Evening Standard

[Joe Chetcuti]

If anybody can get into the archives of the London newspaper the Evening Standard for Dec 9, 2002 there should be a letter in there from a man from Basingstoke. The guy was responding to the newspaper's review of Cornwell's book Portrait of a Killer.

Apparently, he claimed that in 1888 a large number of prostitutes were recruited by the police as informants against a Fenian-Anarchist alliance in the East End. He went on to say that the Ripper victims had been murdered as a warning to other prostitutes to stop being informants. The guy declared that Abberline knew about this.

I've never seen this letter that was printed in the Evening Standard in 2002, but if somebody wants to dig it up and post here, then please go right ahead. I recently read about this story in an old issue of the Ripperologist journal.

[Howard Brown]

Joe:

I can access every article in the Evening Standard for that date, but their archive doesn't appear to contain letters to the editor.

https://www.standard.co.uk/archive/2002-12-9

The Evening Standard in the BNA only goes up to 1909 ( Forgot to mention that)

[Joe Chetcuti]

Howard,

Thanks for trying. Page 26 of the December 2002 issue of Ripperologist reported:

FENIAN-ANARCHIST ALLIANCE. The Evening Standard carried a letter from Robert Mills of Basingstoke on 9 December 2002 in response to the newspaper's review of Patricia Cornwell's Portrait of a Killer, in which Mills stated as a matter of fact that a 'large number' of prostitutes were recruited by the police as informants in their efforts to crush 'a Fenian-Anarchist alliance' that in 1888 'was trying to create a revolutionary commune and rebellion in the East End.' These prostitutes were vulnerable to both the conspirators and the Government agents...


The Ripperologist column went on to say:

The murderer, according to Mills, was George Chapman (Severin Klosowski), 'a hired killer specializing in informer murders'.

Perhaps the column in Ripperologist gave the wrong date for the Evening Standard.

[Howard Brown]

Joe:

Even if the date was wrong in the Rip....I still can't access letters to the editor.

Thanks for posting the excerpt.