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Chris Phillips
Sergeant
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 26
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 5:43 pm: |       |
Does anyone know anything further about the following example of the Ripper's "sallies in verse", quoted by Donald McCormick, The Identity of Jack the Ripper (1959 edn, p. 83).
'Up and down the goddam town
Policemen try to find me.
But I ain't a chap yet to drown
In drink, or Thames or sea.'
'I've no time now to tell you how
I came to be a killer.
But you should know, as time will show,
That I'm society's pillar.'
Melvin Harris made a strong case that McCormick manufactured another Ripper poem, "Eight little whores", and passed it off as an extract from Dr Dutton's Chronicles of Crime. That poem, with its reference to "Henage Court", served a purpose in McCormick's scheme, as he seems to identify the doctor arrested by PC Spicer in Henage court with his suspect, Dr Pedachenko.
In contrast, no source is given for the poem above (it immediately follows the poem "I'm not a butcher...", extracted from Macnaghten's memoirs), and it seems to play no part in McCormick's scheme.
Chris Phillips
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John Ruffels
Sergeant
Username: Johnr
Post Number: 33
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 5:24 am: | |
Hello Chris,
Just looking at the above poem one word strikes me: "goddam": is the author of the poem conveying a sort of music hall Americanism?
And, others might know, doesn't that term have modern usage feel about it? |
Chris Scott
Detective Sergeant
Username: Chris
Post Number: 91
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 8:15 am: | |
Hi Chris
I have never seen any provenance for this verse but two things strike me about it.
1) It seems to be a parody of a well known nursery rhyme - "Pop Goes the Weasel". The full version of this rhyme starts: "Up and down the City Road, In and out The Eagle..."
2) The one thing that gives me serious doubt that it is contemporary with the killings is the reference to drowning in the Thames. This seems an obvious reference to the Druitt suicide. Although we know this was reported in various newspapers in January 1889, there is, as far as I know, no reliable reference to Druitt being seriously considered as a suspect until the MacNaghten document of 1894, and even that was a confidential document kept in police files.
Unless the writer had access to police files before Druitt's identity and suspicions about him were made public in the 1960's, I think this verse has be looked at with a very sceptical eye.
Chris S |
Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 52
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 9:19 am: | |
Chris
Yes, I agree we should be sceptical about it, particularly in view of the suspicion that McCormick concocted another Ripper poem based on a nursery rhyme.
Really, the reason you give - the reference to drowning in the Thames - was the reason I was interested in its provenance.
I think we do have one significant reference before 1894 - the "West of England" MP's belief in 1891 that the Ripper was the son of a surgeon who had committed suicide (though drowning in the Thames is not mentioned). We also have the story, likewise of dubious provenance, because it comes from McCormick, that Bachert was told in early 1889 that the killer had drowned himself in the Thames.
Chris Phillips
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