• R. Lakshmi Priya

Jack the Ripper, is considered to be one of the most notorious serial killers in the annals of criminal history. He can be seen as an epitome of the Human belief system; he is the perfect exem-plification of the anti-establishmentarian attitude as he broke the Cartesian epistemology of “I think, Therefore I am”, to “I kill, therefore I am”. While there are numerous conspiracy theories sur-rounding who the ripper is even after 129 years, he is yet to be found. Jack the Ripper was identi-fied by his style of killing in the year 1888 with five consecutive killings to his name. He killed women who were around 25 - 45 years old and left them disembowelled in the streets of London. He wrote gruesome letters to Scotland Yard which was investigating the cases; it is these letters and a few DNA samples that exist as the only collected evidence till date. With these conspiracy theories and interludes, a gamut of Jack the Ripper stories have been published by numerous crime writers till date, the most recent work being I, Ripper by Stephen Hunter in the year 2015. While numerous arm chair detectives have tried to close the case of the Ripper, what has always aston-ished the readers and general public is the stand taken by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during the period of the Ripper killings. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was already a successful detective story writer dur-ing this period and he had already published A Study in Scarlet. Despite writing the Holmes stories, it is surprising that he never mentioned a word about the Ripper in his works. This among many oth-er theories, led to assumptions that Conan Doyle himself might be the serial killer. This paper fo-cuses on the counter-historical evidences, that were published as works of fiction in a later period dealing with Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, the detective created by Doyle. The writers of Ripper killings have used the fictional interface of the Sherlock Holmes stories to create a fictional construct, by interpolating the historical facts related to the Ripper, his victims and the lives of the investigators, who could never find this notorious psychopath during their and during his life time. Among many such theories exist the idea proposed by Conan Doyle of “Jill the killer”. And of course, the other obvious assumption of what if there was no Ripper?. Such non-canonical theories are analysed in the course of this paper. The blurring of fact and fiction is prominent in case of the Ripper killings as numerous confirmed evidences are being rejected with scientific epistemology reaching its peak in contemporary times.

Anti-Detective Fiction as History: An Analysis of Victorian Reality and Post-modern Narratives

"Anti-Detective Fiction as History: An Analysis of Victorian Reality and Post-modern Narratives", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no.1028-1034, April-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAG06211.pdf

"Anti-Detective Fiction as History: An Analysis of Victorian Reality and Post-modern Narratives", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no. pp1028-1034, April-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAG06211.pdf