“That is where I am going,” I said aloud. To my surprise, the tall man answered in a somewhat altered tone, “How long shall you be?” “That depends,” I replied, “you had better come to the house with me.” “No,” said he, “I shall wait for you here;” and the forgeman and I walked up to the cottage together. At its door I dismissed my ally with thanks and a grateful coin; and entering in, I told my tale to my friend the stout pitman and his hearty wife, who heard it with indignation. In less than a minute, he and I sallied from his dwelling in search of the fellows who had dogged me. But they had vanished. Seeing me received and welcomed by people whom they knew, they doubtless felt that pursuit was futile and suspicion vain.
Now, I do not object to adventures, even in the decline of life; nor do I much blame my antagonists, whether their motive were righteous indignation, or, as is more likely, the hope of reward. But I think them guilty of a serious and even dangerous error of judgment in not distinguishing between the appearance of Jack the Ripper and that of your obedient servant,
AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN
There may have been a reason that escapes me for this elderly “gentleman” traveling through the country and the mining district, and omitting his name and the names of the places. I suppose there may have been a reason why a “gentleman” in those very class-aware days would have friends who were pitmen or forgemen. But I am at a loss when I try to figure out why anyone would assume that Jack the Ripper was an “elderly gentleman,” and why a paper as respected as The Times would publish such a sophomoric tale, unless upper-level journalists were being infected by Rippermania and were grabbing after any Ripper tidbit they could find.
But there are details in the letter worth noting. The author claims to have been traveling a lot of late, and Ripper letters indicate the same. The “gentleman” mingles with the working lower class, and Sickert was known for that. The letter reminds readers that the Ripper is feared not just in London, but everywhere, and this would be a self-serving assertion if the “elderly gentleman” were really Walter Sickert. In his role as Jack the Ripper, he wanted to frighten as many people as he could.
“If the people here only new who I was they would shiver in their shoes,” the Ripper writes in a letter mailed from Clapham on November 22, 1889. And as an additional “ha ha” he uses the return address of “Punch & Judy St.” Sickert would have been familiar with Punch and Judy. The puppet plays were wildly popular, and his idol Degas adored Punch and Judy and wrote about the violent puppet plays in his letters.
Granted, acceptable humor in the Victorian era differs from what is acceptable today. Some people find Punch and Judy to be offensive. Punch beats his infant daughter and throws her out a window. He repeatedly cracks his wife, Judy, on the head, “fairly splitting it in two.” He kicks his doctor and says, “There; don’t you feel the physic in your bowels? [Punch thrusts the end of the stick into the Doctor’s stomach: the Doctor falls down dead, and Punch, as before, tosses away the body with the end of his staff.] He, he, he! [Laughing.]”
In Oswald Sickert’s Punch and Judy script, “Murder and Manslaughter or, The Devil Fooled,” the puppets’ cruel antics go beyond Punch’s spending all the household money on “spirits.”
Punch dances around with the child.
(hits the child’s head against the railing, the child cries)… Oh don’t… be quiet my boy (puts him in the corner}.
I will get you something to eat (exits}.
Punch returns, examines the child very closely.
Have you already fallen? Be quiet, be quiet (exits, the child continues to cry}
Punch with porridge and spoon Son of my quiet love do not make me stroppy. There, now be quiet.
(Feeds the child porridge non-stop} there-you go,
there you go. Good heavens!… don’t you want to be quiet? Quiet, I say! There you go, there’s the rest of the porridge.