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ritaerSpiro Dimolianis has amassed an impressive amount of evidence and speculation regarding the Whitechapel Murders, also known as the Jack the Ripper case. Dimolianis’s claims to connect the case with the history of supernatural beliefs, secret societies, and the occult in Victorian England promise a provocative work. He introduces much tantalizing information— mentioning gypsies; Jewish folklore; theosophy; and, the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. How much is new is a question for confirmed Ripper scholars. Unfortunately, this information is presented in such a jumbled and incoherent state that it is daunting to follow any thread through to a conclusion. The book begins with references to mediums and ends with attempts to link the Ripper case to the struggle for Irish independence.
Large portions of documents are printed verbatim, leaving the reader to decide what points are pertinent. For example, in a discussion of Dr. Roslyn D’Onston, Dimolianis reproduces more than a page of testimony about night-nursing staff procedures in London Hospital (85). D’Onston was a patient in the hospital, which abuts the Whitechapel area, during the period of the murders. Could he have slipped out to commit the crimes while retaining a seemingly irrefutable alibi? The description of large wards left unattended for long periods during the night may whet the reader’s appetite for a conclusion that D’Onston is a prime suspect. However, a few pages later the author concludes that it is unlikely that D’Onston could have, on three separate occasions, escaped the attention of the nursing staff and the night porter at the locked hospital gate (87).
The photographs included, and their captions, betray a scattershot approach to intriguing the reader. One example, a double exposure of a man in two theatrical poses is accompanied by this caption:
"Actor Richard Mansfield in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whose performance at the Lyceum before the Jack the Ripper murders was so convincing it was believed he was capable of the Whitechapel crimes. On October 5, 1888, the City of London Police received a letter signed “M.P.,” who, having seen the play, 'felt at once that he was the man wanted'” (47).
No further information is given in the text. One suspects that this letter was treated much as one accusing actor Anthony Hopkins of similar crimes based on a viewing of _The Silence of the Lambs_ would be by police today. A photograph of Crowley’s mother, with the note that she dubbed him “the Beast,” is even more tenuously connected to the case, since Crowley was only 13 in 1888 and unlikely to have ever set foot in the East End before or during the period of the murders (123).
Another photograph’s caption makes little sense at all:
"Pope Leo XIII held the papacy during the Whitechapel murders and troubled Anglo-Irish relations of the period. In 1884 he issued the Humanum Genus which banned all secret societies for Catholics. Driving them further underground promoted speculation that Jack the Ripper was a protected member of such a society." (57)
Neither the chronology nor the logic of this statement holds up. A pope banning secret societies would have little effect in Protestant England. And how can a decree made in 1884 be seen as protection for crimes committed four years later? This seems like a gratuitous attempt to drag the Roman Catholic Church into the case. It probably is relevant that the immigrant populations of the East End included Irish, Poles, and other predominantly Catholic peoples. But their church’s ban on secret societies has no clear relationship to whether the Ripper was among their number, unless one is advancing a case for an outlaw group of Roman Catholics forming an assassins’ society, which no one appears to have suggested at the time. Elsewhere, Dimolianis mentions theories that the Ripper was a lower-class Polish Jew, or a Jewish ritual butcher. In contrast to the Leo XIII caption, this seems to be legitimate information about the types of conspiracy theories that were in circulation at the time, especially in view of the fact that police examined the knives of Jewish butchers.
The most disappointing aspect of this work is its lack of clear organization. The author jumps from one topic to the next without clearly developing his ideas. Nowhere does he provide a timeline of the crimes, a list of victims, a list of major suspects, or a map of the territory. The latter would have been of material aid in the section dealing with occult theories, since we are told that the locations of the murders were believed by some to form an occult symbol—a cross or a pentacle, depending on the theory. Much of the information given is not related to the case. For example, the history of theosophy and its leaders could be condensed, as could the discussion on Robert Anderson, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. What relevance do Anderson's views on a revised translation of the Bible have to his handling of a murder investigation? Is the author implying that his religious conservatism contributed to his willingness to implicate the Jewish population by his theory that an unnamed, unindicted Jewish lunatic was known to the police to have been the killer? This claim is cited at length and discussed in more than one section of the book. However, it is never clear why such an allegation would make sense. Information about the treatment of lunatics under British law at the time would have been helpful.
Those who try to collect everything written on the topic of the Ripper murders will probably wish to add this book to their libraries. The specialist in search of previously unpublished information may discover nuggets that make the search worthwhile. However, for the reasons given above, it is not a work for the general reader.
Spiro Dimolianis
Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Murders.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.
229 pp. $38.00.
Review originally published in _Clues_ 32.1 (2014) 108-09, reprinted by permission of McFarland and Co.
Large portions of documents are printed verbatim, leaving the reader to decide what points are pertinent. For example, in a discussion of Dr. Roslyn D’Onston, Dimolianis reproduces more than a page of testimony about night-nursing staff procedures in London Hospital (85). D’Onston was a patient in the hospital, which abuts the Whitechapel area, during the period of the murders. Could he have slipped out to commit the crimes while retaining a seemingly irrefutable alibi? The description of large wards left unattended for long periods during the night may whet the reader’s appetite for a conclusion that D’Onston is a prime suspect. However, a few pages later the author concludes that it is unlikely that D’Onston could have, on three separate occasions, escaped the attention of the nursing staff and the night porter at the locked hospital gate (87).
The photographs included, and their captions, betray a scattershot approach to intriguing the reader. One example, a double exposure of a man in two theatrical poses is accompanied by this caption:
"Actor Richard Mansfield in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whose performance at the Lyceum before the Jack the Ripper murders was so convincing it was believed he was capable of the Whitechapel crimes. On October 5, 1888, the City of London Police received a letter signed “M.P.,” who, having seen the play, 'felt at once that he was the man wanted'” (47).
No further information is given in the text. One suspects that this letter was treated much as one accusing actor Anthony Hopkins of similar crimes based on a viewing of _The Silence of the Lambs_ would be by police today. A photograph of Crowley’s mother, with the note that she dubbed him “the Beast,” is even more tenuously connected to the case, since Crowley was only 13 in 1888 and unlikely to have ever set foot in the East End before or during the period of the murders (123).
Another photograph’s caption makes little sense at all:
"Pope Leo XIII held the papacy during the Whitechapel murders and troubled Anglo-Irish relations of the period. In 1884 he issued the Humanum Genus which banned all secret societies for Catholics. Driving them further underground promoted speculation that Jack the Ripper was a protected member of such a society." (57)
Neither the chronology nor the logic of this statement holds up. A pope banning secret societies would have little effect in Protestant England. And how can a decree made in 1884 be seen as protection for crimes committed four years later? This seems like a gratuitous attempt to drag the Roman Catholic Church into the case. It probably is relevant that the immigrant populations of the East End included Irish, Poles, and other predominantly Catholic peoples. But their church’s ban on secret societies has no clear relationship to whether the Ripper was among their number, unless one is advancing a case for an outlaw group of Roman Catholics forming an assassins’ society, which no one appears to have suggested at the time. Elsewhere, Dimolianis mentions theories that the Ripper was a lower-class Polish Jew, or a Jewish ritual butcher. In contrast to the Leo XIII caption, this seems to be legitimate information about the types of conspiracy theories that were in circulation at the time, especially in view of the fact that police examined the knives of Jewish butchers.
The most disappointing aspect of this work is its lack of clear organization. The author jumps from one topic to the next without clearly developing his ideas. Nowhere does he provide a timeline of the crimes, a list of victims, a list of major suspects, or a map of the territory. The latter would have been of material aid in the section dealing with occult theories, since we are told that the locations of the murders were believed by some to form an occult symbol—a cross or a pentacle, depending on the theory. Much of the information given is not related to the case. For example, the history of theosophy and its leaders could be condensed, as could the discussion on Robert Anderson, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. What relevance do Anderson's views on a revised translation of the Bible have to his handling of a murder investigation? Is the author implying that his religious conservatism contributed to his willingness to implicate the Jewish population by his theory that an unnamed, unindicted Jewish lunatic was known to the police to have been the killer? This claim is cited at length and discussed in more than one section of the book. However, it is never clear why such an allegation would make sense. Information about the treatment of lunatics under British law at the time would have been helpful.
Those who try to collect everything written on the topic of the Ripper murders will probably wish to add this book to their libraries. The specialist in search of previously unpublished information may discover nuggets that make the search worthwhile. However, for the reasons given above, it is not a work for the general reader.
Spiro Dimolianis
Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Murders.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.
229 pp. $38.00.
Review originally published in _Clues_ 32.1 (2014) 108-09, reprinted by permission of McFarland and Co.
