish. For as most will know I have laboured hard and long to take the very points this chap has made about the hoax letters of Jack the Ripper and then wrap them around the actual crimes of JtR rather than the paper trail that followed him. It is my contention that the social conditioning and behaviour Remington discusses in this paper do actually apply to the crimes.
We have used different terms, I saw social signals that were designed to smooth and smother the collective anxiety of society - the Colony in my own model - going astray and playing an active role in the motivation behind the crimes in specific individuals. Same thing really, Remington’s specific individuals write letters and my specific individuals kill people.
But both are reacting to radical change in the social order.
And both play their role in evolutionary trend and change in society.
Where I think I part company with Remington is probably in the individual versus society arena, for he maintains that the individual writing the letter was unaware that he was by doing so becoming inadvertently part of a hidden social programme designed to whack the Colony back on track after disaster, but then he goes on to say that the writers of the letters basically wanted to be on the pulse of things, to be part of the Jack fantasy, to be part of the ‘monster’.
Something in me says that the two are the same thing.
Anyways, I’m going to read it a few more times as it is a brilliant piece of energetic thinking, something we could use around here more often.
The guy should let it be flagged up on here for free.
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Dan Norder
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 12:09 pm: |
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Chris wrote:
"I disagree with the author Ted Remington that Jack the Ripper himself was a hoax, though I might agree that the name was made up by someone other than the killer and that all or the majority of the letters allegedly from the killer were hoaxes. "
Well, he seemed pretty clearly to be saying that the killer wasn't a hoax, but that "Jack the Ripper" -- the name and most everything people thought they knew about him as a character -- was the result of a hoax. Your statement above seems to be in complete agreement with his point, unless I'm missing some subtle distinction somewhere. |
Thomas C. Wescott
Sergeant
Username: Tom_wescott
Post Number: 46
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 10:44 pm: |
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Hello all,
Actually, Dan, the essay states that Jack the Ripper was a hoax; meaning that what we percieve to have been Jack is all a lie, perpetuated by the letters and fueled by the press and public imagination.
I also agree with Chris that, even if a few of the Ripper letters were genuine (i.e. 'Dear Boss', 'Openshaw', and/or 'From hell') that doesn't negate the fact that MOST were certainly hoaxes. So, the author's thesis would be damaged, but not altogether wrong.
I will say I enjoyed reading the essay. A very good writer. I'm still surprised at the typos.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Dan Norder
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 12:53 am: |
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Thomas,
"Jack the Ripper is a hoax" is a phrase that the author explicitly states means "virtually everything we know, or think we know, about Jack the Ripper is based on one sort of fiction or another" and specifically in this essay, the letters claiming to be from the killer.
I'm not trying to be bothersome, I just am not following why Chris thinks what he said is different from what the author of the article said nor why you think what you said is different from what I said. |
Bullwinkle
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 6:10 pm: |
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Any chandala worth half his salt can say the words right: "There was no Jack the Ripper! He's just a creation of the popular culture!"--and then bark like a seal. But it takes a choosier, tastier, slower, even slower method to tell the real differences--and similarities--between the popular culture and what the murderer actually did. Surely there was a real Jack the Ripper, but where and why and how and when was he--that nobody knows!
B.
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Mark Starr
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 4:11 am: |
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Christopher George wrote:
>>a view diametrically opposed to the recent view put forward by Patricia Cornwell and Mark Starr on these boards that their suspect, Walter Sickert, wrote most of the letters.
Please do not put words in my mouth I never said. I do not believe that Walter Sickert wrote most of the letters. Patricia Cornwell can speak for herself, if she chooses.
Regards,
Mark Starr |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1040
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 1:35 pm: |
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Just another quick point that I'd like to beard the author of this excellent article with. It is where he states that:
'Specifically, the murders placed acts of barbaric, chaotic violence within the setting of Great Britain, a nation that styled itself as the most civilized society the world had ever known. Thus, the murders challenged the very national identity of Victorian England.'
I believe this to be a fatal flaw in his entire argument, and he should have done his research better... as this small quote from my own worthless efforts should demonstrate:
'The mid to late Victorian era was a time of brutal violence. Over 11,000 people died yearly from acts of violence and in what was proudly known as the age of 'assertive masculinity' the poor and needy of London were commonly referred to by their betters as 'surplus population'. Surplus they were indeed when one considers that almost 60% of all children of the area died before they were five, and when one of this surplus population happened to be a female she could expect little help from the criminal justice system. In just one sad example a man attacked a girl in broad daylight and beat her so severely that one eye was gouged out and her nose and skull broken. Not satisfied with that he then kicked her as she lay bleeding on the ground and finally threw her over a parapet. For this horrific attack the man was jailed for a mere year. A boy who spun a top on the public highway received the same sentence. Perhaps even more horrific in that age of 'assertive masculinity' was the attack on Jane Shore at a fair in broad daylight by a gang of five men who beat and brutally raped her while a crowd of onlookers cheered them on.'
That all sounds fairly barbaric and chaotic to me. |
Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 672
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 1:48 pm: |
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An excellent point to raise AP.Quite right too about levels of violence and brutality at that time.
I think though that the chaos, inability to catch the killer,and the horrific mutilations which built up to a crescendo were what got everyone going,including the "status quo".
Natalie |
AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1045
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 1:16 pm: |
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Thanks Natalie
you are probably quite right about the 'crescendo'.
I didn't realise that 'status quo' were involved in all this?
Does that mean 'pictures of matchstick men' is a vital clue and that the killer was an artist after all?
Seriously though, I aint finished with this fast razor yet and have a few more comments about his theory.
Just as a for instance, there is no way that I could agree with his view that the potency of Jack's crimes would have been less if he had committed them against more socially acceptable female classes.
I believe that Jack would have been caught in the year of his crimes if those crimes had been committed against what the fast razor calls 'aristocratic shopkeepers wives'.
I think we know this from the case of the Yorkshire Ripper... don't we?
In other words the fact that the victims were of the prostitute class actually decreased the 'potency' of the crimes. The opposite to what he claims.
He sees 'collective anxiety' in society because of the nature of the womens' work.
I see a strange collective acceptance of the poor girl's fate because 'they were asking for it' and the 'hand of God' struck them down. That's according to the males who were policing society at that time.
You see he talks 'now'.
I talk 'then'.
This is a major flaw in his work. |
Natalie Severn
Chief Inspector
Username: Severn
Post Number: 675
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 18, 2004 - 2:17 pm: |
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Hi AP,I haven"t read his book but from your observations it looks as though he is another one making it up as he goes along.
Victorian Society was outrageously unequal,vicious in its repression of any hint of rebellion or even any demand from the poor to remedy inequality.Women didnt even have a vote and had to chain themselves to railings and face jail before any legislation allowing them a vote was passed.
Absolutely correct too about the class these women came from-to a certain extent such attitudes still prevail towards prostitution
violence and brutality still form part of their working lives and virtually nothing is done to protect these people from it hence the Camden Ripper was able to cull his prey[like Jack did]
from the women who walked the streets around King"s Cross.
No I would seriously think that had Jack the Ripper been targeting women from the middle and upper classes he would have been caught and sharp.
However I do think it caused the sensation it did because of the shocking crime scenes.It strayed from the norm and from what was predictable homicidal behaviour[as far as police and the press were concerned].
Quite honestly I don"t think the hoax letters of themselves were any big deal.Its a pity such a big deal was made of them at the time because it "may" have set the police off on wild goose chases as was apparently the case with the Yorkshire Ripper.The newspaper sales were rocketing and the letters meant more publicity could be made out of it all and therefore greater profits.
Sorry to sound cynical AP but you have already said what I think too-I agree with you on it.
Natalie |
Tiddley boyar
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 3:22 pm: |
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I think he could have written the article in 3 pages easily without the rhetoric. Some interesting bits but unfortunately blinkered. |
Ted Remington
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 7:22 pm: |
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Hi all--don't mean to be lurking but I wanted to pass along a couple of notes.
First, I've talked to the folks at JCJPC and they've agreed to allow the crossposting of the article on Casebook.org, so hopefully there'll be less hassle with browser pointing, downloading, etc. I've let Stephen know he has the go ahead to post it at his leisure, so it should be up in relatively short order.
Second, I've been pleased to see the comments from all quarters on the article and related matters--quite thought provoking. The conversation is certainly in good hands without me butting in, but I did want to address a couple of specific points that seemed both important and in need of clarification. On A.P. Wolf's statement concerning Britain being a brutal, chaotic place--I agree wholeheartedly. I certainly did not mean to suggest otherwise. Rather, I argue that the level of publicity of these murders made it impossible to ignore the violence common in much of urban Britain. Yes, there were untold numbers of murders committed in Victorian Britain, but most of them received little if any press coverage. There are a host of primary sources from the time that speak to the jaw-dropping ignorance of many well-off Londoners of the plight of their poverty-stricken brethren. The Ripper murders shed light on the often-ignored brutality that was all too common in the lives of many Britons. This is reflected in the writings of folks such as G.B. Shaw, who commented on the social impact of the murders before they had even ended, not to mention the famous editorial caroon "Nemesis of Neglect." The violence itself wasn't new (except perhaps in degree); the inability to avoid or ignore it was.
On Wolf and Severn's ideas about the role of prostitution in the social reaction to the murders: I agree that had the murders been committed against a more "respectable" group, the authorities would have acted more quickly and with better results. No debate there. When I suggest the symbolic potency of the crimes stems from the fact that the victims were prostitutes, I'm arguing that the identity of the victims made public reaction to the crimes much more complex than they would have been if the victims had been members of a less "problematic" group. In other words, the fact that the victims were prostitutes caused the murders to push more social "hot" buttons than they would have if the victims had been schoolteachers, children, nuns, etc.
This stems from the fact that prostitutes evoked such a wide array of reactions from the larger public. Not simply "fallen women," (although they certainly were seen as that by many), they inspired a host of conflicting attitudes: desire/revulsion, pity/blame, condemnation/sympathy, etc. Combine this with their existence at the intersection of issues of sexuality, gender, commerce, and violence, and you have a group of people who embodied, perhaps more completely than any single group, the social contradictions and tensions of the time. (For more on the social import and complexity of the prostitute as a symbol in Victorian London, see Judith Walkowitz's "City of Dreadful Delight.").
So I agree with Wolf and Severn that victims higher placed in the social order would have elicited more immediate reactions from the authorities, but I doubt the murders would have had the deep social resonances they had at the time, and certainly wouldn't still be the subject of such fascination. On that matter, I'm firmly in the Walkowitz camp, as well as with Colin Wilson, who says in the introduction to Rumbelow's "The Complete Jack the Ripper," "If Jack the Ripper had murdered nursemaids or suburban housewives, it would have been shocking enough; but his choice of prostitutes touched the deepest springs of Victorian morbidity."
There's much to be said for the continuing effects of the Ripper's choice of victims on the understanding of, and fascination with, his crimes. But that's a subject for a different post--I've blathered on long enough for now!
Regards,
Ted Remington }} |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 3067
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Monday, April 26, 2004 - 7:32 pm: |
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Hi Ted -
Just wanted to thank you for securing the proper rights, allowing the Casebook to republish your excellent article. And feel free to chime in anytime you like on the boards!
Thanks again,
Stephen
PS: Anyone who hasn't yet read the article can now do so on the Casebook at: http://casebook.org/dissertations/tedremington.html
(Message edited by admin on April 26, 2004)
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper
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AP Wolf
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Apwolf
Post Number: 1078
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 1:30 pm: |
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Ted
Thanks for your lucid and aggreable comments.
As I said right at the start - despite my negative comments - I found your piece very provocative and highly interesting, not to mention brave, and I am always ready to support someone who is providing an alternative and useful insight into such crimes.
You are to be congratulated for that, and for flagging the piece up here where I can now read it at my leisure.
Prepare for a few cannon shots across your bow though. |
Shelley Wiltshire
Police Constable
Username: Shelley
Post Number: 9
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 9:22 am: |
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Hi,
All i can say is the ripper letters were a hoax, they were written by a a newspaper editor by the name of 'T Bulling', infact i have in my collection, Mr Bulling sending another letter to the police claiming it was from 'Jack the Ripper',( as also the letter he was sending was signed 'Jack the Ripper'), was the exact same handwriting as 'Bulling'...the other thing i can say is What a cluts!.
Cheers
Shelley
Criminology Student
For MASC (Ad Crim) |
Deano
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 9:37 pm: |
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Hello
As I now realise from these boards, most people and detectives regard the 'Dear Boss' letters as a hoax. More than likely written at the CNA. Since this Maybrick diary contains the Dear Boss lines 'HA HA', does this mean by default that the diary is a hoaxer who used the dear boss letter thinking it was real at the time? |
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