I expect that the people who look up this Jack the Ripper page on the website will have very diverse reasons and levels of interest, from the vaguely curious to the self-styled amateur expert, who feels he has read every book and published article on the subject, and merely wishes to see if he or she can add or delete my own opinion from their standpoint.

I would say that my own position, on a ‘Curious to Expert’ scale of the whole Ripper subject, is slightly over halfway. I have not, like many of you, I am sure, read every modern book published or even some of the earlier works, such as "The Mystery of Jack the Ripper" Leonard Matters (Hutchinson, 1929 and W.H.Allen 1929 & 1948); or "The Identity of Jack the Ripper" Donald McCormick (Jarrolds, 1959). There were, of course, many publications in the 1970's following a resurgance of popular interest, and notable books include "The Complete Jack the Ripper" Donald Rumbelow (W.H.Allen 1975); "A Casebook on Jack the Ripper" R.Whittington-Egan (Wildy, 1976); and my own preferred line of argument, "The Final Solution" Stephen Knight (Grafton, 1977).

Knight argues his case for a dastardly team which comprises Sir William Gull, who was chauffered around Whitechapel by his trusty society aspirant John Netley, and supported by the prominent painter Walter Sickert, who carries the story with him to the end of his day, when it was passed on to his son Joseph. Joseph recounted the story to Knight some 85 years after the infamous year of 1888. You cannot fail to be impressed with the sheer wealth and depth of Knight’s research and the considerable amount of minutiae and coincidences that he brings to the surface, and the way the whole 'picture' of events hangs nicely together. He makes a fair attempt too, in eliminating other notable candidates for Ripper notoriety, such as Montague Druitt and the Duke of Clarence.

I say eliminate, because he puts forward a reasonable case to dismiss them, unlike Patricia Cornwell, whose "Portrait of a Killer" (Little, Brown, 2002) dismisses Gull at a ‘stroke’ on the grounds that he actually had a debilitating stroke late in his life and was thus incapacitated, thereby ignoring the medical report which described his first stroke as "mild". Focusing on Walter Sickert alone, she is convinced that the painter used his canvasses to portray the images that had haunted him since the days when he was Jack the Ripper. This does not mean that he was JtR. But I agree that he must have been present when the murders took place, and this fits in well with what Stephen Knight is saying. However I am still unable to understand how Sickert was compelled to become part of the Ripper ‘team’, which, according to Knight, was fuelled by Masonic undertones to provide a clean-up act to protect the royal family and maintain the stability of the royal line of accession. You will indeed find many clues in Sickert’s paintings, of which much has been written and highlighted in TV documentaries. An aftertaste lingers, however, even in his more mundane works. A visit to my local Walsall Art Gallery to see a Sickert picture, disappointingly of a Venetian square from his Italian tour, I drew to the attention of the curator a previously unnoticed facet. There, in the centre of the picture, amongst a handful of Venetians in brightly-coloured clothing, are three black-cloaked mysterious figures!!

And so, it is with the Stephen Knight version of the ‘truth’ in mind that I have set about composing my album of original music which I hope you may feel sufficiently curious enough about to buy. Please listen to the samples that you will find on the CD page of this website.

Thank you.

Related Links

Click here to view the CD

Currently playing ‘Ripper Emerges’