The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper

by Paul Begg

  Jack the Ripper was essentially a reinterpreted version of the ‘Dr Stanley’ theory put forward by Leonard Matters thirty years earlier. The Ripper kills prostitutes in revenge for the death of his son, who contracted venereal disease from one woman in particular. As the Ripper approaches each victim, he asks, ‘Are you Mary Clarke?’ Visually, he is the archetype of all subsequent Ripper depictions: silhouetted in the gloom as a tall, aristocratic gentleman wearing a top hat and cloak and carrying a black Gladstone bag. In a sensational trailer for the film, London was described as ‘a city torn apart by fear and hate as the mob howled for the blood of the human monster Scotland Yard could never catch!’

  So Jack the Ripper, the horror ‘superstar’, was born, complete with foggy claustrophobic period settings, glamorous victims and theatrical violence. The visual image of the murderer was well and truly in place, and it would be hard to find any depictions of the Ripper after this film was released which did not conform to that type. One could argue that screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and wardrobe supervisor Jack Verity created the ultimate ‘Jack the Ripper’.

  Now a media icon, the Ripper was deemed a suitable subject for other popular art forms, notably popular music. In the early 1960s, David ‘Screaming’ Lord Sutch released ‘Jack the Ripper’, a lolloping chunk of British rhythm and blues, which was little more than a novelty song, made even more absurd by Sutch’s public appearances when performing it. Clad in the now accepted garb of the ‘toff’, wielding a black bag and knife, Sutch would scream out the lyrics to his audience, occasionally pushing his grotesquely made-up face towards an unsuspecting female member of the audience at just the right moment to unlock the still-underlying fear of the Whitechapel murderer. The song would often be the finale of his stage show, giving him the opportunity to present a performance that wasn’t just grisly, but tipped over the edge into what could be considered bad taste. Not only would he portray a staged evisceration during the song, but he would also produce a fake severed head with real offal hanging from it, which he would then wave in the faces of the girls in the front row. If the venue was large enough he would throw larger pieces of offal into the audience; ‘that always sent them running for the exits like rabbits,’ said Sutch in his autobiography.8 The song would be re-released several times over the years (including a disco version in 1977) and would later be one of many songs using the Ripper as a theme, including those by Link Wray (1959), Judas Priest (1976), Thin Lizzy (1980), Morrissey (1992), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1992) and the White Stripes (2004), among others.

  The 1960s had obviously seen a resurgence of interest in Jack the Ripper; Tom Cullen’s and Robin Odell’s respected books had been published almost simultaneously.9 While they concentrated on giving the true story of the Whitechapel murders, fictional Jack was soon to meet his fictional nemesis in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle’s eminent detective Sherlock Holmes in the film A Study in Terror.10 Considered to be an underrated piece of Ripper cinema, it was not only the first film to pit Holmes against the Whitechapel fiend, but was also the first to bring the names of the real victims to the movie-going public. In fact all the major victims were included, and even Emma Smith made an appearance. With A Study in Terror, Jack the Ripper moved into the realms of a chronologically versatile fictional character and would later be seen crossing boundaries of time and even space. Paramount’s cult sci-fi series Star Trek gave the Ripper a place in the wider universe when he became entangled with the crew of the USS Enterprise in 1967. 11

  The episode ‘Wolf in the Fold’12 was written by Robert Bloch, a writer notable for penning Psycho, which formed the basis of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous film, released in 1960. But he had also written a short story called ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ in 1943, which essentially dealt with the concept that the Ripper was still alive and willing to kill again almost sixty years after his initial reign of terror.13 By bringing Jack the Ripper into the realms of science fiction in Star Trek, Bloch did something that, with hindsight, is quite profound. The plot centres around the existence of ‘Beratis’, ‘Kesla’ and ‘Redjac’, all names for an ancient entity that has intense hatred for the life of women. The Enterprise computer tells the crew that Beratis (of Rigel IV), and Kesla (of Deneb II) are names given to the unknown identities of serial killers on those planets. The computer suggests that Redjac may have been responsible for other killings on Earth, namely seven women in Shanghai in 1932 and five similar murders in Kiev in 1974. It also reports eight murders of women in the Martian Colonies in 2105 and ten on Alpha Eridani II in 2156. But importantly, Redjac (as ‘Red Jack’) was Jack the Ripper on Earth in 1888.

  What is fascinating about this concept is that Bloch, not content with suggesting that the Ripper was still around in the 1940s, puts forth the notion that Jack the Ripper, as a collective equivalent of violence and fear, has always been around and always will be. One of the many reasons the Ripper legend persists is that no matter how many people try to name him or explain him, he remains almost an ‘entity’, the lurker in the shadows, the sum of all our dread and anxieties, a universal embodiment of fear, past, present and future.14

  Science fiction can often be that cerebral, whereas horror, especially in the movie genre, can often be happy to go for the more base instincts. This would explain how the Ripper was treated by later film-makers, spurred on by the relaxation of censorship in the late 1960s. Mainstream films now pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable content, particularly in the areas of sex and violence. Movies such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Straw Dogs (1971), The Exorcist (1973) and others created great controversy, and the British horror genre, spearheaded by Hammer Films, was now competing against productions that could outdo them in terms of sensationalism. Hammer adjusted its output accordingly.

  In 1971, they combined two great Victorian gothic characters, the Ripper and Mr Hyde, to produce the camp and sexualized Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde.15 In a bizarre twist on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 story, Dr Jekyll discovers the elixir of life, for which he requires female hormones taken from cadavers initially supplied by the grave robbers Burke and Hare. Regular experimentation with the resulting potion causes Jekyll to not only become Hyde, but also to change gender. Having to murder young girls to ensure a regular supply of hormones, Jekyll abhors his actions, but Mrs Hyde begins to enjoy it and, struggling to stabilize his personality (and gender), Jekyll goes all out to commit one last murder. The film could be seen as the apotheosis of bad Ripper mythology, throwing into the pot nearly every crass preconception associated with it, especially with the appearance of a poster which reads:

  WANTED! IN CONNECTION WITH THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS.

  Police wish to interview a person described by various witnesses

  as A TALL MAN WEARING A TALL HAT AND A DARK CLOAK.

  Enough said.

  The same year saw the release of Hammer’s Hands of the Ripper, an altogether different movie, which employed yet another new twist;16 the Ripper’s daughter commits the murders as a result of mental traumas acquired after witnessing the killing of her mother by her father as a child. A wholly more sensible film than Hammer’s offering, it still revelled in its licence to depict gore, despite the promise of more mature themes, as a psychiatrist attempts to find the causes of the daughter’s behaviour. Here are shades of the ‘Jill the Ripper’ idea favoured by Conan Doyle, Lord Godolphin Osborne, William Stewart and Edwin Woodhall; however, the story behind the killer’s motivation stands alone.

  As the Ripper enjoyed a sudden increase in public profile in the mid-1970s BBC TV’s The Two Ronnies, a popular comedy show featuring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, screened a short mini-series entitled ‘The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town’.17 It was written by Spike Milligan and Barker (credited as ‘a gentleman’) and was an obvious parody of the Ripper scare of 1888. In this case, however, the miscreant would merely utter flatulent noises (or ‘raspberries’), which would leave his victims in a shocked stupor. The wh
ole idea was as much a spoof on the perceived prudish sensibilities of Victorian society as it was a Ripper farce. The eponymous villain was seen as the top-hatted ‘gentleman’ and the skit was filled with set-pieces from the now-established Ripper mythology, particularly London fog. In one episode cliffhanger, the Prince of Wales is considered as the phantom after a terrible realization by his own mother, the queen. ‘The Phantom Raspberry Blower’, by parodying the popular myths surrounding the mystery of the Whitechapel murders, showed just how ‘Jack the Ripper’ had become so distanced from reality that it could even be turned into comedy of the silliest kind without any problem.

  Perhaps the honour of the most famous modern filmed accounts of the Whitechapel murders must fall to the 1988 two-part TV series Jack the Ripper and the movie blockbuster From Hell, both of which seem to have attempted to redress the story with some much needed drama and gravitas. The former,18 starring Michael Caine as Inspector Frederick Abberline and Lewis Collins as George Godley, was a joint effort between Thames Television in the UK and Lorimar in the United States. The big-budget production was promoted as a retelling of the Whitechapel murders story in which the name of the Ripper would be revealed. Such deductions were allegedly aided by direct information from the files of Scotland Yard and the Home Office. Several endings were to be filmed, so that even the cast would not know the result until the screening.

  Unfortunately, what eventually transpired was merely a rehash of the continually popular ‘royal conspiracy’, which for students and researchers into the case was a theory that had been put to bed. It was the second outing of this particular plot (the first being 1979’s eminently enjoyable Sherlock Holmes picture Murder by Decree, featuring Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson)19 and featured a capable cast which included Armand Assante, Ray McAnally, Susan George, Jane Seymour, with Lysette Anthony starring as a typically pretty Mary Kelly. Several previously ignored characters from the Ripper legend also featured – Robert Lees, George Lusk and even the actor Richard Mansfield had major parts to play in the story. Despite becoming a subsequent favourite for many ‘Ripperologists’, it was rather a disappointment, occasionally marred by a tacky script and some choice overacting. Lusk was portrayed as a bellowing revolutionary, Lees was a gibbering aesthete, and Michael Caine’s alcoholic Abberline often launched into vocal histrionics without the support of decent lines. Despite impressive viewer ratings, critics were none too impressed. One contemporary commentator described it as ‘particularly embarrassing’. Poor old Michael Caine and numerous other stars must have wondered what they had let themselves in for in this made-for-Americans western-style mauling of the story.’20 Time has been kind to the series, however. Many students of the Ripper crimes say it is their favourite, some even declaring that seeing it in their youth first ignited their interest in the subject.

  From Hell, released in 2001,21 trod familiar ground, the ‘royal conspiracy’, but was influenced by a graphic novel of the same name by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.22 With its name derived from the chilling opening of the ‘Lusk Letter’, it was much more than just a rehash of Stephen Knight’s theory. This take on the ‘highest in the land’ story was laced with adult themes of sex and graphic violence, and deep significance was given to the mythologies of London itself, wonderfully demonstrated during an epic journey around the capital by Gull and his coachman, John Netley. Influenced by the studies of London ‘psychogeography’ by writers such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd, this lengthy sequence took inspiration from ancient pagan rites, old legends and ley-lines, turning the very fabric of London into an instrument of occult intent. The resulting murders meant more to Gull than just saving the face of the Royal Family. Eddie Campbell’s visuals ably complemented the gritty nature of the work, with an attention to detail in both the characters and places. But From Hell was too complex to be done any justice by the movie industry. There was just too much in it. Moore’s graphic novel would have to be greatly simplified (and toned down) to be a success on the big screen, an unfortunate necessity, as the original story was loaded with concepts that would have expanded the film beyond the jaded royal cover-up plot.

  Despite the work that went into the visual quality of the movie and the all-star cast of Johnny Depp, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Holm and Heather Graham, it was really just a big-budget rehash of the Michael Caine series with better production values and a more disturbing undercurrent – and significantly more gore. Johnny Depp’s Inspector Abberline was now depicted not as a drunk, but as an opium addict afflicted with psychic visions, which seemingly combined him with contemporary clairvoyant Robert Lees. Depp’s ethereal take on the good inspector no doubt compensated for the screenplay’s trimming of the mystical themes in the original graphic novel. Ian Holm’s William Gull also helped to chivvy along the darker mythologies of Jack the Ripper, atmospherically summed up by the line ‘One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century.’

  It is telling that the most recent foray of the Ripper on celluloid – at the time of writing – should hark back to the earliest days in the medium, with a reworking of ‘The Lodger’. A film of that name was released in 2009, starring Alfred Molina as Joe Chandler,23 an altogether modern interpretation of Mrs Belloc-Lowndes’s classic, with plenty of references to the original story, but this time featuring the activities of a Ripper ‘copycat’. With this interpretation of what could be considered a well-worn tale suggesting that ‘Jack the movie star’ had come full circle, it would be down to television to reinvent the Ripper drama, a feat it achieved with no little success. Looking at the crimes from a fresh dramatic angle, ITV in the UK screened a three-part drama series called Whitechapel,24 a story pitting the wits of a new inspector against a serial killer who was quite literally emulating the Ripper, including murder sites, dates of the crimes and injuries. It was a wholly enjoyable affair and gave plenty of nods to the real Ripper case, but productively kept fact and fiction separate. Progressive and modern-thinking Inspector Chandler, with much to prove, is thrown into the ring with a hardened group of detectives whose cynicism and lack of ‘political correctness’ threaten to undermine their professional relationship. When the horrific murder of a community police officer throws up few leads, Inspector Chandler battles against the set ways of his colleagues until a Ripper tour guide comes forward to explain that the killer has copied Jack the Ripper’s first murder and that they should expect more.

  All the characters from the series were named after real personalities from the events of 1888, and so we have Joseph Chandler, Mary Bousfield, Frances Coles, James Kent and Edward Buchan, to name but a few. Buchan is the tour guide and ‘Ripperologist’ who helps the police in the case using his deep knowledge of true crime, which comes good despite an initially hostile reaction. Some of the scenes were actually filmed in the East End, and throughout the drama we await the next discovery, each one an echo of the original crimes, such as the arrival of a kidney in the post and the discovery of an earlier murder bearing the hallmark of Martha Tabram’s death.

  Whitechapel was successful enough to spawn several sequels, each one dealing with cases that emulated famous East End crimes, such as the activities of infamous gangsters the Kray Twins and the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811. Though this could be seen as stretching the concept a little too far, the original series worked for several reasons. The characters were well defined, and the interplay between the different stereotypes (uptight inspector, rough and ready detectives and the eccentric Ripperologist) created a unique chemistry. The concept also did not insult the intelligence of its audience; the trick of keeping fact and fiction separate was exceptionally well executed, giving the seasoned Ripper student plenty of inward chuckles as in-jokes presented themselves and allowing the less informed viewer the dignity of not having to be spoonfed hackneyed iconography and spurious claims of a solution to the original murders in order to ensure they enjoyed the offering. In the words of Andrew Billen in The Times following the ai
ring of episode two of the first series, ‘Slowly, the show is making Ripperologists of us all, as Jack’s “canonical” murders are separated from the ones he actually committed. It is all in the worst possible taste and bloody good fun.’25

  In response, BBC TV’s Ripper Street again approaches the crimes from an original perspective. Despite the rather odd title, the series is set in April 1889, the year after the original murders are deemed to have ended. When more women are murdered on the streets of Whitechapel, the police begin to wonder if the killer has returned. The plot centres on the characters of Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew McFadyen) and his sidekick Sergeant Bennett Drake (Jerome Flynn), each episode presenting them with a stand-alone crime to test their powers of investigation. A gritty production which also deals with heavier themes such as bare-knuckle boxing, early pornography and prostitution, the series features cameos from other real characters in addition to Reid, such as George Lusk and Commissioner James Monro. Like Whitechapel before it, it was a slow burner, with critics warming to it as characters were allowed to develop. In the Guardian Sam Wollaston was guarded in his opinion of yet another Ripper-based offering, saying, ‘It would be easy to be negative about Ripper Street. Do we really need more on a story that’s been not just done to death, but then carved up, and had its insides torn out?’ but concluded his review stating, ‘the script is real, alive and human. It’s beautifully performed, and beautiful to look at – stylish, and stylised. The bare-knuckle fight scenes are brutal and memorable. It’s proper, character-based crime drama, gripping, and yes – I’m afraid – ripping as well.’26 What Wollaston nearly failed to recognize was that Ripper Street, and Whitechapel before it, may well have instigated a new era of fictional interpretations of the Jack the Ripper story: smaller productions with tangential stories which television is perfect to project, bereft of the trappings of Hollywood gimmickry, the writing focusing on real characters rather than stereotypes and jaded interpretations of Ripper mythologies that, in terms of drama, passed their shelf-life decades ago. It remains to be seen if this stays the case as more series of both productions are commissioned.