THE RIPPER AND THE WHONIVERSE, Part 1

The TARDIS is drawn to London

1888, where the Doctor and Ace

discover a dark secret from

Gallifrey's past, and the name

of their unseen opponent.

It is Jack the Ripper.

This revised series of posts examines 

how the Ripper canon has been

depicted in Doctor Who media since

that initial mention of 'Jolly Jack' in

The Talons of Weng-Chiang in 1977,

with particular emphasis on the BBC

Books' novel, Matrix, then the comic

book, Ripper's Curse.

Written by Robert Perry and Mike

Tucker, Matrix (published in 1998)

featured the return of the Valeyard,

and offered yet another contribu-

tion, albeit fictional, to the pseudo-

science that is Ripperology.

Firstly, some context. Interest in the Whitechapel Murders was renewed with the

release of the film From Hell (2001), and the case was re-assessed by the Discovery

Channel’s interactive Trial of Jack the Ripper (2002), were James Maybrick –

revealed as a suspect in 1992 – was found guilty by the audience/jury.

Many theories and suspects have since been advanced in dozens of books.

Bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell (see Portrait of a Killer and BBC1′s

Omnibus: Stalking the Ripper, both 2002), named noted Victorian artist

Walter Sickert (first postulated by Stephen Knight in 1976, then Jean Overton

Fuller in 1990) as the Ripper, after spending millions of dollars on research.

She restated her case in Chasing the Ripper (2014) and Ripper: The Secret

Life of Walter Sickert (2017).

Two more suspects were revealed in 2005 - The 21st Century Investigation (by

Trevor Marriott) provided seaman Carl Feigenbaum, whilst Uncle Jack (Tony

Williams and Humphrey Price) cited surgeon Sir John Williams. Three years

later, Marriott presented further findings that the Ripper had claimed two

more victims in Central London, as early as 1863. The year also saw the release

of Euan Macpherson's The Trial of Jack the Ripper, an expansion on his 1986

rediscovery of contemporaneous suspect, William Henry Bury, executed in

Dundee in 1889.

The Crimes of Jack the Ripper, by Paul Roland (updated in 2017), expanded

on Mark King's article in the Ripperologist (1999), and backed his belief that

Jacob Levy (1856-91), a Jewish butcher, was Jack - the same candidate

proposed in the video game, Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper (2009).

American profiler Pat Brown also favoured Levy.

In 2010, co-authors David Monaghan and Nigel Cawthorne reasoned in Secret
Confession that a Victorian pornographer, known only as Walter, was the Ripper.

A year later, Ripperologist Robert House supported a coetaneous suspect, Aaron

Kosminski in The Case for Scotland Yard’s Prime Suspect, whilst Tom Slemen
speculated that Jack was in fact a spy, in British Intelligence Agent.

In 2013, twenty-one years after the notorious Ripper ‘diary’ surfaced in

Liverpool, the killer’s latest ‘memoirs’ (The Autobiography by James

Carnac), also purported to provide his true identity. Uruguayan math-

ematician, Eduardo Cuitino also identified Dr. Stephen Appleford (1852-

1940) as his suspect.

The 'Jill the Ripper' theory - favoured by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and first

suggested by Inspector Abberline himself - is expanded again in yet another

book, The Hands of a Woman from John Morris (2013). Here, the latest

candidate, Lizzie Williams, is actually the  wife of another suspect (see Uncle 

Jack above).

By 2014, Russell Edwards sought to utilise the latest (but ultimately flawed)

DNA techniques to link (fourth canonical victim) Catherine Eddowes' supposed

 shawl with Kosminski (see Naming Jack the Ripper).
Channel 5 documentary The Missing Evidence (18/11/2014) explored Christier
Holmgren's choice of suspect (and my personal candidate), Charles Allen 

Lechmere, also known as Charles Cross (a witness in the Mary Ann Nichols

 murder).

That year, it was also reported that profiling research from Dr. Kim Rossmo 

and Steve Le Comber resulted in a proposed base for the Whitechapel

Murderer, namely Flower and Dean Street, a location integral to the case.

2015 saw the publication of Bruce Robinson's controversial tome, They All

Love Jack: Busting the Ripper.  James Maybrick's brother Michael was now

 advanced as the Ripper, and Freemasonry had again protected the killer.

Later that year, Randy Williams presented not one killer, but a team of three 

politically motivated assassins - Louis Deimschutz, Isaac Kozebrodski and

 Samuel Friedman.

The story of a new Stateside investigation began on the History channel in 

July 2017 -  American Ripper detailed Jeff Mudgett's quest to prove that his 

descendant and renowned serial killer H H Holmes (1861-1896), was also 

active in Whitechapel.

Then a new volume, The Inevitable Jack the Ripper, by Paul Christian

reinforced Cornwell's controversial thesis, that Sickert was the serial killer.

The first series of ITV1′s excellent Whitechapel (2009) even dramatised the

murders of a modern-day Ripper copycat. The aftermath of the Autumn of 

Terror was also explored in the BBC drama, Ripper Street, and in the Murder

Squad series of novels from Alex Grecian (both 2012-16). The Scandi crime

novel Keeper linked the Ripper killings with a (fictional) series of murders

in 2015, wherein the author, Johana Gustawsson named John McCarthy

(Mary Kelly's landlord) as Jack. Lesley McEvoy's thriller,  The Murder Mile,

followed a series of copycat killings in Yorkshire, committed by a descendant

of Kosminski.

Recent TV documentaries on the subject include Killer Revealed (for

Discovery, 11/10/2009), Tabloid Killer (24/6/2010), The Definitive Story

(11 & 20/1/2011) – both for Channel Five – Marriott's The German Suspect

on National Geographic (April 2012), and Prime Suspect (Discovery, 2013).

BBC Studios marked the 130th anniversary of the Whitechapel Murders 

with a new documentary, presented by Professor David Wilson and Silent 

Witness actress Emilia Fox. In The Case Reopened (4/4/2019), the national 

police computer HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) was

utilised for the first time to evaluate the coldest  of cases, and concluded that 

Martha Tabram was the first canonical Ripper victim.

Matrix establishes that the infamous murders of 1888 resulted in a bloody 

revolution (as was feared by the establishment at the time) that caused an

alternate timeline, where, by 1966, London is under US-controlled quarantine.

The city is beseiged by the walking dead and street-gangs who worship Jack.

Here the Doctor and Ace encounter a local couple. Ian and Barbara, who

never met Susan Foreman at Coal Hill School. They and the visiting American

President, John F Kennedy, are killed by zombies, and the Doctor determines

to put recorded history back on track.

TO BE CONTINUED

* See also:

• The Final Solution (1980)
• Timewatch: Shadow of the Ripper (BBC2, 7/9/1988)
• Crime Monthly (LWT, 1990)
• To Kill and Kill Again (ITV, 2002)
• Vic Reeves Investigates (Sky, 2007)
• Jack the Ripper in America (Discovery, US TX: 16/11/2009, UK TX: 14/3/2010)
• Mystery Files (National Geographic, 2010)
• A Very British Murder: Detection Most Ingenious (BBC4, 30/9/2013)
• Murder Casebook [aka Murders That Shocked the Nation] (C&I Network, 5/11/2013) 
• Murder Maps: In the Shadow of Jack (Netflix, 1/12/2015) and Jack the Ripper (Yesterday, 12 & 19/1/20)
• American Ripper in London (History, 2017)
• The Royals and the Ripper (Sky, 2017)
• The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story (BBC4, 26-28/3/ 2019)
• Murder, Mystery & My Family: Maybrick (BBC1, 27/7 & BBC2 28/7/2020)
• Jack the Ripper: 5 Victims (5, 12/7/2022)
• Who Was Jack the Ripper? (Netflix, 2023)