A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper Read online

Does theatre echo life, or is it the other way around? Last night I paid a visit to the Lyceum Theatre and witnessed a performance of the new stage play, 'a phenomenon of the stage' they call it, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Tale of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde'. A wonderful performance by Mr. Richard Mansfield, the great American actor, in the title role, and yet, how so like my work. Am I not the perfect gentleman, this 'Dr. Jekyll, and yet also the instrument of fear and terror that is 'Mr. Hyde'? Oh, to see the looks of shock upon the faces of so many in the audience! I could have laughed aloud at their pitiful shrieks and gasps, but I did not. If only they had known, what would they have thought, how would they have reacted? I shall obtain perhaps a copy of the book, so that I may study in more detail the author's words on the subject, so obviously cut short by the needs of the stage.

  I wonder, have the press received my letter yet? What shall they make of it I wonder? Will they dismiss my words as a hoax, or a fanciful lie perhaps? Ha, they will soon see that I do not lie. The time is fast approaching when I shall go to work once more, the streets are too dry of the blood of the whores, they must run once more with the river of life, I shall release the flow from the wells of their wretched bodies, they will bleed, and they will die. The voices are getting louder once more, my head is aching terribly. The laudanum helps but won't stop it altogether. The pain is sometimes more than I can bear. Only the blood of the whores will make it go away. I shall take a larger dose, feel the warmth coursing through my body, and the sleep will come, if I am so lucky, a lovely long black sleep, and then, my work may begin once more.

  A visit to the theatre? I could scarcely believe what I was reading. Here he was, just three nights before he would commit the ferocious double murder of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes, happily enjoying an evening viewing the most celebrated play in London. My own notes had shown that at the time the Ripper murders began, Richard Mansfield, a renowned American actor was starring at the Lyceum in that very play, and that, subsequent to the double murder, the play was cancelled as people had thought that its content might possibly inspire the murderer to strike again. Today we would find such a thing ridiculously naïve and childish in the extreme, but to the sensitive factions of Victorian society, it seemed the right thing to do at the time. Whether Mr. Mansfield was ever compensated for the cancellation of his starring engagement I cannot say, as I was unable to obtain that information. The Ripper was also richly mocking in his view of his fellow theatregoers. To say he felt like 'laughing aloud' when witness to their shock and horror at the more lurid scenes of the play was yet another example of his total disdain for his fellow citizens. I was intrigued by his allusion to the similarities between the character of Jekyll and Hyde, and himself. He knew enough to realise that the similarity existed, so he obviously had not as yet passed the point of no return, the final descent into the madness which I knew he was spiralling towards with grim inevitability. Had that point been passed, I doubted he would have had the clarity of thought to make such a comparison. For now at least, I felt that he was just holding on to a vestige of reason and sanity, though by little more than a thread.

  Deep within him the rage was building once again. The voices were back, presumably guiding and goading him. Whatever psychosis was acting upon his mind, I was sure he would soon have little control over his own actions. The blood lust was getting stronger, he now saw the bodies of his victims as 'wells' which would provide him with the blood he needed to satisfy his, and 'his voices' crazed need for blood. I was still certain that he was in the tertiary or final stage of syphilis, and that the damage to his brain was now irrevocable. I couldn't yet understand how he hadn't been diagnosed with the disease. Surely, over the years he had consulted a physician, and would that doctor not have noticed the tell tale signs? Then again, though the early sign of the disease are evident to the sufferer, they are not outwardly visible, and if he had chosen not to seek help, the initial stage would have passed with or without medication, and the second phase would have allowed the disease to lie dormant, possibly for years, before finally rising like a phoenix from the ashes to begin its awful, terminal stage.

  He was obviously ignoring the symptoms as much as he could, and also ignoring the doctors, including my great-grandfather, who had treated him for his latest 'attack' of temporary amnesia and partial dementia. This was evident by his intention to increase the dosage of laudanum, which by now was probably already at dangerous proportions. He was totally addicted to the opium in the drug, and like any addict, any attempt to wean him from the drug would have been a fruitless exercise without some form of support and medical assistance. He knew the laudanum would induce what he described as a 'dark sleep', a deep hallucinogenic sleep, during which he would 'see' and 'hear' all manner of aberrations, which would fuel his sadistic passions as soon as he returned to a waking state. I had had this type of so-called sleep described to me on many occasion in the past by patients far less disturbed than the writer of this awful text. Already driven half-crazy by the syphilis spreading through his body and his brain cells, he was now also a drug-crazed junkie, and possibly subject to other forms of psychological disorders, too. I was amazed to some extent that he managed to function at all in the everyday world. Yes, in many ways he was like the actor Richard Mansfield, who had created such a stunning and frightening stage persona that people often ran screaming from the auditorium, such was the fear he engendered in them, but Mansfield was just an actor who, at the end of each performance, could wipe away the greasepaint and make-up, wash his face and hands, go home to his lodgings and become his own self once again. The Ripper was different, very different.

  To put it simply, unlike the character portrayed by Richard Mansfield, unlike Robert Louis Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jack the Ripper was no figment of the imagination, no fictional creation of a literary brain. No, as the words of his journal screamed from the page his threats of further mayhem, the character with two minds, two personalities, but one single, simple aim, that of horrific and brutal murder, was all too real. Within days everyone would know him by his self chosen terrible and blood chilling name. The 'Whitechapel Murderer', and 'Leather Apron' were about to be consigned to the pages of history, 'Jack the Ripper' was about to announce himself to his public!

  Chapter Twenty Two

  An Image of Hell

  My father, God rest his soul, always told me that psychiatrists are among the most ignorant of doctors. When I asked him why, he told me that, although the range of illnesses, psychoses, and other ailments we attempt to treat are huge, virtually limitless in fact, the clinical and factual knowledge at our disposal is minute by comparison. We cannot for example, peer into the human psyche, we cannot understand how the thought processes of the human brain really work, or how it can be that one set of circumstances can lead one individual into, say, the deepest pit of trauma or depression, when the self same circumstances have no effect whatsoever on millions of other individuals. Psychiatry is not, and probably never will be an exact science.

  My own experience has taught me that it is wholly possible for two or even three or more psychiatrists to make different diagnoses, and to prescribe different courses of treatment for an individual patient, despite being presented with exactly the same symptoms. Such then, is the imprecise nature of my profession. Patients entering the world of psychiatric medicine are always treated with the best intentions and with the utmost professionalism by their psychiatrist. What we do is limited by our knowledge of those precise workings of the brain, the mind, and the psyche.

  I make these observations for you so you may appreciate, (as I did not) what was happening within my own mind at that time. Under normal circumstances, reading the journal of a long-dead miscreant should not have had an adverse effect on my skilled professional mind. Yet, with each page I read, I drowned in an emotional ride of disturbing proportions. In hindsight I was perhaps beginning to show signs of cognitive dissonance. Humans cannot think two opposing or clashing things a
t the same time, e.g. we know that cigarettes are harmful yet continue to smoke. To be able to do so the mind rationalizes the thought or perception which goes against the behaviour. As a psychiatrist was I 'above' being affected by such a written record? Would I, on reaching the last page of the journal, feel compelled to keep that secret myself, just as everyone else had done? Or was there something far more sinister at work as I read the words of the Ripper? What strange thing was happening, drawing me deeper into a past fast becoming so real I could almost see myself walking beside the man as he waited in shadow, revealing himself to his victims from the darkness before committing his wicked acts of murder and mutilation? As I sat, preparing to continue, I could feel an even stronger throbbing in my head, and I realised that it was the beating of my heart!

  There were no entries for either the 28th or 29th of September. Could I assume the Ripper had indeed entered that 'deep sleep' to which he had previously alluded? Was he at that time lying at home or in some opium den perhaps, in a state of total opium intoxication? The thought of the opium den had just struck me as a possibility. Though he hadn't mentioned it in the pages of the journal, I thought that if he wasn't receiving the palliative effect he desired from the bottled laudanum a direct infusion of pure opium would maybe have been his next logical step. Yet my hypothesis could have been entirely wrong, and there was only way I was going to find out.

  30th September 1888

  How I slept! Never have I known such a feeling, I was asleep yet not asleep, and the dreams, oh such dreams. I walked in fields bedecked with hanging whore corpses, hanging from trees and dripping blood upon the green grass that grew at their feet. The sky was blue, yet tinged with red, the clouds suffused with the blood that rose in a mist from the grass and swallowed up the corpses and sent the whores' damned souls soaring upwards in their twisted agonies, reaching for Heaven, only to send them crashing downwards, spiralling as they fell, screaming as they descended into Hell. There are too many for I alone to rid the world of, but I shall strike down as many as I can, and I shall strike again tonight! The voices are here, they whisper gently in my ear, they tell me that the time is right, tonight shall be my night!

  This was the first time the Ripper had made what I termed a 'daytime' entry, announcing his intentions for the coming night, as opposed to a simple after-the-fact rendering of his murderous deeds. Not only that, but the graphic imagery conjured by his words were horrific in the extreme. There was no mention of opium dens, just an allusion to a strange sleep, 'asleep, yet not asleep', he called it. In other words, that state of opium induced hallucination I had thought probable. His choice of words depicted a scene of such demonic horror that my sense of revulsion was exceeded only by the terror such a scene induced in my mind. His description of the 'rising souls' of those poor women, reaching out to the heavens only to be cast down into the depths of Hell was akin to a scene from Dante's Inferno, a picture of the descent into Hell, of screaming, twisted souls in agony. Somehow, the Ripper's version, though described solely in words as opposed to pictures, served to horrify and terrify me far more than Dante.

  What disturbed me most was the fact that I could see the whole scene in my mind as if I were there, a spectator to the grisly panoply that had played out in his mind, like a grotesque x-rated movie. The words on the page had somehow brought the scene to life in vivid intensity, and I couldn't shake the images from my mind. Nothing in my experiences had ever had such a profound effect on me as this terrible demonic collection of words, or the sights and sounds they were able to conjure in my mind. If it were possible, (which of course would be absurd), I would have said that the words themselves, the ink with which they were written, had assumed the character and the soul of the one who had written them, that they'd taken on a three-dimensional quality.

  Though I knew from my research notes this was the night of the double murder, I still possessed the keen sense that all this had happened over a century ago. But somehow fear had a grip on me I couldn't explain. I wanted to be there, to walk those dark London streets, feel the rain that had fallen that night as it splashed my face, hear the sounds of the late night hansoms and broughams as they carried their wealthy passengers home, and then to make my way into the meaner streets, to feel the demi-silence that descended upon the thoroughfares of Whitechapel, watch the Ripper's victims as they walked towards their inevitable doom, the heels of their boots clattering along the uneven cobbles, their feet splashing in the puddles. I wanted to shout, scream, warn them of their impending fate, I wanted to save them, though I couldn't, could I?

  Those women were dead, and had been for over a hundred years, they were a footnote in history, having achieved a fame in death that they could never have attained in life. Had they not been murdered that night in Berner Street and Mitre Square respectively, Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes would have eventually passed into the afterlife as anonymously as they had lived. So, why was I so concerned, why was I reacting this way? My mind was full of incomprehension as I battled with the illogical desires within me, and the impossible assault on my senses heightening by the minute.

  Fear of the unknown is perhaps the greatest fear that can stalk the mind of man. Though I was, and still continue to think of myself as a rational and sound thinking human being, I had to conclude that something beyond my comprehension was taking place as I sat in my comfortable chair, surrounded by the trappings of my comfortable existence. I was no longer myself in the true sense of the word, I was a spectator, and rapidly becoming a willing one, to the crimes of a 'madman'. Was I losing control, was I going mad? I shall continue this narrative to its conclusion, and then perhaps you can be the judge of that question.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  With the coming of the Night

  As I stretched my aching limbs, I realised that the day was drawing in. It was late afternoon and darkness was beginning to descend on the world, as it had so long ago on the streets that were the Ripper's stalking ground. My own intense immersion in the matter in hand, and the light from my desk lamp, which had burned faithfully on my desk all through the daylight hours, had helped to disguise the gathering gloom outside my window.

  Feeling cold and weary, I rose from my chair and crossed the study, and for the first time in many months, I turned on the antique design, log effect gas fire. Its instant warmth suffused the room, bringing a degree of light and cheer to my self-imposed cloistered environment. I reached for the dimmer switch on the wall and turned it up halfway. The overhead ceiling lights came to life. Despite the warmth and the glow of the fire, I still felt gripped by a coldness that had now spread throughout my body; my hands were visibly trembling, and my legs felt heavy and leaden.

  I thought of retaking my place at the desk, and continuing my strange passage through the corridors of the Ripper's mind, but decided to make for the kitchen and fix myself something to eat. Fifteen minutes later, having partaken of a meagre repast of cheese and biscuits washed down with a glass of sparkling spring water, (just about all I could stomach at the time), I was back in my chair.

  As I reached for the journal, the telephone sprang into life. It was Sarah.

  "Robert, my darling, I got your message, I'm sorry we were out. How are you? Mrs. Armitage phoned me a few minutes ago and said she'd called to see you and that you looked awful! What have you been doing to yourself? Honestly! I can't leave you for a few days without you going to rack and ruin, can I? What is it, Robert, what's wrong?"

  Sarah paused for breath, and I seized my opportunity to reply.

  "Sarah, calm down, please, there's nothing wrong, really. Yes, I looked a bit rough when Mrs. A visited but that was because I hadn't slept very well. I've been going through some more of Dad's papers, and some case files that needed bringing up to date, and I burned the midnight oil a bit, that's all." I half-lied. "If I was ill, my darling, you'd be the first to know about it, don't you worry about that! Now, how's young Jack?" I deflected the conversation into a more manageable direction.
r />   "He's much better, Robert, in fact, I should be able to get back home in two or three days. Jennifer says it's not fair to keep me here when you've just lost your father."

  "That's wonderful," I replied, "I can't wait to see you, my darling. You know how much I love you, don't you, Sarah?"

  "Of course I do, darling. Listen, are you sure you're all right, you do sound a little strange, you know?"

  "Sarah, really, I'm fine. Now, go, enjoy your time with Jennifer and little Jack, and don't worry about me."

  "But Mrs. Armitage said…"

  "Sarah!" I almost shouted down the phone. "I know she's a kind hearted old soul, but she can also be an interfering old busybody, who obviously reads too much into things. Please believe me, I'm ok, really I am, and I'm looking forward to you coming home. Now go and give my love to your sister and Tom, and give the baby a kiss from his uncle, and I'll call you later to say goodnight."

  "All right then, darling," she replied, "but you'd better ring me, or I'll be calling Mrs. Armitage and sending her round to make sure my gorgeous husband is as well as he says he is!"

  "I'll ring you, I promise."

  "I'll talk to you later then, I love you very much. Bye, my love."

  "Bye, Sarah, I love you too."

  The silence in the room was tangible after I'd hung up on Sarah. For a brief moment, I was impaled upon the twin horns of loneliness and desolation, I wanted to ring Sarah back, tell her to come home immediately, tell her how disturbed I felt, how much I needed to be with her right then. But, just as the terrible emotions threatened to overwhelm me, I took a deep breath, looked at the assorted paraphernalia of the Ripper's journal, great-grandfather's notes and father's letter upon the desk, and I knew that the only way to complete my trek through these pages of history was by being alone. I couldn't expose Sarah to the words or emotions contained within the pages of the Ripper's journal.