Product Description

Using contemporary documents, police files, Home Office papers and newspaper reports, 'Jack the Ripper: The Facts' recreates the notorious crimes and police investigation of 1888 to provide the best available overview of the 'Great Victorian Mystery', the greatest unsolved, true crime story of all time. Written by one of the world's foremost authorities on the case, this is a completely rewritten and fully updated edition of Begg's classic title Jack the Ripper. It follows the crimes chronologically and records the most significant events, witness testimonies and aspects of the police investigation. As well as objectively examining the primary police suspects, Begg provides a fascinating and authoritative insight into related political issues and background events.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101958 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Synopsis
Using contemporary documents, police files, Home Office papers and newspaper reports, 'Jack the Ripper: The Facts' recreates the notorious crimes and police investigation of 1888 to provide the best available overview of the 'Great Victorian Mystery', the greatest unsolved, true crime story of all time. Written by one of the world's foremost authorities on the case, this is a completely rewritten and fully updated edition of Begg's classic title Jack the Ripper. It follows the crimes chronologically and records the most significant events, witness testimonies and aspects of the police investigation. As well as objectively examining the primary police suspects, Begg provides a fascinating and authoritative insight into related political issues and background events.

About the Author
Paul Begg is acknowledged worldwide as one of the leading authorities on the Jack the Ripper mystery. He is co-author of the 'Ripper Bible', 'The Jack the Ripper A to Z', and has written 'Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History'. He lives in Kent.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Reference Work For All Would-Be Ripperologists
This is a densely researched, clearly written account of the background history to the Ripper murders, what is known of the events leading up to the murders and the theories that sprung up at the time and subsequently as to who committed them.

Beggs's research is comprehensive and looks into alleged early victims of the Ripper (including Faerie Fae) as well as the political forces at work in the police force as they struggled to find a culprit. Adopting a fairly chronological approach to the murders (albeit one that sometimes jumps back to earlier events), he scrupulously documents the records of the times, including identifying where evidence available to the original detectives has gone missing in subsequent years. His account of the lives of the Ripper's victims is at times moving and all appear as pitiful women, fighting to cope with their lives of poverty. The reproductions of photographs of some of the key players at the time really helps the reader to picture the people and the events surrounding these crimes and none are more chilling than the in situ post-mortem photographs taken of some of the victims, which shows the true savagery of the murders.

Beggs devotes several chapters to looking at those Ripper suspects investigated at the time, including the identity of the notorious `Leather Apron' who terrorised the East End's prostitutes and was fingered as a candidate for the Ripper, Patricia Cornwall's theory on Walter Sickert, Prince Albert Victor and numerous others. What's interesting is that he spends almost as much time establishing where those theories match up with the known facts to pointing out obvious discrepancies and the result is an even-handed approach that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Particularly invaluable is the bibliography and references that Beggs adds at the end. Amounting to over 100 pages in total, it is an invaluable research for those who want to go on and read more on the subject of `Ripperology'.

Informative and well written. Not Speculative.
This book is very informative and well written. Begg shows why he is a renowed ripperologist.

This book gives great detail about the lives of the murdered women, life in victorian london and the lives of the suspected suspects. Although Begg does not seem to outwardly condem any particaulr author's/researcher's writings he does outline the problems with many of the widely adopted, yet unlikely to be true, concluesions and suspects.

Begg takes a broad minded approach and asses many piecs of evidence to show the reader that he is attacking the subject from a historographical standpiont and not a speculative one.

One of the best ripper books ive read. I strongly recommend this!

Definitely worth it for any student of the case!
Because this book is for some reason unaviable in Canada, I ordered it from amazon.co.uk and was not in the least disappointed. The book contains much less detail on the social conditions than his "Definitive History" in favour of a complete history of the case. While in some ways, this book contains less detail on certain aspects than Sugden does, it still, in my opinion, deserves to be ranked with it as the best comprehensive account of the case because it deals with much of the more recent research on the case and still provides a wealth detail, not all of which is in Sugden. The book provides an overview of the case, and covers the expected ground, with chapters on each of the canonical victims (including Tabram), Leather Apron, the letters (with significant detail on the Dear Boss and Lusk letters), the police, the reactions/climate in Whitechapel and London, and the Macnaghten Memorandum. All the chapters contain references to primary sources, mostly quotes from newspapers and police reports.
The suspect oriented chapters on the case include Druitt, Ostrog, Kosminski and Tumbelty. There is also a small section in the Kosminski chapter on Fido's "David Cohen" theory, which in my opinion, despite the dificulties, is the best one out there (I think the confusion of suspects and Anderson's veracity cannot be so easily dismissed). A final chapter briefly discusses, and refutes, various other suspect theories, including the royal theory, Sickert and Maybrick. There are also a few pages of Chapman/Klosowski in chapter 8. There are also the standard victim pictures in the book and pictures of the murder sites. There are also pictures of many of the notable police officers involved in the case as well as two photos of the Swanson marginalia.
Begg's account is, in many respects, as conservative as Sugden's, correctly I think. For example, they both express agnosticism about authenticity of the Lusk kidney, and deem Packer completely unreliable.
There are also differences between Begg's account and Sugden's, giving the book a certain enjoyable idiosyncratic flavour. Sugden and Begg both add Tabram as a probable sixth canonical victim (in my opinion quite rightly), and plausibly discount Smith, Coles and Mackenzie. However, while Sugden includes Millwood and excludes Wilson, Begg discounts Millwood and makes a case Wilson. One final, and perhaps the biggest, difference between the two is that Sugden argued that George Chapman/Klosowski is the only known suspect who could have been, and perhaps was, the killer, Begg all but discounts Chapman seems to tacitly favour Kosminski, although he rightly acknowledges a lack any definitive evidence. While Ripperologists will probably have to die not knowing anything for certain, one cannot help but obssessively keep working at it and Begg's work is basically the best we can do.