Arthur Conan Doyle and the Jack the Ripper Murders

As an appendix to my three articles on Arthur Conan Doyle; (1) I thought I would briefly comment on Conan Doyle's thoughts about the five canonical Jack the Ripper murders in London in the summer of 1888.

It is hardly a surprise that Doyle - as a burgeoning celebrity writer and novelist - would pass some comment on the subject given that the murders were one of the biggest media events of the time. (2) The Times, for example, gave a particularly large amount of column inches over to the issue during the period of the killings. (3)

Therefore it is hardly surprising - as Charles Higham notes - that Conan Doyle based two of his Sherlock Holmes stories on the Ripper killings; the most notable of which is 'The Cardboard Box'. (4) Further at the time Conan Doyle wrote about the killings and with typical chutzpah took the authorities to task about the 'Dear Boss' letter, which was received by the Central News Agency on 27th September 1888.

Conan Doyle believed that the 'Dear Boss' letter was absolutely genuine and unleashed a vitriolic attack on the London police and detective force for 'failing to investigate it properly'. (5) This is despite the fact that the letter - from where we get the name 'Jack the Ripper' - is now (as then) usually regarded as a sensationalist hoax written by a journalist who has been tentatively identified. (6)

What I find surprising about Conan Doyle on this is that he doesn't comment on the rather obvious fact that the area in which Jack the Ripper operated was that an estimated thirty percent of the Whitechapel population at the time were jewish. (7) While the local indigenous population (8) as well as both radical and conservative journalists (9) all believed that the killer was probably a jew.

While the jewish press - most notably the Jewish Chronicle - were screaming about 'defamation' and demanding the proverbial heads of those who asserted the Ripper might be jews (including senior police detectives such as Sir Robert Anderson). (10)

As it happens the leaders of modern research into the Ripper killings - for example Martin Fido and Paul Begg - believe that the likelihood is that the killer was a jew. More specifically a mentally disturbed individual with probable schizophrenia named Aaron Kosminski. This is further supported by the explicit statements of several of the leading detectives who worked in and around the Ripper case. (11)

The fact that Conan Doyle appears to have wilfully ignored the significant possibility that Jack the Ripper was jewish and fixated instead on the 'Dear Boss' letter and alleged official incompetence is suggestive of his own rather strange attitude to popular currents as well as his habit of taking unpopular stances whenever he felt there was a underdog to support. (12)

References

(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/arthur-conan-doyle-zionism-and-the; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-arthur-conan-doyle-anti-semitic; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/arthur-conan-doyle-and-freemasonry

(2) Judith Flanders, 2011, 'The Invention of Murder', 1st Edition, Harper Collins: London, p. 426

(3) Ibid., p. 339

(4) Charles Higham, 1976, 'The Adventures of Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes', 1st Edition, Hamish Hamilton: London, pp. 77; 100; 104

(5) Harold Orel (Ed.), 1991, 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections', 1st Edition, MacMillan: Basingstoke, pp. 72-73

(6) For example Trevor Marriot, 2007, 'Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation', 1st Edition, John Blade: London, pp. 219-223

(7) Paul Harrison, 1991, 'Jack the Ripper: The Mystery Solved', 1st Edition, Robert Hale: London, p. 16

(8) Russell Edwards, 2014, 'Naming Jack the Ripper', 1st Edition, Sidgwick & Jackson: Basingstoke, pp. 55-56; Gerry Black, 2003, 'Jewish London: An Illustrated History', 1st Edition, Breedon: Derby, pp. 100-104

(9) Flanders, Op. Cit., pp. 441-442

(10) Edwards, Op. Cit., pp. 226-227

(11) Ibid., pp. 221-222; 226-227; 254-255; Harrison, Op. Cit., p. 136

(12) Julian Symons, 1979, 'Portrait of an Artist: Conan Doyle', 1st Edition, Andre Deutsch: London, p. 79