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Dorsenne: 'Jack L'Eventreur'
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Media: Specific Titles:
Non-Fiction:
Dorsenne: 'Jack L'Eventreur'
Author: Martin Fido
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 08:33 am |        | Hope you got here safely, Chris and John.
Chris - Not Inspector G[rievous]B[odily] H[arm], but GWH...!
There's a throwaway remark somewhere in the book to the effect that he was actually stationed in Berkshire in 1888, and so if he existed wasn't Met at all. But, wouldn't you believe it? The relevant period is the one for which Thames Valley Police have lost the archives.
For those unfamiliar with the book, there's a lot of fiction in it - much of it arising from Dorsenne's bad habit of inventing dialogue and using a French imagination. So Inspector GWH will leap upon villains shouting, "Hands up! Donnez-moi voz papiers!" Which would hardly be the utterances of an unarmed policeman in a society which never tolerated compulsory identity papers until WWII. Some of it is pure adventure story made up to round off the book as GWH travels all over the place looking for Ripper like murderers. Most of the accounts of the murders seem to be drawn from the press. But the data on the photographer are not in any press report or memoirs known to me - (and I believe I recall its being mentioned somewhere else that he himself played the clarinet, though I was unable to trace it in thumbing through my fading photocopy). And they sound too precise and circumstantial and irrelevant to the main story to my ear for unnecessary fictional ornament. Which makes one wonder whether Dorsenne really did have an informant and didn't make up GWH out of whole cloth. The larger historical interest of this is his claim that Sgt Thick proposed Pizer as a possible Leather Apron off his own bat and from his prior knowledge of him - something which doesn't appear in the press, but which would support the speculation that Pizer was not in fact, or not exclusively, the suspect indicated by One-Armed Liz and other streetwalkers.
With all good wishes,
Martin F |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 09:46 am | | Hi Martin,
Thanks for the thoughts and info on this intriguing book. I do hope our bandleader/photographer is real in most of the details given. I would love to know if anyone ever attempted a biography of him or found out more about his life -- especially his life after taking the Kelly photo (if he did). Here's a guy who photographed the Ripper victims, and worked and possibly hung out with the Victorian equivalent of strippers. I wonder what his love life was like. Was he married, I wonder?
When I was trying to hunt down further information on Caroline Maxwell, earlier in the year, it gradually became apparent to me that no one has yet tried to write her story, or researched her life after the murder and what her status as witness did to her and her family (as far as I could tell) . Both of these people -- Mrs. Maxwell and the photographer -- seem fascinating to me, in human terms.
Anyway, interesting stuff, as always.
Thanks, and see everyone over at the reading for the day, 
--John |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 16 June 2001 - 12:54 pm | | Hi, John and Martin:
Of course, Martin you're correct. It should not be Inspector G[rievous]B[odily] H[arm], but GWH, who was said to be in rose-bowered retirement in Yorkshire at the time of his talk to the French narrator.
I am wondering if the mention of the café concert is not specifically French too and maybe would throw some doubt on our concertmaster-photographer?
It is raining like crazy here which is delaying my departure for a couple of hours so I thought I would post the cover of Dorsenne's 1935 novella as published in Molly Whittington-Egan's translation from Cappella Archive, Malvern, England, 1999:
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Martin Fido
Sunday, 17 June 2001 - 05:02 am | | That's beautiful, Chris. My photocopy only has it in shades of grey.
Martin |
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