Ripper suspects – Joseph Barnett or George Hutchinson

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some of my research instead of my writing musings, so let’s jump back in to Jack the Ripper and consider a pair of suspects: Joseph Barnett or George Hutchinson. These are an “or” pair instead of an “and” pair, because nobody’s (yet) suggested that they worked together, but the story behind them is very similar.

Both Barnett and Hutchinson are connected to Mary Jane Kelly, the last of the so-called Canonical Five victims of Jack the Ripper. Choosing either Barnett or Hutchinson as the Ripper clearly makes Mary Jane Kelly the last. It actually positions her at the center of all of the murders.

Joseph Barnett was Mary Jane Kelly’s boyfriend. The two of them met in April 1887 and decided to move in together on their second encounter. The vast majority of what we know – or think we know – about Mary Jane Kelly comes from Barnett’s testimony at the inquest after her murder. He lived with her until the end of October 1888, when they quarreled and separated.

Barnett had been living with Mary Jane Kelly at 13 Miller’s Court when they separated. It was a very small room, with only a single bed, and one of the reasons for the separation seems to be that Mary Jane was letting other women sleep there. Since this was the Autumn of Terror where women were being murdered in the streets, and since Mary Jane had a steady room that wasn’t in a lodging house, it seems like it was a kind thing for her to do.

Another instigating factor for their separation also seems to have been the fact that Barnett had lost his job as a fish porter, resulting in Mary Jane Kelly’s return to sex work. Barnett apparently disproved of this as much as he did of her offering their small, shared space to other women, and so he left her. Their separation was the reason why Barnett was not also sleeping at 13 Miller’s Court the night of November 8-9, and why Mary Jane Kelly was alone and murdered there.

Barnett was not a suspect at the time. In fact, Inspector Fredrick Abberline personally cleared him after a four-hour interrogation, which included an inspection of Barnett’s clothes. No blood was found, and Abberline, at least, was satisfied.

The same cannot be said for Bruce Paley who, in 1996, named Barnett as the Ripper. According to Paley, Barnett decided to become the Ripper in order to scare Mary Kelly off the streets and force her to stop making money through sex work out of fear of being murdered. On the one hand, Barnett’s plan seems to have worked if Mary Jane Kelly was worried enough to allow other women to sleep indoors with her. On the other, he apparently couldn’t scare her enough to stop. Thus, Paley argues, Barnett was driven to kill the woman he loved because he couldn’t save her otherwise.

George Hutchinson also became a Ripper suspect not in the 1880s but in the 1990s, this time in a 1998 book by Robert Hinton. Hutchinson was known to the police at the time because, after Mary Jane Kelly’s murder, he made a statement to the police about a man he had seen with Mary Jane Kelly shortly before her murder. Hutchinson, unemployed, apparently had plenty of time that night to hang around Miller’s Court and get a good look at anyone who passed by.

Abberline also interviewed Hutchinson, although he was considered only as a witness and not a suspect. Hutchinson had known Mary Jane Kelly for three years and his incredibly detailed description of the man entering the room with her was explained because Hutchinson thought the man looked “foreign,” which piqued his interest and concern. After all, women were being murdered, so of course he would memorize every detail about any man who seemed to be going into his friend’s room as a client.

Although numerous skeptics have doubted Hutchinson’s description of the Ripper, he wasn’t accused of being the murderer himself until Hinton. And here the story sounds very similar: angry that Mary Jane Kelly was supporting herself through sex work – and not relying on him as her sole sexual partner and source of money – Hutchinson orchestrated the Ripper murders, hoping to scare Mary Jane Kelly into stopping.

Hinton suggests that Hutchinson, after seeing Mary Jane Kelly take that client into her room and that client later depart, snapped. Hutchinson therefore went into 13 Miller’s Court himself, shook Mary Jane Kelly awake – or tried to, considering the reports that she was very drunk that night – and was confronted with the reality of the woman she was instead of the apparent perfection he had preciously imagined. With this ideal shattered, Hutchinson lashed out and killed her.

So: two men who knew Mary Jane Kelly, and were known to have been close to her at the time of her death. One of them was cleared as a suspect by Fredrick Abberline, and the other never even considered to be one. More than a century after the Ripper murders, each in turn became accused of being the Ripper to turn Mary Jane Kelly away from sex work … and into his arms.

What do you think? Was there something in the air in the 1990s? Would a man ever actually turn to serial murder as a way of pursuing the “perfect” woman? Or should we let Barnett and Hutchinson rest in peace?

The curse of “perfection”

The other day I read a comment (about a knitting pattern, but it still applies) where someone said “If I’m paying $X, I expect it to be perfect.”

It wasn’t even an exorbitant amount of money. Just a very normal price for a knitting pattern. Probably too low, even, but we don’t need to get sidetracked into discussions of fair pay for designers. The part that’s stuck with me is this idea of “If I’m paying for it, then it should be perfect.”

Putting your writing (of any kind) out there for other people to read is a scary thing, because it means random strangers can pick it apart. Insult it. Post that they can’t believe they paid $X for this. Sharing your writing means opening yourself up to critique, criticism, and insults of something you’ve worked hard on, and done all you could to “fix,” but …

Errors happen.

Especially when your document goes from person to person and each is focused on perfecting one aspect of it. Your editor fixes your commas, maybe, but then once it goes into layout, you end up with a weird line division of a multi-syllable word. It’s not because layout wanted to introduce an error. Layout did exactly what layout is supposed to do. And hopefully you catch it in the proofs stage, but in the proofs stage you’re looking for errors and trying to build your index, working under a hard deadline.

I think it’s time for Gaiman’s First Law again:

“Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there’s one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.”

Neil Gaiman

We’re human. All of us, no matter what our title or CV or reputation. We’re all trying our best to contribute what the process – and it’s a long, long process – needs from us so we can end up putting something in your hands. We read our own words so many times, trying to approach them from so many mindsets, that a mistake isn’t a sign of neglect. Everyone involved is doing their best and laboring over the document and reading so closely that yes, sometimes we miss something that a casual reader will think is glaringly obvious.

There will always be errors, and there will always be people pointing out errors. I guess my fear is that someone will read “If I’m paying $X, I expect it to be perfect” and then … never try. Never write something in the first place. If a complete stranger has such high expectations, never having met you, imagine how high your own must be since you’re fully aware of your own capabilities.

Have you ever heard this one?

A good dissertation is a done dissertation. A great dissertation is a published dissertation. A perfect dissertation is neither.

old academic adage now apparently posted everywhere without an accompanying citation

Stop expecting perfection. Of other people. Of yourself. If perfection were a requirement, nothing would ever be published. We’d all be stuck in the pit of despair and red ink. Forever.

If your idea is going to get out there, you need to make peace with the fact that it won’t be perfect. (Whether you really want to make peace with the fact that strangers will communicate with you solely to point out errors is your own decision.)

There are some things you have no control over. There are some things you just have to let go. One of the first is others’ idea of perfection. And one of the second is your own.

What do you think? Can writing ever actually be “perfect”? (And do people send the same number of comments about something if it is?)

Interview with Grab the Lapels

Melanie over at GTL has interviewed me for her Meet the Writer Series. Go on over and check it out! If GTL is new for you, Melanie explains:

Meet the Writer is a feature for which I interview authors who identify as women. We talk less about a single book or work and more about where they’ve been and how their lives affect their writing. Today, please welcome Rebecca Frost. 

She starts off by explaining a bit how we met. She tracked me down through this website and we emailed back and forth for quite a while about true crime, books, reading … the good stuff. And then we realized we actually have a friend in common.

Melanie asked if I’d like to be featured in her Meet the Writer series, and I jumped at the chance. Head on over to her blog to see what I have to say.

About handling multiple projects again …

I had a virtual conference this past weekend and I was talking to some friends I haven’t seen in over a year. This is usually how it goes for me: someone asks what I’ve been up, to, and … I realize I need to start counting things off on my fingers. Which inevitably leads to another question of “How in the world do you do it?”

Right now, in this very moment, I’ve got three book projects going. They’re all in different stages, but they’re all currently in progress. Some of the progress of getting a book published is actually “waiting,” which is helpful, because I can fill the “waiting” time with other work.

It’s also something I rather seriously compartmentalize. Two of the projects are currently in the “waiting” stage. I’m waiting for one of them to get me proofs, and for feedback on the other, so currently I don’t really consider either of those as “active.” I don’t know exactly when they will be “active” again, but, until they hit my mailbox with the next step and a new deadline, they’re basically snoozed.

A downside to the “waiting on other people” can be that multiple things hit your inbox at once. There was that one memorable year when I wrote three chapters for different collections, plus a book, and things just kept hitting my inbox with tight deadlines and a lot of tasks. That’s when I had to step my compartmentalization up to the next level, assigning each project a block of time per day instead of a block of days.

This is also the time when anxiety can kick into higher gear and imposter syndrome can rear its head, because people are actually reading what I wrote, or they’ll soon be able to. They can pick it apart and tear my argument down piece by piece. (For some reason anxiety never worries that the publisher won’t be able to keep up with demand and people will complain about that.)

And usually when you get feedback, there are at least some positive comments in the mix … but you’re not concentrating on those. You’re looking at what you have to change, and how you’re going to do it, and whether you’re going to be able to keep to your main goals and ideas secure while responding to outside influences. (This is why it’s nice to only have one project in the feedback part of the process at a time, if possible, so at least you can retreat to something else for a break.)

And honestly, it’s only when I have to catch someone else at my life that I step back and see the forest for the trees. I know that’s usually meant as something people should do, because otherwise they miss things, but … for me, at least, focusing on one project at a time (and strictly outlining what those times should be) helps me block out the wider anxieties and put as much of my energy as possible into the project at hand.

How do you deal with working on multiple projects at once?

Jack the Ripper and hypnotism

At the beginning of the year, I was contacted and asked if I’d be interested in writing the foreword to a book involving hypnotism (the author’s area of study) and Jack the Ripper (mine). I’ll admit that I was a little dubious even after I agreed, since I tend to avoid fiction about the Ripper but, once I had the proofs in hand, I was fascinated.

Donald K. Hartman collected two Ripper narratives from 1888 and 1889, both of which use hypnotism in their explanation of why the Ripper killed. Hartman also makes a case for both stories as having the same author, with one written under a pseudonym, and goes on to detail the life of Edward Oliver Tilburn. That’s an adventure in and of itself, but I’m going to stick to the Ripper here.

As I mention in my foreword, the obsession with the Ripper story isn’t just about discovering who the Ripper actually was, but also explaining why someone would kill like this. It’s a question of motive, and we ask it of every serial killer. It’s comforting to have an answer – for example, to say “Ted Bundy killed women who looked like the one who dumped him in college,” since that makes his choice of victims somehow explicable and also means that women could do something as simple as changing their hairstyle to keep themselves from becoming his next victim. (It is, of course, always up to women to keep themselves safe.)

The question was especially prevalent in the 1880s because the existence of someone who killed strangers for his (or her) own devices just seemed so foreign. This wasn’t the era of serial killers and CSI – there was no handy term to use for such a person. The backstory that seems done to death in 2021 didn’t exist in the late 19th century. There wasn’t the Crime Classification Manual or interviews with violent offenders to form a framework. The question of “What sort of person would do this?” didn’t have even a vague, profile-heavy answer.

Hartman provides us with reprints of two stories that respond to the question with “Well, hypnotism’s involved, so that explains a lot.”

Twenty-first century readers might have to force their eyebrows down over the hypnotism specifically, but the two stories here have much in common with contemporary narratives. One of them has so many similarities to NBC’s Hannibal that it’s almost a Ripper AU fanfic. There’s no cannibalism, but an innocent younger man crosses paths with an older man whose obsession is dangerous and immoral, and the two of them begin an intense, destructive relationship.

Once the author (or authors) establishes that at least part of the Ripper was due to hypnotism, it clarifies a lot for the Victorian audience. Already the Ripper is involved in something dark and mysterious, on the edges of society, that really shouldn’t be touched. Once a hypnotist is involved, there’s really not much of a stretch to include murder. One outsider easily becomes another, and the danger of the hypnotist is that of Charles Manson: he doesn’t have to be present at the murder to have caused it, and his powers are so great that he can influence someone who’s otherwise innocent to transgress enough and commit murder simply because he wanted them to.

Neither of these stories intends to actually explain who the Ripper was – that is, to honestly name a suspect or explain the crimes. They’re entertainment, and Ripper scholars can pick out all the details the author(s) gets wrong in the telling. But the really fascinating thing to me is how they’re so similar to serial killer fiction we see produced today, and how many themes and tropes we still share with the late 1800s.

What do you think – does a Hannibal-esque retelling of Jack the Ripper pique your interest? Is there value in reading these old attempts to explain the Ripper through outdated fears of hypnotism and control?

Is it worth it for humanities scholars to have a website?

This question’s been going around Twitter lately, so here are my thoughts:

  • Yes, because if you have a blog, you have more space to answer questions like this and can link people back to it instead of trying to type out the same answer, but shorter. (I’ve been doing this lately when people ask about academic book proposals: two blog links in one tweet. I’m not crowding your feed, but bam, these are my thoughts.)
  • Yes, because it’s a way for people to reach out and contact you. If you’ve ever tried to track down a scholar based on a thesis or dissertation, you might know: .edu emails disappear. They aren’t always checked. Even though my website hasn’t even been around a year yet, I’ve had multiple people contact me through it, either because they’d already read something about me or they googled something about my research and came across it that way.
  • Yes, because if you don’t have a website, you’re never going to randomly wake up one morning to a notification that Smithsonian Magazine has linked to it. Okay, that’s very specific, but: if you don’t put things out there for people to find (for free), then these things won’t happen. It’s also a place where you can share your research on a more accessible level, both as in “not behind a paywall” and “I don’t have to put on my ‘scholar voice’ when I write this stuff.”

People who are curious about the work I do are more likely to click on a link than they are to buy a book. Especially a book from an academic press – we all know the price tag on those can be higher than average. But, if you read what I post and like what I do, the chances of a purchase go up.

On the other hand, the possible drawbacks:

  • Starting a blog means having to continually produce content. I draw either from research I’ve already done and published or my interactions with other writers, but it still takes time to write up these posts so that there’s continually something new. Having a static website is still totally recommended because of my second point – giving people a current means to contact you – but, if you’re thinking of going the blog route, it’s another to-do in your list.
  • Costs. Depending on the kind of website you want, you might have to budget for it. There are plenty of opportunities for people who don’t know either coding or design (hello!) to set up their own websites, but taking the time to look around and decide which one seems best for you is a cost of its own.
  • Overnight success takes a decade. Well, maybe not quite that long, but I looked at this website and blog as a long-term investment. Sure, the views and comments would be low at first, but … maybe … some day … even more things will happen that I never dreamed of. Through all of the “shouting into the void” weeks, though, you still need to be producing content. That’s just something to be prepared for.

What do you think? Do you have your own website? What’s your experience been like?

You’re not a train

Say you’re sitting down to write a new project and it’s just … not working. You’ve got a deadline coming up, but that doesn’t seem to be helping. You’re going through all of your usual tricks to get words on the page, and the blinking cursor still taunts you.

The thing is, you’re not a train. You’re not stuck to a single track. There’s more than one way to get from point A to point B.

Trains can only go where the tracks have been laid, and the tracks themselves have to follow a bunch of rules: no turns tighter than such-and-such. No inclines steeper than so-and-so. They need this much track to get up to speed, and this much to stop, and if they come off the tracks, they’re in big trouble. Anything from a cow to an avalanche can ruin everything, up to and including your perfect murder plot on the Orient Express.

But you’re not a train.

That’s one of the reasons there are so many “how to write” books out there. Maybe a bunch of writers agree on certain sets of train tracks, and there’s a lot of traffic there, and maybe they even usually work for you, but the world is so much more than train tracks. There are paved roads, and dirt roads, and trails through the woods, and not only are you capable of off-roading when necessary, you can even fly. You’re a drone with controls in the hands of a master.

Not a train.

I fall into this, too: thinking that, since x, y, and z have worked well for me in the past, they’re the only paths I have. The only ones I know. The only way to get from point A (the blank screen) to point B (the completed manuscript.)

As though I haven’t read (and rejected) other ways of writing, and I haven’t heard about other apps and technology, and there’s no pen or paper in the house.

When you get stuck with writing, the best thing is to stop trying to force it and take some time away. Deadlines don’t always allow for that, so the second best thing is to stop trying to force it this way and try another approach. Instead of cutting straight on through, the way you always have, look for a different path to see if it’ll skirt the issue and get you where you need to be.

It’s like the old rhyme about going on a bear hunt, except you can go under it. Or around it. Or over it. You’re not forced to always stay on the same tracks and always go through it.

You’re not a train.

The tracks are there, and well-known, and comfortable, but if they’re not meeting your needs right now … leave them. Seek out the path that’ll get you where you need to be, because sometimes plowing through the trees gets you there faster than continuing to inch painfully along the tracks.

(With apologies to my brother, who might actually be a train. He works at the Strasburg Railroad, and that’s him in the front. He’s even written a book about trains and how to make your own.)

Blinders on

There are a lot of times I point out how useful it is to put on your metaphorical blinders when you’re working on a project – or especially when you’re working on multiple projects. Having a clear focus helps keep you from getting sidetracked, especially if today you’re supposed to be working on Manuscript 2, so stop thinking about 1. But, sometimes … the blinders work against you.

Lately I’ve been working toward the tail end of a couple projects. Proofreading, final manuscript preparations, that kind of thing. Generally surface-level stuff and final checks before sending something off. I’ve just finished the current step on a couple of these, and I was telling a friend that I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my week, since I know I’m getting comments back from someone next week.

He told me he’s spending his week reading.

… oh. Right.

I’ve been so focused on these particular steps for these particular projects that I’ve been ignoring the stack of books to the left of my desk in my “read these next” pile. Not to mention a whole bunch of other books lined up behind them.

I have to admit, though, that this isn’t new. Once I get to the end of my to-do list, even two items at a time, there’s generally a moment of stunned silence and a feeling of “Uh … so what now?” I’ve been so focused on getting this one thing done – thank you, blinders – that, once I’ve checked it all off, I have to blink a few times before I can back up and take a look at the forest again.

So: this week, I’ll be reading. Also known as “putting words back in my brain.” Making notes in the margins and highlighting all sorts of things and writing down any new ideas and connections that occur. (But not messing with anything I’ve already handed off – nope: once you put something out there for someone else to look over, don’t even look at it again. Because you can’t go changing it now, anyway.)

Writing blinders, off. Reading blinders, on.

Tools of the trade – digital

It’s the third point of the triangle: my favorite purely-digital writing tools. Once again there’s a selection, depending on what part of the process I’m in. I don’t use all of these every single day – except maybe Microsoft Word – but they all tend to play a role in every writing project.

Microsoft Word – Yeah, I know, but first, most places want you to submit as a Word document, and second, I’m not going to talk about the typing aspect. While it’s useful, and my comfort my word processor, lately I’ve been utilizing the “Read Aloud” feature.

You can adjust the reading speed, but I keep it a little slow and jerky because I’m not really listening to get the meaning of what I’m writing. I use it to proofread, because Read Aloud won’t add extra words in if I’ve missed them, won’t skip over the extra words I’ve put there, and will pronounce whatever word I’ve written instead of the one I think I’ve written. Proofreading your own work is hard, but listening to a semi-robotic voice cover exactly what’s on the page helps.

Scrivener – I’m not as die-hard a Scrivener fan as some of my friends, but I’ve been playing around with it more since the update earlier this year. Scrivener lets you view things as notecards (a plus for me, considering my analog tool preference), move them around, and get an overview more easily than Word. You can choose how closely to zoom in on your work and when to pull back to see how it all fits together.

If you just jump in without watching the tutorial, you’ll probably be lost and think it’s pointless. It might not work for your writing style anyway even after you do watch the tutorial, but there are a lot of steps and processes built in to Scrivener that make it … Scrivener. Going through the tutorial means knowing all of the possibilities, and you might stumble across a different way of thinking about your writing.

Pro Writing Aid – A self-publishing friend of mine recommended Pro Writing Aid because it, like Scrivener, gives you a different way of looking at your work. You can try it out for free on the website with a small sample and play around with the various reports it offers. For me, Pro Writing Aid works best when I’ve got the writing as strong as I can, so it comes near the end of the process – I haven’t tried composing in the program, but just importing once it’s fairly polished.

All the reports and suggestions can be overwhelming, so it’s recommended to work on small sections at a time, anyway. It helps give an overview of your writing weaknesses and crutches, beyond “just” grammar and usage.

Dragon (formerly Dragon Naturally Speaking) – Whenever I mention this one, I get hit with “Oh, I could never dictate my writing!” I mean, not with that attitude …

There’s a learning curve. Any new process or technology has a learning curve. I first downloaded Dragon in December 2020 to give my hands a break because, for some reason, I decided to completely NaNoWriMo (50,000 words) in two days. Ow. So I looked into various dictation tools I already owned, and then went with Dragon because it’s not an add-on – it’s all they do.

And yes, you start off slow and feeling kind of silly. Yes, you have to train yourself to add in punctuation. But again, Dragon offers something that typing doesn’t, the way different programs have their own affordances and limitations. I like being able to dictate when my hands feel like they need a break, and I’ve put enough time into it that I can switch back and forth, depending on how I want to write that way. You absolutely can dictate your writing, if you decide it’s worth the time and effort.

What other digital writing tools do you use? Is there anything else I should try?

Tools of the trade: analog

There are a lot of steps to the writing process, and I’ve used a lot of tools over the years. (Fun fact: I wrote my first “novel” when I was 15. It ended up being about 25,000 words, all written by hand, using a mechanical pencil and college-ruled notebook paper.) Some tools come, and some go, but I’ve found that a number of hands-on pieces still work really well for me, especially in the planning stage.

Pens and markers and highlighters, oh my: I like thick, bold lines, so I’m apt to reach for Sharpies or markers. My husband writes with the finest pens he can find. On the plus side, we’re not going to steal each other’s writing utensils.

It’s kind of like what they say about kitchen knives: the best one is the one you’re going to use. The one that feels good in your hand. And, in the case of writing, the one that leaves the sort of mark you want it to leave. (Leaving marks with kitchen knives is a different story.)

I’m also all about colors. When I’m reading or taking notes, I’ll have at least two on hand: one for the important things, and one for the stuff I want to stand out as even more important. I know this about myself, so in the Before Times when writing in coffee shops was common, I always made sure I had multiple pens in my bag before going out to one.

I mentioned the Frixion brand in my other post, and they’re not just for Rocketbook – they work on normal paper, too, and erase with the heat from the friction of rubbing at the page with the rubberized “eraser.” I use their pens, markers, and highlighters for basically everything, because then I get my nice bold lines but also the ease of being able to fix any mistakes. (Note that disappearing in heat means don’t leave any important documents in your hot car, and that you shouldn’t sign important documents with them. Every tool has its intended purpose.)

Index cards and sticky notes: I like being able to capture ideas or due dates in bite-sized, discrete chunks. I’ve got a number of reminders posted around my desk on bulletin boards or just stuck there to keep me on top of the various projects I’m working on (because there are always overlapping timelines). These are, of course, color-coded, because I’m me.

It feels easier for me to have not only the condensed space of this smaller sheet, but also the ability to be able to move them around or toss them out if necessary. There’s something about typing an outline or initial ideas on a computer that feels too polished and final. In the initial brainstorming stages, I want to be able to write things down, cross things out, and shift them into new groups to discover better connections. Being able to physically move sticky notes around helps me do that.

I will frequently do sort of a quick study on plain white index cards or just one color of sticky notes and then, once I’m starting to see the shape of the project, group them and write them out again on different colors to trace the themes and ideas. I like the visual aspects of being able to pull back and see an entire project laid out like that, and then being able to focus today’s writing on just one of the points.

The Mover Family: the idea here combines sticky notes and magnets. I backed their first kickstarter campaign to get a number of sticky notes in two different colors and a couple of the magnet boards to place around my workspace. It’s like having eternally restickable sticky notes (and the new version turns each magnet from a finite amount of sticky notes that need to be replaced into mini whiteboards).

I like these because they’re meant to be moved and displayed, and the new whiteboards will cut down on the number of sticky notes I use. (Yeah, I know, there are apps and things that will look like sticky notes and index cards, but sometimes I want the feel of a pen in my hand and something in my own handwriting.)

What analog writing tools do you like to use?