The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Read online

  Also edited by Otto Penzler

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  A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2016

  Introduction and compilation copyright © 2016 by Otto Penzler

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Owing to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material appear on this page.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Penzler, Otto, editor.

  Title: The big book of Jack the Ripper / edited with an introduction by Otto Penzler.

  Description: New York : Vintage Books, [2016] | “Vintage Crime/Black Lizard”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016012024 (print) | LCCN 2016029457 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Jack, the Ripper—Fiction. | Jack, the Ripper. | Serial murderers—Fiction. | Detective and mystery stories, American. | Historical fiction, American. | East End (London, England)—Fiction. | London (England)—History—19th century—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Anthologies (multiple authors). | FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS648.J25 B54 2016 (print) | LCC PS648.J25 (ebook) | DDC 823/.087208—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016012024

  Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101971130

  Ebook ISBN 9781101971147

  Cover design: Joe Montgomery

  Cover art: man © Roy Bishop/Arcangel; lampost © Lee Avison/Trevillion Images

  www.weeklylizard.com

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also Edited by Otto Penzler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  The True Story

  Victims in the Night: David Abrahamsen

  The Jack the Ripper Murders: Anonymous

  Key Texts: Maxim Jakubowski and Nathan Braund, eds.

  Witness Statements

  Autopsy Reports

  The “Ripper Letters”

  London’s Ghastly Mystery: Anonymous

  The East End Murders: Detailed Lessons: Anonymous

  Blood Money to Whitechapel: George Bernard Shaw

  Who Was Jack the Ripper?: Peter Underwood

  Mystery Solved!: Anonymous

  “Frenchy”—Ameer Ben Ali: Edwin M. Borchard

  Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick: Stephen Hunter

  Copy Murders and Others: Robin Odell

  Mystery, Crime, Suspense—Stories

  In the Fourth Ward: Theodora Benson

  Jack: Anne Perry

  Spring-Fingered Jack: Susan Casper

  The Uncertain Heiress: Isak Dinesen

  Knucklebones: Tim Sullivan

  A Kind of Madness: Anthony Boucher

  The Sparrow and the Lark: Lyndsay Faye

  The Decorator: Boris Akunin

  Guardian Angel: Gwendolyn Frame

  In the Slaughteryard: Anonymous

  The Lodger (short story): Marie Belloc Lowndes

  The Lodger (novel): Marie Belloc Lowndes

  The Sins of the Fathers: Scott Baker

  Don’t Fear the Ripper: Holly West

  The Mysterious Card Unveiled: Cleveland Moffett

  Jack Be Quick: Barbara Paul

  A Matter of Blood: Jeffery Deaver

  A Study in Terror: Ellery Queen

  Red Jack—an Inspiration

  G.I. Jack: Loren D. Estleman

  The Legacy: R. L. Stevens

  Jack’s Little Friend: Ramsey Campbell

  The Stripper: H. H. Holmes

  The Ripper Experience: Daniel Stashower

  The Treasure of Jack the Ripper: Edward D. Hoch

  The Hands of Mr. Ottermole: Thomas Burke

  Saucy Jack—Timeless

  Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper: Robert Bloch

  A Toy for Juliette: Robert Bloch

  The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World: Harlan Ellison

  Gentleman of the Shade: Harry Turtledove

  The Adventure of the Grinder’s Whistle: Howard Waldrop

  Sagittarius: Ray Russell

  The Demon Spell: Hume Nisbet

  My Shadow Is the Fog: Charles L. Grant

  By Flower and Dean Street: Patrice Chaplin

  The Final Stone: William F. Nolan

  The Gatecrasher: R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  A Punishment to Fit the Crimes: Richard A. Gordon

  From Hell Again: Gregory Frost

  An Awareness of Angels: Karl Edward Wagner

  A Most Unusual Murder: Robert Bloch

  Jack the Ripper in Hell: Stephen Hunter

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  For Roger Cooper

  My valued friend, with gratitude

  and admiration for his creative guidance

  INTRODUCTION

  WHILE THE WORLD has had no shortage of murderers, with Cain wasting no time in getting humanity started on its bloodstained path, none has imposed himself on the public consciousness as indelibly as Jack the Ripper. Most experts, known in this very specific area of scholarship as Ripperologists, believe that the fiend committed his atrocities during a relatively short period of time in 1888, yet his sobriquet still resonates throughout the world today.

  It is reasonable to ask why this remains true after more than a century and a quarter. Certainly, there have been countless other killers whose names have screamed at us in headlines over the years, holding our attention for a while before fading and, mostly, disappearing.

  We may remember Adam Lanza now, for having committed the incomprehensible slaughter of twenty children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, but only devoted scholars of crime will recall Andrew Kehoe, who murdered thirty-eight children and five adults when he blew up a school in Michigan in 1927.

  American gangsters such as Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, Whitey Bulger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and John Gotti are legendary figures in America but are virtually unknown in the rest of the world. The same is largely true for the icons of the old Western frontier, where Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the Younger brothers, and Doc Holliday became the subject of purple prose newspaper accounts that captivated East Coast readers, leading to dime novels and motion picture portrayals that reimagined vicious thugs as semi-heroic characters. None of these villains sends a chill down the spine, as popular media have sanitized their reputations and deeds.

  Equally uninspiring of horror in the present time are British killers such as Fred and Rose West, who are known to have tortured and murdered at least eleven women and girl
s until they were brought to trial in 1994, their exploits garishly recounted in the news media. Also the merest footnote to the history of serial killers is Dr. Harold Shipman, reputedly the murderer of approximately two hundred and fifty people, mostly his patients, whose wills he forged so that he could inherit their valuables. Some may recall the newspapers’ colorful title of the Moors Murderers, but few remember the real names of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, described at her trial as the Most Evil Woman in Britain. Other names that became famous at one time, mainly because they became the subjects of books or movies, are Burke and Hare, gravediggers who were paid for corpses for medical examination and soon found it easier to kill people than dig them up; Constance Kent, who murdered a child when she was sixteen, a case so notorious in its time (1860) that elements were used by Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone, by Charles Dickens in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and in numerous other novels; Peter William Sutcliffe, better known as the Yorkshire Ripper, convicted of murdering thirteen women; and Madeleine Smith, whose trial for poisoning her lover allowed her freedom when the jury returned a verdict of “not proven.” She was sensationalized in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady and in the 1950 David Lean film Madeleine.

  Better known in the United States, often because journalists bestowed colorful names on them, are such infamous serial killers as The Hillside Stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono; the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz; the Co-ed Killer, Edmund Kemper; the BTK (Bind, Torture, and Kill) Killer, Dennis Rader; the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez; the Milwaukee Cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer; the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway; John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, prolific murderers who somehow eluded colorful titles; and Charles Manson, probably the most fearsome American psychopath of the twentieth century, his crimes splashed along headlines for years, partially because of the unspeakable brutality of the crimes and partially because of the fame and beauty of one of the victims, Sharon Tate.

  There is a seemingly limitless number of people who have committed untold numbers of heinous acts throughout the long history of Homo sapiens, a species almost unique in its ability to kill within the species for the sheer pleasure of it. With so many others having murdered in even greater numbers than Jack the Ripper, and some equally brutal (or worse, engaging in unspeakably depraved torture of living victims, a practice almost entirely eschewed by Saucy Jack), why does he continue to maintain his place at the top of the public’s radar?

  While students of criminology are not unanimous in attributing the number of the Ripper’s victims, with five apparently accepted universally, but one, two, three, or four others also credited to him by various scholars, it is generally agreed that all the murders occurred during the autumn of 1888 (again, with outliers claiming at least an additional year at either end). The victims were all prostitutes in London’s East End, a ghetto teeming with the poorest segment of the population. The dark, narrow alleyways, often ending in cul-de-sacs, were perfect venues in which to commit an act of violence—or a transaction of a sexual nature, performed by a member of the largest profession of the neighborhood. The noxious fumes of coal stoves and fireplaces, as well as the factories located in the area, combined to provide an almost permanently darkened sky, a smog known as London particular. The women of the night, prowling the streets, looking for partners to pay them enough for a glass of warming gin, were perfect victims, willing—no, eager—to slip off to a darkened corner to quickly ply their trade. Although police patrolled regularly throughout the night, it was seldom the cream of the force, and the odds of them catching a criminal in the act, with visibility frequently limited to two or three feet, were slim.

  Since so few cared about the victims of the Ripper’s carnage while they were alive, why has their fate continued to resonate today? A likely reason is that he was never caught. Having spread a tsunami of terror for a short time, he disappeared completely, leaving his identity to be theorized, discussed, argued, and written about for decade after decade. It did not hurt his legacy of notoriety that he frequently taunted the police, with the complicity of the local press, by sending letters warning them of forthcoming attacks and daring them to catch him if they can.

  The frisson of terror evoked by his name, Jack the Ripper—so much more chilling than merely Jack the Killer or Jack the Stabber—stays in the memory, and on the tongue, so easily. He was written about in such extreme terms, first of course in newspapers, but then in magazine articles and books, that he provided endless fodder for those who became intrigued by him. Theories about his identity were rampant, with clues clutched to advance one theory, while other possible pieces of evidence were ignored if they suggested that someone else was the genuine article. Other Ripperologists rushed to discredit the first theory and advance their own, which suffered the same fate at the hands of still other students of the crimes. Jack the Ripper has now been “proven” to be any one of at least a half-dozen people by various authors and scholars.

  This collection has articles describing the area of the atrocities, accounts of the murders, and theories about the identity of Red Jack by some of the world’s leading experts on the subject. There also are contemporary reports from newspapers of the day. Taken together, they will provide a reasonably clear picture of the real-life events that inspired so much fiction about the incidents and the demented individual at the heart of them. For the most comprehensive guide to all the facts, if you are interested to read in far greater detail than offered here, I recommend The Complete Jack the Ripper by Donald Rumbelow.

  The fiction contained in this tome has a wide range. While planned as a volume of crime stories, the almost mythical level at which Jack has been perceived has compelled me to include some of the memorable tales that present him as ageless as his reputation. Many theories about why Jack quit so abruptly have suggested he moved to a different country, or to a different time. It was impossible to resist these stories by several masters of the form.

  Finally, proving yet again that Jack the Ripper is as timeless as fear, there are new stories, written especially for this volume by some of today’s most distinguished authors—Jeffery Deaver, Loren D. Estleman, Lyndsay Faye, Stephen Hunter, Anne Perry, and Daniel Stashower—and I am grateful to them all for adding to the literature about one of the most singularly vile creatures ever to degrade the planet.

  Prepare to be unnerved.

  —Otto Penzler

  Victims in the Night

  DAVID ABRAHAMSEN

  As a forensic psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, David Abrahamsen (1903–2002) was called upon to serve as an expert witness at some of the most famous murder cases of the twentieth century, including the Leopold-Loeb “Crime of the Century” trial, the investigations of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the trial of David Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam.” His interest in the latter led to his book Confessions of Son of Sam (1985).

  His expertise in criminal psychopathology proved invaluable while working at prisons in New York and Illinois and lecturing at different hospitals, ultimately leading to the publication of fifteen books relating to various elements of the subject, including Crime and the Human Mind (1944), Who Are the Guilty?: A Study of Education and Crime (1952), The Psychology of Crime (1960), Our Violent Society (1970), The Murdering Mind (1973), and The Mind of the Accused: A Psychiatrist in the Courtroom (1983). He also wrote a study of Richard M. Nixon—Nixon vs. Nixon: An Emotional Tragedy (1977)—and Murder and Madness: The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper (1992), in which he identifies Prince Albert Victor and James Kenneth Stephen as collaborators in the Ripper murders, providing them with credible motives (unlike most of the other suspects who have been advanced over the years), although he supplies no convincing facts to support his hypothesis.

  “Victims in the Night” was first published in Murder and Madness: The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper (New York, Donald I. Fine, 1992).

  VICTIMS IN THE NIGHT

  David Abrahamsen

  With life so precarious, and opportunity for the happiness of lif
e so remote, it is inevitable that life shall be cheap…

  Jack London, The People of the Abyss

  The murders and mutilations of five prostitutes in Whitechapel, in the East End of London, began on the morning of Friday, August 31, 1888. Mary Anne Nichols was found dead, lying in a back street named Buck’s Row. Murders connected to theft or rape were common occurrences, and under ordinary circumstances the death of a prostitute would cause no more than a momentary ripple in the dark pool that was the East End. But these circumstances were not ordinary.