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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Camden Town Murder -- New Website
Casebook Message Boards: Beyond Whitechapel - Other Crimes: Camden Town Murder of 1907:
Camden Town Murder -- New Website
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 02 November 2002 - 07:49 am |        | Hi, all:
For all the controversy that she has caused, one thing that Patricia Cornwell in her new book, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (Penguin-Putnam, 2002) has done is bring new focus to the Camden Town murder of Phyllis (born Emily Elizabeth) Dimmock in September 1907, which Ms. Cornwell claims that her suspect, Impressionist painter Walter R. Sickert, committed. Now there is a new website devoted to the Camden Town Murder, run by John Barber, a writer who has expanded an article on the murder that he wrote for the August 2002 issue of Hertfordshire Countryside to establish the website.
As Mr. Barber states, "The Camden Town Murder was the talk of the country in 1907. It was on the front pages of all national newspapers, became a landmark in criminal justice and attracted the most notable criminal defence lawyer in England. Almost one hundred years later it remains one of the most famous unsolved murder mysteries of all time. . . . The story began . . . when a young prostitute known as Phyllis Dimmock was found with her throat cut in St Pauls Road, North London on the morning of 12 September. The police arrested a young designer by the name of Robert Wood. He was the last person to have been seen with Phyllis and had sent her a postcard on which he had asked her to meet him at a local pub."
It would seem that Mr. Barber, as he states, wishes not to take sides as to whether Sickert or Wood was guilty but rather, commendably, to bring renewed attention to this English murder of 1907.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Esther Wilson
Monday, 04 November 2002 - 06:09 pm | | Thanks Chris for this information. I've checked out the site that you have included and it is very interesting indeed. I've got my reading cut out for me.  No pun intended.
Esther |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Tuesday, 05 November 2002 - 09:04 am | | There are very few things that are new in Ripper research, and a linking of the Camden Town murder of 1907 with the Whitechapel murders of 1888 is certainly not one of them.
The accused, Robert Wood, was defended by the great advocate Mr. (later Sir) Edward Marshall Hall. In his opening speech for the defence on Monday, 16th December, 1907, Hall evoked memories of the unknown Whitechapel murderer in an effort to explain a possible motive for the murder. He stated:-
"Is it not probable that the crime is the work of a sexual maniac - a murder similar to the murders which paralysed all London many years ago? Is it not possible that this woman, who had descended to the lowest depths of prostitution, should have become acquainted with some man who proved to be a maniac seeking for his prey? The murderer was a madman..." |
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