Was Jack The Ripper A Jaqueline?

A great deal of attention is being paid to Watchmen and Alan Moore because of DC Entertainment's new summer event Before Watchmen. But what of Alan Moore and his other works? I wonder what Moore would have to say if and when he weighs in on this: 

Could Jack the Ripper have been a woman?

According to a Doug Barry on the website Jezebel, that may be the case. 

The theory is not a new one. In 2006, Kathy Marks in The Independent, had word that a scientist may have proven the theory.


That's what a new book argues, suggesting that the killer who murdered five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel district in 1888 was a woman named Lizzie Williams, the wife of physician Sir John Williams, who himself was labeled a suspect in a 2005 book. Author John Morris, a retired lawyer, contends in Jack The Ripper: The Hand of a Woman, that Lizzie killed the prostitutes out of anger over being infertile, and the despair led her to remove the wombs of three of the victims. Among the evidence Morris cites:

• None of the five prostitutes were sexually assaulted.
• The personal items of one of the victims were laid out at her feet, quote, "in a feminine manner."
• Three buttons from a woman's boot were found in blood near the body of another victim and remnants of women's clothing were found in the fireplace ashes of yet another one, and the items didn't belong to the victims.
• Evidence suggesting that one of the five women, Mary Kelly, was having an affair with Lizzie's husband, who ran abortion clinics in Whitechapel.
• Evidence suggesting that Lizzie suffered a nervous breakdown soon after the murders.

Despite Morris' arguments, other so-called "Ripperologists" have dismissed the idea that Lizzie Williams was the killer. Over the years, more than 100 people -- until now all of them men -- have been theorized as possible Jack the Ripper suspects.

It should prove interesting to see if Alan Moore, a "Ripperologist" himself, weighs in on this.


I've seen the 1992 Johnny Depp-Heather Graham film. I sometimes get it confused with other Johnny Depp films, most notably Sleepy Hollow, because, Depp usually works with Tim Burton, and the combination usually ends up becoming a soup of films that all seem alike.

I've not read Moore and Campbell's From Hell. I'm not sure I have the stomach strong enough for it. I've read and heard from those that have read it that it is both exhaustive in detail and research and quite graphic. It might be cold and factual in presenting details of the murders, with autopsy results, but still, CSI's have not desensitized me that much. That's probably the difference from the British to English approach. Nothing is more fascinating - other than, say, maybe Amelia Earhart - than the elusive mystery of the identity of Jack The Ripper. At this length, we can still only speculate, and fictionalize, who it might have been.

At any rate, the guilty culprit was truly (here it comes) from Hell.