Often these serial killers seem, like James Maybrick, to be quiet men, men with families, men who go to work each day and tend the garden at week-ends.
David Forshaw cited the example of Andre Chikatilo, who lived in the coal mining town of Shakhty in the former Soviet Union. He was a 42-year-old former Communist Party member with a wife, two children and a good job as a teacher in a school of mining. Then, one day in 1978, he took nine-year-old Lena Zakotnova to a tumbledown shack on the edge of the town and strangled, stabbed and slashed her. The pleasure was immense and his newly discovered blood-lust unstoppable. So he went on, over a dozen years, to slaughter and eat women and some 53 children, tearing their insides out with his bare hands. Like Maybrick, he left taunting little jokes at the scene to tease the police.
Chikatilo is said to have never raised a hand to his own children and had made great strides in life, rising from peasant roots to the intelligentsia. But he yearned to be a brave soldier and a romantic lover. He longed for the kind of respect that would have made school children stand up as he entered a room. He believed the real Chikatilo didn’t match up to this self picture and he felt a failure.
When he was finally captured in 1991, he wrote to his wife: ‘Why did God send me to this earth? Me, a person so affectionate, tender and thoughtful but so totally defenceless against my own weakness.’
Chikatilo’s words reflect the tormented message of painful inadequacy which fills the Maybrick Diary. They also recall his image of himself as gentle and at the same time given to extreme violence. The gentle man with gentle thoughts will strike again soon.
Another such figure was Peter Kürten, the Düsseldorf murderer who was hanged in 1937 for killing nine people and attempting to kill seven more. Yet he was living and sleeping with his wife throughout the killings. So was Peter Sutcliffe, whose mission was, in his own words ‘to rid the streets of prostitutes’.
In 1997, the national press reported how the fiancée of triple killer Alan Reeve described him as friendly, caring and dependable as well as loving and said she would trust her life in his hands. She was engaged to him from 1995 until he was arrested in April 1997. He had escaped from Broadmoor Hospital seventeen years earlier, after he had been assessed as a dangerous psychopath who should be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.
Maybrick, like Kürten, Chikatilo, Sutcliffe and Reeve was the man next door, an ordinary and unremarkable neighbour — at least on the surface. In other ways, too, Maybrick exhibits traits of the typical serial killer — who, Dr Forshaw says, are nearly always male, and often obsessional and hypochondriacal. Serial killers are usually mild-mannered too, although deep down they seethe with pent-up anger. They also have rich fantasy lives which they find preferable to reality. They dream of power and are preoccupied with their masculinity and sexual potency. It was fear of losing the latter that drove Maybrick to strychnine and arsenic.
In 1965, Eugene Revitch, author of Sex, Murder and the Potential Sex Murderer, studied reports on unprovoked attacks by men on women, dividing offenders into groups of those above and below the age of eighteen. He found that ‘…the older the attacker the more the primary motive reflected anger or hatred.’
‘The unattractive nature of the Ripper’s killings leads to the conclusion that the killings reflected hostility rather than a need for sexual gratification,’ says David Forshaw. ‘The killer was, therefore, probably not a young man.’
Maybrick had his 50th birthday on October 24th, not long before the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.
‘Seminal fluid is not mentioned in the post-mortem reports so it is not known if the assailant had sex or if he masturbated at the scene of the crime,’ Forshaw goes on. ‘It seems improbable since hatred not sex is likely to have been the motive. In any case, the known time available to the killer would hardly have allowed such indulgence. It may be that the killer selected victims as anti-symbols of sex, chosen to thwart even the possibility of intercourse. However it may be their very depravity that appealed to a perverted sexuality.’
There was no doubt that the Ripper’s choice of target — prostitutes — had practical advantages too. Since there is little to link them with their clients, and they work in isolation, prostitutes are easy victims for sex attackers. Moreover, a serial killer who selects prostitutes may genuinely feel he is performing a service to society.
I am convinced God placed me here to kill all whores.
But at the same time it is likely that the hapless ladies of Whitechapel represented something far more personal to Maybrick: his adulterous wife. ‘Prostitutes represent to the attacker, consciously or unconsciously, despised and unfaithful loved ones who through circumstances are relatively safe from attack,’ says David Forshaw. ‘Women of easy virtue were the symbols of his wife’s infidelity.’
Forshaw believes that the Ripper probably obtained satisfaction only from the process of killing, from feeling or seeing his victim die, even from their mutilation afterwards — not from putting them through prolonged suffering.
There was also another motivation for murder. The ‘Son of Sam’ killer, David Berkovitz, who terrorised New York for a year in the mid-1970s talked about ‘the desire to do it, to kill’, which, he said ‘filled me up to such explosive proportions, it caused me such turmoil inside that when it released itself it was like a volcano erupting and the pressure was over, for a while, at least.’ The American psychiatrist, David Abrahamsen, who has written about Jack the Ripper, agrees that the Whitechapel killer probably felt this tension.
I need more thrills, cannot live without my thrills. I will go on. I will go on nothing will stop me nothing.
Maybrick had a mistress, identified in the Diary only as ‘mine’, to whom he seemed to turn when the pressure becomes too great.
The eyes will come out of the next. I will stuff them in the whores mouth. That will certainly give me pleasure, it does so as I write. Tonight I will see mine, she will be pleased as I will be gentle with her as indeed I always am.
Maybrick, like the Ripper, enjoyed the thrill of the chase. He revelled in the excitement of possible capture — even more than ripping.
I believe the thrill of being caught thrilled me
more than cutting the whore herself.
‘Serial killers,’ says David Forshaw, ‘typically feel inferior, except when writing or thinking about their crimes. That is the reason for a diary.’ Maybrick used the journal to boost his self esteem, bestowing on himself the titles Sir Jim and Sir Jack. The Diary also enabled him to use one set of pleasant thoughts to drive away distressing ideas and feelings.
I will force myself to think of something more pleasant.
‘In the Diary he used this method of thought manipulation fairly often, like a screen between himself and the real world,’ explains David Forshaw. ‘He therefore allowed himself to remain outwardly calm and in control. It may have also distanced him from reality.
Maybrick used sex to take his mind off reality. After his first killing he wrote:
I will take the bitch tonight. I need to take my mind off the night’s events.
From the beginning his fantasies of his wife and her lover together gave him a morbid sense of pleasure.
The thought of him taking her is beginning to thrill me
The entries suggest he was sexually aroused and derived some sort of sadomasochistic pleasure when actually writing the Diary.
‘One very striking visual aspect of the Diary is the way in which the handwriting changes to reflect the changing emotions of the writer. It is clearly written by the same person but moves from the fairly neat school-taught hand to a much larger, uncontrolled scrawl which corresponds to mental deterioration.’
David Forshaw selected seven samples of handwriting from the Diary and examined them chronologically. He explains, ‘At the beginning, before any killing has taken place, the writing is neat, undemonstrative, restrained even. But it becomes larger, more flamboyant, less controlled and certainly more confid
ent, as he pursues what he called his “campaign” of murders. Now the handwriting is clearly laden with a mix of emotions. Then, having built up to fever pitch, towards the end of the Diary it reverts dramatically to the calm, controlled style before the killings began. This last, marked shift occurred shortly after Maybrick is known (from trial statements) to have returned from a visit to Dr Fuller in London.’
Fuller believes there is very little the matter with me. Strange, the thoughts he placed into my mind.
What those thoughts were we do not know, but from this moment in the Diary there is an increased yearning for release from torment and even talk of suicide.
‘Modern studies of serial killers have led to a better understanding than existed in the 19th century. Psychiatrist Malcolm MacCulloch, of Liverpool University and his team noticed a clear pattern in thirteen of sixteen offenders studied in a special hospital. The men had been preoccupied with sadistic sexual fantasies over a period of time, which became more extreme, leading to “behavioural try-outs” such as following potential victims. These “try-outs” were then incorporated into the fantasy, moving inexorably towards a climax. Increasingly, each patient became less able to distinguish between reality and his fantasy world.’
The team speculated that inflicting suffering was the route to control. Control was at the centre of the behaviour. In one sense, the ultimate possible control over anyone is when they are dead, or unconscious. Maybrick’s Diary and the Ripper killings show a clear escalation of viciousness from one victim to the next.
‘It is almost as though he was habituating the behaviour and developing a tolerance towards it,’ says Dr Forshaw. ‘This is a phenomenon akin to urban joyriding where offenders very often achieve their thrills from being in control, driving fast and taking ever more risks.’
As for the Ripper’s cannibalism, Forshaw says, ‘Very often body parts are removed in order for the killer to have some kind of memento. The Hungarian, Elizabeth Bathory, who died in 1614 aged 54, used to bathe in the blood of her victims to keep her young and attractive. Christie, who was hanged in 1953, collected pubic hair from his victims. The Ripper could have been convinced that by eating a womb he would achieve eternal youth.’
Other macabre hoarders include the American serial killer Ed Kemper who, in 1972, collected internal organs and sometimes heads, which he kept in his wardrobe. The murderer Dennis Nilsen, who was active between 1978 to 1983, stored the dismembered remains of his victims in cupboards and under the floorboards of his London homes.
Dr Forshaw continues, ‘If limited information is known about a person’s past, or mental state, it is difficult to distinguish the sadistic serial sex-killer with progressive sadism syndrome from multi-victim killers who kill as a result of mental illness, such as schizophrenia.’ From his reading of the Diary, Dr Forshaw sees no evidence that the writer suffered from mental illness. ‘He did not have delusions. James Maybrick of the Diary was mentally disordered, but whether sufficiently enough to diminish his legal responsibility is a matter for discussion. Was he mad or was he bad?’
Simon Andrae wrote of serial killers in the Observer in 1993: ‘They are not born bad. They are rarely found mad… their behaviours develop through a complex interaction of biochemical, psychological and cultural factors, catalysed in different degrees and at different points in their lives… A small percentage of people are born with genes which make them naturally inclined towards anti-social or aggressive behaviour… Combined with predisposition, childhood trauma is the second major factor common about serial killers…’
In the case of James Maybrick there is an intriguing, if unscientific, answer to Dr Forshaw’s question. It is that Maybrick was bad but Jack the Ripper was mad. Merge the two and you have a powerful force for evil.
In conclusion Dr Forshaw writes:
If the journal is genuine then it tells a tragic tale. It makes sense. This is an encouraging sign for its authenticity. However, there are other possibilities… it would seem that the most likely options are that it is either genuine or an extremely good modern fake. If it is a fake then it is as remarkable as if it were genuine. It would be very hard to fake… a considerable amount of work would have to be done, even by someone or a team already familiar with serial killers and the Maybrick and Ripper cases. The faker would have had to work hard to mimic the thoughts and feelings portrayed in the journal, though it might be easier if they had a similar psychopathology to begin with.
A thorough examination of the journal and its provenance are essential components of deciding if it is authentic. If such an examination proves indecisive and all falls back on the content, then I would argue in that case, on the balance of probabilities from a psychiatric perspective, it is authentic.
THE LANGUAGE
Yet another hurdle for the Diary to overcome was that of the language used by its writer. There are one or two phrases which leap out of the page — they feel too modern for Victorian composition.
John Simpson, co-editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, wrote to me:
The Oxford English Dictionary seeks to document the history and development of English from the early Middle Ages to the present day. Its analysis is based upon the record of the language obtained by reading as wide a range of texts as possible and excerpting from these texts examples of usage for our quotation files. The earliest use of any term occuring in the Dictionary represents the earliest written use available to the Dictionary’s editors when a particular entry is compiled.
I would expect first instances to represent a useful guide to when a given term entered the language, but earlier attestations, (some of which are substantial pre-datings) are continually being brought to our notice. Language is spoken before it is written down and in some areas (such as dialect slang and local crafts) there may well be some time lag between the introduction of a term and its appearance in print. I would be surprised but not dumbfounded, if its first appearance was found to pre-date the Dictionary’s first recorded example by as much as half a century.
I also spoke with Mark Agnes, a member of the editorial team of Webster’s New World Dictionary, in America. He agreed with John Simpson. ‘Even today there are phrases we all know and use but which can’t be found in any dictionary. It can take a very long time indeed, especially in technical areas for the oral tradition to be recorded in the written word.’
Dictionary searches for words that had worried me, such as ‘top myself’ and ‘gathering momentum’ were found to be in use in late Victorian times. I was more anxious about the phrase ‘one off’.
Webster’s gives its first written appearance as 1925. But it was in the building world that I found what I consider the real answer to my problem. Among the archives of the building company Trayner’s of Kent in 1860 the phrase appears when a new material was being ordered as a ‘special’; a ‘one off’ was also an ornamental brick used in Victorian canals and the term referred as well to a unique example or a prototype — precisely its use in the Diary.
MAYBRICK’S ADDICTION
I consulted doctors from the Poisons Unit at Guy’s Hospital, London, for their views on whether the symptoms of arsenic abuse as they appear in the Diary are accurate. They told me that there was a dearth of reliable information available about addictions in 1888 and that, even today, a hoaxer would be severely taxed to know where to find facts upon which he could build such a very realistic portrait.
Arsenic, when taken over years, leads to an accumulation of pyruvate in the blood. This substance is important in the body’s metabolism of Coenzyme-A, an essential enzyme of energy-giving carbohydrates. In acute arsenic poisoning, gastro-intestinal symptoms of the kind that Maybrick suffered predominate. In the last century, chronic poisoning was believed to be indicated by such gastric complaints. Today, however, we recognise the prominence of neurological symptoms. Most Victorians wrongly believed that chronic arsenic eating over 20 or 30 years could result in paralysis. There was — and is — almost nowhere the diarist co
uld have learned these facts, which leads one to suspect that he could, indeed, be writing from experience.
The Victorians did understand, however, that the sudden withdrawal of arsenic could result in agonising pains, such as Maybrick is known to have experienced after he could no longer get to his office or have access to his supplies.
Dr Forshaw also tackled the question of addicition. Maybrick liked alcohol and used arsenic — both of which can produce a chronic disorder of the nerves of the limbs and gastro-intestinal problems. He explains:
An underactive thyroid, the gland in the neck that helps regulate the general level of metabolic activity in the body, can also produce a disorder with similar symptoms to those Maybrick described: tiredness, lethargy, constipation, intolerance of cold, aching muscles. There may be deafness and hallucinations, the face looks expressionless, broad and bloated, the memory is poor and the patient may be depressed. This illness known as hypothyroidism or moxoedema, can only be confirmed by a blood test which was not available in Maybrick’s day.
Von Ziemenssen’s 13 volume Cyclopedia of Medicine, in its chapter on chronic poisoning by heavy metals says: ‘the mild form of chronic poisoning can arise from the therapeutic use of Fowler’s Solution.’ Dr C. Binz who wrote, Lectures on Pharmacology in 1897, explained: ‘a stimulus if frequently repeated, must be exhibited in increasing doses in order each time to produce a certain effect. In other words, an addict must, over time, take more and more of a drug in order to sustain the effect.’
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 31