Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert by Patricia Cornwell

Author:Patricia Cornwell [Cornwell, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781531868710
Google: h4ZeDQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1531868711
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: 2017-02-15T06:00:00+00:00

23

A SHINY BLACK BAG

THE SUN DIDN’T SHOW ITSELF on Saturday, September 29, and a persistent cold rain chilled the night as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ended its long and controversial run at the Lyceum. Citizens were blaming the frightening duality play for influencing the Ripper, and a tip in yet another letter from an anonymous concerned citizen already had resulted in American actor Richard Mansfield being questioned by the police.

Hyde was linked to the Ripper, and almost a month earlier on September 1, an article in The Evening News stated: “Certain is it that beings, outwardly human, one such as was suggested to the police by either the performance or perusal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, do exist.” A week later (September 8) the East London Advertiser carried the following: “If, as we imagine, there be a murderous lunatic concealed in the slums of Whitechapel, who issues forth at night like another Hyde, to prey upon the defenceless women of the unfortunate class, we have little doubt that he will be captured.”

That same day the Pall Mall Gazette published its own version of this snowballing rumor: “There certainly seems to be a tolerably realistic impersonification of Mr. Hyde at large in Whitechapel.” Later it would be suggested by another concerned citizen who signed his letter to the editor G.C.: “. . . Let detectives consider how Mr. Hyde would have acted—for there may be a system in the demonic actions of a madman in following the pattern set before him.” Eventually these sensational speculations made their way across the Atlantic, and New York’s Ogdensburg Journal would report on October 10: “This theory is that the horrible crimes which have so disturbed the city [London] and interested the entire world are the result of a case in real life of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Furthermore, the detectives believe that the existence of such a case is directly attributable to the excitement and morbid reflections caused by a mind dwelling upon the circumstances detailed in the story and play just named.”

Oddly, the article went on to say that the police were focusing their surveillance on a man who lived in Grosvenor Square, and maybe it’s nothing more than a coincidence that at the time Sir William Gull lived just off Grosvenor Square, at 74 Brook Street. As a former journalist I have to wonder about the source of all these tips and other information. Who was supplying such details to the press? More anonymous concerned citizens? Perhaps ones who wished to cast a shadow of suspicion over the Queen’s physician, a famous actor—or even Whistler himself, who also would be linked to the Ripper’s atrocities by the end of the year?

By the end of September 1888, the stage certainly was set for more horror and uproar to come. The media was increasingly frenzied, and the Great Metropolis was beginning to feel terrorized. But citizens concerned and otherwise had no idea that the worst had yet to come, far from

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