JACK THE RIPPER'S SECRET CONFESSION. The Hidden Testimony of Britain's First Serial Killer

Hardback. 1st US Edn. While fear of Jack the Ripper spread throughout the East End of London in 1888, another man wrote about his exploits on the dark, damp streets hunting flesh. He called himself "Walter". He was a rapist, voyeur, and fetishist obsessed with prostitutes. In the same year as the Ripper killings, Walter first printed his vast memoir of sex and perversion under the title 'My Secret Life'. Fewer than 20 sets were printed on a secret Amsterdam press between 1888 and 1894. Long banned for his perversion and obscenity, only censored excerpts of Walter's masterwork were seen for a century. One of the few complete sets not destroyed by the authorities was locked away in the British Library. This is the story of the volumes in that locked room and the horrific secret they contain - the secret that unlocks Walter's diary as the confession of Jack the Ripper. This book details how this notorious work of violent Victorian pornography reveals that its author - textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee, writing under the name Walter - had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper. As importantly, it delves into dark psychiatric motives within the text, to show Walter possessed the unique psycho-sexual fingerprint of a serial killer. The comparison between Walter and the Ripper also illuminates the taboos of Victorian sexual society including that of child prostitution - which was rife - in a time when the age of consent was still thirteen. A book which makes the case for a strong new Ripper suspect. With Endnotes and Index 332pp. small 8vo. h/back. Lightly browned edges o/w Nr. F. in F. protected dw.