Its been a while since the last Casebook update - sorry about that!  Its been a busy year, but I’m slowly catching up in getting new content up on the site.  And in that vein, two new additions were made today:

An Interview with Deborah McDonald

We do a brief question-and-answer session with Deborah McDonald, author of The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper: The Evidence Linking James Kenneth Stephen to the Whitechapel Murders (2007).  Anyone with an interest in J.K. Stephen will definitely want to check this one out.

Elisabeth Gustafsdotters’ last Stride

Swedish Ripperologist Stefan Rantzow explores Elizabeth Stride’s Swedish background in Torslanda and elsewhere, and her various family connections in this insightful article. Includes photographs of the buildings where Elizabeth was born and baptized.

Trevor Marriott says [Jack the Ripper] may have struck in 1863 and 1872.

Mr Marriott will be presenting his findings at the Docklands Museum which is hosting an exhibition on the killer.

The body of 28-year-old prostitute Emma Jackson was found in a brothel in St Giles, central London, in April 1863.

She had five wounds to the throat and had not been robbed. The case was never solved.

Mr Marriott also uncovered a second case he believes may have been committed by the Ripper.

Nine years after the Jackson murder, on Christmas Day 1872, Harriet Buswell was found with her throat slit at her lodgings in nearby Great Coram Street, after returning home the previous evening with a male guest.

These claims and several others are outlined in Trevor’s newest book, The Evil Within.  More information is available on his web site at: http://www.trevormarriott.co.uk/

Salient points about Porriott:

• He was around 19 or 20 years old in 1888.
• He was better known as Andrew John Gibson, but had a slew of other names including Charles Ernest Chadwick
• He sailed from England to Australia on 9 November 1888, the date of the Mary Kelly murder
• He married a Francis Mary Scally (or Skelly) in 1891.  He would later marry another woman named Kelly in the United States.
• He spent roughly 44 years of his life in prison for various offenses
• He often impersonated a doctor in his later years, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1940 after killing a pregnant woman.  (He had been posing as her gynecologist).
• It is claimed he married at least twenty times, most often to his “patients” whom he would then fleece of their money.

More information:

Paul Tully’s maintains a blog discussing his research at:
http://ripper1888.blogspot.com/

There’s been some good forum discussions on the Casebook, including a number of early to mid-20th century press reports posted by Chris Scott about Porriott at:
http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=38188

Alan Sharp has written a response to the press buzz on Porriott at:
http://extra.rippernotes.com/?p=95

Knoxville, TN (PRWEB) August 26, 2008 — From August through November of 1888, a mysterious figure now known as Jack the Ripper killed and mutilated women in the East End of London. Although the murderer was never identified, 120 years later researchers are uncovering new details about the case at an ever increasing rate.

“We may never know for certain who was responsible for these murders,” Dan Norder, editor of the journal Ripper Notes, said. “But if the killer is ever identified, it will probably be the result of a worldwide community of researchers sharing their knowledge with each other.”

To that end, Norder and Kelly Robinson, a writer with a long-held interest in the Victorian era, will host a conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, October 10-12, 2008 for leading experts in the field to meet and present their findings to others interested in the topic.

One of the most recent discoveries to be discussed at the event is the first photograph of police suspect Dr. Francis Tumblety. Archaeologist and historian Timothy Riordan learned of its existence while searching online records. Prior to this discovery only illustrations of Tumblety were known to exist. The photograph, described by Riordan as “incredibly detailed,” will be a highlight of his conference presentation.

Tumblety was an eccentric character who became wealthy selling medicine to the public. He was famous for self-promotion and also for being linked to a number of scandals, including alleged involvement with the Lincoln assassination. “I’m amazed that there aren’t more pictures of him available,” Riordan said. “It just would be something one would expect of Tumblety.”

Photos will also feature in a number of other presentations at the conference. Canadian author Robert J. McLaughlin will discuss the man responsible for most of the mortuary photographs of the Ripper’s victims and the history of their publication, including some rarely seen images published in France in the late 19th century. Philip Hutchinson, a London tour guide and author, will present a collection of recently discovered photographs of the Ripper crimes scenes taken by John Gordon Whitby.

The keynote speaker will be Martin Fido, the author of The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper as well as biographies on such figures as Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. “Mr. Fido is one of the most respected historians in the field,” said Robinson. “We’re thrilled to have him at the conference.”

The weekend will also feature a candlelight banquet, an auction of Ripper-related items, the debut of a new documentary and a preview of bestselling author James Reese’s newest title, The Dracula Dossier: A Novel of Suspense, which features Tumblety in a major role.

The conference is open to the public, but advanced registration is required. For more information, including the full list of scheduled speakers, see the conference website at http://www.ripperology.com/conference/.

About the Jack the Ripper conference:
Jack the Ripper conferences are held annually and alternate each year between a city in the United States and one in England. The fifth U.S. conference is the first to be held in Knoxville.

About the 2008 conference organizers:
Dan Norder is the executive editor of Ripper Notes, the leading journal about the Whitechapel murders, and the publisher of Neal Stubbings Shelden’s The Victims of Jack the Ripper and Stephen Ryder’s Public Reactions to Jack the Ripper. Kelly Robinson is a writer with a long-held interest in the Victorian era. The two met at a previous U.S. Ripper conference and announced their engagement at a Ripper conference in England.

Contact:
Kelly Robinson and Dan Norder
Jack the RIpper 2008 conference organizers
(865) 405-9166
ripperconference @ gmail.com
http://www.ripperology.com/conference/

Dave Yost works in the engineering and design fields. He is a coauthor of The News from Whitechapel (2002) and lives in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

Buy this book now on Amazon.com

David Ondaatje’s remake of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Lodger is going direct-to-DVD on February 10, 2009. Ondaatje is making his directorial debut with the film which was produced under Sony’s Stage 6 banner.

The Lodger follows a grizzled detective Chandler Manning (Alfred Molina) on the trail of a ruthless killer intent on slaughtering prostitutes along West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger called Malcolm Slaight (Simon Baker) rents a guesthouse from Joe (Donal Logue) and Ellen Bunting (Hope Davis), a married couple struggling to preserve their fragile union after their plans to start a family have ended in tragedy.

Manning, shunned both by his daughter Amanda (Rachael Leigh Cook) and his suicidal wife Margaret (Mel Harris) as a result of his single-minded dedication to police work, teams up with unlikely rookie partner Street Wilkenson (Shane West), only to make a startling discovery. It appears that the murderer’s grisly methods are identical to that of London’s infamous 19th century psychopath Jack the Ripper - a relentless serial killer who was never caught by police. To make matters worse, Manning soon notices the parallels between the crimes committed by the West Hollywood stalker and those of a serial murderer Manning incarcerated years ago.

From:
http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=7305

José-Luis Abad y Benítez from Santa Cruz has spent many years researching one of the greatest murder mysteries of our time, the identity of Jack the Ripper. The investigation has cost him dearly, but luckily he has been assisted by many people including a professor at the University of La Laguna.

Santa Cruz - 12.07.2008 - 118 years have passed since the Ripper’s last and most horrific crime, and since then there have been many suspects. James Maybrick, a Liverpool busi­nessman, was one of the first and the diary which bore his name was declared false. In the opinion of José-Luis, it was authentic, but only authentic in that the di­ary was written by Jack the Ripper, and this is where his theory differs from those of other investigators. He maintains that Jack the Ripper and James Maybrick were two separate people but that the Ripper iden­tified with Maybrick and his family. Other suspects over the years have been Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Duke of Clarence, but he had a perfect alibi. The Queen’s doctor was also a suspect, but this idea was discarded due to his state of health. José-Luis has a diploma in grapho-psychol­ogy from Madrid’s school of legal medicine and is a distinguished member of the Spanish Society of Graphologists. In his book which will be published within the next few months he will present more than 30 definitive forms of proof that there is no doubt who this psychopathic assassin known as Jack the Ripper really was.

It is certain that he was intelligent, he didn’t com­mit suicide, was not ar­rested and didn’t end up in prison or in a hospital. José-Luis claims that this is no hypothesis or theory, that he knows who Jack the Ripper was and that he is going to prove it to us. Island Connections will let you know when this book, which solves the biggest whodunnit of all time, is published.

http://www.casebook.org/suspects/donston.html

Enjoy!

I won’t reproduce it here but if you want to see ol’ Frank’s photograph, I highly suggest you head over to the Ripperologist website and purchase a subscription (or just bug Adam to allow you to purchase just this issue if you must).

A fantastic find, and my congratulations go out to Tim.

So much for those who say there’s no longer anything “meaty” to discover in this field, eh? 

From the publisher’s web site:

Halfway up Commercial Street, one block away from Spitalfields Market, lies an anonymous service road. The average pedestrian wouldn’t even notice it existed. But unlikely though it may seem, this characterless, 400ft strip of tarmac was once Dorset Street – the most notorious thoroughfare in the Capital; the worst street in London and the resort of Protestant fire-brands, thieves, con-men, pimps, prostitutes and murderers, most notably Jack the Ripper.

Spitalfields as a whole is now a vibrant and fashionable place to live, work and play; the home of artists and artisans, just as it was when the Huguenots settled there. However, as dusk falls, the seemingly indelible, sordid side of this fascinating part of London begins to emerge once again as the unknowing descendants of Mary Kelly, Mary Ann Austin and Kitty Ronan and others begin to ply their trade around the hallowed walls of Christ Church. All signs of Dorset Street, ‘ the worst street in London’, may all but have disappeared from the map but its legacy is too powerful to ever be entirely erased.

This book chronicles the rise and fall of this remarkable street, from its promising beginnings at the centre of the 17th Century silk weaving industry through its gradual descent into iniquity, vice and violence to its final demise at the hands of the demolition men. Its remarkable history gives a fascinating insight into an area of London that has, from its initial development, been a cultural melting pot – the place where many thousands of immigrants became Londoners. It also tells the story of a part of London that, until quite recently, was largely left to fend for itself, with truly horrifying results.

More information at:

http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/product.php?productid=60065&cat=1327&page=1