In all of the pastiches and films in which Sherlock Holmes takes on Jack the Ripper, Holmes always triumphs. But would he have? Instead of taking that as a foregone conclusion, today's guest blogger does what Holmes always did: She sets aside preconceived notions and approaches the question armed with facts and logic. Here's Janis Wilson, trial attorney and writer, on Holmes and the Ripper:
It has been 125 years since the
Autumn of Terror, so named for the throat-slashing murders of several
prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888. Just a year before those killings, the
world’s greatest detective emerged, fully formed, in the story entitled, A
Study in Scarlet, which was published in Beeton’s
Christmas Annual.
I have been asked, as a
Ripperologist, to opine on whether Holmes could have solved the case. Let us begin by considering Holmes’s various
talents.
Holmes was not the most brilliant
man of his generation. That honor almost
certainly belonged to his brother, Mycroft.
Holmes was educated, but did not receive a degree. Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes’s biographer,
never named the university he attended, but one readily jumps to the conclusion
that it was either Oxford or Cambridge.
Holmes was interested in chemistry
and performed many experiments in his rooms at 221B Baker Street. That address, fewer than five miles from
where the women were killed, could not have been more different. The Whitechapel slums were filthy,
impoverished and depressing. The
prostitutes who were killed were not tarted up beauties but, in most cases,
middle-aged women. Some were plump, some
were missing teeth. They wore the only
clothes they owned, naturally making them filthy and probably smelly. They charged four pence per assignation, the
exact cost of a doss house bed that looked rather like a coffin – a narrow,
wooden rectangle.
Holmes’ knowledge of chemistry,
botany, geology and poisons would be unavailing. The deep, vicious slashes to
the victims’ throats made clear what had happened. These women were killed where their bodies
were found, so there was no need to determine whether the dirt beneath their
bodies or on their boots was from a different part of the country. No plants or poisons were used.
Holmes is known to have had
little regard for the skill of the Metropolitan Police, but the officers strove
mightily to find the killer. According
to Ripperologist Paul Begg, 473
constables were dispatched to Whitechapel, where they distributed 80,000
handbills, conducted house to house searches, questioned 2,000 lodgers, and
made inquiries of sailors on the Thames, Asians in London's opium dens, Greek
gypsies, and cowboys from the American Exhibition.
Furthermore, three hundred people were questioned as a result of tips
from Whitechapel residents. They
conducted line-ups, or identity parades as they are called in Britain.
A piece of one victim’s apron was found discarded on the street. Holmes would have found it to be of no value,
as it was covered in blood. Above the
scrap of material was a message, written in chalk. It said:
“The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed
for nothing.” The message, with its
triple negative and misspelling, surely struck fear in the hearts of English
teachers and may well have baffled the educated detective. It would not have been available for Holmes
to peruse, however, because the highest ranking police official in England,
fearful it would incite anti-Semitic rioting, ordered the evidence erased. Holmes would be right to criticize this
decision.
Bottom line – I
don’t think Holmes could have figured it out.
He was simply too logical to bend his mind to the Ripper’s lunacy. Holmes was not crazy about women, but he was
not the type of misogynist the Ripper was.
JtR picked on the most pitiful, helpless members of society. Moriarty was a brilliant adversary, with
greed as his comprehensible motive. The
Ripper was just a thug.
Janis Wilson was one of 125 participants in a recent London conference on the 125th anniversary of Jack the Ripper. Learn more about her on her website: www.janiswilson.com.
I believe Holmes might well have solved the killings had he existed. Several things known to the police were the neighborhood, the general hours of predation and the Ripper's general style.
ReplyDeleteWhat they didn't know was how to analyze a crime scene. Holmes would have been able to deduce a great deal from the blood spatter, the bloody footprints left behind, the letter to the Reverend Lusk, probably the only sample of the Ripper's handwriting.
Police work then was largely the result of knocking on doors, still the most reliable method of finding out what happened and who did it. But the Ripper was clever enough to elude them.
I offer my own theory in my current novel, "Never Meant to Be," from Dan's and mine mutual publisher, MX Publishing.