DRACULA, when it was published in 1897, was not an immediate success. There are those who have suggested, and not without some credence, that the popularity it eventually garnered was due in no small degree to the crimes of Jack the Ripper less than a decade prior. The depredations of this real-life monster whetted the Victorian appetite for lurid titillation and made it easier to believe that a vampire might really be prowling the fog-shrouded streets, preying on hapless victims. There are even some who’ve suggested the Ripper WAS a vampire as a way to explain his seemingly supernatural means of avoiding capture, and his bloodlust.
Every year now, and sometimes several times a year, someone comes out with a new, 100% positive identification of the killer, offering “definitive” proof to back up his or her claims. None of these identifications is definitive, and some are downright silly. The latest candidate put forward, by author Bruce Robinson, is singer Michael Maybrick, whose brother James has previously been fingered as the writer of the “Jack the Ripper diary,” which is a hoax, by the way, albeit an entertaining one. The same can be said for this new theory. Like all the rest. It’s entertaining, if nothing else.