Jack the Ripper Conference 2012: York

I’m back at last! I know I’ve been promising this blog all weekend, but I just haven’t had the chance (or at times been sober enough). So here we go:

Friday 28th October

I left Swansea at 11.30am and arrived in York (via Bristol at about 5.30pm) caught a taxi to my hotel (which took a while due to traffic suffering the after effects of the recent floods) where I checked in, freshened up and changed and wandered down the Monkbar Hotel (I was staying in the nearby City Guest House on MonkGate as it was much cheaper (http://www.cityguesthouse.co.uk/). Upon arriving I was greeted by two members of the conference team extraordinare in the form of Neal and Jenni Sheldon who presented me with my delegate pack whereupon I headed to the bar and was greeted by some old friends and new ones. Shortly after I also saw conference organisers Colin and Ricky Cobb and Adam Wood and Andrew Firth (whose fantastic graphics surrounded us all weekend), until finally Trevor Bond joined me after his long trip from Aber. Trevor needed some help getting some videos working with his antique laptop so him, myself and Adam Wood barricaded ourselves in the conference room to try and do some tech wizardry (which unfortunately wasn’t that successful) for several hours until we finally gave up and went to rejoin our fellow delegates. Despite the prices in the bar the beer and conversation was flowing for several hours until I retired for the night at about 1am.

Saturday 29th October

Arriving at the conference venue at nine I greeted more friends who were joining us that day and settled into my seat in time for Colin Cobb’s welcome speech. Colin is a funny and charismatic speaker with a great enthusiasm for everything who made us all feel welcome.

After Colin welcomed us and thanked his fellow organisers the first talk was John Bennett (with a change from the advertised talk of “The Strange Case of James Lampard”) speaking on the subject of the pros and cons of being a Ripper tour guide. The talk featured a brief history of the Ripper tour industry, many amusing anecdotes (with John’s customary wit and use of voice impersonations) and even a best practice guide for other tour guides.

Next up was Robert Anderson with “An Inconvenient Book – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Diary Tests but Were Afraid to Ask” – in which he detailed a brief summary of the some of the contradictory test results and possible origins for the book, before handing over to his surprise in the form of Diary owner Robert Smith who spoke briefly on the Diary and after lunch let us see it up close.

The next event in the schedule was mysteriously labelled “Tempus Omnia Revelat!” (the Latin for Time Reveals All Things) which was one of our conference surprises in the form of… an open top bus tour of York. I was quite glad to be able to see some of the city and many stories the guide told were very interesting.

After lunch (and a quick look of the Diary supervised by Robert Smith) the talks resumed once more.

The afternoon kicked off with Neil Storey discussing “The Dracula Secrets: Jack the Ripper and the Darkest sources of Bram Stoker” in which he detailed some of the research from his new book showing how Bram Stoker was influenced by the Ripper crimes when writing Dracula and the links between Stoker and Ripper suspect Francis Tumblety. Neil’s talk was the most interesting of the day and when he speaks he makes anything sound interesting an animated (I think Colin Cobb mentioned at one point that Neil reading a shopping list for bin bags would sound interesting).

Next up was Trevor Bond who (after falling asleep in the bath when finishing it off the previous night, destroying his copy of The Final Solution by Stephen Knight – no real loss really) “Writing Mary Kelly” a look at the evolution of the “character” of Kelly in fiction and reasons why she is often not treated the same as the other victims.

The final talk of the day was Trevor Marriott, who despite his best efforts (and disgusting autopsy photos) did not manage to convince anyone of his crackpot ideas (sorry… I mean interesting theroies) regarding organ removal, discarded aprons and the graffiti (The author wrote “Juwes” but meant “Jurors” indeed…).

After the talks Neil Bell took a few of us on his “The Alternative Victorian Lantern Show” in York’s dark alleys to demonstrate how much light a Victorian police lantern would have given off and the sound of a police whistle.

The evenings entertainment was in the form of a banquet at St Williams College, which was a medieval one (with no plates) and each table was named after a Street connected to the case (I was on Berner Street). After dinner was the raffle (Liza and Colin should make a comedy double act) where I won a mug (hurrah!), followed by a very brief talk on the Swanson Marginalia by Neville Swanson (great grandson of Donald Swanson, the detective in overall control of the Whitechapel murders case).

After retreating back to the MonkBar-Bar (say that 10 times fast) we decided that as it was the anniversary of the Double Event we would stay up to toast Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes (at 1am and 1.45am), the finding of the graffiti and apron (at shortly after 3am) and the graffiti getting erased (at 5.30 am) (after the Double Event toasts I think it may have just become an excuse to stay up and drink…). The toasts were interspersed with deep conversation on both the case and the wider world and I finally staggered back to my bed at 6am…

Sunday 30th September

8am

Alarm goes. Oww my head.

9am

Oww my head

10am

Forced myself up and in the shower. Owe my head.

11am

Finally made it back to the conference, having unfortunately missed all but the last 5 minutes of Lindsay Siviters talk on “Sir William Gull: The Man Behind the Myth”. Head still hurts

After a few coffees and painkillers, Martin Fido discussed “The Rest of the World on 30th September 1888” featuring news stories, sports events and politics, and questioning if whether the rest of the world had been more interesting on this day, the Ripper crimes may have had less press attention.

After a Sunday roast (which cured my hangover) we were back in the afternoon with Rob House “Aaron Kosminski: Soctland Yard’s Prime Suspect”. Rob presented an interesting case against Kosminski and has left me wondering due to his circumstantial evidence (or certainly unique coincidences) if Kosminski was responsible for Strides murder.

Now we were on to the final talk of the day and the one I was looking forward to the most: Laura Richards “Profiling Jack the Ripper: Using 21st Century Techniques to Understand a 19th Century Killer”. And it did not disappoint, it was fascinating and enlightening and was the stand out talk of the weekend for me (and all the other talks were of a very high quality indeed). After speeches and goodbyes from Colin and the other organisers (and the announcing that there would be a conference next year on November 9th – the 125th anniversary of the final Ripper crime) we retired to the bar to reflect on the weekend and get ready for our ghost tour.

We left the hotel again and ventured into York, going on the Ghost Hunt from the Shambles where our “unique” guide (who looked like Jack the Ripper) told us tales of tragedy, plague, murder and being buried alive! Following this we all went for Italian food and ventured back to the bar to discuss the weekend and say our final goodbyes.

Monday 1st October

I wanted to see some of York, so I left my bag at the hotel and ventured through the MonkBar into the city to look at the streets and buildings. I visited the haunted house on StoneGate and a couple of old pubs (16th and 17th century) before leaving York and heading back home to Swansea.

This years conference was a fantastic experience and my thanks go out to Colin and Ricky Cobb and their team for their hard work and dedication for bringing us this event. Can’t wait until next year!

 

More photos are posted individually to my blog as Instagrams or on Facebook.

Edit: Facebook pics now up – see them here.