Jack the Ripper: Light-Hearted Friend

First off, this book doesn't prove that Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper. It doesn't even come close. What it does do is show how a fertile imagination can take a few facts and run wild with them: it's speculative nonfiction at its finest, or more accurately, speculative non-narrative fiction. I'd be disappointed to discover that Wallace believes in his lunatic thesis, but I wasn't at all disappointed to read it. It's berserk and methodical at the same time, a shining gem of surreality.

Wallace's books are indeed an interesting read. Most students of Carroll and the Ripper unhesitatingly refute these works. At the same time, there is a failure on their part to address several curious questions raised by Wallace. There is undeniable evidence that Carroll was a master anagram creator and riddler. He "littered" his books and letters with mysteriously underlined segments of text and in several cases asked the audience to find the anagram. There is also much well founded evidence that he was a pervert. Wallace does often liberally stretch the boundaries of literary license in asking the question: to what extent did Carroll express his inner perverted drives on paper and people. But, he, unlike recent scholars, is not afraid to explore the depths of Carroll's psychie. There is still a long way to go to definitively conclude that Carroll was the Ripper, but within the texts of Wallace's two books, there is enough of a basis to warrant further serious inquirary.

The real interest for conspiracy fans is how so many people have tried to belittle a man who has done nothing more than say "this is a possibility, let's continue to explore it". Every "leap" he takes is shown as a leap, and nowhere in his writing does he attempt to use slanted or manipulative language. It is honest and interesting work and while nowhere near conclusive (as he himself admits), He definitively puts Carroll into the line-up. There has been violent, if not high profile, slander and criticism of Mr. Wallace from interested parties involved with the legacies of both Mr. Dodgeson (Lewis Carroll) and the modern tourist/conspiracy industry once known as Jack the Ripper. People have called him everything under the sun, boldly retelling the author's abilities to condemn him or belittle his audience. But they discuss only the most fluffy of arguments. It is possible that Mr. Wallace is wrong, but when one sees a gentle idea "Ripped" to shreds by arrogant people who shout him down with half truths or worse slap him with the false praise of being a brilliant lunatic, it isn't much of a "leap" to see that these people may just be more than disgusted by Mr. Wallace possible folly. I think, they are afraid that maybe, he is right. If he is no child will every read Alice the same way. No Tourist walk through the alleys of London will be completed without the mention of his name. Just the possibility of a connection between Lewis Carroll and Jack The Ripper is staggering. In the days to come. if we find Mr. Wallace to be on the right track, the concept would be a historical Paradigm shift, allowing us to question that which we hold most sacred in our cultural mythology, while still recognizing its importance and brilliance. If he's not, Mr. Wallace still gives us a blue print on how to present a possibility, with dignity and honesty. He is best described by the arrogance and venom of his detractors. My suggestion is you cut past the hype and din and read it for yourself, also the companion book The Agony of Lewis Carroll.

Exhaustively analysing the letters of Jack the Ripper and the writings of Lewis Carroll, deriving lurid confessions out of anagrams and making numerous bold leaps from the most dubious of premises, Wallace comes up with a classic. Anyone who collects psychoceramic literature should have this book, preferably right next to a treatise on the connection between UFOs, the Vatican and the Loch Ness Monster or some similar topic.

Richard Wallace has indeed compiled a very thorough and thought-out theory thrusting Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and his childhood friend Thomas Bayne to the top of the Jack the Ripper suspect list. Whether Wallace is correct in asserting that Dodgson was Jack the Ripper or not, the fact remains that he was indeed capable and ingenious enough to have carried out everything presented in this book, from the anagrams to the murders themselves. If even 10% of the anagrams in this book are correct, the evidence -- in all of his writings, childhood experieces and thorough education -- is still credible against him. Who can dispute such hidden messages in Carroll's work as "I strangled Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes" or "He, Thomas Vere Bayne, I, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, reign as Jack the Ripper?"