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Saturday, June 09, 2018

Jack the Ripper/Walter Richard Sickert?

Walter Richard Sickert Age 2. In one more year he will begin to undergo 3 Vivisections in the next 2 years on his genitals for a fistula. Without anesthesia. 

In June,1862 Dostoevsky left for his first journey abroad. In July of that year he was in London and it was in London that he came face to face for the first time with the industrial society which he regarded as the triumph of Baal. The thing that struck him most was the contrast between the colossal facade  of riches, luxury, and general prosperity of the few and the abject poverty of the many and their coolie-like  acquiescence in their fate. Dostoevsky wrote in the April, 1863, issue of Vremya, in which he described his impressions of his first visit abroad, the starving soul is humbled and driven to submission, seeking salvation in gin and dissipation and beginning to believe that this is the way things ought to be.Facts oppress the spirit, and if scepticism is born, it is a gloomy, accursed sort of scepticism which seeks salvation in religious fanaticism.

...every Saturday night half a million workers, men and women, with their children, spill into the streets like a flood, flocking to certain parrts of the tkown, and all through the night, till five o'clock in the morning, they are taking part in a bacchanalian revel, eating and drinking like beasts, ...All are drunk, but not cheerfully; ...All seem to be set on getting dead drunk as quickly as possible.

...Anyone who has ever visited London has probably been to the Haymarket, if only once. This is the quarter which is at night crowded with women of the street. In the Haymarket I saw mothers who had brought their young daughters, girls who were still in their teens, to be sold to men. Little girls of about twelve seize you by the hand and ask you to go with them. 

Seeing London at this time through Dostoevsky's eyes is a rare gift for us. Like Conrad he saw the consequences of industrialization.

The Best Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky translated by David Magarshack Modern Library, 2005. pages xi-xxvi.

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In three years Walter Richard Sickert, having just turned five years old, will be brought to this London. He will be brought by his father to the hospital to undergo his third vivisection on his genitals in two years. Without anesthesia. Not known for his tenderness, concern or interest in his children Oswald Sickert will dump little Walter in the hospital, a dank, chilly, inhospitable place with no one there in the evening or all night long. Only one nurse works there, and she goes home at night. 

The message is clear. Fix him. Make him into a Real Boy. Or.........let him die? The miracle is that he didn't. 

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Patricia Cornwell has researched him for two decades now and has spent millions of dollars searching for evidence that will provide Proof. While she cannot, I am convinced that Sickert was The Ripper and so is she. The debate rages on as it does with the JFK assassination.