Authors: Paul Woods and Gavin Baddeley
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
Scarcely a year goes by without a new book, TV programme or magazine article claiming to have solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper – the perpetrator of at least five brutal prostitute murders that shocked London in the summer and autumn of 1888. The fascination with this squalid episode is partly because Jack the Ripper is widely believed to have been the first serial killer, although the main draw of the case undoubtedly stems from the Ripper never having been positively identified – hence he remains a blood-spattered silhouette upon which our fantasies have been projected.
Although ‘Jack’ as an entity was almost certainly invented by an unscrupulous journalist, he became an archetype of his time – decked in the top hat and cloak of a Victorian melodrama villain, stalking the fog-wreathed streets of the old East End. But the numerous Ripper theories which emerged from that time tell us more about the prejudices and attitudes of the Victorian mind than they do about the killer’s true identity.
In Saucy Jack the authors follow the grim homicidal trails that have permeated popular culture since the Whitechapel murders of 1888, including:
- The stories of the victims, in all their sad and desperate poignancy.
- The evolution of the Ripper archetype, against the seedy reality of the crimes’ Victorian setting.
- An analysis of the most often cited latter-day suspects for the crimes, and the perennial fascination of ‘ripperology’.
- The conspiracy theories – from black magicians to the British royal family.
- The short stories, novels, films, comic books and even video games, all inspired by the murders of 1888.
And finally, the modern forensic view of the Ripper murders as sex crimes, with reference to disturbing modern cases such as that of the ‘Plumstead Ripper’.