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Post by Doc Al on May 26, 2010 18:09:27 GMT -5
I'd like to do a little brain-picking that's way off Alamo topics. Having been around this and other Alamo sites, I know the high caliber of the contributors and the wide range of interests, as well as the diligence, with which you all post answers. Here goes.
I'm thinking about doing a general-interest type book on Jack the Ripper, and one of the things that's always fascinated me is that, in investigating the second murder, Scotland Yard questioned "some cowboys," who may have been stranded or who stayed behind after Buffalo Bill's Wild West show had left England a few months before. There's only the one spicky little comment. Black Elk was there, but he says nothing in "Black Elk Speaks" about the murders or about much else concerning his stay. But among the letters to the editor written by Londoners, there occasionally are suggestions that the Ripper murders could have been committed by American Indians at large in the East End. The reasons, of course, was the savagery of the mutilations. I'd like to know if anyone could share info, or point me in a direction, regarding books, articles, etc. dealing with British attitudes toward American Indians, especially attitudes around the year 1888.
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Post by Del Groves on Jun 3, 2010 7:28:05 GMT -5
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Post by Doc Al on Jun 3, 2010 12:29:42 GMT -5
Thank you, Del! I'll check that site. I also did a Google search, though an unforgivably hasty one, and missed the source you provide.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jun 15, 2010 23:31:39 GMT -5
Hey Doc. I've got an ol' Ripper file, but I never heard that theory on Black Elk and the Indians. Interesting. Man, they were blaiming Jews, Poles, Indians and all kinds of foreigners for those brutal murders. I think Jack was probably just some rich English doctor out for scalpel practice on poor, easy victims. Uh, no offense to doctors, Doc. Just speculatin'. ;D
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Post by Doc Al on Jun 16, 2010 17:43:04 GMT -5
Yo, Ranger Rod! I'm PhD, not MD, but I think the "doctor" theory has a lot to it as well. Yeah--If you check a copy of the graphic novel "From Hell" I think one of the Indians interviewed is Black Elk. As for speculation, one of the latest contenders for the true identity of the Ripper is Lewis Caroll. The volume of screwball "scholarship" out there is astonishing. About the equivalent of "Exodus from the Alamo," or worse. Thanks for sharing!
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jun 16, 2010 23:09:21 GMT -5
I think a suspect with a proficiency in quick dissection has always been the most logical theory. Investigators have often gone down strange avenues, then backtracked when they hit a dead end. The ridiculous Lewis Carroll theory is a different rabbit hole all together. It's interesting, but with the end of the actual Ripper Murders in Whitechapel, suspects started to show up across the world in Australia, America, Africa, etc. thanks to the introduction of the global telegraph, but I guess they were released when the evidence didn't pan out.
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