Читать книгу The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick - Shirley Harrison - Страница 8

by Professor David Canter, Director of the Institute of Investigative Psychology and Forensic Behavioural Science,

The University of Liverpool, 1997.

On my drive into the University of Liverpool, each morning, I pass Riversdale Road. A sleepy cul-de-sac that stretches from the elegant, tree bedecked boulevard of Aigburth Drive down to the wide, grey, River Mersey. The only sign of any note at the entrance to the road is one warning motorists that it does not give them access to the pleasant park that is a respite for courting couples, and promenade that is a haven for joggers and anglers, now that the Mersey has been cleaned. Riversdale Road is thus an unlikely setting for the erstwhile residence of probably the most notorious serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper. A murderer who was awarded his sobriquet because of the violent way he mutilated his victims.

A little way down Riversdale Road is a large Victorian house built out of the gentle, russet sandstone characteristic of the opulence of nineteenth century Liverpool. This is where James Maybrick lived in the late 1880’s when the Whitechapel murders were being committed in London. The ‘Diary’ purported to have been written by this apparently insignificant businessman, implies he was the fiendish killer that so many people have been seeking for so long.

Yet the magical Mystery Tour that takes visitors to Liverpool around the mundane, youthful haunts of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and other Liverpool celebrities does not even pass the end of Riversdale Road. No. 7, where James Maybrick lived, attracts no stream of casual visitors, even though the area of London in which the killings took place over 100 years ago brings in as many as half a million visitors a year.

Clearly, for most people, it seems highly unlikely that a Victorian businessman, who lived in such pleasant and affluent surroundings, committed so many sickening killings 200 miles away. It would be much more probable that these diaries are some sort of hoax on a par with the notorious ‘Hitler Diaries’.

Such suspicions have been further fuelled by the remarkable way in which opposing camps so quickly formed, advocating or denigrating claims to the authenticity of the ‘Ripper Diaries’. Instead of the steady drip of systematic research that such an important historical document would demand, with a consensus slowly emerging after careful consideration of all options, there has been a feast of claim and counter-claim, fed by opinions from every bizarre sort of ‘expert’ that could be got hold of. The only surprise to me is that alien abduction or a sighting of Elvis Presley has not entered the diabribes!

Indeed, before I met Shirley Harrison and was approached by others to comment on the ‘Diary’, not only was it impossible to get any clear or detailed information about its provenance, or the tests that had been carried out on the ‘Diary’, it was not really feasible to enter into any sensible dialogue about the claims and counter-claims, so vociferous were the advocates. Since those early harangues, comments on the ‘Ripper Diary’ from astrologers, graphologists and a small army of psychics, none of which has ever withstood careful, systematic, scientific validation, have masked the growing body of scholarly and objective information which Shirley Harrison and her publishers have garnered about this most curious of documents. Their careful studies demand that the Diary of Jack the Ripper be looked at closely.

By their nature clairvoyants, and all other purveyors of the paranormal, express their opinions with great confidence. They offer up a proliferation of views that the unwary and gullible can pick amongst until they find something they can clasp as a gem that supports their beliefs. These apparently glittering crystals of insight make the cautious, specific opinions of scientists look pale by comparison. The steady build-up of rather dour, technical information politely asks for consideration amongst the yapping claims of minor media moguls and counter claims of professional cynics.

Out of this unproductive exchange of polemics a clan of the converted emerges, holding aloft the fake baubles and icons of their faith. Thus, when I have tried to find the evidence for and against the genuineness of the ‘Ripper Diary’ I am regaled with wondrous account of psychics flown in from foreign lands and astrologers poring over Mr and Mrs Maybrick’s birth charts. I have seen TV presenters sniffing the Victorian album in which the ‘Diary’ is written as if it were a bottle of wine that would reveal its origins in a distinctive bouquet. I have witnessed a psychic swinging a pendulum over the document intoning “Was this written in 1888… 1889… 1890?” whilst apparently well-informed, intelligent people watch without even a smile to cloud their gullibility. This is all such arrant nonsense that I have been tempted to dismiss the ‘Diary’ as one more component of the myth of Jack the Ripper, and see it as another millennial, new age flowering, half fiction, half fantasy.

Then, a pause at the traffic lights by Riversdale Road, whilst listening to the banter of Billy and Wally on local radio, makes me wonder how such a strange concoction of a Scouse Ripper who kept a diary could ever have been invented. What sort of a person, or team even, could have come up with such an unlikely notion? Psychological Offender Profiles of Jack the Ripper are ten a pound, but what would be the profile of the hoaxer who perpetrated such an inventive scam?

The first point to come to mind is that the author of the ‘Diary’, be he hoaxer or fraudster, was a remarkably subtle man. (Most crime and the majority of frauds are committed by men, although fraud does attract more women, but even they — contrary to feminist aspirations — are often secondary to their male partners.) When I first read the ‘Diary’ I was struck by how unstructured the writing was. It is not really a diary in the usual sense at all, but more of a journal of thoughts and feelings, or even at times a notebook recording sketches of half-hearted doggerel. There are no clear or regular dates, it meanders from thoughts to accounts of events to plans for action. In the same section that describes the most horrific post-mortem mutilation there is the search for a rhyme scheme. The record of the crimes and reactions to relatives and acquaintances are all mixed together.

This is inventive psychological writing of the highest order. For if most people sat down to write a convincing diary about another’s life I am sure they would want to place the publicly known events of that life clearly for the reader to see. Indeed, the fraudulent diarist would have to take the public events as a starting point and build the diary around them. But our fraudster is much more cunning than that. The ‘Diary’ deals with the feelings of the writer. It is dominated by a record of his experiences. The things noted in the ‘Diary’ are those that would be of interest to the author. It does not focus on what others have seen him do.

Many serial killers write autobiographies and some keep a journal. These typically capture the self-centred, narcissistic focus that drives these people to such disgusting excesses of depravity. There are examples that immediately occur to me. Fred West’s memoir is full of trivial detail of daily life dotted with casual reference to outrageous sexual exploitation of his children, larded with gooey declarations of love. Pee-Wee Gaskins describes with glee how he killed babies by sexually assaulting them, implying in a mock sermonising tone that his pleasure in this was enough justification. Charles Manson keeps a manic, self-centred diatribe going throughout his extensive correspondence. Sadly, there are many more examples in the archives. They are all leagues away from the ponderous seriousness of those who write about Jack the Ripper. Indeed, few novelists could capture the all embracing egocentricity with its mix of gloating irony that this ‘Diary’ has.

There is another, rather more objective test that psychologists have fashioned to help determine the authenticity of an account. It has been graced with the rather grand title of ‘Criteria Based Content Analysis’, but what is amounts to is a list of aspects of an account. These aspects are taken to reveal the density of experience on which the account draws and the sort of detail that would be more likely to come from genuine experience than fabrication. Of course, creative writers as they work, unconsciously tick off the criteria for making invention seem genuine, but less effective imaginations do miss a few tricks. The point most often missed is the almost irrelevant detail, or casual aside, that embeds the narrative within a particular context, especially when that detail does not really move the story line forward and may actually undermine its obvious purpose. As for example, when a rape victim mentions that after the assault she was worried about being late for work. This might be taken to indicate that she had not been seriously traumatised by the assault, but is the sort of thought that occurs when the mind is on automatic pilot.

The author of the ‘Diary’ is a particular master of the casual aside, the irrelevant detail that implies a person whose mind is not entirely on the events he is describing, who seems to be writing to sort out his own feelings not just to tell a story. He may be bragging about having fooled the police, yet there is still the need to record how cold his hands felt. Amidst the gruesome writing about removing body parts is the domestic aside of wondering ‘how long it will keep’. This is the sort of specific comment that, because it apparently derives directly from the immediate concerns whilst writing, brings the reader back to thinking about the person writing, not just his deeds. It is therefore a powerful literary device if used effectively, but easily turns into self-parody.

The author of the ‘Diary’ has a particularly clever way of keeping these irrelevancies coherent with the character he is creating. We are given a man who thinks nothing of murdering and mutilating others but is nonetheless psychologically vulnerable. He is desperately concerned with his own state of health and a determination to get rid of intrusive thoughts about his children that might distract him from his campaign. After the most violent outburst he notes that ‘the children enjoyed Christmas’. By these asides a surprisingly insecure protagonist is created. No implacable Bruce Willis, or steely, emotionless Clint Eastwood is he, but a man who misses his brother, who is astonished that he has not been caught, dependent on his ‘medicine’, but who eventually becomes obsessed with his own actions and their consequences.

So, our literary profile of the perpetrator of this fraudulent ‘Diary’, if such it be, is already revealing some distinct characteristics. Here is a subtle writer who is determined to envelop us in Maybrick’s thoughts and feelings, even if that introduces ambiguities into the details of his actions. But he is also remarkably crafty in the way he develops his fiction. If you had not been told this was the actual writing of a notorious serial killer the opening pages would not have made you any the wiser. There are oblique references that indicate more that the author is engaged in nefarious activities that cannot be specified too precisely for fear of discovery. There are emotional words that raise more questions than they answer. Especially the curious term ‘whore master’ that shows an anger with some one who although execrated as a ‘whore’ is still of great emotional significance to the writer.

The opening paragraphs lead us further into an intriguing world of subterfuge and emotional tension with just the necessary sexual undertones to raise our interests without giving too much of the plot way. We are hooked by the time it is clear that the writer has a ‘campaign’ as he calls it although we are not told explicitly what that ‘campaign’ is. Although sex and violence, those great recipes for public interest, are not far below the surface. Only once our interest has been raised does this skilled story-teller begin to feed in connections to a world we might recognise.

There is a further subtlety in the way the ‘Diary’ has been concocted. It is not clear at the beginning what it is dealing with, only possibly an attempt to plan some dangerous ‘campaign’. Indeed what we have appears to be the latter half of a book that has had the opening pages torn out. The first page we have of the ‘Diary’ does not even start with a complete sentence. It seems to be the end of a sentence from the previous page; ‘what they have in store for them they would stop this instant.’ It carries on as if it is the continuation of an earlier idea; ‘But do they desire that? My answer is no.’ It requires the reader to work out the missing prior phrase ‘if they knew’.

Here is someone having a discussion with himself and we catch him in the middle of it. The discussion is about nothing less than whether his targets would wish to change their lives if they knew the consequences their cautions would have. As such it has the dramatic power on a par with Hamlet wandering on stage in deep thought about the purpose of existence uttering the most famous lines in all literature ‘To be or not to be’. All serious authors take special care of their opening words. To start such a significant text as this in this way, is little short of genius.

Of course, that could have been a happy accident due to the document being damaged over time and pages going missing by mis-handling. But the actual volume is rather tidy. The pages are not scuffed or dog-eared. There are virtually no blemishes on the paper itself. The earlier pages have been removed in a careful and determined way. So this first page does seem to be exactly where the author wants us to start reading.

The reader is led on by hints of the danger of actually writing things down, ‘it is unwise to continue writing’. But we are given the strangely ambiguous phrase ‘to down a whore’. This is almost a hunting term as in ‘the dogs downed a fox’. Its true significance is indicated by the suggestion that the act of recording it is dangerous. That ambiguous caution continues throughout the ‘Diary’, but after the visit to Manchester and the apparent strangulation of a ‘whore’ the accounts get ever more explicit and caution is eventually put aside to enjoy the delight of recording the experiences.

He measures his pace very well, slowly involving us in ever more gruesome details, capturing a mood of increased anger mixed with pain and delight. What starts as an unclear reference to a ‘campaign’ gets more explicit with a reference to the purchase of a knife. Then all is made terribly clear when the difficulty of cutting off the head is mentioned. As if that is not enough the ‘Diary’ moves into angry despair: ‘I want to boil boil boil’, an almost incoherent tirade against himself and the God that made him. Lucid moments of self-doubt intervene and a growing refrain that perhaps he should give himself up or commit suicide, but the ending is much more effectively resolved than that. The author actually asks the reader for forgiveness. The whole document emerges as a justification of his actions. They were brought on by others and the external forces of ‘love’, not evil within himself. Only someone who has carefully explored how serial killers see the world could be so perceptive as to notice that in the end they always seek to justify their actions by some means or other. Typically these justifications place the blame outside their own nature.

Most novelists struggle for years to gain the ability to look at the world as if through the eyes of another. Then they usually fail and are only able to give us one of their own perspectives. The ‘Diary’ writer, though, brilliantly captures the mixture of adolescent delight in fooling others and getting away with crimes he finds exciting. He also has the unselfconscious thrill of seeing his deeds written about. This fraudster really enables us to get into the mind of a ‘Ripper’ character and see the turmoil of emotions and the tumult of thought that keep him going. As the ‘Diary’ unfolds the author gives, with developing clarity, the reasons why the ‘Diary’ is being written at all. What starts as a desire to plan and record the illicit pleasures evolves into a struggle to make sense of his emotions and ends as a testament to his deeds which he almost hopes will exonerate him.

This is masterly psychological thriller writing, deftly indicating why the diary is being written at the same time as drawing us into the anger and confusions of the author. These moods are seasoned with the game of writing poems. A use of frivolity and dark humour to highlight the deadly seriousness of the drama that Shakespeare could have been proud of. Constant anger or polemic would have been tedious and unconvincing, but the mixture of emotional expression and banality keep the reader mesmerised as by the slight twitches of a snake.

Also, there are just enough hints at facts to allow us to tie the experiences into known events. These historical cards are not over-played. It has taken Shirley Harrison and her advisors a considerable amount of time and effort to unravel all the references to actual events. A more conventional fraudster would have made sure that the critical events were clearly present. There are even hints at events that have no place in the Ripper canon like the early murder in Manchester. Did an author who was so meticulous in all his other details make a mistake here? Or is this a devilish nuance to hint at things that only Maybrick would know, but which no-one else could ever verify?

The artistry of the fraudster has been demonstrated. But what of the character he has created for us? Does that give us any more clues to the person who wrote the ‘Diary’? Most novelists inevitably write about themselves no matter how hard they try to disguise the fact. So what sort of person is James Maybrick revealed to be in the ‘Diary’? He is certainly the centre of his own world. The ‘Diary’ is written for his own pleasure but also in the arrogant belief that his views are inevitably of public significance. He has enormous mood swings from the heights of delight to the depths of despair. He is an inveterate gambler who gets real enjoyment from taking risks. But his arrogance is based on profound doubts about his own self-worth, especially in comparison to his brother. This does seem to be what gives him such preening satisfaction in duping others. His pleasure on showing them to be ‘fools’.

Yet for all these explosive emotions and wild mood swings he is able to present himself as mild mannered and is aware enough to recognise that duplicity and gloat over it. He is not uncontrollably impulsive, but plans ahead, enjoying the planning and reminiscence of past acts as much as the acts themselves. This is a man others would recognise as intelligent, but not easy to know because he would hide so much of what he feels. There are some well-established British authors who would fit this picture. What have any of them to gain from remaining anonymous all this time?

A subtle novelist capable of giving the feeling of what it is like to be inside the Ripper’s skull, but who also knows how to tread softly and pull back from revealing all too readily, is clearly a master of his art. But the fraudster/novelist had to do more than be convincing by carefully ambiguous statements. He had to have a thorough knowledge of Jack the Ripper and his activities. There are, of course, far too many books about the Victorian killings, so a study of these might have provided the basis for the prank. But, as I found when I tried to put some thoughts together for a book, the plethora of material on the Whitechapel murders is actually the problem. There are huge disagreements about most details including who Jack actually killed. So the fraudster/novelist would have to have been very heavily immersed in the Ripper literature for some time. He would also have to have had a very good understanding of Victorian England and police investigations in order to distill from all the writings those facts that the experts would agree on. Such a person would be known to the experts and could indeed be recognised as one of them. However, having had to plough through many Ripper books I have to say there are not many, if any, that reveal the writing skills apparent in the invention of the ‘Diary’.

Our profile of the fraudster, then, has narrowed down the field to gifted writers who are also Ripper experts. But there is one more clear indication of the character of the fraudster/novelist/expert.

This is the very clever focus on a Liverpudlian. Jack the Ripper is a London character par excellence. If he is not one of the professionals or aristocracy that crown our image of Victorian London, then we can almost see him as a sort of Dick van Dyke classic cockney. Liverpool can claim to be the birthplace of many of the metropolitan developments of the last century, from Medical Officers of Health to recalcitrant strikers, but Liverpool is not usually thought of as an especially violent city or one from which the modern serial killer would have originated. It is a stroke little short of genius to spot the trial of Florence Maybrick for murdering her husband, and determine to work the fiction backwards from that point to invent her alleged victim as Jack the Ripper.

It may be my own origins that bias my opinion, but surely only people from Liverpool are convinced enough of the fecundity of their city and its central position in the known universe to believe that Jack the Ripper could have been a Scouser? But as the quietness of Riversdale Road demonstrates that is certainly not an idea that has caught the imagination of present day citizens. So whichever of their number invented the ‘Diary’ she or he was certainly swimming against the Merseyside tide. The author of the ‘Diary’ was not picking up one of the popular myths of Liverpool and cloaking it with invention.

This Liverpool fraudster/novelist/expert was also, of course, very knowledgeable about the Maybricks and their doings. Florie’s trial was of great note in the local press so, once again, tireless research would have provided the depth of insight to be able to scatter references to major and minor figures in James Maybrick’s life. A variety of names would be available from the trial, but once again the author does not over-use them. For example, the outburst against a subordinate in the railing against Lowry is a delightful touch and further evidence of the control and skill of the novelist. I must confess that if I were to invent such an interesting walk-on character as Lowry, I would have wanted to develop his involvement and use him as more than a cipher.

The knowledge of inks and paper, of Victorian vocabulary and handwriting styles and the other objective aspects of the ‘Diary’ that Shirley Harrison has painstakingly examined, were of course available to the fraudster in much the same way as they were available to her. Readers of crime fact and fiction books will be aware of the forensic sciences that can be drawn upon. Our fraudster is no Liverpool scally, no slouch throwing a few possibilities together. He has devoted considerable time and effort to getting the ‘Diary’ just right. He would not make the mistake of getting the forensic science obviously wrong.

Our profile of the author of the ‘Diary’ then has him (or just possibly her) based in Liverpool with a very good knowledge of life and times of the Maybrick family. He also has excellent knowledge of Victorian England and the Jack the Ripper murders and their investigation. He further can very plausibly capture and express the mixture of thoughts and feelings that the Whitechapel murderer might have had. Furthermore, he is likely to be a careful scholar who enjoys taking risks. Those who know him very well will recognise a turmoil of emotions deeply hidden by a placid facade. He has access to, and knows how to use effectively, Victorian writing implements and writing styles. But above all he does not display these consummate creative and scholarly skills by writing a gripping novel or screen play, but produces a personal, meandering document that is so unlike a ‘Diary’ that it finds a publisher almost accidentally.

This is a person so fascinated by Jack the Ripper that he has devoted a large portion of his life to trying to be him. A person who gets such delight in recreating the feelings that Jack the Ripper might have had and such excitement by the stir that the ‘Diary’ might cause, that this shy genius has still not stepped forward to claim his rightful glory. His story would be a certainty for Hollywood treatment. Anthony Hopkins would beg to play the role.

I have laid out, briefly, the characteristics of the author of the ‘Diary’, but the question still lingers as to whether it might after all be genuine. Psychologists and others who study these matters have not come up with any foolproof method for detecting fraudulent writing and certainly not one that is genius proof. But what my own studies have indicated to me is that close examination of any human utterance makes it seem suspect. Watch a TV news announcer as carefully as you possibly can and see if you think he or she really believes what they are saying. You will notice little twitches that are suspicious, or possibly the complete lack of any hesitation or doubt will raise questions in your mind. I know from various careful studies that we have done that if you give written accounts to ordinary people and ask them to determine whether they are genuine or false the majority will be assumed to be false no matter how many are genuine. So read the ‘Diary’ with the assumption that it is a hoax and you will be amazed at the way some details are spelled out as if to make us believe it is genuine. Now read it again assuming it is genuine and you will be struck by what you learn about Jack the Ripper’s thoughts and feelings.

These musings, then, give us two broad possibilities for the authorship of the ‘Diary’. One is that it was written by a shy, but emotionally disturbed genius, who combined the novelist’s art with an intelligent understanding of serial killers, the agreed facts of Jack the Ripper and James Maybrick. The other possibility is a rather different person. He knew how Jack the Ripper felt and had knowledge and experience of his killings. He also was totally familiar with the world of James Maybrick. He fits the personality profile revealed in the ‘Diary’ exactly and had ready access to all the necessary writing materials. He also had a plausible reason for writing the ‘Diary’. He desperately wanted others to know the secret festering within him. He lived at No. 7 Riversdale Road in the late 1880’s.