Jun 15, 2021
Jeb and Blake crawl through the cobbled streets of 1978 television to find out what was going on when IN SEARCH OF went looking for Jack the Ripper.
A lot of this episode is about "The Royal Conspiracy" - the idea that Prince Albert Victor (aka "Prince Eddy") was secretly Jack the Ripper.
This was largely derived from a book called Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, an ironic title since it turned out to be neither final nor the solution. This was written by Stephen Knight, who appears in the episode. Shortly after this he will develop brain cancer and pass away.
The story also involves Prince Albert Victor's surgeon, Dr. William Gull.
We discuss the "modern plague" of Gin in London at the time. (That link is to the Pub Map.)
Alert listener Dr. David Cockcroft sent us a link to the 1886 London Poverty Maps of Charles Booth. It's a treasure trove of information contemporary to the time of this case (and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes episode as well).
Nimoy Fashion Alert!
Did you notice that big book lying flat behind Nimoy's head? That's a book about Vincent Van Gogh. We'll hear more about him in Season 4.
In our bonus episode about pop-culture of JTR we talked about a weird 6-part BBC crime series which pitted two fictional modern TV police detectives against the case. Wendy Sturgess was one of the writers.
We discuss some of the appalling poverty of the area of London where the murders took place. This included discussion of Jack London's book about London. "The People of the Abyss" - that was the name of a work by American fiction writer Jack London. It's available online.
A young Donald Rumbalow makes an appearance.
We briefly discuss the "wizard money" of England at the time.
The Police News vintage paper is shown several times in the episode. You can search these old papers on the British Newspaper Archive!
I elected not to do dramatic readings of the JTR letters, but some of the most famous ones you can read about here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Boss_letter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saucy_Jacky_postcard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Hell_letter
Dr. J. M. Cameron - chief pathologist of home office (1930 - 2003) makes an appearance.
We're not done with the "foggy streets of London" either because we'll be looking into the real identity of Sherlock Holmes in just a few episodes, with return guest Dr. Kenny Feder.