UBC: L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Jack the Ripper & the London Press

Jack the Ripper and the London Press by L. Perry Curtis Jr.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




It feels weird to be saying a book's problem is its commitment issues, but that's the best way I can sum up Jack the Ripper and the London Press. The book provides a useful overview of the press coverage of the Whitechapel murders: which papers took what stance (and had which political leanings) and how detailed they got in their description of the "abdominal mutilations." But it neither (a.) has a strong theoretical basis to talk about why (in fact, Curtis frequently seems hostile to theory, about which more below) nor (b.) really digs into its subject the way "Ripperologists" do (I put that word in quotes because it's easier and shorter than saying "popular and amateur historians writing about the Whitechapel murders" but it's also derogatory in a way I don't endorse or condone.) So even though Curtis has clearly done a metric ass-ton of research, the book feels superficial. It could be giving a lot more bang for its buck.

Part of Curtis' problem with theory is that the theorists he engages with most consistently are feminist historians. This sounds, I know, like a strength, but it is amply evident that Curtis has little to no sympathy with those feminists' theoretical project. This is not to call him misogynist, exactly, but to provide an example: in discussing Judith Walkowitz' mistaken assertion that there were riots in the East End, he says, "No doubt such sensational assertions enliven academic monographs of the cultural studies genre" (259), which is just . . . me-OW. He consistently presents the most embarrassingly ridiculous extremes (e.g., Jane Caupti's assertion that the hydrogen bomb is "'the precise macrocosmic parallel to the crimes of Jack the Ripper'" (Caputi quoted in Curtis, 258)) or (as with Walkowitz) the most egregious mistakes, and the language he uses is always faintly impatient, just palpably derogatory. He contrasts them with (male) historians whose views are more "restrained" and "empirical"--although he notes further down the page that his "restrained" and "empirical" (male) historian is following Foucault, which makes me wonder (aloud, to my husband) if he's on crack. (My husband's answer: "Yes.") Curtis treats the feminist theorists in the way academic historians generally treat "Ripperologists."

I will totally grant that the feminist theorists he quotes are not doing a very good job of engaging with the Whitechapel murders, but it would be so much better if he said that and then (again) talked about why, instead of using them throughout the book as straw-men (straw-persons?). Because I think there is a problem in the collision of feminist cultural history and Jack the Ripper, and I don't think it's that the feminist theorists are being silly, even though that's how Curtis makes them look.

And on the other hand, he doesn't engage with his primary sources in the way I wish he would. His most interesting chapter is on letters to the editor, and even there, he gives a statistical overview and quotes highlights, but he doesn't provide any serious analysis--partly because he doesn't have any kind of a theoretical argument underpinning his presentation of his data. He doesn't even have the kind of historical argument that Andrew Cook presents so badly in Jack the Ripper.

It's hard to come to grips with Jack the Ripper on any academic front--because the Whitechapel murders have been so sensationalized? because the amateur historians have made it embarrassing for academic historians to engage with the subject? because we don't know who did it, so we can't measure our theories against his reality? because we don't have a successful model for intellectual engagement with (a.) serial murder, (b.) sexual murder, (c.) serial sexual murder? I know I always break out Patricia Cline Cohen at this point in the discussion--and it's not fair to Curtis, whose book was published in 2001--but she is truly the best example I have found thus far of using feminist analytical techniques on "true crime" subject matter.

Curtis's subject material is interesting in and of itself, and he presents it clearly, but he doesn't provide anything that would make this book more than an assemblage of data. Which is a pity.



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