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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 **
Jack the Ripper: Light-Hearted Friend (Wallace)
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles:
Non-Fiction:
Jack the Ripper: Light-Hearted Friend (Wallace)
Author: Michael Rogers
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:42 am |        | | Just when you think you've heard it all, here comes this bizarre volume. The author, apparently a therapist of some sort, here proposes the theory that Jack the Ripper was the Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known to the public as author Lewis Carroll, the "Alice in Wonderland" guy. Wallace claims Dodgson was sexually abused as a child which led him to become the Victorian serial killer. Completely ridiculous. |
Author: Teresa Lucia
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:42 am | | What do you think of Richard Wallace's theory that "Jack" could be Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll the author of the children's book, "Alice In Wonderland" fame? His observations are extremely interesting and intrigueing. Anagrams were, indeed, a part of the Ripper's game playing as they were a large part of Dodgson's writings and mathematical musings.
("Jack The Ripper; Light-Hearted Friend" and "The Agony Of Lewis Carroll" by Richard Wallace; Gemini Press, 1990) |
Author: Robert Whitehead
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:42 am | | I am sure that by now you have heard of the book claiming that Lewis Carroll was JTR but since i found no mention of it at your fabulous site, i thought i'd email you about it just in case. the theory is set forth in a book entitled JTR:"Light-hearted Friend " by Richard Wallace. The author is a psychotherapist specializing in helping children in overcoming abuse. the JTR book is a sequel to The Agony of Lewis Carroll, which claims that LC was a homosexual with rage at his parents, family and society. in the JTR book he analyzes LC's works and finds anagrams in them which are all about JTR or about his supposed homosexuality. for example, by switching the letters around in a sentence in the Nursery Alice, Wallace comes up with this, "O, yes, the gay son swells so! But as blood gushes out, even I shun a view, masturbate onto the wound. -Jack the Ripper."
it's all pretty ludicrous. i haven't figured out if it's more insulting to Lewis Carroll or JTR. you can get these two masterpieces through amazon books, or you can get them autographed by Wallace from the publisher, Gemini Press, PO Box 1088, Melrose, MA 02176. it's $23 for the pair, and not worth it signed or unsigned. |
Author: Richard Wallace
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:43 am | | I bring to your attention my book, published in 1996, presented by Harper's Magazine in November. It includes an introduction by Colin Wilson and is getting good reviews for it's research. The British Ripper crowd is beginning to hear of it and some things should appear soon in their publications.
A controversial work, it points to Lewis Carroll, a "least likely" suspect for the times but one whose rage at women and the world in general was well identified and documented in my first book, The Agony of Lewis Carroll, in 1990.
I suggest that these crimes were abuse reactive, a reenactment of sexual abuse and exploitation in the British public schools where Charles Dodgson was sent after early schooling in the home. He appears to have suffered a psychotic break from that experience, his emotional growth ceased (witness his social life with little girls) and he developed sophisticated word games to "get back" at society by hiding disclosure and pure smut in the nonsense of his works.
The book includes a forensic handwriting analysis of sample Ripper letters and pages from his handwritten diary (from the British Library) from his ages 20, 30, 40, and during the Ripper spree -- a complete life-time analysis. The book's in paperback, $13.00, and available from BookWorld, Ingram, and increasingly in the local bookstore. |
Author: Jackmaybri
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:43 am | | I just finished reading Richard Wallace's "Light-hearted Friend".
It was an entertaining book, and Wallace convincingly shows that there was a dark and twisted and smutty side behind Charles Dodgson's Victorian reserve and behind what appear to be delightful children stories enjoyed on both sides of the Atlantic.
But Wallace falls at least half a football field short in his attempt to show that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper. His case against Dodgson/Carroll rests largely upon perceived parallels between the Ripper murders (his theory would require some very questionable murders being ascribed to the Ripper, including Frances Coles) and some key dates in Carroll's life, but the parallels are vague enough that anyone could "find" such parallels if he looked hard enough.
And his case also rests upon some anagrammatic reconstructions of the "Dear Boss" letter, the Goulston Street graffitto, and portions of Carroll's works, including "Jabberwocky" and "The Nursery Alice". But as Stephen Ryder points out, you can take any completed work after the fact and make an appropriate anagram out of it if there are enough letters to do so. Portions of the works of Shakespeare have been anagrammatically reconstructed to prove the authorship of Bacon, Oxford, Marlow --- and Shakespeare himself.
On the other hand, it would be pretty difficult to create before the fact a work that clearly imparts desired messages both normally and anagrammatically. And it would also be difficult to create a normal message that didn't leave any anagrammatic messages at all. Suppose you were Lewis Carroll and you just wanted to write a plain ordinary letter or verse that cou ldn't be anagrammatically misinterpreted by anyone? How would you do it? It would probably be as difficult as creating a normal message that did mean something else an anagram.
Difficult indeed, when Richard Wallace insists that "Dear Boss" should be anagrammatically interpreted to mean "Dare, Boss", and/or "Sob dears" and/or "Sores bad". Please, Mr. Wallace. How do you start a letter if you don't start it with the salutation "Dear"?
But as far as advancing "Ripper Studies", I think that the Wallace book is valuable for two reason: 1) It presents a very plausible explanation for where the author of the "Dear Boss" letter and the "From Hell, Mr. Lusk" letter might have derived the references to "Jack the Ripper" and "Hell" (whether or not you believe that these letters were written by the killer) and 2) It presents an equally intriguing explanation of how the Ripper, whoever he was, might have derived his modus operandi (Hint: Initials CK, circa 1860).
Well, Mr. Wallace; whatever happened to the sale of film rights that you said in March 1997 you hoped to be able to announce? If you can do it, more power to you. Others have done it and there is no reason why you should not get your bite at the apple. A film based on your book should be no less entertaining than your book. To paraphrase some famous general, it can be magnificent even if it isn't history.
As an addendum to my last post, I should add that another major problem with the anagrammatic "confessions" that Richard Wallace extracts from the poetry of Lewis Carroll is that these have Carroll "confesssing" not only to having killed these prostitutes but to having masturbated onto them.
Unless I am very much mistaken, there was no semen found on any of the acknowledged or purported Ripper victims. |
Author: Teri
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:44 am | | After reading Wallace's books and the other entries (including my own Nov.5), I am compelled to add to this "conference."
Irregardless of Wallace's "ludicrous" observations, his theory is no less valid than any other. Indeed, his story is made more intrigueing by his suspect; a revered Oxford professor, author and man-of-the-cloth, than any other. Not being a "Ripperologist," and for the most part ignorant of documentation other than this website and others like it, Wallace's books, Colin Wilson's book on the subject and Hollywood flambeau, I am inclined to believe that Wallace may be onto something other than sensationalism. There are a couple of points Wallace makes that make me think so. Unfortunately, given Wallace's "ludicrous" and, albeit, far-fetched analyzing of his study subject, I think no one feels it worthwhile to pursue the certain avenues of "proof" that may or may not hold the key to the Ripper's identity.
The foremost is a fingerprint, or rather "finger smear from 'red stuff'" ("Light hearted Friend," p. 101) noticable on the microfilm copy of a communication received by authorities on Oct. 1, 1888, allegedly by JTR. Wallace writes, "Whether or not the . . . fingerprints are still visible in the original is a good question and might provide an interesting police analysis with a Dodgson letter in the Lewis Carroll collection. . .which is said to have a pretty clear print of the author." Does anyone here know if this has ever been done? Mr. Wallace?
Another is "The Druitt Connection," "Light Hearted Friend," p. 250, wherein Wallace suggests that Dodgson, Thomas Vere Bayne and Montague Druitt are responsible for the murders, as well as Bayne and Dodgson being responsible for Druitt's apparent "suicide," if there is truth to the fact of Druitt's "association" with the Oxford don at the time of the murders. The murders of Emma Smith, and the two others who lived to describe their assailants would lend this a bit of credence, at least to those attacks. What person living in the slums of outer East London would know an Oxford don?
When young, I remember reading the "Alice" books. My father told me at that time to look for the "hidden meanings" contained within the works and described them as both "political," and "sinister." I never knew what he meant. Perhaps Richard Wallace does. |
Author: Jackmaybri
Thursday, 19 November 1998 - 12:44 am | | Actually, I will revise my last post to add a third potentially valuable contribution that the Wallace book, "Light-Hearted Friend" may have provided.
Again, the Wallace book does not go very far towards establishing that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper or even towards making him a serious suspect but does contain some valuable information that I, for one, have not seen elsewhere.
In addition to the two alluded to in my previous post, the Wallace book has something interesting to contribute about the "Eight Little Whores" poem that the police received which might have been written by the Ripper (though this is hotly disputed, as are all of the famous letters and poems).
This is the poem that starts, "Eight little whores with no hope of heaven/Gladstone may save one, then there'll be seven..."
As far as I know, only Richard Wallace has pointed out the similarity betweeen this verse and the poem "A Game of Fives", written by Carroll in 1883 and apparently published at that time: "Five little girls of Five, Four, Three, Two, One;/Rolling on the heartrug, full of tricks and fun..."
The meter and rhyme of each of these two poems, and to a lesser extent the theme of each poem read in full seem too close to be coincidental, unless the meter was a common one oft-used by a number of poets from the late 19th century who wrote in English. Of course, this meter has since been adopted as "Ten Little Indians", which in turn was utilized in a famous Agatha Christie novel and at least two movies based on that novel.
Anyway, Wallace would like to use the similarity between "Eight little whores..." and "A Game of Fives" as additional proof that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper. But assuming that the meter of the poems was not in common use at the time, all that the similarity between the two poems in question would show is that the writer of "Eight little whores..." was familiar with Carroll's "A Game of Fives", which was, after all, in print years before the Ripper murders.
Is it therefore too much to speculate that the person who wrote "Eight little whores" is likely to have been a father of a young child or of young children, including at least one daughter, who might have held his daughter on his knee while reading the Carroll poem to her? |
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