How did YOU meet Jack?

[Andrew Komyati]

School in 12th grade. We all had to pick who we thought Jack The Ripper was. I went with George Chapman.

[Anna Morris]

I don't remember anything specific. I read something about the mystery, emphasis on mystery. Then I read a book or the book that brought in the Royals. I didn't like the gory details. Around that time I had begun writing and worked for a paper. I got the idea a journalist might be able to solve the case so I started reading everything I could find and doing any research I could think of.

At this point I am more mystified about the fact that there were plenty of murderous, vicious, creepy men all over the world who could have been Jack, and that the name became a synonym for many other crimes, as Howard's inexhaustible supply of newspaper clippings proves. Indeed when I go to my old newspaper source that covers the U.S., there are many uses of the name JtR that are just tacked on to get attention and have absolutely nothing to do with the Whitechapel fiend.

[Phillip Walton]

I was vaguely aware of JTR before but my interest started when I commenced work upon leaving school when I commenced my first job with Kearley & Tonge in Mitre Square.

[Tracy Ianson]

I already knew the name of course but my real interest came a few year back form watching the Stewart Evan documentary on Francis Tumbelty.

I was fascinated by the whole scenario of finding papers of the time hidden in an old book pointing out a suspect like that. Although it didn't pan out I still look fondly on the memory of it.


(for those who want to point out they weren't hidden it is my memory so I get to say they were)

[Curryong]

I've always been interested in mysteries of all kinds from the time I was small, but I first 'met Jack' in the 1960's as a very young teenager, when I was taken by an older relative around the Ripper sites. Even then they were very much changed from Jack's day, but there were more contemporary buildings around the streets that still survived than there are now, though some were in very bad repair.

After that I read books like Cullen's 'Autumn of Terror' and was hooked!

[Sam Flynn]

Apart from various newspaper articles, and the general awareness that Brits had/have about JTR, I have to say that it was Stephen Knight's book which first piqued my interest in the subject. That remains my only debt of thanks to the Royal/Masonic Conspiracy, by the way.

[String]

Is there any way you can see how you voted?
Half the time I can't remember what way I voted and want to be sure if I was telling lies or not.

[Cogidubnus]

When my brother and I were young my mother used to threaten us with JtR if we were misbehaving...I subsequently learned that this was something her mother had done too.

Cheers

Dave

[Matt Hood]

I voted British Culture.

Being nine years old in the Autumn of 1988, there was not much chance of me not hearing about the case. Add that to the fact that I was a morbid child and something of a nascent goth, it was little wonder that it stuck in my memory.

Come 1998, I was reintroduced to the Whitechapel Murders in A-Level history, specifically looking at the diary as a suspect source, and I've been interested in the case on and off ever since.

[Robert Linford]

Dan Farson newspaper serialisation followed by Dan Farson book. Hiatus cause by dancing with Tessie O'Shea, then Stephen Knight newspaper serialisation and book.

[Mr. Poster]

Back-from-the-dead-thread I see......

Who the hell has Jack the Ripper as a family tradition?

The Addams Family? The Munsters?

p

[Robert Linford]

Maybe that was put in to include the Browns.

[Sam Flynn]

Who the hell has Jack the Ripper as a family tradition?

Mark Ripper?

Jack Nicholson?

Elizabeth the Second?


... oh, hang on, perhaps that last one might not be a joke

[Robert Linford]

Victoria 1837 - 1901
Elizabeth II 1952 -


She is now 'Long Liz.'