JACK THE RIPPER'S SECRET CONFESSION. The Hidden Testimony of Britain's First Serial Killer

Monaghan (David) & Cawthorne (Nigel)

ISBN 10: 1602397996 / ISBN 13: 9781602397996

Published by Herman Graff/Skyhorse Publishing (New York), 2010

About this Item

Hardback. 1st US Edn. While fear of Jack the Ripper spread throughout the East End of London in 1888, another man wrote about his exploits on the dark, damp streets hunting flesh. He called himself "Walter". He was a rapist, voyeur, and fetishist obsessed with prostitutes. In the same year as the Ripper killings, Walter first printed his vast memoir of sex and perversion under the title 'My Secret Life'. Fewer than 20 sets were printed on a secret Amsterdam press between 1888 and 1894. Long banned for his perversion and obscenity, only censored excerpts of Walter's masterwork were seen for a century. One of the few complete sets not destroyed by the authorities was locked away in the British Library. This is the story of the volumes in that locked room and the horrific secret they contain - the secret that unlocks Walter's diary as the confession of Jack the Ripper. This book details how this notorious work of violent Victorian pornography reveals that its author - textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee, writing under the name Walter - had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper. As importantly, it delves into dark psychiatric motives within the text, to show Walter possessed the unique psycho-sexual fingerprint of a serial killer. The comparison between Walter and the Ripper also illuminates the taboos of Victorian sexual society including that of child prostitution - which was rife - in a time when the age of consent was still thirteen. A book which makes the case for a strong new Ripper suspect. With Endnotes and Index 332pp. small 8vo. h/back. Lightly browned edges o/w Nr. F. in F. protected dw.

Seller Inventory # 12588

Bibliographic Details

• Title: JACK THE RIPPER'S SECRET CONFESSION. The Hidden Testimony of Britain's First Serial Killer
• Publisher: Herman Graff/Skyhorse Publishing (New York)
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1602397996
• ISBN 13: 9781602397996
• Binding: Hardcover / Hardback
• Edition: First edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Jack the Ripper and Assoc.

About this title

Synopsis

With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life, first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history’s most fiendish killer.

Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it’s narrated by “Walter,” the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died in 1901, long before his book would be widely read. Only now have researchers finally come to the conclusion that “Walter” and Jack the Ripper were, in fact, one and the same.

Jack the Ripper’s Secret Confession puts all the pieces together, and its new theory will amaze and titillate scholars who for generations have pondered the true identity of history’s most brutal murderer.

About the Authors

David Monaghan is an award-winning television director. He lives in England.

Nigel Cawthorne is the author of numerous books on history and true crime, including Serial Killers and Mass Murderers, and The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large. He lives in England.