Sickert painted the Ripper's crimes

The argument

Walter Sickert was a painter who took a strong interest in the Ripper case, notably completing a painting entitled "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom" in 1907, based on his time staying in a room allegedly used by the Ripper. Some of Sickert's other paintings contained hints about the murders as well, including his 1908 work "The Camden Town Murder", in which the murdered body of a prostitute is positioned in a strikingly similar way to the autopsy pictures of the actual Ripper murders. Sickert's obsession with Jack the Ripper and the clues of his paintings go beyond a simple artistic interest, and suggest that he was deeply involved with the Ripper's crimes.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The inference would convict a large portion of the era. Fascination with the Whitechapel murders was a mass phenomenon in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and painting, writing about or living among the sites of a famous crime is the behaviour of someone interested in a famous crime. Applied consistently, the reasoning implicates every true-crime novelist and documentary maker since; artistic preoccupation is evidence of preoccupation and nothing further. The individual items are weaker than they look. The title of 'Jack the Ripper's Bedroom' rests on a landlady's assertion that a former lodger had been the murderer, which is hearsay from twenty years afterwards and was the kind of claim many London landladies made. The Camden Town paintings take their subject from the killing of Emily Dimmock in 1907, a widely reported contemporary case with its own trial, so a resemblance to a murdered woman in those canvases is explained by the murder Sickert was actually depicting. Compositional similarity to autopsy photographs is also a judgement of the eye, made by people who already suspect him, and the poses of reclining figures are a staple of the period's painting. The positive case is thin where it would need to be strongest. Documentary evidence, including family correspondence cited by critics of the theory, places Sickert outside England during part of 1888, and the forensic claims advanced in the best-known books — mitochondrial sequencing and paper matching — do not exclude large numbers of other people and have not been accepted by most researchers. Against named suspects who drew contemporary police attention, and against the position that no single person committed the canonical murders, an argument resting on a painter's subject matter is the weakest form of identification available.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The painting's title rests on a landlady's claim, made two decades later, that a former lodger had been the murderer — hearsay of a kind common at the time — and interest in a famous crime was a mass phenomenon in the period, so the premise establishes preoccupation rather than involvement. [Rejecting P2] The Camden Town works take their subject from the 1907 killing of Emily Dimmock, a widely reported contemporary case with its own trial, which accounts for a murdered woman appearing in them; and compositional resemblance to autopsy photographs is a judgement made by those already persuaded, in a period whose painting is full of reclining figures. [Rejecting C] The identification also runs against documentary evidence, including family correspondence placing Sickert outside England during part of 1888, while the forensic claims advanced for the theory do not exclude large numbers of other people and have not been widely accepted — leaving subject matter as the weakest available basis for naming a suspect.