Jack the Ripper in fiction
Important influences on the depiction of the Ripper include Marie Belloc Lowndes' 1913 novel The Lodger, which has been adapted for the stage and film, and Stephen Knight's 1976 work Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which expanded on a conspiracy theory involving freemasons and royalty. The literature of the late Victorian era, including Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes stories and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has provided inspiration for story-makers who have fused these fictional worlds with the Ripper.
The Ripper makes appearances throughout the science fiction and horror genres and is internationally recognised as an evil character. The association of the Ripper with death and sex is particularly appealing to heavy metal and rock musicians, who have incorporated the Ripper murders into their work.
Literature
Works of fiction inspired by the
Ripper stories appealed to an international audience.[4] A "reputedly unsavoury" anthology of short stories in Swedish, Uppskäraren ("The Ripper") by Adolf Paul, was published in 1892, but it was suppressed by Russian authorities.[5]
The character of Sherlock Holmes has been used often in Jack the Ripper fiction. In 1907, Aus den Geheimakten des Welt-Detektivs No. 18 from German publisher Verlagshaus für Volksliteratur und Kunst featured "Wie Jack, der Aufschlitzer, gefasst wurde" (How Jack the Ripper Was Taken), in which Holmes captures the Ripper.[6] In the 1930s the story was translated into Spanish in for Sherlock Holmes Memorias intimas del rey de los detectives No. 3, "El Destripador" (The Ripper), recently reprinted in a new book and translated into English for the first time.[7] Cullen called the story "amusing Sherlock Holmes pastiche".[4] Holmes was also used later in Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978), Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror (1966), John Sladek's Black Aura (1974), and Barrie Roberts' Sherlock Holmes and the Royal Flush (1998) amongst others.[8]
The first influential short story, "The Lodger" by
In 1926, Leonard Matters proposed in a magazine article that the Ripper was an eminent doctor, whose son had died from syphilis caught from a prostitute. According to Matters, the doctor, given the pseudonym "Dr Stanley", committed the murders in revenge and then fled to Argentina. He expanded his ideas into a book, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, in 1929. The book was marketed as a serious study, but it contains obvious factual errors and the documents it supposedly uses as references have never been found.[10] It inspired other works such as the theatre play Murder Most Foul and the film Jack the Ripper.[11] Jonathan Goodman's 1984 book Who He? is also written as if it is a factual study, but the suspect described, "Peter J Harpick", is an invention whose name is an anagram of Jack the Ripper.[12]
The many novels influenced by the Ripper include:[16]
- A Case to Answer (1947) by Edgar Lustgarten
- The Screaming Mimi (1949) by Fredric Brown
- Terror Over London (1957) by Gardner Fox
- Ritual in the Dark (1960) and The Killer (1970) by Colin Wilson
- Sagittarius (1962) by Ray Russell
- A Feast Unknown (1969) by Philip José Farmer
- A Kind of Madness (1972) by Anthony Boucher
- Nine Bucks Row (1973) by T. E. Huff
- The Michaelmas Girls (1975) by John Brooks Barry
- Jack's Little Friend (1975) by Ramsey Campbell
- By Flower and Dean Street (1976) by Patrice Chaplin
- The Private Life of Jack the Ripper (1980) by Richard Gordon
- Hasfelmetsző Jack (1981) by Gyula Hernádi
- White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair
- The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper (1991) by Paul West
- Beasts in Velvet (1991) by Jack Yeovil
- Anno Dracula (1992) by Kim Newman
- A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) by Roger Zelazny
- Ladykiller (1993) by Martina Cole
- Savage (1993) by Richard Laymon
- The Pit (1993) by Neil Penswick
- Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) by Peter Ackroyd
- Pentecost Alley (1996) by Anne Perry
- Matrix (1998) by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
- Final Destination: Destination Zero (2005) by David A. McIntee
- The Name of the Star (2011) by Maureen Johnson
- Stalking Jack the Ripper (2016) by Kerri Maniscalco
- The Cutthroat (2017) by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott[17]
- The Hypno-Ripper: Or, Jack the Hypnotically Controlled Ripper; Containing Two Victorian Era Tales Dealing with Jack the Ripper and Hypnotism (2021) by Donald K. Hartman
- The Ripper Lives (2024) by Kevin Morris. A 10-part crime fiction sequel to the official account of Jack the Ripper's murder spree.
Theatre, opera and music theatre
The Ripper features at the end of
André de Lorde's Jack l'Eventreur was part of the Grand Guignol's output in Paris.[22] Marie Belloc Lowndes' novel and short story The Lodger was adapted for the stage as The Lodger: Who Is He? by Horace Annesley Vachell. In 1917, Lionel Atwill's first role in Broadway theatre was as the title character.[23] Phyllis Tate also based her opera The Lodger, first performed in 1960, on Lowndes' story.[24]
Murder Most Foul by Claude Pirkis was first performed in 1948. The character of the murderer, Dr. Stanley, was taken from The Mystery of Jack the Ripper by Leonard Matters, first published in 1929.[25] Doug Lucie's Force and Hypocrisy is based on the royal conspiracy theory of Stephen Knight.[26]
Two British musicals, Ripper by Terence Greer and The Jack the Ripper Show and How They Wrote It by Frank Hatherley, were staged in 1973.[27] Jack the Ripper: The Musical (1974), with lyrics and music by Ron Pember, who co-authored the book with Dennis de Marne,[28] influenced Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.[29] In 1996, a rock opera entitled Yours Truly: Jack the Ripper with lyrics by Frogg Moody and Dave Taylor was performed and, in a break from recent practice, portrayed the Ripper as an ordinary everyday man.[30]
Film
Marie Belloc Lowndes' book The Lodger has been made into five films: Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), The Lodger (1932), The Lodger (1944), Man in the Attic (1953) and The Lodger (2009). Hitchcock decided to cast romantic lead Ivor Novello as the title character in his version of The Lodger, with the consequence that the film company, Gainsborough Pictures, insisted on a re-write to make Novello's character more sympathetic.[31] In a change from the original story, whether the lodger is the killer is no longer left ambivalent at the end. Instead, the lodger's strange behaviour arises because he is a vigilante, trying to catch the real killer.[32] Novello remade the film in 1932 with a more dramatic ending, in which he throttles the killer, who is his demented brother, the "Bosnian Murderer".[33] Novello played both roles, and Maurice Elvey directed. It was released in an abridged version as The Phantom Fiend in 1935.[34] The 1944 version dispensed with the ambivalence of the novel and instead casts the lodger, "Slade" played by Laird Cregar, as the villain "Jack the Ripper".[34] Unlike the earlier versions, the film is set in 1888, rather than in the year of the film's making.[35] The 1953 version, Man in the Attic with Jack Palance as "Slade", covers much the same ground.[36] The 2009 film casts Simon Baker as "Malcolm Slaight".
Room to Let (1950) is similar to The Lodger story but was based on a 1948 radio play by Margery Allingham. It was one of the first horror pictures made by Hammer Film Productions.[38] Valentine Dyall plays the lodger, "Dr. Fell", who has escaped from a lunatic asylum where he has been incarcerated for 16 years since committing the Whitechapel murders.[39] Hammer released two Ripper-inspired films in 1971. In Hands of the Ripper, the Ripper's daughter (played by Angharad Rees) grows up to become a murderess after she sees her father kill her mother.[40] In Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dr. Henry Jekyll transforms into the evil predatory woman Sister Hyde and is also responsible for the Ripper murders.[41] In Terror in the Wax Museum (1973), a murderer disguises himself as a waxwork of the Ripper.[42]
The Veil episode "Jack the Ripper" (1958) is a made-for-television film introduced by Boris Karloff, in which a clairvoyant identifies the Ripper as a respectable surgeon whose death has been faked to cover his incarceration in a lunatic asylum.[43] The story's basis was an 1895 newspaper report that Robert James Lees had used psychic powers to track the Ripper to the home of a London physician.[44]
Jack the Ripper (1959), produced by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker and written by Jimmy Sangster, is loosely based on Leonard Matters' theory that the Ripper was an avenging doctor.[45] It borrowed icons from previously successful horror films, such as Dracula (1958) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), by giving the Ripper a costume of a top hat and cape.[46] The plot is a standard "whodunit" with the usual false leads and a denouement in which the least likely character, in this case "Sir David Rogers" played by Ewen Solon, is revealed as the culprit.[47] As in Matters' book, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper, Solon's character murders prostitutes to avenge the death of his son. However, Matters used the ploy of the son dying from venereal disease, while the film has him committing suicide on learning his lover is a prostitute.[48] In a reversal of this formula, the German film Das Ungeheuer von London City (1964), released as The Monster of London City in 1967, casts the son as the villain with the father as the victim of syphilis.[49]
Peter Barnes' stage play
Night After Night After Night (1969) was a low-budget production that cast a high court judge (played by
In Time After Time (1979), based on the novel of the same title, Jack escapes in a time machine to modern-day San Francisco and is pursued by H. G. Wells. The pursuer was originally slated to be Robert Louis Stevenson in a link to the author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he was written out in favour of Wells.[68] In Bridge Across Time (1985), starring David Hasselhoff, Jack's spirit is transported to Arizona in a cursed stone from London Bridge.[69] In The Ripper (1985), his spirit is instead concealed in a cursed ring.[69] Ripper Man (1994) depicts a killer who believes himself to be the reincarnation of George Chapman, who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper after his arrest and execution for murder in 1903.[70]
Released in the same year as From Hell, and consequently overshadowed by it,
Television
By the 1960s, the Ripper was established in American television as a "universal force of evil", who could be adapted to suit any villainous niche.
In The Sixth Sense episode "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1972) a man is driven mad during a paranormal experiment when he inhabits the body of Jack the Ripper.[77] A Fantasy Island episode, also titled "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" (1980), was written by the same writer as the episode of The Sixth Sense, Don Ingalls. Lynda Day George plays criminologist Lorraine Peters who uses a time portal to confirm her suspicion that Jack the Ripper was a doctor, Albert Fell, played by Victor Buono. Fell follows her back through the portal, grabs Peters and takes her back to 1888, where the enigmatic Mr. Roarke intervenes fortuitously, and Fell dies moments later while fleeing.[78] The name Fell is clearly lifted from Margery Allingham's 1948 radio play Room to Let.[78] A time portal is also used in "A Rip in Time" (1997), the first episode of the short-lived television series Timecop, in which a time travelling cop travels back to 1888 to catch a criminal who has killed, and displaced, Jack the Ripper.[79] Ripper Street is a 2012 British television dramatic series set just subsequent to the murders, with the first episode seeing series protagonist Edmund Reid resolving to move on from obsession over the victims after a new case; at the end of the first season, protagonist Homer Jackson is temporarily framed as the Ripper, but is able to clear his name.
The
Art
Walter Sickert was an English artist inspired by the seediness of the East End of London. His works include "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom".[86]
Comics
From Hell is a graphic novel about the Ripper case by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, which took its name from the "From Hell" letter supposedly written by the Ripper. It is based on Stephen Knight's conspiracy theory, which accused royalty and freemasons of complicity in the crimes and was popularised by his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution.[87] In the Appendix to the graphic novel, Moore clearly states that he lends no credibility to the Knight theory and only used it for dramatic purposes. Royalty and the Ripper also featured in Blood of the Innocent by Rickey Shanklin, Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley in 1986, and a story ("Royal Blood") in DC Comics' Hellblazer series in 1992.[88]
Issue #100 of Marvel Comics
In the Italian comic book Martin Mystère, a vampire Richard Van Helsing discovers that the Ripper is an ancient mythical force, divided into several knives, which force their holders to kill. Van Helsing searches for and destroys the knives, including one which is destroyed by Sherlock Holmes.[91]
Manga
In the 2006 manga
Music
Link Wray's 1959 instrumental "Jack the Ripper" begins with an evil laugh and a woman's scream. These devices were also used in "Jack the Ripper" (1963), originally recorded by Screaming Lord Sutch and covered by The White Stripes, The Horrors, Black Lips, The Sharks and Jack & The Rippers.[94] The mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984) features a vignette in which the band discusses the possibility of composing a rock opera about Jack the Ripper's life, called Saucy Jack in reference to the Saucy Jacky postcard supposedly sent by the Ripper.[30]
Metal bands are particularly keen to associate themselves with the "bloodshed and sleaze" image of the Ripper.
Songs inspired by the Ripper were recorded by artists as varied as
The power metal band Falconer wrote a song entitled "Jack the Knife" for their album Grime vs. Grandeur. This song is heavily inspired by the story of Jack the Ripper and makes many references to the mythical traits associated with him.[99] The Brazilian thrash metal band Torture Squad also recorded a song based on Jack the Ripper's legend. The song is titled "Leather Apron" and was included on the band's 2003 album Pandemonium. The song "Blood Red Sandman" Finish metal band Lordi's second album The Monsterican Dream is inspired by the story of Jack the Ripper and opens with the lyrics "They called me the Leather Apron/ They called me Smiling Jack."
In 2014, the online musical series Epic Rap Battles of History produced a video where Jack the Ripper raps against Hannibal Lecter.
"Respite on the Spitalfields," the closing track from Swedish metal band Ghost's 2022 album Impera is about Jack the Ripper.[100][101]
Video games
- Jack the Ripper appeared in a text adventure game.[102]
- The Sega platform game Master of Darkness (1992), reveals Jack to be an animated wax doll upon his defeat.[103]
- In 1992, Jack the Ripper featured in the dungeon crawl style role-playing video game Waxworks.[104]
- Jack is one of the historically-based characters in the World Heroes fighting game series, making his debut in World Heroes 2: Jet in 1994.[103]
- A demon named Jack the Ripper appears in the Shin Megami Tensei series, frequently as a low-level enemy. His most notable appearance is in the Virtual Boy game Jack Bros., where he appears as a playable character (named Jack Skelton [sic] in the English release).
- Ripper (1996) deals with a copycat serial killer in a futuristic New York City in the year 2040.[103]
- Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (1999) is a "light-hearted gunplay romp set in Victorian London" that features Jack the Ripper.[103]
- Jack is one of the principal villains in the action-horror Shadow Man (1999).
- Jack appears in the gothic horror platform game MediEvil 2 (2000) as a tall green monster with giant claws, long sharp teeth, and a top hat.[103]
- The Metal Gear Solid series character Raidenis also known as Jack the Ripper.
- In Jack the Ripper (2003), the player takes on the role of a reporter sent to cover similar murders in New York in 1901, 13 years after the Ripper's murders, who later discovers are being committed by the actual Ripper.[103]
- Mystery in London: On the Trail of Jack the Ripper (2007) fuses the Ripper story with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
- Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper (2009) fuses the Ripper story with the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes.[103] Jacob Levy shows up as the Ripper at the end of the game.
- In Splatterhouse, Dr. Henry West became Jack the Ripper after a series of murders he committed after becoming "bored" while in London.
- In the Anuman Interactive) in 2010, the player embodies James Palmer, a young journalist who reluctantly investigates the murder of two prostitutes and the possible return of Jack the Ripper.[105]
- Assassin's Creed III (2012) features a multiplayer character called the Nightstalker, whose character bio says he is a serial killer known as "Joe the Ripper".
- The Order: 1886 (2015) features Lord Hastings, the main villain, as a vampire who is behind the Ripper killings.
- Jack the Ripper is featured in a self-titled DLC pack for Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015),[106] in which he is a former member of the Assassin Brotherhood and his victims were Assassins he killed while seeking revenge on his former group.
- Jack the Ripper appears Fate/Grand Order (2015) as an Assassin class servant of the Chaldea Security Organization.
- The Ripper's murders are the subject of the 2019 fantasy adventure game Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey.
- The Ripper, a.k.a. Jack, serves as one of the Hunters in Identity V, released by NetEase.
Sports
In 2011 an
Notes
- OCLC 43935642.
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 61–62
- ^ Meikle, p. 40
- ^ a b c Cullen, p. 246
- ^ a b c Woods and Baddeley, p. 67
- ^ Nordberg, Nils. "Sherlock Holmes in the Penny Dreadfuls". Archived from the original on 2016-01-21. Retrieved 2015-01-19.
- ^ Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper by Joseph A. Lovece, Createspace, 2014
- ^ Whitehead and Rivett, p. 135
- ^ a b Meikle, pp. 44–48
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 114–115
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 160, 198
- ^ Whitehead and Rivett, pp. 12–13
- ^ Meikle, p. 110
- ^ a b c Woods and Baddeley, p. 68
- ^ Whitehead and Rivett, pp. 133, 135–136
- ^ Whitehead and Rivett, pp. 133–136
- ^ "The Cutthroat: An Isaac Bell Adventure". Publishers Weekly. 2017. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
- ^ Meikle, p. 34
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 165
- ^ Cullen, p. 246; Meikle, pp. 212–226
- ^ Rumbelow, p. 286
- ^ a b Cullen, p. 249
- ^ Meikle, p. 49
- ^ Cullen, p. 248
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 159–160
- ^ Rumbelow, p. 292
- ^ Wilson and Odell, pp. 310–311
- ^ Ron Pember & Denis de Marne, Jack The Ripper: A Musical Play (Samuel French Ltd., 1976)
- ^ a b Woods and Baddeley, pp. 75–76
- ^ a b Woods and Baddeley, pp. 77
- ^ Meikle, p. 50
- ^ Meikle, pp. 50–51
- ^ Meikle, pp. 53–54
- ^ a b Meikle, p. 55
- ^ Meikle, p. 56
- ^ Meikle, pp. 61–63
- ^ Meikle, p. 121
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 196
- ^ Meikle, pp. 59–61
- ^ Meikle, p. 121; Woods and Baddeley, p. 200
- ^ Meikle, p. 125; Woods and Baddeley, p. 199
- ^ Meikle, p. 129
- ^ Meikle, p. 67
- ^ Meikle, p. 68
- ^ Meikle, pp. 75–79; Woods and Baddeley, p. 198
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 197
- ^ Meikle, pp. 76–77
- ^ Meikle, p. 79
- ^ Meikle, pp. 86–87
- ^ Meikle, p. 33–34; Woods and Baddeley, p. 165
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 166–167
- ^ Meikle, p. 30
- ^ Meikle, p. 99; Woods and Baddeley, p. 150
- ^ Meikle, pp. 92–99
- ^ Meikle, p. 150
- ^ a b c d Meikle, pp. 131–133
- ^ Meikle, p. 171
- ^ Meikle, p. 88; Woods and Baddeley, p. 69
- ^ Meikle, pp. 205–206; Woods and Baddeley, p. 73
- ^ Meikle, pp. 100–101
- ^ Meikle, p. 155–157, 183; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 203–204
- ^ Meikle, p. 104
- ^ Meikle, p. 140
- ^ Meikle, pp. 102–103, 156, 159–160; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 204–205
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 206
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 207
- ^ Meikle, p. 183
- ^ Meikle, pp. 136–137; Woods and Baddeley, p. 205
- ^ a b Meikle, pp. 157–158; Woods and Baddeley, p. 205
- ^ Meikle, pp. 173–174
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 213
- ^ Meikle, p. 200
- ^ Meikle, pp. 185–186
- ^ Meikle, p. 115
- ^ Meikle, pp. 117–118
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 171
- ^ Meikle, p. 133
- ^ a b Meikle, p. 139
- ^ Meikle, p. 180
- ^ Meikle, pp. 175–176
- ^ Knight, p. 16; Meikle, p. 142; Rumbelow, p. 223; Woods and Baddeley, pp. 150–151
- ^ Meikle, pp. 135–136
- ^ Meikle, pp. 181–182
- ^ Meikle, p. 206
- ^ Whitehead and Rivett, p. 149
- ^ Jack the Ripper's Bedroom. Manchester Art Gallery. Accessed 6 October 2008
- ^ Meikle, p. 188
- ^ a b c d Whitehead and Rivett, p. 137
- ISBN 978-0-7011-8247-2, p. 256
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 73
- ^ Martin Mystère: The Return of Jack Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Lissa Pattillo (2 November 2010). "Review: Black Butler GN 3". Anime News Network. Retrieved 10 November 2010.
- ^ Phantom Blood, Ch. 18
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 79
- ^ a b c Woods and Baddeley, p. 80
- ^ Motionless in White Launch London in Terror Fearnet
- ^ [1], Macabre - Murder Metal - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives.
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 190
- ^ "Falconer - Grime vs. Grandeur - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives".
- ^ Branniganpublished, Paul (2022-02-24). ""That darkness inside us needs to find its way out": Tobias Forge's track-by-track guide to the new Ghost album, Impera". loudersound. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- ^ "Ghost: "You have to destroy to rebuild, but that doesn't mean you have to level everything into gravel"". Kerrang!. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, p. 74
- ^ a b c d e f g Woods and Baddeley, p. 75
- ^ Woods and Baddeley, pp. 75, 171
- ^ "[Communiqué de presse] Anuman Interactive étoffe sa collection d'objets cachés avec 4 nouvelles aventures sur iPad - Jeux iPhone, Android, 3DS, PS Vita... Tout le jeu mobile et les consoles portables !". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-16.
- ^ "TGS 2015: Assassin's Creed Syndicate Getting Jack the Ripper DLC - IGN". 15 September 2015.
- ^ "Yahoo Sports MLB".
- ^ "Metro - London Rippers owner 'will fail miserably': Women's centre". Archived from the original on 2011-12-20. Retrieved 2012-02-13.
References
- Cullen, Tom (1965). Autumn of Terror. London: The Bodley Head.
- ISBN 0-7537-0369-6.
- Meikle, Denis (2002). Jack the Ripper: The Murders and the Movies. Richmond, Surrey: Reynolds and Hearn Ltd. ISBN 1-903111-32-3
- ISBN 0-14-017395-1.
- Whitehead, Mark; Rivett, Miriam (2006). Jack the Ripper. Harpenden, Hertfordshire: Pocket Essentials. ISBN 978-1-904048-69-5
- ISBN 0593010205
- Woods, Paul; ISBN 978-0-7110-3410-5