Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer

by M.J. Trow

For a hundred and twenty years, the identity of the Whitechapel murderer known to us as Jack the Ripper has both eluded us and spawned a veritable industry of speculation. This book names him. Mad doctors, Russian lunatics, bungling midwives, railway policemen, failed barristers, weird artists, royal princes and white-eyed men. All of these and more have been put in the frame for the Whitechapel murders. Where ingenious invention and conspiracy theories have failed, common sense has floated out of the window.

M.J. Trow, in this gripping historical reinvestigation, cuts through the fog of speculation, fantasy and obsession that has concealed the identity of the most famous serial murderer of all time.

Genres: True Crime, History, Nonfiction, Crime

311 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2009

About the author

Meirion James Trow is a full-time teacher of history who has been doubling as a crime writer for seventeen years. Originally from Ferndale, Rhondda in South Wales he now lives on the Isle of Wight. His interests include collecting militaria, film, the supernatural and true crime.

Reviews

[☆Ruth☆ · Rating 1 out of 5]

So disappointing! The book started well, the author had obviously done a great deal of research and was able to make a good case for dismissing many of the usual suspects within the first few chapters. I therefore had high hopes for an intelligent, logical discussion of further candidates. Instead the author suddenly produced his own contender and gave him the persona of 'Jack the Ripper', with not only no plausible reasoning, but adding his own completely fabricated embellishments and details to some of the known facts.
A waste of good reading time and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

[Mercedes Yardley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is wonderfully researched and presents an extensive amount of information without being dry. It took a while to read because there is so much to process. Trow is "unmasking" Jack the Ripper and writes as though he is certain that his suspect, who is not one of the usual ones, is the killer. He says things as, "REDACTED wrapped his hands around her throat," etc. It's important to go into this remembering that nobody knows who Jack the Ripper was and you have to take Trow's view with a grain of salt, but it was an intriguing book by a man obviously passionate about the case. Quite a good read.

[Zach Opsitnick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally true crime is very hit and miss with me, but when there's persuasive research that clearly was done with a lot of care, I am here to listen. Especially with such a case as Jack the Ripper. The further removed we are from the events, the further we get from uncovering any sort of truth. This work presents some old faces plus a new member of the party. While not fully convinced, I definitely appreciate the work that went into it.

[Wayne Stimpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a good read about victorian London this is for you. I enjoyed it and not like some I didn't get upset when the author names his own suspect. Very interesting.

[Stanimir · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me, this book was a slow read, almost impossible to get through. There are some interesting facts but also some details feel like the author had made up himself.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting theory, but I'm still a believer in Kosminksi as JTR.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is it with Jack the Ripper? No, I'm not asking why his gruesome killings still fascinate people. That's fairly obvious. But what is it about Jack the Ripper and writing a book about him (or her) that seems to make people lose their minds in the single-minded pursuit of proving their pet theory is correct?

Last year I suffered through the much-hyped, but emptily DNA-fetishistic and maddeningly pompous ramblings of Russell Edwards' 'Naming Jack the Ripper'. And while MJ Trow's own telling of the story, and ability to make a case for his oown theory is significantly better than Edwards', he commits some of the same thoroughly annoying errors.

Edwards outed Aaron Kosminski as the Ripper. Trow picks out local mortuary attendant Robert Mann. Both authors are convinced of their theory and both present some fairly compelling arguments. But both also repeatedly state, again, and again, that their suspect IS the Ripper.

But neither of them have anything even approaching proof.

Trow, a crime writer and novelist, at least acknowledges that very little is known about Mann and that he can't really prove anything about his supposed guilt. But for great stretches of the book he writes as if it is a proven fact. That, straight away, is not only bad history but it makes a complete mockery of the otherwise entertaining chapter he spends slagging off other theories for not, erm, being backed up by any proof.

Trow's case rests on modern techniques of geo-profiling and serial killer psychology. And massive great dollops of circumstantial evidence, supposition and leaps of faith. He quotes 'evidence' from a 1988 FBI profile that fits Mann but does note the existence of the inconvenient bits of that profile that don't fit. That's something, at least.

And in fairness, there's plenty in this book that's interesting and thought-provoking. His early chapters, on how Jack the Ripper is seen in popular culture (and why, as usual, popular culture gets it all wrong), his case for the killer being a member of the local community and detailed history of, and conditions in, the area's workhouses are fascinating.

His retelling of the basic facts is good, and he writes in a clear, if cliched way (more than once we are told the Ripper knew Whitechapel "like the back of his hand"). He presents a mostly solid case for Mann being the culprit but meanders off into imagining how Mann felt, what motivated him and details what he was thinking. He even steps dangerously close to outright manufacturing a backstory for Mann that would help explain his murders.

This ahistorical claptrap simply undermines his case and while he deserves credit for attempting to explain the holes in his narrative, these are too often inadequate. His claim that the Ripper claimed seven, not five, victims is interesting but his explanation for the thirty-three week gap between the slaughter of Mary Kelly (the last of the 'canonical five') and the murder of Alice McKenzie, and the ways the McKenzie murder differed from previous ones, is simply unconvincing.

There are clear logical failings, too. Trow lays into coroner Wynne Baxter for "a complete lack of understanding of how a serial killer's mind works" but later details the main late nineteenth century theories, the vast majority of which are clearly ridiculous. No, Baxter didn't understand things that no other human being at the time fully understood. Trow may as well have sneered at him for not being able to Google the killer and find evidence that way.

Trow also repeatedly scoffs at the deductive powers of anyone and everyone involved in the case. Except, conveniently, Dr Thomas Bond's profile of who the killer might be. There, Trow makes sure to note all the ways Robert Mann fits that profile. Funny how that works.

Worst of all, Trow even ropes graphology (the utterly ridiculous 'science' of analysing handwriting) into things. If he'll base even the tiniest part of his claims on such pseudo-scientific flapdoodle then Trow unfortunately has about as much credibility as any of the more swivel-eyed conspiracists out there who remain convinced the Ripper's work was part of some grand Royal plot.

[Cecilia Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it interesting

The author is very detailed in presenting his theory for who was and who was not the ripper. It dragged on a bit but I did find it interesting.

[Eva Müller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long before writing this book Trow contributed an essay to The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper in which he brings up a suspect and then goes through all the details explaining why that person must be Jack the Ripper. At the end he says that he doesn't really believe that this man did it but he wanted to show how easy it is to frame somebody more than a century after the murders happened. Knowing that it's a bit odd reading this book because part of me expected it to end with a 'Trolololol didn't you listen the first time?'
Well, it doesn't. Trow is convinced that Robert Mann was Jack the Ripper. Mann worked in the Whitechapel mortuary, he was no famous person just one of the thousands who lived there, which is where the problem starts. No I don't believe that it was a royal conspiracy or anything in that vein (the parts where Trow explains how illogical all these theories are were my favourite parts of the book) but if the suspect was famous you get at least some of the things a modern reader expects as proof for somebody's guilt or innocence: you get records that tell you if he was in London at the time of the murders, you know things about his upbringing that might fit a serial-killers profile and so on. We don't know much about Mann's life before, during or after the murders, we know that he probably was in Whitechapel at the time because he hadn't the means (or reasons) to go somewhere else and, as he worked in the mortuary where they performed the autopsies on the Ripper-victims we have some records about what people said about him (and he was present at at least one inquest).
How convincing a case can you make when you lack so vital information? I'm not sure if I can say that I am convinced but Trow makes at least a logical case for Mann as the Ripper. There was no moment where I thought 'Wait? Now how did we arrive at this conclusion?'. Trow admits that there are things we simply don't know (and probably never will), which is much more than most Ripperologists do.
There were also some minor nitpicks I have with this book: the worst is that Trow actually believes in graphology. No further comment. The second is that when he talks about other Ripper-theories in the first chapters he is, well let's say somewhat economical with the truth. When he mentions James Maybrick he just writes that he was poisoned by his wife, no mention of the fact that today most people doubt that this was really the case. As that does not influence his reasons for dismissing Maybrick as suspect I can let that slide. Then he also talks about police-memoirs (of those involved in the case) and how they are mostly flawed because they were written so long after the events happened which is a good point but then he takes a second swing at Walter Dew who was one the first at the scene of Kelly's murder and who also caught Dr Crippen almost 20 years later. Trow just throws at us that today DNA-evidence has shown that the body in Crippen's basement couldn't have been his wife as another reason why we shouldn't trust his word but fails to mention that there is dispute over the fact how suitable the DNA-sample was for testing. Even if Trow thinks that the results are genuine it's bad style not to mention this (besides even if it wasn't his wife it still leaves Crippen with body-parts in his basement but that's another story).

Still, from the Ripper-books that focus on a single suspect this is one of the better ones.
3-4 stars.

[Kelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author seems to have it all figured out on Jack's true identity. How could nobody figure this out at the time? The pieces seem to fit together a bit too conveniently.

[Brian Dyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting theory on who the Ripper was but falls into the trap it rails against In the first chapter of insisting on the suspect presented as the only viable suspect.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting theory, which certainly is plausible. However, we are still far from knowing with certainty 'whodunnit'.