I thought I was a veteran investigator of horrors, and I knew nothing.
I didn’t understand that psychopaths follow the same human patterns “normal” people do, but the violent psychopath strays off track in ways that would never register on the average person’s navigational system. Many of us have erotic fantasies that are more exciting than the actualization of them, and looking forward to an event often gives us more delight than the experience of it. So it is for violent psychopaths as they anticipate their crimes.
Sulzbach also likes to say, “Never look for unicorns until you run out of ponies.”
Violent crimes are often mundane. A jealous lover kills a rival or partner who has betrayed him or her. A card game turns ugly and someone is shot. A street thug wants cash for drugs and stabs his victim. A drug dealer is gunned down because he sold bad drugs. These are the ponies. Jack the Ripper wasn’t a pony. He was a unicorn. In the 1880s and 1890s, Sickert was far too clever to paint pictures of homicides and entertain his friends by reenacting a real murder that had happened just beyond his door. The behavior that casts suspicion on him now was not apparent in 1888, when he was young and secretive and afraid of getting caught. Only his Ripper letters to the newspapers and the police offered evidence, but they were met with a blind eye, if not utter indifference and perhaps a chuckle or two.
There were two vices Sickert hated, or so he told his acquaintances. One was stealing. The other was alcoholism, which ran in his family. There is no reason to suspect that Sickert drank, at least not to excess until much later in life. By all accounts, he stayed away from drugs, even for therapeutic purposes. No matter his cracked facets or emotional twists, Sickert was clear-headed and calculating. He had an intense curiosity about anything that might catch his artist’s eye or appear on his radar for violence. There was much to appeal to him on the Thursday night of August 30, 1888, when a brandy warehouse on the London docks caught fire around 9:00 P.M. and illuminated the entire East End.
People came from miles and peered through locked iron gates at an inferno that defied the gallons of water dumped on it by the fire brigades. Unfortunates drifted toward the blaze, both curious and eager to take advantage of an unplanned opportunity for sexual commerce. In the finer parts of London, other entertainment lit up the night as the famous Richard Mansfield thrilled theatergoers with his brilliant performance as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum. The comedy Uncles and Aunts had just opened and had gotten a grand review in The Times, and The Paper Chase and The Union Jack were going full tilt. The plays had begun at 8:15, 8:30, or 9:00, and by the time they ended, the fire on the docks still roared. Warehouses and ships along the Thames were backlit by an orange glow visible for many miles. Whether Sickert was at his home or at one of the theaters or music halls, he was unlikely to miss the drama at South and Spirit quays that was attracting such an excited crowd.
Of course, it is purely speculative to say that Sickert wandered toward the water to watch. He might not have been in London on this night, although there is nothing on record to prove he wasn’t. There are no letters, no documents, no news accounts, no works of art that might so much as hint that Sickert was not in London. Divining what he was doing often means discovering what he wasn’t doing.
Sickert wasn’t interested in people knowing where he was. He was notorious for his lifelong habit of renting at least three secret “studios” at a time. These hovels were scattered about in locations so private and so unexpected and so unpredictable that his wife, colleagues, and friends had no idea where they were. His known studios, which numbered close to twenty during his life, were often slovenly “small rooms” filled with chaos that “inspired” him. Sickert worked alone behind locked doors. It was rare that he would see anyone, and if he did, a visit to these rat holes required a telegram or a special knock. In his older years, he erected tall black gates in front of his door and chained a guard dog to one of the iron bars.