GEORGE HUTCHINSON

‘Unfortunates’
and Bêtes Noirs
EDITORIAL by CHRISTOPHER T GEORGE
Although the broad and well-known stories of the ‘Unfortunates’ who were Jack the Ripper’s
victims have remained much the same for the past 127 years, the face of ‘Jack’ himself continues
to change, with an endless parade of newly promoted or revived suspects. No doubt to the utter
confusion or else fascination of the public - or is it more boredom with the topic by this point?
Well, frankly, the way the media jumps on each new sensational theory, with little discernment as
to the particular theory’s possible flaws or shortfalls, it seems newspaper writers and editors and
TV producers have the sense that members of the public retain their hunger for news of ‘Jack’
and the latest narrative that will forever settle the never-ending question of who he (or she) was.
Somehow it’s still the bloody autumn of 1888 and everyone is panting waiting to know the identity
of the unknown killer.
When my wife Donna and I attended the Salisbury Conference in September
2014, the ‘big thing’ was Russell Edwards’ recently published book, Naming
Jack the Ripper, and he and his Liverpool John Moores University DNA expert,
Dr Jari Louhelainen, were in attendance to tell the delegates that indeed
the shawl allegedly found in Mitre Square on the night of 30 September
1888 contained DNA from the blood of victim Catherine Eddowes and the
semen of suspect Aaron Kosminski - or at least that the DNA would match
that of modern-day relatives of both parties. Doubts about these revelations
have since arisen, to the extent that the DNA matches are believed by
many observers to be not as rare or as strong as Mr Edwards continues to
aver. Meanwhile, out in the lobby of the Mercure White Hart Hotel, was the
manuscript of the alleged confession of one James Carnac who claimed to
have been the Ripper, also published in the months before the convention. A
piece of fiction no doubt but also with its own claims to a corner in the rich
and somewhat confusing story of the Whitechapel murders from 1888 to the
modern day. A long and winding road with no end.
Russell Edwards and the alleged Eddowes shawl
Mr Edwards and the shawl also figured prominently in a segment of ‘CBS
Sunday Morning’ that aired here in the United States this past Sunday, 25
October. I had fully expected to be treated to the spectacle of learning
that the Ripper is revealed to be celebrity musician and baritone Stephen
Adams, aka Liverpool-born Michael Maybrick, but it seems that the CBS
story was prepared for Halloween before Bruce Robinson’s They All Love
Jack: Busting the Ripper, implicating Maybrick, hit the bookshops, and the
producers received insufficient ‘heads up’ to enable them to jump on to the
‘next big thing’ - the absolutely latest revelation about the Ripper. Friends,
is this story starting to become a bit tawdry - can we somehow get off this
neverending ghoulish cavalcade? Would the media perhaps help us to look at
the situation a bit more rationally? Or might that be making too frank a call
to the honest, news-reporter souls in the media?
Ripperologist 146 October 2015 1