As the Jack the Ripper atrocities increased with such alarming ferocity, people began looking for any motive that could have driven somebody to carry out such atrocious crimes.
At the time the study of mental illness was a growing branch of medical science, and specialists, such as Dr. Forbes Winslow, were constantly in the news commenting on the type of person the murderer was, and what could possibly have inspired him to undertake his reign of terror.
As the murder spree got underway, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was playing at the Lyceum Theatre, and several commentators were opining that it might have inspired someone to carry out the murders in imitation of either the novella or the play.
One person who began appearing a lot in peoples newspapers in the autumn of 1888 was the alienist, neurologist, and anatomist Dr, Edward C. Spitzka (1852 – 1914) – the author of the landmark psychiatric manual, “Treatise on Insanity, Its Classification, Diagnosis and Treatment”, which had been published in 1883.
The Bradford Daily Telegraph, published an interview with him in its edition of Friday the 16th of November 1888:-
THOSE LONDON MURDERS.
Dr. Edward C. Spitzka, of New York, who is known far and wide as a tireless and advanced investigator of mental diseases, says, referring to the Whitechapel murders:-
“It is probably a case of sexual perversion, what the old French writers called instinctive monomania.
If this is so, the murderer is just as cunning and deliberate in his crimes as an able, sane man would be in doing meritorious acts, or as a forger or swindler would perpetrating their lawless deeds.
THE DESIRE TO BITE
This London murderer shows skill, daring, and the power to conceal his identity.
Many persons have a desire to bite those for whom they entertain affection.
There is a much larger number of persons than you dream of who, if the could take a knife and cut and scarify (not kill) and see the blood run, would experience great delight.”
DOES HE ENJOY THE NOTORIETY?
“Do you think he enjoys the notoriety which the newspapers are giving the case?
“Very likely that does not affect him at all.
He enjoys reading the details of the crime, and of how the the corpses looked, but probably has no law defying mood.
If this man is like the other cases we know of, he will be remarkably careless when brought face to face with the moral enormity of his deeds. He will recognize as an abstract idea that it was not right, but there will be no inward conviction.
INSPIRED BY JEKYLL AND HYDE
As a member society he may express regret, but his conscience will not trouble him. He will very likely possess, in a faint degree, the moral qualities of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I should not be surprised if he was stimulated to commit these crimes by reading Mr Stevenson’s morbid and unhealthy story, which is likely to have a bad effect upon a previously morbid mind.
DUAL NATURE IN NEW YORK
I have had in New York a case of this dual nature and sent him to the asylum. He confessed to me his horrible cravings.
“When I walk in the street,” he said, “I feel as if I could cut the flesh of the people I see.”
He was certainly one of the most singular looking persons I have ever seen.
The expression of his countenance was indescribable; in ordinary language, it would be spoken of as at once repulsive, comical and weird.
This effect was heightened by involuntary grimaces, resembling vacant smiles or sarcastic grins.
Occasionally, an expression of satanic cunning would pass over his countenance; in the next moment it would look almost childishly open and appealing.
SUCH FUN TO SPOIL THINGS
His gait was sliding and swift – he appeared to pass along without steps, and I could not resist the impression that Mr Stevenson had some such person as my patient in his mind when he described the repulsive influence exerted by Mr. Hyde on persons passing him in the street.
Once he said:-
“Going along the street, I find that it is such fun to spoil things; people go along imagining that they have good looks, and do not think that I have a power to take away their good looks, a power as if I could bite them.”
DANGER OF AN EPIDEMIC
“Do you think there is any danger of an epidemic of these butcheries?”
“Well, of course danger exists.
The slumbering propensities of such persons are excited by reading of such butcheries. It works upon their imaginations.”
ACTS OF KNOWN LUNATICS
“Are the Whitechapel butcheries simply reproductions of the acts of known lunatics?”
“Yes, sir. There are many cases on record.
In Westphalia, three or four years ago, a man killed 13 innocent country girls and defiled their bodies by mutilation to gratify the same extraordinary passion or fury that has, in all likelihood, inspired the Whitechapel crimes.
They were all stabbed in the back in the same way.
He suddenly ceased, and no one has ever discovered who he was.
He was satiated.”