Sickert loved to write letters and sometimes apologized to friends for writing them so often. He habitually wrote letters to newspapers. He had such a knack for stirring up news that letters by him and articles about him amounted to as many as six hundred in one year. It is daunting to go through Sickert’s archives at Islington Public Libraries and look at his several reams of clippings. He began gathering them himself around the turn of the century, and then used clipping services to keep up with his seemingly endless publicity. Yet throughout his life, he was known as a man who refused to give interviews. He managed to create the myth that he was “shy” and hated publicity.
Sickert’s obsession with writing letters to the editor became an embarrassment to some newspapers. Editors squirmed when they got yet another Sickert letter about art or the aesthetic quality of telephone poles or why all Englishmen should wear kilts or the disadvantages of chlorinated water. Most editors did not wish to insult the well-known artist by ignoring him or relegating his prose to a small, inconspicuous space.
From January 25 through May 25, 1924, Sickert delivered a series of lectures and articles that were published in the Southport Visiter, in South-port, north of Liverpool, on the coast. Although these articles came to more than 130,000 words, that wasn’t enough. On May 6th, 12th, 15th, 19th, and 22nd, Sickert wrote or telegraphed W. H. Stephenson of the Visiter: “I wonder if the Visiter could bear one more article at once…. If so you should have it at once” and “delighted writing” and “please ask printer to express early six copies” and “Do let me send you just one more article” and “if you hear of any provincial paper that would care to carry series over the summer let me know.”
Throughout Sickert’s life, his literary prolificacy was astonishing. His clippings book at Islington Public Libraries contains more than 12,000 news items about him and letters he wrote to editors in Great Britain alone, most of them written between 1911 and the late 1930s. He published some four hundred lectures and articles, and I believe these known writings do not represent the entirety of his literary output. Sickert was a compulsive writer who enjoyed persuading, manipulating, and impressing people with his words. He craved an audience. He craved seeing his name in print. It would have been in character for him to have written a startling number of the Ripper letters, including some of those mailed from all over the map.
He may have written far more of them than some document examiners would be inclined to believe, because one makes a mistake to judge Walter Sickert by the usual handwriting-comparison standards. He was a multitalented artist with an amazing memory. He was multilingual. He was a voracious reader and skilled mimic. There were a number of books on graphology available at the time, and the handwriting in many Ripper letters is similar to examples of writing styles that Victorian graphologists associated with various occupations and personalities. Sickert could have opened any number of graphology books and imitated the styles he found there. For graphologists to study Ripper letters must have struck Sickert as most amusing.
Using chemicals and highly sensitive instruments to analyze inks, paints, and paper is scientific. Handwriting comparison is not. It is an investigative tool that can be powerful and convincing, especially in detecting forgeries. But if a suspect is adept in disguising his handwriting, comparison can be frustrating or impossible. The police investigating the Ripper cases were so eager to pinpoint similarity in handwriting that they did not explore the possibility that the killer might use many different styles. Other leads, such as cities the Ripper mentioned and postmarks on envelopes, were not pursued. Had they been, it may have been discovered that most of the distant cities shared points in common, including theaters and racecourses. Many of these locations would appear on a map of Sickert’s travels.
Let’s start with Manchester. There were at least three reasons for Sicken: to visit that city and be quite familiar with it. His wife’s family, the Cobdens, owned property in Manchester. Sickert’s sister, Helena, lived in Manchester. Sickert had friends as well as professional connections in Manchester. Several Ripper letters mention Manchester. One of them that the Ripper claims to have written from Manchester on November 22, 1888, has a partial A Pirie & Sons watermark. Another letter the Ripper claims to have written from East London, also on November 22nd, has a partial A Pirie & Sons watermark. The stationery Walter and Ellen Sickert began using after they were married on June 10, 1885, has the A Pirie & Sons watermark.