I Spent My Weekend Figuring Out Why Jack The Ripper Stopped Killing; How'd you Spend Yours?


The identity of Jack The Ripper is one of history's great mysteries. A monster who stalked and viciously killed women in London's Whitechapel district taking six victims in the late 1880s then managed to elude capture.

It's a case that will likely remain unsolved entirely, but I think I may have cracked another important aspect of the case: why did he* stop killing.

*(I say he, but there are some pretty compelling arguments into the crimes having been committed by a woman posing as a nurse, The key to that argument is she could have posed as a mid-wife which would have allowed her to walk around Victorian England in bloody clothes without raising suspicion.)

Jack The Ripper wrote a series of letters to Scotland Yard in which he taunted authorities. I was reading a book that featured one of the letters — the famous "From Hell" letter, the killer's final letter — when something hit me.

Here, read it for yourself:

From hell.

Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif[e] that took it out if you only wate a whil[e] longer
signed

Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

Notice anything? "Mishter Lusk?" How about spelling "kidney" without a "y"? Leaving out an "e" in "knife" and "while?" And perhaps most egregious, spelling the word "sir" with an "o." This was England! That's where the word "sir" came from. They love it over there!

I'm not sure about you, but I'm appalled when I realize I've made a spelling mistake. If you've read my blogs or my book Quarter-Life Manifesto: Rants, Ramblings, And Lies From An Idiot’s First Twenty-Five Years of Mediocrity (buy it here), you're probably aware that they happen with some degree of regularity. They still eat at me and I often scramble to fix them as fast as I can.

Jack The Ripper may have been a monster, but he was also a human being (kind of like his contemporary Joseph Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man). This is why I submit to you that upon realizing the number and magnitude of the typographic errors in the "From Hell" letter, the killer was so appalled that they gave up killing or perhaps left London in search of fertile killing grounds where no one was the wiser to their lack of proofreading acumen. 

Embarrassment is powerful. I know how the killer feels. I mean, I didn't have a bunch of typos in my letter taunting police, but I did mess up a handshake with my college's mascot, and I thought I was going to have to transfer.

Obviously, this doesn't solve the mystery of who committed these heinous crimes, but it would explain why the letters stopped, as well as the killings, which after the sixth victim seemed to stop.

What do I want for solving this mystery? Not much, I'm just looking to raise awareness for the mental anguish that comes with typos.

Also, immense financial compensation would be cool.

Comments

  1. Would be nice to have any photo or legitimate follow up on the killer.

    ReplyDelete

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