Another book about Jack the Ripper. (The Diary of Jack the Ripper - Shirley Harrison)

Name: Terrie

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Product:	The Diary of Jack the Ripper - Shirley Harrison
Date:	04/02/01 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: One would like to believe we now know Jack the Ripper's identity.

Disadvantages: The diary is a hoax.

This is another book about Jack the Ripper. But it has a twist to it. A diary turns up to possibly shed light on a mystery, almost a century old, that is so hideous. One can’t help but be interested in it. It's about Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders--or more specifically a diary supposedly by Jack himself. Five dead prostitutes, an unknown madman, and now, a diary. Makes for interesting reading, right?

In 1976, one man turns over a diary to a friend. This man takes it home and starts reading it with his wife. They discover the unthinkable: Jack the Ripper’s diary.

This book presents the facts of the case. But it takes into account there is now a diary that one written by James Maybrick. James Maybrick, an older English gentleman, well to do, had a younger American wife, Florence.

This book looks at this man’s insecurities about his wife’s fidelity and whether or not she was plotting against him. Maybrick was a regular user of arsenic and strychnine. Everything stressed him to the point of believing Florie was having an affair and trying to kill him.

In this diary, Maybrick talks about how he kills these women in an attempt to kill his wife. He ends up dead and Florence goes on trial for his murder. He took arsenic or strycknine for "medicinal" reasons. He died from all that poison he was taking.

But as it turns the diary is all a hoax. Evidently the ink composition wasn’t old enough and lacked an ingredient found in ink back in Victorian England. So, again, we don’t know who Jack the Ripper is. Thinking that knowing the identity of Jack the Ripper was nice while it lasted. Back to square one. While this book was interesting reading, I thought it was pretty lousy for someone to play this kind of prank for the 15 seconds of fame, not to mention the cruelty of using someone else's tragedy and misfortune in this manner.

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