The Stuff That Made Modern Ripperology

[Howard Brown]

Which books, events, discoveries, or people have made Ripperology what it is today for those of us within Ripperology and shaped its direction...wherever that may be headed ?




Which books, events, discoveries, or people have made Ripperology what it is today for those people outside of Ripperology....the casual crime enthusiast, couch potato who viewed a documentary or From Hell , or read a magazine about the crimes ?

[Dusty Miller]

Evans and Skinner's The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion for those inside.
It provided, and continues to, essential study information.

Stephen Knight's The Final Solution for those outside. Even those who haven't read it vaguely know the story.

[Mr. Poster]

Id say the Kelly photographs. For both.

And Knights book.

P

[Paul]

Evans and Skinner's The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Companion for those inside.
It provided, and continues to, essential study information.

Stephen Knight's The Final Solution for those outside. Even those who haven't read it vaguely know the story.

The Ultimate made the Scotland Yard and Home Office files available to everybody and made it possible to research the crimes using these most important primary documents. Combined with the digitisation of newspapers and the growth of sites like Ancestry, it enabled serious historical research to begin.

[Michael Banks]

I’ll state a rather obvious one....the internet.

When I first got interested in the case in the early eighties you could pretty much name the researchers and authorities on the case without too much effort. The chap in the post below mine being one of them of course. Now we have an army of researchers trawling the net and digging out masses of new information. It’s also led to increase in knowledge of peripheral characters which helps give us a wider understanding.

Sadly the net has also given us endless photographs of cats but hey - swings and roundabouts.

[Robert Linford]

Apart from research, the internet provides discussion, giving people a chance to use fellow members as sounding boards and critics, which is very useful.

[Sam Flynn]

I’ll state a rather obvious one....the internet.

When I first got interested in the case in the early eighties you could pretty much name the researchers and authorities on the case without too much effort. The chap in the post below mine being one of them of course. Now we have an army of researchers trawling the net and digging out masses of new information.

And the only reason that the information can be dug out is that the Internet provides easy access to electronic archives containing vast amounts of images and data. Some of these systems pre-dated the Internet, or at least weren't originally designed to be exposed to the outside world but, now that they've been given Internet front ends, their use has increased exponentially. This popularity has in turn led to more and more information being digitised and served up by purpose-built services that natively exploit Web technologies, making them even more powerful and easy to use.

[Michael Banks]

Apart from research, the internet provides discussion, giving people a chance to use fellow members as sounding boards and critics, which is very useful.

Hello Robert,

Thanks for pointing out the whilst listing the benefits of the internet on a forum I neglected to mention forums!

Just checking that you’re still on the ball of course.

[Michael Banks]

I think it’s also worthwhile mentioning the few names that we’re all aware of that almost became the public faces of ripperology. If these researchers and writers hadn’t shown that the subject could be discussed with reason in a professional and open-minded way then those unfamiliar with the case might have been left with the impression that the rest of us were either weird conspiracy theorists or even worse people that simply revelled in the gory sensationalism.

You may have heard of them....Rumbelow, Evans, Sugden, Whittington-Egan, O’Dell, Fido and some bloke called Begg.

And while I’m in a territory that might be construed as sycophancy it’s worth mentioning those that provide the forums.

I’m assuming that the cheque’s in the post How?

[Paul Butler]

And of course the elephant in the room, namely the diary. The reason Casebook and internet ripperology got started in the first place.

[Robert Linford]

Didn't that Begg fella write 'Lady Don't Fall Backwards'?

[Scott Nelson]

Still clinging to that avatar Paul?

[Howard Brown]

And while I’m in a territory that might be construed as sycophancy it’s worth mentioning those that provide the forums.

I’m assuming that the cheque’s in the post How?

Correctamundo, Mr. Banks....

[Robert Linford]

Bounce up.