psychoceramics: Jack the Ripper & The Agony of Lewis Carroll

["Andrew C. Bulhak" <acb @ discordia.null.org>]

Below is an excerpt from Mr. Wallace's books, which posit his 
unique theories about Lewis Carroll and Jack the Ripper.

 -- acb

[http://www.bookworld.com/jack_ripper/excerpt.html]

>              Jack the Ripper & The Agony of Lewis Carroll
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> [Order This Book][Title Page][Reviews][About the Author][Related Sites][Next Book]
> 
>                   Jack the Ripper                   [Jack the Ripper]
>                "Light-hearted Friend"
>                           by Richard Wallace
>                                [Excerpt]
> 
> [Image]In what I believe to be thematically the crowning piece of his
> works as they reflect his struggles and possibly predictions of these
> murders, we have the opening verse to "Jabberwocky" from his Through
> the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There....
> 
>      [Image]Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
>      [Image]Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
>      [Image]All mimsy were the borogoves,
>      [Image]And the mome raths outgrabe.
> 
> [Image][In the complete poem "Jabberwocky"] we have what is most
> likely the clearest disclosure of Dodgson's rage, its target, the
> nature of his efforts to both soothe himself and separate himself from
> the grip which possessed him. It is also the clearest foretelling of
> the Ripper murders as appears in the works published prior to 1888....
> [Image]Many analysts have interpreted the poem as masturbatory in
> theme. If we treat the opening verse as three anagrams, the first two
> lines together as the unit they are based on punctuation and the last
> two separately, we have a totally different poem, clearly masturbatory
> in theme, which also identifies what and who was killed symbolically.
> We also see an introduction which sets the theme for the body of the
> poem that follows. The anagrammatic solution is:
> 
>      Bet I beat my glands til,
>      [Image] With hand-sword I slay the evil gender.
>      A slimey theme; borrow gloves,
>      [Image] And masturbate the hog more!
> 
> [Image]...Within Dodgson's world of words and anagrams, and, until
> they were not enough, I believe he "slayed the evil gender" with
> words, the anagrammatic reworking of sword. [Experts identify
> masturbation] as an act of self-mutilation as a substitute for abusing
> a mother figure, with individual freedom from the controlling
> mother-image and the self-abusive act the goal, but dependent on a
> resolution of the psychic rage directed at that mother figure.
> [Image]Was this entire poem [which depicts the removal of the head of
> the Jabberwock] a foretelling of violence to come, a part of the
> brooding and plotting that began twenty years or more before the
> Ripper murders?
>        --------------------------------------------------------
> 
> [Image]It is in the area of numbers that the greatest symbolic
> relevance can be found. This should be no surprise when we recall that
> Dodgson was a mathematician and consummate gameplayer with numbers.
> [Image]There were two significant numbers in Dodgson's world as
> reflected in his literature. There was the number 42, which appeared
> as "Rule 42 of the Code" and which represented his manifesto to bluff
> the world, creating a totally false image, as his life's goal, his
> road to immor-tality, and there was the number 3, which appeared as
> the "Rule of 3" or the "Double Rule of 3." Three was also of great
> significance in Greek, Masonic, and Christian traditions.
> [Image]As we examine the frequency of certain numbers in these
> murders, always conscious that there is enormous potential for
> contrivance in any such pursuit, one wonders if the appearance of
> these significant numbers is purely coincidence. For example, I am
> inclined to see something possibly meaningful in the "double event."
> If Dodgson were attempting to incorporate the number "42" into his
> real life events as well as into his literature, there could be no
> better way to relate these murders to that code than to follow murder
> number four, not with a routine fifth and sixth, but with an emphatic
> "2" following the first "4." While theorists tend to believe that the
> second murder on 30 September was a madman's response to unsatisfied
> lust following interruption during the first killing, were two in fact
> planned or was the second one planned "on the fly" when a target of
> opportunity appeared? Two could have been planned even if the first
> was interrupted before mutilation could take place.
> [Image]In another coincidence, "42" appears in the murder of Martha
> Tabram, stabbed thirty-nine times. Assuming the autopsy results were
> correct, was the repeated stabbing the result not of frenzy, but of
> careful calculation and execution? Was there a goal to combine both
> the "Rule 42 of the Code" and the mysterious "Rule of Three" by
> finishing just three strokes short of forty-two? Was it coincidence
> that thirty-nine also was Martha Tabram's age? Had the Ripper
> determined her age in the course of disarming conversation? Was the
> frenzy a counting frenzy, an obsession for precision, not that of a
> lunatic out of control? Was there a meaningful selection process going
> on? Was there a subtle message to the police to pay attention to
> numbers in efforts to solve the crimes?
> [Image]Is it coincidence that Emma was forth-five years old, again a
> difference of three from forty-two? Mary Ann Nichols, possibly the
> third victim, and possibly the first murdered without assistance, was
> exactly forty-two years old and was killed exactly twenty-four days
> after Martha Tabram. The pattern fails with Annie Chapman, who was
> forty-seven; but on the night of the double event, the first victim,
> Elizabeth Stride was forty-five, while the second, surely not
> "selected" as she had just been released from the jail house, was
> forty-three. But when we come to Marie Kelly, the number appears
> again. For if the double event occurred just after midnight on 30
> September, and Kelly's on 9 Novem-ber, we have the latter occurring
> exactly forty-two days after stalking Elizabeth Stride on the 29th of
> September. A lapse of forty-two days between murders had been missed
> by just moments. Could that be the reason why in flight from
> detection, someone fixated on the number "42" remained fixated and had
> to commit another murder?
> [Image]There is some question regarding Kelly's age. Rumbelow, Wilson
> and Odell both have her twenty-four years old when she was murdered
> but the death certificate indicated she was twenty-five and was most
> likely the source used by Howell and Skinner. Given the quality of
> both researchers, the certificate may be incorrect. Did the Ripper
> believe she was twenty-four based on disarming casual conversa-tion?
> Did he choose her because her age is the reverse of forty-two? Or is
> it all just coincidence?
> [Image]Knight places Rose /Davis's death on the 26 December. [12]
> Rumbelow places it on the 28th/29th. [13] But the Daily News of 26
> December was already reporting during those days that it had occurred
> on Thursday, the 20th. She is not mentioned in the works of Wilson and
> Odell or Howells and Skinner; most do not believe she was a Ripper
> victim, although Sugden is so inclined. I add her as a possibility
> only because of the symbolic meaning of 20 December. For Rose Mylett
> was murdered exactly forty-two days after the murder of Marie Kelly on
> 9 November.
> [Image]Is it purely coincidental that these murders began exactly
> forty-two years after Dodgson entered Rugby, the boys' school where
> the sexual assaults appear to have reached an intolerable level, a
> level which most likely brought on a psychotic break? Was this the
> forty-second anniver-sary of when the "perfect child" became a
> confirmed psychopathic killer who would spend the rest of his life
> brooding and plotting his revenge? Is this why the spree had to take
> place in 1888? Had destiny so declared it?
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>   [Order This Book] [Title Page] [About the Author] [Related Sites]
>                              [First Book]
> 
>  [The Agony of Lewis Carroll]        The Agony of Lewis Carroll
>                                          by Richard Wallace
>                                [Excerpt]
> 
> From the chapter which identifies significant anagrams found in the
> works of Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll.
> 
> [Image]Scholars have been fascinated by the appearance of the number
> "42" throughout Dodgson's works. Though it does not appear in the
> source book presented to Alice Liddell, it appears in Alice's
> Adventures in Wonderland as "Rule Forty-two" in the Court Scene when
> the King of Hearts exclaims: "All persons more than a mile high to
> leave the court." Alice denies being a mile high but she has
> experienced increased growth and confidence as the trial has
> proceeded.
> [Image]It appears again in the Snark within Carroll's Introduction to
> the work as:
> 
>      Rule 42 of the Code: "No one shall speak to the man at the
>      helm and the man at the helm shall speak to no one."
> 
> [Image]It appears again in the Snark as 42 packages that belong to the
> Baker, one of the crew and long considered to represent Dodgson by
> interpreters of this work.
> 
>      [Image]He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,
>      [Image]With his name painted clearly on each:
>      [Image]But, since he omitted to mention the fact,
>      [Image] They were all left behind on the beach.
>      [Image]Fit 2, v7
> 
> [Image]Some have made a hypothetical connection between Dodgson's age
> and that of the narrator in Phantasmagoria. However, Dodgson was
> thirty-seven at the time of the text's publication. There are
> forty-two Tenniel pictures in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
> there are twenty-four total chapters in the two "Alice" books, which
> Clark points out is the reverse of forty-two. [8]
> [Image]Solving the phrases involved with the number 42 as anagrams
> results in the following: "All persons more than a mile high to leave
> the court", published in 1865 when Dodgson was thirty-three, becomes a
> quite different rule: "Let not holier thoughts reveal cheap animal
> mores."
> [Image]"No one shall speak to the man at the helm; and the man at the
> helm shall speak to no one", published in 1876, when he was
> forty-four, becomes: "No one shall spanketh the hot male meat; and the
> hot male meat shall spanketh no one," meat a valid word for genitals
> and suggesting shared masturbatory fantasies which appear in many
> forms within the Snark and in other anagrammatic themes from other
> works.
> [Image]From whence comes the fascination with the number 42? There is
> a risk of using writer's license in deriving this solution; for in
> order to solve this riddle, the rule established at the beginning that
> all letters must be used has to be broken. Partly due to the theme of
> this pivotal anagram, my sense is that this was a deceptive trick by
> Dodgson within his game play, a deliberate changing of the rules. This
> theme reappears as his fundamental attitude toward Victorian societal
> hypocrisy in general and is reflected in the bitter parody. I believe
> the appearance of this number is associated with the following, rather
> fortuitous occurrence. In 1950, nearly a hundred years after it was
> acquired by the Dodgson family, when the interior of the Croft Rectory
> was being remodeled, workmen found several items beneath the floor
> boards of the room used as a nursery during the Dodgson family
> residency __ a left foot shoe, a thimble, a hair slide, and the
> following verse written on a wood block, reportedly in Dodgson's hand.
> Also found with the family items was a note from the workers: "This
> floor laid by Mr. Martin and Mr. Sutton June 19th, 1843.) The verse on
> the block reads:
> 
>      [Image]And we'll wander through
>      [Image]the wide world and
>      [Image] chase the buffalo. [9]
> 
> [Image]...There are fifty letters in the verse and with eight removed
> an anagram emerges which I believe represents a manifesto to the
> world, a manifesto of the rage he carried with him wherever he went as
> forty-two symbolic letters or boxes: "Bluff a rough, sordid, heathen
> world and cheat death!", his strategy for achieving immortality. Note
> the thematic affinity to [the anagram formed from the title Alice's
> Adventures in Wonderland] "Censure an evil and stained world." Did he
> put this in at age eleven when the floor was laid, or did he manage to
> slip it there in the intervening years?
> 
>                       [Visit Publishing Central]


-- 
                                     "Angels take poison
  http://www.zikzak.net/~acb/         In rotting pavillions
                                      Under shivering stars
              <a--@d--.null.org>      The sickness is gilding." -- Coil