The Historic UK website publishes interesting facts about England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. on a day-to-day basis.  Today's entry reads:

27 September 1888:  First use of the name Jack the Ripper in an anonymous letter to the Central News Agency 


This, of course, marked a turning point for the public's perceptions of the killer as well as how the police and newspapers handled the story.  The public had a name for their boogeyman, and the police now saw people accused of being the Ripper just for using the name in conversation.  The fact that the Ripper letter was sent to a news aggregate service rather than a specific newspaper always struck me as fishy, and points to the letter (and all subsequent missives) as being hoaxes.

This post gives an account of a recent Ripper tour with Donald Rumbelow, well-known and respected Ripperologist.

My updated edition of  Jack the Ripper A to Z arrived today, so I'll have some fun weekend reading.  

On a related note, I found out today that I will be teaching the Jack the Ripper's London course at the University of Tulsa this spring.  Fantastic!  Can't wait!

I’m still looking over Colin Wilson's History of Murder and I went back to the Ripper section where I found this passage relating to Joseph Sickert’s supposed involvement in the Royal Conspiracy:

Does this mean that Sickert was Jack the Ripper?  Almost certainly not.  Artists and writers may become morbidly obsessed by certain murders, but no artist has ever been known to commit premeditated murder.

Uh, what?  See Pen, Pencil and Poison by Oscar Wilde concerning the poet Thomas Wainewright.  Or Caravaggio in 1606, if we can count a duel as premeditated.

A new book entitled What Alice Knew has William and Henry James assist Scotland Yard in tracking down Jack the Ripper.  Interesting conceit, and perhaps more promising than the tired Sherlock Holmes involvement.

After many months of pre-ordering, having the publication date pushed back, and Amazon finally canceling my order, the newly updated Jack the Ripper A to Z is finally on its way to me via Amazon UK!  I'm anxious to see the authors' takes on  newly minted (after the initial book's publication) suspects.  I hear that Mike Covell gets a mention in the Stephenson section, so congrats, Mike!  Well-deserved.

Can't wait to read it!

I am re-reading The History of Murder by Colin Wilson and am a bit disconcerted with his overuse of "homosexual" when describing people.  By this I don't mean the term itself, but rather I feel he uses it when it has nothing to do with the case or its analysis.  One such usage occurs in the case of Lacenaire, the French killer and thief from the 1800s.  Wilson describes Lacenaire's last victim as a "homosexual letter-begging-writer."  The victim was a bank courier, so his sexual orientation did not appear to contribute to or figure in his death.  Overall, a strange over-usage of the word.

That said, I enjoy Colin Wilson's books and his Encyclopedia of Murder with Pat Pittman is probably my favorite true crime resource.