Free The Complete and Essential Jack the Ripper by Paul Begg, John Bennett

Paul Begg, Martin Fido and Keith Skinner, were by now well respected in the field, and in his foreword Donald Rumbelow described it as ‘the anchor of future Jack the Ripper studies’. In the ensuing years, new research and a sudden glut of new suspects would ensure several updates, but most theories, no matter how unlikely, were included. Many of the dubious claims of early twentieth-century authors were given the caution they no doubt deserved, and the by-now popular royal cover-up theories were no exception. Perhaps in a polite attempt to put these spiralling ideas to rest once and for all, the
A-Z
politely stated in reference to Joseph Gorman Sickert that ‘it is to be regretted that overall extreme caution is recommended in examining any story emanating from or otherwise associated with Mr Sickert’.
    Then in 1991, a discovery was made which sent tremors through the world of Ripper studies, breaking the boundaries of that relatively specific research field to become a controversial international media event of its own. The backgroundstory of what became known as the ‘Maybrick Diary’ made the events surrounding Joseph Sickert’s eccentric claims of royal conspiracies seem tame by comparison. It is without doubt one of the most highly controversial affairs in a field that thought it had heard it all. In fact, so tortuous and contentious were the multifarious events surrounding the ‘diary’ that they generated an independent study of their own. 18
    In 1991, unemployed Liverpudlian Michael Barrett was given a journal by a close friend, Tony Devereaux, in a pub and told to ‘do something with it’. The journal appeared to be an old photo album with numerous pages cut out at the beginning. The remaining pages were written upon, detailing a peculiar series of events which culminated in the confession: ‘I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentle man born. Yours truly Jack the Ripper. Dated this third day of May 1889.’ Barrett, apparently intrigued, attempted to discover the identity of its author and finally came across James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton merchant who had been poisoned by his wife in 1889 and for which she endured a long prison sentence. It was a prominent criminal case in its time, presided over by Justice Stephen, father of sometime Ripper suspect James Kenneth. The ‘diary’ (as it shall be called hereafter) suggested that Maybrick had perpetrated the Whitechapel murders in a fit of insane rage as a response to his wife’s perceived infidelities, all fuelled by an uncontrollable addiction to arsenic. Further research revealed specific information in the diary which confirmed his identification, from the pet names of Maybrick’s two children to their residence at Battlecrease House in Aigburth, Liverpool. Unsure of how to progress, Barrett took the diary to a literary agency, and, excited about the prospect of a publishing scoop, they set wheels in motion to have the diary published.
    That is the original story behind the discovery of the Maybrick Diary, put as simply as possible. However, before anybody would commit to publicizing it, it had to be tested for authenticity. And this is where the whole story becomes
very
complicated. In the months that followed, experts in ink and paper dating, handwriting, criminal psychology and, of course, ‘Ripperologists’ would pore over the text and conduct numerous debates over the veracity of the document. Publishing rights were bought by Smith Gryphon (with author Shirley Harrison commissioned to write the book) 19 and Paul Feldman, a businessman who had been partly responsible for bringing the 1990 movie
The Krays
to the screen, acquired video rights. The stage was set for a war unprecedented in such a small arena. Complicating matters was the discovery of a pocket watch, the interior of which was engraved with the initials of the five ‘canonical’ victims of Jack the Ripper, the words ‘I am Jack’