Thomas Slemen is well known in Paranormal circles, his books “Haunted Liverpool” are popular books which is why I was surprised to see this offering in a bargain bin!!

“The worlds Greatest Ghosts” by Roger Boar and Nigel Blundell is a collection of ghost stories and sightings from all over the world.  There is a small story on a witness who claims to have heard spectral screams, and another which claims to have seen a ripper victim huddled up in the gutter!!

“Mad Franks London” by Frankie Fraser and respected crime writer James Morton has a very small section on the East End of London, here Frankie Fraser mentions the crimes of Jack the Ripper in his poetic style,

“The Worlds Greatest Mysteries” by Nigel Blundell was first published in 1980 and features a section on “Crime and Intrigue” of course no section would be complete without looking at the Ripper!

Wait a minute your not a ripper book…..2

Wait a minute your not a ripper book…..1

Ever bought a book, something totally unrelated to the case, only to find out there is a section or article contained within covering the crimes!

The case has expanded in recent years, covering all aspects of of popular culture.  From books on Unexplained mysteries, to Unsolved crimes, and even Ghost stories and Psychic detectives!!

I will look through my massive collection of books, and seek out the Ripper stories and articles contained within!!

Some of the authors will be familier to Ripperologists, whilst other may not, some of the entries are just bizarre!!!

I don’t think there is anyone alive today who looks through the primary data on Stephenson as much as me, it’s true that there are researchers, looking into this man, but living in the town of his birth enables me to search through stacks of primary sources!!

These searches usually take hours and often come up with nothing, but on occassion some good finds are made, its when these good finds are made that it all becomes worthwhile.

Yesterday’s trip was to obtain as much info as I could on,

The Dawber Family Obituaries,

Information on Francis Roe,

Information on Solictors, Mr. Smith, Mr. Hearfield, and Mr. Wilberforce.

Information on the Hull Police Court,

Information on Hull Statues in the Police Court,

Information on Ferry Times to and from the Corporation Pier in Hull,

Information on the 1879 Trial of Richard Stephenson Jnr,

And any more info on Richard Stephenson’s Obituary.

I found “NEW” information on all of the above, I also found another article about an alleged Crime that Robert D’Onston Stephenson may have committed.

There was also a lot of “NEW” information covering an area of the Stephenson family that few have ventured into, their upbringing!

“NEW” obituaries were found for the Dawbers and the Stephensons!

“NEW” details were found covering the locations of the above named solicitors!

All in all it was a great day, with several pages printed of newspapers, and several new Trade Directory entries found for my Chronology!

Richard Stephenson and Isabella Dawber’s marriage cert and entry in the registry will be here within the next few days!

Robert D’Onston Stephenson’s birth Cert will be here on Monday!

And Robert D’Onston Stephenson’s Christening registry entry is being sought, I should know more next week!

Just another amusing News story to disect!! As usual my opinions in bold!!

Source, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D91E30F937A35755C0A96E948260 

NEW YORK TIMES

 A Century Later, Ripper Mystery Remains

By HOWELL RAINES, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: June 4, 1988 

This is the centennial year of the Jack the Ripper murders. It seems a fair time to ask how the investigation is going.

The short answer is, not much better than it went 100 years ago, when Queen Victoria sent a grumpy suggestion to Scotland Yard: ”Our detectives must be improved. They are not what they should be.”

Now as then, monarchs, investigators and the general public do not know the identity of the psychopathic slasher who, between Aug. 31 and Nov. 9, 1888, killed 5 of the 1,200 or so prostitutes then living in the teeming Whitechapel slums of east London.

But the Jack the Ripper industry is in great shape. So far this year, five books have assessed the claims of suspects ranging from a mad Russian to the Queen’s physician to one of Oscar Wilde’s young men.

And at the moment, the entire Ripper industry is in an uproar over a new television mini-series being filmed in England for broadcast on Thames Television in Britain and CBS in the United States. According to the Thames Television publicity kit, the four-hour film will be able to identify Jack because century-old evidence from ‘’secret Home Office and Metropolitan Police files” has fallen into the hands of the film’s producer and director, David Wickes.

“This refers to the Michael Caine mini series “Jack the Ripper” which started with a reference to Documents being looked at, its a shame they didn’t research Abberline”

Orthodox Ripperologists use terms like ”absolute rubbish” and ‘’sheer baloney” to dismiss Mr. Wickes’s claim that he has unearthed new documentary evidence that solves the case. Mr. Wickes responds that they are angry because his film will expose most of their theories about Jack as ”pure fantasy.”

“Pure Fantasy” what like Abberline being a drunk ladies man?”

That language gives a fair idea of the level of discourse in the jealous little world of Ripperology, just as the dispute between Mr. Wickes and his leading critics gives a overview of what is known - or rather, how little is known - about the world’s most enduring whodunit.

The combatants include Daniel Farson, who unblushingly describes himself as ”the leading authority on Jack the Ripper”; Melvin Harris, the discoverer of this year’s most colorful new suspect, and Donald Rumbelow, a scholarly detective generally regarded as the most authoritative referee of the competing claims. A Drunken Barrister

“I have to agree with the “colorful suspect” Robert D’Onston Stephenson!”

Mr. Farson’s fame rests on his discovery in 1959 of notes in which a Scotland Yard official identified a drunken barrister named Montague J. Druitt as a main suspect. The murders ended after Mr. Druitt drowned himself in the Thames in December 1888, and Mr. Farson was able to show that the police, without naming Druitt, had spread the word that the murderer died in the river.

“Was Druitt really a drunk barrister?”

”People can say whatever they like, but they cannot deny that this is the man that the police thought did it and also that Druitt had drowned in the Thames,” he said.

Indeed, Druitt remains a betting favorite with many students of the case. But Melvin Harris stumbled on an oddball new suspect, Roslyn D’Onston, while researching a book on psychic hoaxes. A failed physician, a dabbler in black magic, an alcoholic and drug addict, D’Onston turned - quite naturally, some would say - to Fleet Street to make a living.

“No Proof of being a physician, never mind failing!  No proof he “dabbled” in Black Magic, and writing an article or two is not really deemed turning to “Fleet Street”!”

Thus began, Mr. Harris says in his book, ”Jack the Ripper, the Bloody Truth,” the ”incredible string of hoaxes” that have disguised the killer’s trail. ”In almost every case they were created by journalists,” Mr. Harris added with the tone of a man who has, at the least, placed Jack in the right professional company. Police Records Lost

“This should read, The Incredible string of hoaxes that fooled the public into buying books on Stephenson”

Mr. Harris contends that D’Onston’s newspaper articles on the murders were intended to disguise that he was the Ripper, but his detailed knowledge of the case aroused suspicion. D’Onston’s mistress and Aleister Crowley, a famous magician of the day, both considered him the killer. Mr. Harris contends that D’Onston was arrested as a suspect once, but the police records of the interrogation have been lost.

“How convenient, they have to exist in the first place to be lost”

Mr. Harris has joined Mr. Farson in charging Mr. Wickes, whose ”Jack the Ripper” is to be broadcast in November, with creating the latest hoax by asserting that he has seen documents previously unavailable.

In an interview, Mr. Wickes blamed overzealous publicists for mistakenly claiming the film was based on ‘’secret” files. ”There are no secret files,” he said. But with his $11 milllion budget, Mr. Wickes said, he has been able to do a thorough search of the archives and cull information ignored by ”all the other people who call themselves Ripperologists.” A Most-Balanced Roundup

Has Mr. Wickes found additional evidence on Druitt or perhaps the missing interview with D’Onston? Enter Mr. Rumbelow, in real life a City of London detective, in private life a Ripperologist whose artifacts include a postmortem knife that may have been used in the murders and whose book, ”The Complete Jack the Ripper,” is regarded as the most-balanced roundup of the evidence.

Mr. Rumbelow is dismissive of Mr. Wickes’s idea that Frederick Abberline, the Scotland Yard inspector portrayed in the film by Michael Caine, solved the case only to see his work covered up by his superiors. Mr. Rumbelow says he, too, had high hopes for missing evidence from Abberline when he found a long-neglected scrapbook compiled by the detective, who died in 1929.

”As I flipped through it, my heart sank,” Mr. Rumbelow said. ”I saw the words, ‘Why I Didn’t Write My Reminiscences When I Left the Metropolitan Police.’ One-hundred odd pages and hardly a line, a word about the Ripper. You want to lay hands on him and beat his head against the wall.”

The reason Abberline wrote nothing, Mr. Rumbelow concluded, is that he had nothing to tell. ”He was still hunting the Ripper in old age. He quite clearly hadn’t solved it.”

Still, Mr. Wickes promises his film will ”absolutely” identify the Ripper and show that there was a high-level decision to conceal the evidence.

“But it still failed to do so!!  He should have just read Final Solution and saved his 11 Million budget!”

This has led some experts to believe that the movie will go with a version of a conspiracy theory that has been kicking around for some time. According to it, a group of Freemasons led by Sir William Gull, the physician to Queen Victoria, killed the prostitutes to cover up the fact that the Duke of Clarence, the Queen’s weak-willed grandson, had fathered a child by one victim.

Mr. Rumbelow asserts that the case will be solved in the hereafter rather than by him or Mr. Wickes or any of the other competing experts.

”On the Day of Judgment,” he said, ”when all things are known, when generations of Ripperologists call on Jack the Ripper to step forward and call out his name, we shall look at one another in amazement as he does so and say, ‘Who?’ ”

”It will be someone none of us has ever heard of.”

“True poetry, spoken by a man who KNOWS!!”

New Ripper suspect’s ritual killings

obeyed occult decree

Whitechapel prostitutes were victims of a surgeon who studied the black arts, claims author

“Except there is no proof he was a surgeon!”

Jack the Ripper was not a serial sexual killer but an occultist called Robert Donston Stephenson who terrorised London’s East End while indulging in a sadistic form of Satanic worship.

“Should read Whilst indulging in Hospital Food!”

According to a new book that claims to prove conclusively the identity of the mass murderer, the Ripper’s true motive was to kill four prostitutes as the occult decreed and, in so doing, profane the Christian cross.

“Only four, so who killed the fifth, or are we sharing that one with Sickert?”

Public fascination with Jack the Ripper has barely faltered since the first murder, on 31 August 1888, when 45-year-old Mary Ann Nichols was murdered and mutilated at a spot patrolled every 30 minutes by policemen.

Three new books speculating on the killer’s identity will be published this autumn, while films, including last year’s From Hell, starring Johnny Depp and Heather Graham, are based on the crimes.

Patricia Cornwell, one of the world’s most successful crime novelists, is working on a BBC Omnibus documentary that will conclude the killer was artist Walter Sickert. Her belief is based on his obsession with the subject - his depiction of what was believed to be the last murder led to speculation that he was the Ripper.

“A fistula full of dollars!”

But in Jack the Ripper’s Black Magic Rituals, author Ivor Edwards claims that despite being repeatedly overlooked by Ripperologists, Stephenson, alias Roslyn D’Onston, was the killer.

“Repeatedly overlooked”, who is this guy kidding, O’Donnell wrote a manuscript on Stephenson, and Melvin Harris covered Stephenson in two books”

‘Certain points in relation to these crimes have never been satisfactorily explained and, in fact, many have been ignored,’ said Edwards, who has spent the past nine years investigating the murders.

‘One avenue, which was never explored by the police of the day, mainly due to their ignorance, was occult ritual murder, including the doctrine that certain organs should be removed from murdered prostitutes, killed at pre-arranged sites, which were to be located at the four points of the compass.’

During his research Edwards realised that the victims were carefully laid facing north, east, south and west. ‘How do you calculate the probability of finding four bodies randomly distributed in a city so that they form the precise points of a cross?’ he asked.

He then did what no other researcher has done before: measure the distances from victim to victim and take compass bearings to discover if there was a pattern between the sites where the women were murdered.

‘I found that by joining some of the sites together, you created two equilateral triangles; a sacred symbol which, in occult doctrine, Satan devised to be used in worship of him,’ Edwards said. By joining the sites in a different way, a Christian cross was revealed.

“Very Black Magic indeed, My local church is full of them!”

After examining the position of the fifth and last victim, 25-year-old Marie Jeanette Kelly, Edwards realised that all the women were killed within a 500-yard radius and that, by joining the sites together, it was possible to create the Vesica Piscis, a fish-like symbol worshipped by the early Christians. By murdering his victims and leaving their bodies in that way, the killer intended a tribute to Satan.

“Why not just write a book devoted to him?”

Edwards said the organs removed by the Ripper - the heart, kidneys, genitalia and womb - were those routinely used in black magic rituals.

‘Such practices were common on the west coast of Africa at the time and my suspect was known to travel to the west coast in search of occult knowledge and even went so far as to write on the subject,’ Edwards said.

“The West Coast of England??”

Stephenson, an occultist and military surgeon who lived near the site of the murders at the time they were committed, was arrested twice for the crimes but was released each time.

“being an inpatient at the London Hospital is not “Living near” plus were is the proof he was a military surgeon?”

An exceptionally intelligent and educated man, Stephenson was obsessed with black magic and confessed to the murder of at least two people during his travels in Africa.

He was from a wealthy family but had been cast out after marrying his mother’s maidservant, Anne Deary, in 1876.

“HIS FATHER WAS A WITNESS TO THE WEDDING!!”

After he was turned down for a job with the Metropolitan Police, the couple made what money they could through Stephenson’s writings on the occult, which included One Who Knows and Tautriadelta .

Deary disappeared in 1887 and was never seen again. However there were suspicions that a dismembered body found in a river near the Stephenson’s Brighton home later that year was hers.

“same old crap as the other article in part 1 of this series”

With his wife out of the way, Stephenson spent his time in the company of prostitutes.

“Seriously now, were is that written??  I would love to know!”

On 26 July 1888, he moved to London, signing himself in as a private patient at the London Hospital, Whitechapel, complaining of neurosthenia, a complaint whose cure lay in rest, fresh air and a light diet.

“Rest, Rest, Rest….you said it yourself”

‘Why would a man suffering with a complaint that requires nothing more than a rest move from a renowned health resort by the sea to a dirty, acrid, polluted area like Whitechapel?’ Edwards asked.

He believes the reason was so he would be in a place where the police were least likely to look for a killer.

“Because the Police had more than 1 brain cell and realised a man with a gammy leg from a shooting in 1868 could not jump over the locked gates at the hospital!”

According to Edwards, Stephenson spent a month planning the murders with such precision that the police were unable to trace him and, despite partial admissions that led four friends to report him as a likely suspect to police, he remained at large, writing long articles exhibiting intimate knowledge of the murders for the Pall Mall Gazette .

In 1904 Stephenson published a book, The Patristic Gospels, which continued to explore his obsession with the world of black magic, but after that he was never heard of again. No record of his death has been found.

“Same old, same old, except Patristic Gospels is about Religion, remember what I said about writing a book??”

Source, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jul/28/humanities.books