Author: David Radka
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 10:41 am |        |
CNN has a story on the Cornwell book on the front page of its web site today. Although the text of the story is conservative concerning the level of believability deemed accordable to the theory, doubtless Cornwell will profit handsomely by the story appearing where it does. Very few or no other author on the case could obtain such creditable exposure. Did Evans, Sugden, Begg or Fido have such opportunities when publishing? Yet, their works on the case are so much worthier.
David |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 12:05 pm | |
Hi, David:
Thank you for pointing to the CNN news story, "Jack the Ripper solved by Cornwell? Crime author believes she's cracked the case." Note that the article appears in the "Entertainment" section!  Having just reviewed this book for Ripperologist, where my review is "in press," I can say that this news story, as you note, is a pretty fair treatment of Cornwell's case, such as it is. The key word is that she "believes" she has cracked the case. Her book shows differently.
The story quotes Cornwell's text where she says, "At best, we have a 'cautious indicator' that the Sickert and Ripper mitochondrial DNA sequences may have come from the same person," but the point is that real proof may never be available because Sickert was cremated, leaving no evidence of his DNA behind. Thus she does not have the "hangable" proof she promised in her Primetime Live broadcast with Diane Sawyer a year ago.
It could be that Cornwell and her investigation was caught in time crunch for that TV spot with ABC and for the publication of her book now, a year later. The book reveals that only in September 2001 did she and her team receive permission "to conduct non-destructive forensic testing on the original Jack the Ripper letters at the Public Record Office in Kew." The Primetime Live broadcast would come up within two months of that permission being given but the DNA evidence the team was hoping to find on the letters could not be obtained because the PRO letters had been heat-treated and put in plastic. Only the Openshaw letter, recently returned to the PRO, gave hope for DNA testing, and a Ripper letter with a degraded blood smudge.
The TV broadcast revealed as its "highlight" only a watermark match between the Openshaw letter postmarked October 29, 1888 and a Sickert letter to American artist James McNeill Whistler, with whom the younger man had served as an apprentice. Now her book goes further by documenting a DNA match using DNA from beneath the stamps on the Openshaw letter. But the handwriting is radically different between that Sickert letter and the Openshaw letter and it is not proven anyway that the killer wrote that letter or any of the Jack the Ripper letters.
Statistically, she states, "the single-donor sequence excludes 99% of the population" and she quotes Dr. Paul Ferrara, Director of the the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine whose scientists worked on the investigation, as cautioning that "The matching sequences might be a coincidence. They might not be a coincidence." It might also be questioned whether DNA from 1888 is reliable, or has it degraded beyond being usable? And how much contamination has taken place from the innumerable people who must have handled these documents in the past century or so?
So for all the fanfare, her theory is like a house of cards. I suspect that as with prior theories in Ripperology, she will take in the gullible. It seems like we have been down this road before, folks.
All the best
Chris George |
Author: Chris Hintzen
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 12:44 pm | |
Hi All,
Been a LONG time. I don't have much time to chat, but I thought you'd be interested in the Patricia Cornwell Article on Yahoo's Oddly Enough News.
Here's the Link:
Crime Writer Says She's Got the Ripper's DNA
Best Regards,
Chris H.
P.S. Hopefully I'll be back again some day soon. :D |
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 03:33 pm | |
Quite right, Wolf - I did mean Villain. I had a mental image of the photograph of Sickert and Lessore in my head as I typed, and the mistake went from brain to fingers to screen. Which, of course, is what happens when you type off the top of your head and away from your research library!
But it is interesting to see how PC is ever so slightly backing down from her previously-stated '100 percent certainty' of Sickert's guilt by hedging it with a great deal of 'cautious indicators' and 'mights' and so on. Which only proves what a great many of us already know: you may write 'I honor those who have gone before me and dedicated their efforts to catching Jack the Ripper. He is caught. We have done it together,' but proving it beyond the shadow of a doubt. . .well, that's another thing entirely.
CG - could you e-mail me a private copy of your review? Jim DiPalma will be doing it for the January RN, but I'd be interested in your take. And is your review the reason the new issue of the Rip is so late? Was it held back to give you time to complete a literary dissection?
CMD |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 04:23 pm | |
Hi, CM:
No my review in truth is not why Ripperologist is late. I think that had more to do with Paul's various commitments. It just so happened that I received the review copy and Paul told me Adam indicated there was a possibility to get my review into the current issue if I could finalize it. Will e-mail you as requested, CM.
All the best
Chris |
Author: David Radka
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 09:23 pm | |
For the cognoscenti, the Cornwell problem is but the latest malady post-W-E. Spare us any more helpful bits of information to oppose our oh-so-culpable tendency to build a jackdaw's nest. And also, if it's not too dear, those who ever-so-innocently wish to debunk them for us.
Jackdaw |
Author: Howard Brown
Tuesday, 29 October 2002 - 09:54 pm | |
| You spelled "jackass" incorrectly,Dave. |
Author: Vicki
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 10:49 am | |
Hi all!
Keith,
This is just some speculation.
http://www.cleveleys.co.uk/wonders/gardensofbabylon.htm
Hanging Garden sounded familiar, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Herodotus claimed the walls of Babylon were 56 miles in length. Sickerts address was 56 Noel Street/Road. Noel is a Christmasy word and means a "Christmas carol." Babylon has the word baby in it. The picture could have been very symbolic to Sickert. Maybe it had something to do with Jesus being a King.
Another thing that Herodotus claimed was that "Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god Marduk, that seemed to reach to the heavens." Sickert's picture gives the illusion of looking up at towering buildings.
Thank you for bringing the picture to our attention.
Vicki |
Author: David Radka
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 04:17 pm | |
The recent 45th anniversary of the Soviet Union's launching of the first dog into space (Sputnik II, October 1957) brings some of the above posts together for me. The significance is that the cosmonaut in this case was a dog named Laika. In the same sense that the launching of a spacecraft with a living being in it need not necessarily imply that that being is a real cosmonaut flying the spacecraft, so the writing or reviewing of Ripperlogical materials need not imply that the writer or reviewer is necessarily a person qualified to be writing or reviewing. If a spaceship can be launched with a dog as "pilot," a review of a Ripperlogical book may be written by an incompetent as "reviewer." In my opinion, we have a major problem with self- or mutually-qualified "experts" in our field. The existence of Cornwell-like materials is a good indication of where the field stands at this point. Person A says here we have a Ripperlogical object, Person B has it tested for DNA, and viola! Case solution. A and B each mutually qualify the other. The problem is, A and B may not have been on the same page. Same thing with writing/reviewing. Person A has a journal, person B writes a review for it, and viola! Both are taken as experts. The problem is, neither may be.
David |
Author: David O'Flaherty
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 05:08 pm | |
David,
A Halloweenish-aside from recently declassified Soviet documents: Laika the Sputnik dog was really known as "Fluffy" by the Russian scientists, although he was not a fluffy dog. It was discovered that after his exposure in outer space, Fluffy had acquired the ability to shoot laser beams from his eyes, and after a short rampage in Leningrad, had to be put down.
Sometimes you have to do that with rabid animals, put them down. And if an editor of Ripper Notes isn't qualified to review Ripper-related material, then were does that leave a poor old accountant? Counting his fingers and toes, I suppose.
Cheers,
Dave |
Author: John Dow
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 06:43 pm | |
Patricia Bloody Cornwell. Well, I made the mistake of watching the Omnibus programme and I'm too incensed to type properly so it's probably best if I don't.
I will make two comments though: firstly, her tame FBI guys went to great lengths to explain that the killer of Mary Kelly et al would not simply stop - he'd go on killing until he was caught or died. I'd be interested to hear Ms Cornwell's opinion of what Sickert was up to between the Cambden town murder and his death some decades later.
And don't even START me on the arrogance of the woman, sitting calling him an "Evil Old Man" - dragging the name and reputation of an innocent throught the deepest swamp imaginable simply to justify her investment.
I am utterly sickened by this whole thing and would urge my fellow readers to boycott the woman's "book".
Angry in Edinburgh. |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 06:53 pm | |
Dear David,
And who is your suspect?
Dear Vicki,
You become more intriguing than Mr Radka!!
Dear Pat,
"Its like raising the Titanic"...(thanks to Davidoz.)
Dear SELF,
Believe Nothing.
Rosy :-) |
Author: Bob Hinton
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:11 pm | |
Dear Everyone,
Having just finished watching the Patricia Cornwell programme ( its on later in wild Wales) the only comment I feel I can make is "This is a joke - right?"
What a complete load of unmitigated twaddle!
Bob Hinton |
Author: Jim Jenkinson
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:12 pm | |
John,
I have to agree with you. Especially Ms Cornwell's comments, at the end, while she was watching the home movie of Sickert,which I thought were unwarranted.
Jim |
Author: The Viper
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:18 pm | |
The Omnibus programme makers did at least seek the odd bit of dissent, witness the all-too-brief comments by Donald Rumbelow.
The comment Jon Dow mentions from the ex-FBI investigator did interest me. The film cuts to Ms. Cornwell saying that she didn't think that Mary Kelly was Sickert's last murder victim. However, after only vague allusions to other similar murders in London (no names, no details) Cornwell went straight on to concentrate on the Camden Town murder some nineteen years later, which she believes is attributable to Sickert.
Overall I thought the film sloppy right from its incorrect opening caption (stating that JTR was the first serial killer), and confused. The chunks of Cornwell's autobiographical detail and readings from her novels didn't sit easily amongst the investigative material. What exactly did the makers of this programme want to achieve?
There were a number of loose ends and no clear summary of the case Cornwell was making against Sickert was ever presented. At one point she talked about there being "even more evidence" against him. Yet one struggled to think of any decent evidence that had previously been presented. Rather there were just a series of coincidences in which various forensic and artistic "experts" found similarities between images, handwriting or swab samples taken from a variety of the letters at the PRO and articles tracable to the painter. There was nothing that represented a solid connection and the investigators began to fall back on the "we can't prove it was, but you can't prove it wasn't line" that we've seen put forward so often with these dubious theories.
The overall verdict? A poorly constructed case made in a poorly constructed programme. This viewer found himself channel hopping more than once. Definitely not a film to make you want to run out and buy Ms. Cornwell's book.
Regards, V. |
Author: Jim Jenkinson
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:24 pm | |
V.
The odd bit of dissent, yes, but not at all balanced. Maybe they should have let the "Horizon" team handle it.
One thing Ms Cornwell did prove to me, Sickert was a smashing painter.
Jim |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:40 pm | |
The sad thing about Patricia Cornwell is that she spent 16 months plus 6 million dollars in an effort to make a silk purse from a sows ear only to make a pigs ear of it.
She made the comment that if she knew she had failed in her task she would then go back to becoming a waitress.
Make mine a tea and two bacon rolls please Patricia. |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 07:54 pm | |
| Oh and one other thing, Cornwall's friend the attorney stated that if she got Sickert into a court of law she would have a case againest him and would convict him. What's new ? I know a judge who would find Jesus Christ guilty and nail him to a cross far quicker than the Romans did. |
Author: Jim Jenkinson
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 08:13 pm | |
Would she extradite Sickert to the USA ?
Would he have the right to remain silent ? |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 08:18 pm | |
Dear Mr Edwards,
BUT...mitochondrial DNA by Dr Ferrara would also support your theory. Think about it.
Rosey :-) |
Author: David Radka
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 08:40 pm | |
Laika was not a male dog. She was a b*tch.
David |
Author: Christopher T George
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 09:39 pm | |
Dear Mr. Radka:
If you would like the chore of reviewing the books for Ripper Notes and Ripperologist, I am assured that editors Christopher-Michael DiGrazia and Paul Begg have a huge stack of books they would like reviewed by early next week. Please expect a truckload on your front doorstep in the morning.
I am sure with your fluency in the mother tongue you will be able to knock out the required reviews in no time.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Garry Ross
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 10:18 pm | |
To all who saw the Omnibus programme,
I taped it so I could watch it very closely and go over bits that interested me, although I never needed to hit the rewind at all.
The whole programme was too OTT by half for one, I was expecting storm troopers to rush in when the part with her investigative friends came on followed by a car chase and a few explosions (sadly lacking)
Like John, the comment at the end about Sickert being an 'evil old man' made my stomach turn - he just looked like any old fella who looked a bit bemused at someone pointing a camera at him to me!
The two main parts that made me chuckle were the fact that he used to sign himself as Dick Sick, and when Cornwell was convinced even more that he was the Ripper because he painted the 'Camden Town murder' and 'Jack the Rippers bedroom'...startling evidence! The man was an artist and artists do that sort of thing. There's been countless songs over the years with some even having the singer claiming to be 'Jack the Ripper' but none of them were.
Sickerts 'bedroom' painting is also of a woman so perhaps he was hinting that a woman was 'the Ripper'? or even that every womans bedroom is the domain of 'the Ripper'? Who knows? he never wrote down little narratives for his paintings.
How she thought any of those paintings and drawings bore any resemblance to anything is beyond me apart from the fact that she needed to.
The Cornwall guest book pic of a man with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth and a drawing on a 'Ripper letter' of a man with a pipe in his mouth weren't that similar either.
A severe lack of evidence including all these other murders we were told about but not told about in the same breath.
Like Donald Rumbelow I'll be saddened if people believe this tripe and start slashing his paintings or desecrating his grave etc - as they did with poor Maybrick.
In Cornwells case, the jury isn't out, they've been dismissed and gone home already.
I'm sorry she wasted so much time and money on this.
take care
Garry
There will be other programmes to look forward to though, hopefully with more real info than this one. |
Author: Garry Ross
Wednesday, 30 October 2002 - 10:29 pm | |
oh and I nearly forgot about the 'Jack the Ripper' signature also on the Cornwall guestbook...let's face it, how many here can replicate that signature on the 'Dear Boss' letter? We know it was in mass circulation and the entry in the guestbook was 1889 anyway!
you can all put your hands down now 
take care
Garry
Overall I suspect that Sickert was just fascinated by dark subjects...we're all suspects if that is the case |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 01:43 am | |
Hi, Garry:
Yes when we consider how many artists painted or sketched women in their boudoirs around that period, we could have many more Jack the Ripper suspects than just plain old Wally Sickert. The "similarity" that Ms. Cornwell sees between bedroom scenes in Sickert works and MJK's room is really just that they are likewise seedy working class bedrooms.
In terms of the Lizard guestbook in Cornwall, when you see the Cornwell book (Cornwall - Cornwell.... Lizard - gizzard.... Whitechapel, Liverpool - Whitechapel, London.... get it??? ), you will see that she shows a considerable number of cartoonish sketches from the guestbook that she "thinks" are by Walter Sickert (no proof there) and shows them side by side with cartoon-like illustrations from Jack the Ripper letters.
Such a comparison of the Lizard sketches with JtR letters might be persuasive for Joe Public (unfortunately). However, those of us who have studied the Jack the Ripper case and have seen the excellent book by Evans and Skinner, Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell know that the JtR letters were all written in different styles of handwriting and there is no proof that any of the letters are from the killer. So Ms. Cornwell is comparing drawings that are not provably by Sickert with drawings that are not provably by the Whitechapel murderer.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: ALAN SMITH
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 04:36 am | |
Can anyone explain P.C.'s point about Jack throwing Eddowes' internal organs over her shoulders to avoid blood which was still spraying from her neck?
Apart from the fact that there was no spraying blood, is she suggesting that he was trying to keep himself clean?
I must be missing something.
Alan |
Author: Andy & Sue Parlour
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 05:19 am | |
Hello All,
Let's face it. The Omnibus programme was not, I repeat, not about JTR. It was about Patricia Cornwell telling the whole World how bloody good and clever she thought she was. We are all guilty of saying things that others don't agree with when pushing our own theories, (unless that is you can walk on water), but what she did and said on the proramme just beggar's belief.
It was full of silly camera bites, especially the one of her and her 'Team' walking up to the door of the PRO.
Don's bit was obviously edited so much, but he did get a few salient points on screen.
We say at the end of our book 'We are only spinning a yarn'. Cornwell spun enough to make a 1,000 army blankets.
Tea and 2 toast please waitress.
A. |
Author: Rosemary O'Ryan
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 05:23 am | |
Dear Mr Ross,
A photograph of "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom" is in the possession of the A-Z editors...FOR OVER A DECADE. The dark figure is a MAN.
Since it is known that a Casebook poster had this painting in his possession prior to its so-called
discovery by the art gallery's curator(!)we must be cautious about the pencilled title on the reverse of the canvas.
Rosey :-) |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 09:07 am | |
Hi, Alan:
Cornwell's book (p. 238) states that in the Eddowes murder it was likely that the killer threw the intestines to one side because it was certain organs that he wanted. Nothing said about blood spray in this context.
All the best
Chris George |
Author: Scott E. Medine
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 10:26 am | |
I'll make this as short and quick as possible. Cornwell's experts used mitochondrial DNA for their testing. This is no big surprise as mtDNA is most often used when using degraded DNA samples. They also had no known sample to work from. A know sample would have been from Walter Sickert himself, not a family member. Apparently, they also had no elimination DNA, this is DNA from everyone, over the last 114 years, who has handled the evidence that the samples originated from. Of the two types of DNA used for testing, the other being nuclear, mtDNA is the most unreliable.
I can tell you right now that the samples taken off the evidence was contaminated as the mere act of breating on a piece of evidence containing possible DNA samples is enough to contaminate the sample.
Cornwell's experts speak of excluding 99% of the population. This is not to be confused with 99% certainity. Because mtDNA is grouped along racial and ethnic lines, the most the Cornwell team can say is that a white male of Euro descent is the author of the Oppenshaw letter. If Sickert were still alive and ordered to stand trial for the murders I am sure Johnny Cochrane and F. Lee Bailey would be on the next plane to London.
Peace,
Scott |
Author: David Radka
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 10:30 am | |
I am thinking of Cornwell as Laika in the above post. I certainly do not mean to take a jab at the integrity of anyone mentioned by Mr. George in his answering post above.
David |
Author: Christopher T George
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 10:32 am | |
Hi, Scott:
And Jack never left a bloody glove at the crime scene either. 
Seriously, Scott, thanks for your informed comments on Cornwell's DNA evidence.
All the best
Chris |
Author: Scott E. Medine
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 02:05 pm | |
No problem Chris...By the way .....
If its not my spit you must aquit.
Sorry I couldn't resist.
Peace,
Scott |
Author: Christopher-Michael DiGrazia
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 02:32 pm | |
Speaking of Laika -
If you link to the "Fortean Times" webiste, you will see a story about poor Laika. Rather than a happy dog surviving almost a week in space, as the godless Commies trumpeted to the world, the poor dog was a stray from the Moscow streets who was chained in the capsule to prevent her from turning around and who died of stress and overheating within hours of liftoff.
Time reveals all, as a certain gentleman used to say.
And I'm glad we don't get Omnibus here in the States. I'd have thrown even more of a hissy fit than I have since I began reading Portrait of a Killer.
CMD |
Author: Arfa Kidney
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 04:04 pm | |
Hello All,
Matching DNA samples is all very well,but there was no mention of any attempts to match hand writing samples!
And if anyone mentions multiple personalities in their response,I shall puke into a large plastic bucket!
Mick |
Author: Stephen Hills
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 04:28 pm | |
This post is entirely superfluous as it is just to say how pathetic the Omnibus program was and how weak PCs case against Sickert (as everyone who has posted seems to agree). I was expecting at least some evidence or even imaginative narrative that if you suspended disbelief you could have followed to the inevitable conclusion that Sickert did it (after all she is an author). Alas, I too was disappointed. And I too think her sign off about the Evil old Man was as disgusting as Anne Robinson's wink. It seems her strongest evidence is that in a piece of old film she sensed the evil in him from a look in his eyes. I guess with senses like that Scarpetta always gets her man!
Cromo |
Author: Dean James Hines
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 05:11 pm | |
Well the artist pallete knives are definitely out on this shoddy piece of investigative documentary, I'm suprised the BBC went ahead and showed it, purely shameless self promotion by Patricia Cornwell. She may well have assisted in numerous PMs in her time, she certainly has a great knowledge of forensic science but she is no art historian and even aspects of the crimes themselves certainly eluded her argument as sucessfully as the Ripper eluded the police. If I seem subjective in my criticism, forgive me as it seems, Ms Cornwell was 100 percent subjective throughout even to top the epilogue with an 'a self centred sonafa****'address towards Sickert. Allow me a moment to be objective.
I'd like to expand upon comments made by Gary Ross and Christopher George on artists and their practices. As a student of art history, currently on my final dissertation, (my teen-year interest in JtR rekindled by this current debate), I thought that I may be able to add some objective criticism to Sickert and Impressionist painting.
Sickert's work belongs to the Camden Town Group, which was associated with British artists as Gore and Gilman. These artists were credited with introducing post-Impressionism ideas of Van Gogh and Cezanne to British painting whereby there was a call for a return to a formal conception of art, or where there was a significant stress on the subject matter as opposed to painting purely what you see. Art historians agree that the term is very vague and indeed looking at Sickert's work we may question his motives, certainly the tonal range of his pallet was much more sombre then the vitality of colour in works by Monet, Renoir, Pissaro etc and we might conclude that Camden Town Murder, or La Hollandaise (strange how Cornwell did not refer to this, though Stephen Knight had done in his work)are concerned with actual violence against women. However, as Cornwell did note, Sickert interest with 'low life theatre' as a subject matter, indeed he had been a minor performer, however this form of entertaiment was not uncommon to Fench Impressionist painters.
We have to understand that the French Impressionism movement was concerned with rejecting traditional academic pratices: historical & landscape painting, neo-classical influences are examples. The re-development of Paris after 1849 created a new economy, a new class, the bourgeoise, and, more opportunity for leisure, thus we see bars, cafes, theatres springing up along newly built boulevards (actually a strategic idea - it stops barricades being erected). For the new painter, encouraged to paint plein air, there were numeorus leisure activities to capture on canvas, people bathing, people in cafes, people enjoying the ballet the theatre.
Yet there is a constant undercurrent of sexual vibrance in Impressionist painting, political subversity (Pissaro), debauchery (Manet's Absinthe Drinker - although he was still much academic painter)and taboo. Take for instance Degas' depiction of ballerinas rehearsing whilst gentlemen watch - an allusion to child prostitution - hich was rife.If Sickert is guilty of anything it is following in the path of previous artists interest in the darker, baser aspects of human nature.
Returning to the documentary, Cornwell's argument for Sickert as candidate to the JtR Probable Suspects' Hall of Fame hinges primarily on the murder of Mary Kelly, indeed, the dcumentary opens with a lurid depiction, almost to cement the argument that follows. I dismiss Ms Cornwell's belief that Le Journal (1904) points to Catherine Eddowes murder on the basis purely because the viewpoint of the subject is similar to the pre-post mortem photograph of Eddowes lying in her shell. In art history, this would be considered pseudomorphic, whereby there is an accidental apperance throughout history where images whose close formal analogies falsify the fact that their meanings are totally different. Where would Sickert have seen the mortuary photo to depict in Le Journal?
In the case of Kelly's murder (note how the medical examiner incorrectly said Kelly's intestines were lying on the bedside table - Miss Cornwell did you read Dr Bond's post mortem notes?)there are numerous depictions of women out stretched on beds through this period and beyond. The actual Camden Town murder may have inspired Sickert (as he actually lived there)but it seems too easy to criticise the titles he applies to his painting as having direct parallels to the subject matter or even JtR. The woman lying on the bed in CTM may not actually be dead, the use of murder might imply the death of virtue, or innocence, perhaps through violence, perhaps not?
I recently attended a lecture on the German Expressionist painter, Max Beckmann. The works by Beckmann were unsettling particular his post WW1 examination as The Night (1918-19)with it's undertones of a facist police state pre-empting the rise of Nazism. However, works by his contemporary, Otto Dix are even more unsettling. Observing a slide of his etching, Rape and Murder (1922) the parallels with Kelly's murder were all too apparent. A woman lies sprawled across her bed, the victim of savage, sexual mutilation. The etching was from a series of dark, peverse works which the war torn Dix had produced as a reaction to the futlity and dispair of human existance following WWI. Was he the Ripper? No, he had not been born. Artists as Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud depict women (and men) in naked and unusual postures, their tonal range on a par with Sickert, it does not make them murderers.
I feel that Ms Cornwell has been clutching at straws. Evidence appears circumstatial I pity that there was a lack of authority on the Ripper case, Donald Rumblelow's comments amounted to a few seconds and who was this Asst. Commissionaire? If you are reading this Stewart, did the BBC approach you for your comments? I hope Sickert's reputation is not tarnished by this fast food approach to criminology. It reminded me of Silent Witness where the evidence fits nicely enough to allow time for an Amanda Burton one last smugg, 'I told you' so look. For a $6million investigation you'd have expected to get something for your money - even th documenatry failed to deliver convincingly. Ms Cornwell, please leave the art to the art historians. |
Author: David Radka
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 07:09 pm | |
Crackin' post, Mr. Hines! This is the kind of dynamic analysis we need. I'm still thinking.
Does anyone know if Ms Cornwell undertook paid consultations with well-known Ripperologists? I notice the silence of attacks on her book from on high. Could she have perhaps spoken with one or more of them for half an hour, then paid a five-digit fee?
I'm sure this question will draw the ire of some. I mean no harm--I'm not accusing anyone. And I'm on Alprazolam, remember. Just asking.
David |
Author: Dean James Hines
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 07:28 pm | |
Thank you David for your compliments. My apologies to all for dropping some letters in my discussion - it's been a long, long day.
Kind regards
Dean |
Author: Garry Wroe
Thursday, 31 October 2002 - 09:27 pm | |
Hello All.
If nothing else, Ms Cornwell has at least inspired some extremely interesting and inciteful posts. I'm only surprised that no-one has mentioned the surgical operation that, according to Patsy, possibly/probably resulted in the removal of Sickert's penis during boyhood - despite the fact that he appears to have fathered at least one child in adulthood. This deficiency, it was inferred, proved to have been the motivational force behind the Whitechapel Murders. Predictably, not a shred of evidence was adduced in support of this contention.
And yet, whilst I would agree with virtually all of the criticisms levelled at Ms Cornwell and the BBC, I would also suggest that there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If the Cornish hotel register is genuine, for example, and Sickert really was responsible for the caricature contained therein, then it is at least possible that Sickert authored one or more of the Ripper letters. This is in no way meant to suggest that Sickert should be considered a realistic Ripper suspect. On the contrary. But Sickert certainly appears to have harboured a longstanding fascination for the case. And given his creative flair and mischievious personality, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he derived a certain frisson from sending hoax letters to the press or police. In psychological terms, such behaviour is not a world apart from Macnaghten's apparent compulsion to write about the Ripper and his crimes. Forbes Winslow and Stephenson also represent examples of men who repeatedly put pen to paper in a Ripper context.
At present, this can be no more than conjecture. Only time and further research will resolve the issue one way or the other. But it may well be that Ms Cornwell has made a positive contribution to the case after all.
Best wishes,
Garry Wroe. |
