Jack The Ripper - Mark Whitehead [43]
Knight died of an inoperable brain tumour in 1985, by which time he’d joined the Rajneesh cult and written a further exposé of Freemasonry, The Brotherhood (1983). Sickert continued to change and embroider his story for whoever was listening but it appears to have followed the law of diminishing returns. In 1981, after the arrest of the Yorkshire Ripper, Sickert claimed that Sutcliffe had once tried to run him down with his lorry.
Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942)
Fingered by Jean Overton Fuller in Sickert and The Ripper Crimes (1990) and Patricia Cornwell in Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed (2002)
Sickert was a renowned British artist, born in Munich. His work, and that of his followers, found a space between French impressionism and realism, drawing inspiration from London’s seedy music halls and down-at-heel lodging houses. Although not considered independently in the previous edition, Sickert had already been unmasked by Fuller in 1990. Rightly or wrongly, what got him noticed as a suspect was Cornwell’s book. This situation seems to have occurred simply by virtue of being in the area and being famous.
As noted under Sir William Gull’s entry above, Jean Overton Fuller writes in Sickert and the Ripper Crimes that the ‘royal baby story’ (Gull and all) was related to her mother, the artist Violet Overton Fuller, in 1948. She claimed to have heard it from Florence Pash, a fellow artist and close friend of Sickert. Supposedly, Ms Pash’s suspicions were aroused by Sickert’s claim to have seen the bodies and his detailed descriptions of the wounds. Yet this knowledge could be gained by following the case closely through the newspapers and Sickert was a voracious reader. That the Whitechapel Murders fascinated Sickert is without question. He frequently lunched out with the story of how he had rented a room previously occupied by a ‘pale veterinary student’ who was collected by his parents in the middle of the night shortly after Mary Kelly’s death.The landlady told Sickert that it was only after he left that she realised he was… Go on, guess.This tale became The Lodger after Marie Belloc Lowndes heard it from Sickert. Tales of murder fuelled Sickert’s creativity but reading about the Ripper isn’t the same as being the Ripper.
Pash’s tale fits very neatly with Stephen Knight’s theory in The Final Solution. Perhaps a little too neatly, as Pash, Fuller claims, also relates the story of Lord Salisbury allegedly paying Sickert £500 for an inferior painting – clearly a bribe to buy Sickert’s secrecy. Knight and Pash both claimed that the prime minister was part of the Freemasons’ plot. Yet Lord Salisbury was never a freemason. Also, Sickert told the same story, but about another artist, A Vallon. Lord Salisbury had paid the painter off personally because he disliked the family portrait he had commissioned. This confusion suggests that Pash’s evidence may not be all it seems.
On the subject of paintings, Fuller’s (and Pash’s) story includes the same detail about Sickert including a clue in one of his works. In at least one of the versions of ‘Ennui’ (Sickert painted five, possibly more) a painting on the wall behind the ennui-laden couple depicts a statue of Queen Victoria. Perched on its shoulder is a seagull… However, Jean Fuller insists that it is a bluff, a deliberately false lead placed there by Sickert to lead suspicion away from himself and put Gull in the frame. As Alan Moore points out in From Hell,given that Fuller’s favoured suspect was Sickert, why include Pash’s detail about the clue in the first place? Would it not have been simpler to find another ‘clue’ that points to Sickert?
Patricia Cornwell does just that, and using another version of ‘Ennui’. In this version, the painting on the wall depicts a young woman. Cornwell notes that behind her there appears to be a man lurking in the shadows, or what may be an ear, anyway.This is read as Sickert admitting to his guilt. As clues go, it is hardly the gold standard.