One of mine and my youngest daughter’s pleasures is to visit IKEA, a strange place where I cannot avoid being fascinated by the small, decorated rooms. They make me think of reconstructions of antique environments which are to be found in museums. The only difference is that at IKEA people move around among the furniture. Otherwise, the IKEA environment is just as strangely removed from reality as the museum displays.

Recently I did in an art magazine discover the works of the American artist Rikki Nihaus – Swedish Landscapes. Contour-sharp, hyper-realistic oil paintings showing how the same man, wearing a gray suit and black tie, places himself among IKEA's furniture displays. Perhaps these artworks might be considered as a critique of our consumer society. I do not know. The images are emotionally cold, testifying to surface and alienation. The man seems to e something in common with the furniture – rigid and devoid of signs of expressions he reflects an illusion of “reality”, that is nothing less than lifeless sterility.

One of Nihaus’ paintings appears to reflect a painting by the English artist Walter Sickert'– Ennui, Boredom. A cigar smoking man stares blankly at something beyond us. while a woman is leaning against a chest of drawers seemingly looking straight into the wall, or possibly she is dreamily looking at a painting. It is hard to establish which is the case.

In Nihaus’ Swedish landscape, the man also looks at something outside the picture and just as the older cigar-smoker in Sickert's painting has a half-filled glass in front of him, and possibly an ashtray, or a matchbox, the well-dressed man sitting among IKEA’s furniture display has glass and porcelain in front of him. The woman behind him turns away. The two IKEA-visitors have no contact whatsoever. O each other they are complete strangers. IKEA is here appearing as a Twilight Zone, a world far beyond the “real” life.

On the contrary, the persons in Sickert’s painting might know each other far too well, in any case they have no contact either.

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) was undoubtedly, along with his contemporary Philip Wilson Steer, England’s foremost impressionist, although his misanthropic disposition makes Sickert often seem to be in a twilight zone between impressionism and expressionism. Below we see the serious Sickert and a more jovial Steer in a painting by Henry Tonks.

Sickert painted atmospheric landscapes from Venice, Dieppe and the English countryside, but made himself best known as a city painter.

His representations of taverns and cabarets have a certain liking to Degas, at least in terms of motifs, although Sickert makes use of a more fragmented colour surface and diffuse contours.

In 1883, Sickert met Degas in Paris and was then deeply impressed by him and his art. Like Degas, Sickert depicts entertainment venues and portrays prostitutes, and like the virtuoso Frenchman, Sickert used unexpected angles, bold cuts, and paid attention to subtle light shifts and reflections.

However, if Degas in his painting seems to find himself in the middle of life, Sickert, who quite often was overtaken by depressions, seem to express a feeling of exclusion, paired with a negative view of humanity. Sickert used to state that he regarded humanity as divided between "caretakers and patients".

In London, Sickert liked roaming around in poor, run-down neighborhoods. In his pictures of prostitutes, Sickert does not seem to meet them like in Degas in brothels, but in shabby hotel rooms, and he portrays them with a ruthless, almost contemptuous realism.

It is possible that Sickert, despite having a several girlfriends, had a degrading view of women. In fact, he explicitly forbade women to participate in the artists’ group he founded in 1911 and named The Camden Town Group. For three years, sixteen artists met regularly in Sickert’s studio and arranged joint exhibitions. Several of them were already well-known, like Robert Bevan, Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis and Duncan Grant.

Robert Wood was an artist who, like Sickert, lived in Camden. However, he was too young and unrecognized as an artist to be honoured with membership in an illustrious artist fellowship. Wood was primarily an engraver and was working as designer at the reputable London Sand Blast Decorative Glass Works. Since he and Wood shared the same interests, Sickert was probably acquainted with him. Like Sickert, Wood was often seen in pubs, restaurants and various places of entertainment and was known as a somewhat blasé, though nevertheless a charming man.

Emily Dimmock, who occasionally worked as a prostitute, was in 1907, in an apartment she shared with a railway worker, found with the throat slit. The couple was not married and when the man was away on lengthy work shifts Emily received her former customers in the couple's shared apartment. The perpetrator had killed Emily in her sleep he had deed unseen disappeared from the crime scene.

The murder became a sensation and was followed up by a number of sensational newspaper articles. It was wildly speculated that Jack the Ripper had reappeared. Robert Wood’s former girlfriend, Ruby Young, who was a prostitute as well, knew that Wood had an affair with the murdered Emily. The artist forced Ruby to provide him with a false alibi for the night of the murder. Ruby, however, told what happened to an acquaintance, who went to the police who when they pressed Ruby and furthermore showed her a postcard they had found in Emily's apartment, she recognized Wood’s handwriting. Ruby's testimony was fitted in with the fact that several of Wood’s acquaintances on the night of the murder had seen him together with the murdered Emily. Wood was arrested, but was acquitted after an extraordinary skillful defense.

Through his handsome, youthful appearance and calm demeanor, Wood had during the trial been able to charm a large part of the audience, while others became disturbed by his light-hearted, obviously careless behaviour. During his trial and detention, Wood made a number of sketches which were immediately published in the press. After his acquittal, the suspected killer lived a relatively unnoticed and quiet life until his death in 1966.

Walter Sickert was a trained actor and could easily identify with different people, not least suspected murderers. He became famous after devoting several drawings, etchings and paintings to what he called The Camden Town Murder. All these works of art depicted how a dressed man is seen in the same room as a naked woman lying on a bed.

Sickert had previously made himself known for renderings of “vulgar” nudity and his depictions of the Camden Murder created a widespread scandal. Rarely had a well-known artist in such a brutal manner manifested his engagement in an actual murder, which furthermore hinted at sexual violence. Sickert went out in defense. In an article he opposed the shallow and enticing nudity of salon art and instead advocated an uninhibited realism:

An inconsistent and prurient puritanism has succeeded in evolving an ideal which it seeks to dignify by calling it the Nude, with a capital “n,” and placing it in opposition to the naked. An interdict to representations of the naked figure, such as was in force in certain Catholic countries in the middle ages is worthy of respect, and is consistent. The modern flood of representations of the vacuous images dignified by the name of the Nude, represents an intellectual and artistic bankruptcy that cannot but be considered degrading, even by those who do not believe the treatment of the naked human figure reprehensible on moral or religious grounds.

From time to time, Sickert painted naked women with disfigured faces and bodies, reminding of the work of Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873–1949), a commercial photographer who in New Orleans devoted himself to portrait - and landscape photography. Bellocq came from a well-to-do family and was something of a dandy, who according to friends and acquaintances had no other interests other than photography. Bellocq was attracted to Storyville, the city's shabby, red light district, the birthplace of jazz and an abode of disgraceful entertainments. Bellocq spent much of his time in the brothels and opium dens located to these infamous neighbourhoods.

After his death, Bellocq became known for his previously unknown photographs of nude prostitutes. Pictures that have made Bellocq the subject of a number of films and biographies, often of a lugubrious kind. The main reason for this interest is that several of the naked women portrayed in Bellocq’s photographs have had their faces scraped away. Something done already while the photo emulsion was still moist, i.e. the liquid mixture of gelatin and photosensitive silver salts that early photographers used to develop their images.

That Bellocq acted in such manner remains a mystery, especially since his nude models on several images have their faces intact. However, Bellocq often provided his models with face masks.

Bellocq’s and Sickert’s nudes are through their rather shabby surroundings reminding of Francis Bacon's numerous depictions of distorted, helplessly naked and almost massacred figures twirling around on soiled beds.

Bacon’s occasionally quite repulsive pieces of meat, placed as they are on disheveled beds, bear a resemblance to the revolting forensic photographs taken of Jack the Ripper's victims. Jack the Ripper was the designation for an unknown serial killer who between August and November in 1888 murdered at least five women, the so-called Canonical Victims, this since there might be several more victims of The Ripper’s murder spree.

The killings came to prominence through their connection with social and moral squalor of the undiscovered assassin’s hunting grounds within Whitechapel, one of London’s East End’s most infamous neighborhoods, immortalized by Gustave Doré’s etchings in Jerrold Blanchard’s London, A Pilgrimage from 1869 and Jack London’s impressive reportage book The People of the Abyss, from 1903.

Murder was common in the East End, not the least did its poor and unprotected prostitutes live dangerously. The general public’s anxiety and imagination were further provoked by the Ripper’s defilement of his victims. He opened their corpses opened and removed internal organs. In some cases, he arranged severed body parts together with various objects in the same room where he had committed his horrendous crimes. This was done in such a way that it seemingly suggested macabre rituals. In other cases, he took some of the organs with him. One of the the Ripper’s victims was Swedish port of Gothenburg.

When the commotion was at its greatest heights, the police and press received hundreds of letters whose senders pretended to be Jack the Ripper. Most of them could be rejected as written by journalists, or by people who wanted to enjoy the effect of their antics. Several researchers believe that all letters are fake, but one of them is, due to its special content, often highlighted. This so-called Letter-From-Hell was addressed to the leader of a civic guard which assisted the police force in its search for Jack the Ripper. 

The letter was sent in a small box that also contained half a human kidney. The grotesque object may have originated from one of the victims, Kate Eddowes, who suffered from the same disease as the sent kidney showed signs of. The letter writer, it is the only letter that is not signed with “Jack the Ripper”, said he had fried and eaten the other half of the kidney. The misspelled, strangely formulated and awkwardly texted letter eventually disappeared during the London Blitz. It got its name from its introductory words “From Hell”.

Jack the Ripper’s rampage among East End’s prostitutes ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Had he simply taken his own life? Or was he perhaps a well-to-do gentleman from the city's upper classes who assumed that hunters were on his track? In any case, the gruesome murders gave rise to a plethora of “investigators” who, from 1888 onward, have been presenting a myriad of theories and assumptions about who the killer might have been. There is no lack of articles, books, plays, musicals, operas, comic books, paintings, rock music and not the least novels dealing with Jack the Ripper. The perpetrators have been identified as teachers, thieves, lawyers, surgeons, butchers, mental patients, vampires, demons, doctors, hairdressers, blackmailers, arsonists, royalty, writers, artists, businessmen and police officers. Jews, Freemasons and priests have been suspected. In addition to being English, Scots or Irish, the alleged perpetrators have been Poles, Russians, Americans, Germans, French, Belgians, Italians, or Australians.

After presenting his artistic renderings of the Camden Murder, Sickert began to expose an increasingly immersive interest in Jack the Ripper. He continued to paint naked female figures on beds in impoverished environments and even imagined that his home on 8 Morning ton Crescent once had housed Jack the Ripper. His landlady had assured him that a tenant, a young man studying to be a veterinarian, who had rented the apartment in 1881, had been no less than the infamous serial killer.

That Sicker was engrossed by his interest in brutal murders has been observed stated, among others, by his artist colleague Marjorie Lilly (1891-1980), who in her memoir Sicker: The Painter and His Circle from 1971 described how Sicker when she once visited him was obsessed by a “burning craze for crimes personified in Jack the Ripper.”

The artist and gallery owner Helen Lessore (1907-1994), who in the thirties spent a lot of time with Sickert and wrote several articles about him, also pointed out his great interest in murder scenes and claimed that she and Sickert often visited places where heinous crimes had been committed. In parentheses it might be mentioned that it was Lessor who first paid serious attention to the young Francis Bacon’s art and she did in 1953 in her London gallery Beaux Arts arrange the artist's first exhibition, when among other outrageous works his later so famous Screaming Pope was exhibited.

Several of the paintings and sketches that Sickert made of his bedroom he named The Bedroom of Jack the Ripper. In a particularly enigmatic version we see the room through an open door. It is dark and contours are blurry, light enters from gaps in the window blind. It appears as if a menacing figure is standing with his back to us, looking out through the narrow openings in the window screen – the Death, Jack the Ripper? In comparisons with several other of Sickert’s representations of the same room, we realize that it is in fact not the shape of a dark male figure, but a mirror.

Did Sickert often stand in front of that mirror while pretending to be Jack the Ripper? A fantasy he possibly portrayed in his depictions of disfigured, naked women? He made a large number of paintings of naked women lying exposed on a bed in the same room. Were they fantasies about slaughters by Jack the Ripper?

Sometime in 1969, Helen Lessore, who was sister-in-law to Sickert's third wife, was in her gallery visited by a peculiar man and thus began a new chapter in the strange story about Jack the Ripper.

Joseph Gorman, a rather unsuccessful artist and art restorer, claimed to be the illegitimate son of the otherwise childless Walter Sickert. Gorman had sought out Lessore because she was known to be an authority concerning most matters related to Walter Sickert, if she accepted Gorman's story it would be an important part of his intents to prove that he was Sickert’s son.

It was not only Walter Sickert’s fatherhood that Gorman revealed to Lessore, most sensational was that according to him had Jack the Ripper not at all been a crazy serial killer. The five women had actually been murdered as part of an effort to hide a scandal within the British royal family. According to Gorman, the killer had been no less than the respected Sir William Withey Gull, one of Queen Victoria’s trusted medical doctors. Walter Sickert had also been involved in the bloody and sordid drama.

Through Helen Lessore, the BBC got in touch with Joseph Gorman, or Joseph Sickert as he now called himself and this contact became the origin of a conspiracy theory that still haunts movies, books and newspapers.

In 1973, the BBC did in six episodes broadcast a series dealing with Jack the Ripper. The programs were in part presented as a discussion between two “detectives” and interspersed with dramatized scenes taking place in the 1880s. In episode six, Joseph German appeared and told his astonishing story.

According to Gorman, his grandmother – Annie Elizabeth Crook, had secretly been married to the English heir to the throne, Albert Victor, and had a daughter with him. In connection with this rather incredible story, German claimed that the Ripper murders were part of a conspiracy to silence a potential scandal by murdering everyone who knew that Albert Victor had begotten a daughter with a commoner, a woman who worked in a tobacco shop.

Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, was the eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII. Accordingly Albert Victor was in second place in the British succession order. However, he died in 1892, only 28 years old, and since Edward VII died childless, this would actually mean that Joseph Gorman’s mother, Albert Victor's daughter, had been the rightful heir to the British throne and that Joseph Gorman thus was a prince. However, when Edward VII died in 1910 it was Albert Victor’s son, George Frederick Ernest Albert, who became British King under the name of George V.

According to Gorman, Walter Sickert knew everyone involved in the conspiracy to cover up the fact that Albert Victor had a daughter. They were all Freemasons. Sickert also knew Since Albert Victor, Edward VII and the future George V all were members of the same Masonic lodge as Sickert he was personally acquainted with all of them. That Sickert knew George V is partly based on the fact that he made several portraits of him. However, like so many other of Sickert's “portraits”, they were actually based on newspaper clippings.

At the request of her Masonic friends, Sickert, still in accordance with Gorman’s imaginative tale, employed a nanny to Prince Albert Victor’s secret daughter, whose mother by the conspirators had been locked up in a mental institution. The nanny was, in fact, a prostitute, Mary Jane Kelley, who, when she learned about the truth of the child’s ancestry, began blackmailing the British royal family. Mary Jane Kelley became Jack the Ripper’s last victim, before whom Sir William Withey Gull, on behalf of the royal family and with the help of his Masonic colleagues had murdered four of Mary Jane’s friends, they were all prostitutes, making it all appear as crimes committed by a perverted misogynist.

Joseph Gorman/Sickert had claimed that he had been told the sordid story by his alleged father, Walter Sickert, who according to him had had an affair with Prince Albert Victor’s alleged daughter, who thereby had became the mother of Joseph Gorman/Sickert.

The reason I became interested in this singular story was that while I in 1983 was teaching history of religions in Santos Domingo was approached by one of my adult students who came up to me and greeted me with a somewhat peculiar handshake. He blinked conspiratorially while declaring: “I understand that you are one of us.” When I seemed to be completely unaware of what he meant, he whispered: “Los Masonicos” the Freemasons. Somewhat later I discovered that handshake on the cover of a book by Stephen Knight The Brotherhood, which in addition to providing an interesting account of the history of the Freemasons presented a number of more or less fantastic conspiracy theories about this legendary society. In Knight’s book I found Joseph Gorman’s ingenious story, which the author apparently had taken very seriously.

After watching the BBC’s series about Jack the Ripper, Stephen Knight (1951-1985) had sought out Joseph Gorman in his shabby apartment in north London. For hours, Knight had been sitting and with great fascinated listened to the mythomaniac’s cunningly constructed stories. At first, however, Knight had been extremely doubtful whether the whole thing could be true or not and accordingly dug himself into investigative journalism, which led him to discover quaint contexts and inexplicable coincidences. Finally, Knight became convinced that Gorman was largely telling the truth. The result was a 1975 bestseller – Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which captured public imagination not only because of the fantastic story told by Knight, but also due tom his “discovery” of a high-level conspiracy. About hidden forces at the heart of British society – the lugubrious manipulations of Masons, who for centuries had shaped English politics. Knight’s book thus became another contribution to the nutty nets that are spun around what is conceived to be global, damaging and outright dangerous intrigues generated and stage-managed by powerful, secretive associations.

An enraged Gorman did however partially destroy Knight’s cleverly constructed theories about Free-masonic manipulations. Knight had slightly changed German's tale by emphasizing a suspicion that Walter Sickert was more involved in the murders than previously assumed. Knight even hinted that it was Sickert and not Dr. Gold who was identical with Jack the Ripper. Joseph Gorman, who stubbornly continued to claim that he was Sickert’s son, went to The Sunday Times and admitted that he had invented most of his wondrous story.

Nevertheless, Knight did not give up and wrote The Brotherhood, another bestseller in which he further developed his theories about the Freemasons’ control of British politics, yes – how they actually had a frightening influence on the whole of English society. By that time, Knight had become one of the disciples of Bhagwan Rejnesh, “Osho”, and called himself Swami Puja Deba. Two years after the release of The Brotherhood, Knight died of a brain tumor.

Knight’s theories gave birth to several sequels that spanned both his conspiracy speculations and the possibility that Walter Sickert had been Jack the Ripper. When it came to the conspiracy, Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell’s “graphic novel” from 1998 became influential, mainly because it formed the basis of the Hughes brothers’ 2001 film From Hell.

In their film, the brothers Hughes transform Walter Sickert into Prince Albert Victor, who when he moves to the East End and marries Anne Crook pretends to be the artist “Albert Sickert” (sic). In their graphic novel, however, Moore and Campbell downplay Sickert’s role and concentrate their tale on the physician and Freemason William Gull, who is portrayed as a misogynistic lunatic whose contempt for women is fueled when he, on behalf of Queen Victoria, as Jack the Ripper murders one prostitute after another. They let Gull be harassed by strange visions inspired by Douglas Adam’s humorous detective story Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which Douglas described as a “ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics.”

In his 1990 Sickert and the Ripper Crimes, Jean Overton Fuller, author of several biographies, singled out Walter Sickert as the misogynistic Jack the Ripper and several authors began to follow her trail.

Obviously, an engrossing interest can easily develop into a phobia. I assume this might happen when imaginative people discover contexts and opportunities where others have not perceived them, people like artists, writers and scientists. It seems that conspiracy theories in particular have an ability to occupy people’s mind sets, discoloring their ideas and interpretation of life.

Patricia Cornwell, who had worked in a forensic lab where she learned the intricacies of forensic investigations, became a multimillionaire through her Kay Scarpetta detective stories, which have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The novels about the forensic doctor Scarpetta contain a number of details about forensic methods, which provide solutions to often extremely macabre murders.

By the end of the last century, Cornwall was seized by a mania which meant that she at all costs had to prove that Walter Sickert was identical with Jack the Ripper. It seems as if she, with her autopsy and author background, became overtaken by an obsession forcing her to solve London’s most gruesome murder mystery. Cornwell put her well-founded reputation as a skilled tracking dog at stake in her search for evidence based on interpretations of Walter Sickert’s dark, provocative and elusive paintings.

An approach that makes me remember how I, together with a school class, visited one of Sweden's most well-known forensic pathologists. It was his observations that had led to the capture of a serial killer.

Between October 1978 and January 1979, an 18-year-old relief worker at long-term care unit at Malmö’s Eastern Hospital had poisoned elderly patients with corrosive cleaning agents. A total of 27 patients developed life-threatening symptoms, while 24 of them died in severe pain. The medical examiner explained to us:

I autopsied most of those senior patients. It was pure routine work and, as usual it was a simple matter of determining the cause of death. They had all suffered from severe age-related ailments and many had suffered from far-reaching dementia. In cases like that an autopsy generally recognizes a variety of possible causes of death. In my role as hospital pathologist I am generally not searching for crimes and may thus usually identify “natural” causes of death. However, my suspicions were triggered when an extraordinary number of deaths occurred within a very limited time span, all originating from the same long-term care ward. This awakened the coroner within me and as soon I assumed that there could be a crime hidden behind these deaths I almost immediately found the cause of death. It was so obvious that I could not understand that I had not discovered it before. All the corpses had a strong purple discoloration in the trachea and I could quickly determine that someone had poured deadly detergents, Gevisol, or Ivisol, into them.

The perpetrator was sentenced to “closed psychiatric care” for eleven homicides and sixteen attempted murders. He had been allowed to take care of severely disabled, elderly patients despite having been fired from his previous job as a care assistant at another hospital, with the motivation:

The medical doctor in charge and medical orderlies at the ward have spoken with and about him. He is entirely lacking power of initiative. Acts weird, does not seem to understand what he is being told. Not to be re-employed.

The last sentence was underlined several times.

Patricia Cornwell’s increasingly tenacious efforts to identify Walter Sickert as Jack the Ripper probably has made her blind to other possibilities. Her obsession seems to have led her in the opposite direction to the one generally taken by a criminal investigator. Instead of finding a point of departure based on a chain of clues and events which eventually would lead to a perpetrator, she has from the outset decided that it was Walter Sicker who committed the horrific murders. Cornwell considers his paintings, biography and preserved personal documents as essential clues which binds him to the Ripper murders.

To solve the murder mystery, Cornwell spent part of her substantial wealth to buy no less than thirty-two of Sickert’s oil paintings, as well as a number of his drawings and etchings and a large amount of other “essential Ripper material”.

Cornwell’s fixation on Sickert as a mass murderer has meant that while scrupulously reviewing his works of art she finds nothing else but hints to the murders she believes he had committed. A narrow conception of art that could turn Picasso into a misogynistic murderer.

Not to mention Sickert’s contemporaries among German expressionists, who undeniably had a morbid interest in sexually inspired murders of women and mutilation of their bodies. A phenomenon that has given rise to several special studies.

In addition, Cornwell ignores several characteristics of Sickert's art. She states, for example, that “this artist never painted anything he had not seen”, when he actually used to paint with the help of photographs, postcards and newspaper clippings. Well aware of the fact that public interest was aroused by scandals and crime, Sickert often used ostentatious titles for his painting, alluding to gruesome crimes and sensational news.

When I several years ago read Cornwell's book about Jack the Ripper, I found it to be quiet good, especially her depictions of the misery in the East End and the unrestrained violence against and contempt for the prostitutes of that time.

However, I found that she went too far in her apparently meticulous analysis of Walter Sickert’s assumed character, misled as she was by preconceived notions. Her mistakes are manifold, not least her superficially easy-going analysis of Sickert's peculiar art, which actually is far from being the reflection of a mass murderer’s delusions and/or bad conscience. Likewise, the results of the surveys conducted by generously paid graphologists and DNA experts are not particularly convincing. First, it is uncertain whether any of the carefully researched Ripper Letters, which are filed with Scotland Yard, were actually written by the serial killer. Secondly, Cornwell’s conclusions that the traces of human DNA on two postage stamps correspond to the DNA on stamps found among Sickert’s preserved correspondence. The mitochondrial DNA present on the stamps can be found among one to ten percent of England’s population, i.e. at least tens of thousands of individuals. The same goes for the paper on which several of the Ripper letters were written, although being identical to the one Sickert used this specific stationary was the one most commonly used in England at the time when the letters were written. 

Despite this and several other spurious observations, Cornwell stubbornly continues to insist that she is one hundred percent sure that Walter Sickert was identical with the elusive Jack the Ripper, declaring that:

Because if somebody literally proves me wrong not only will I feel horrible about it, but I will look terrible and I will lose my good reputation. […] If it turns out that something indisputably proved that this notorious killer was someone other than Walter Richard Sickert, I would be the first to offer congratulations and retract my accusations.

Unsolved murders often lead to complicated conspiracy theories and if they appear to be politically motivated, those looking for a solution can easily get lost in a labyrinth where unrelated, but sometimes not entirely improbable facts interfere with the investigations, until a quite preposterous pattern emerges.

Just think of the thicket that grew up around the Kennedy – and the Swedish Palme murders, where Occam’s razor rarely has been used: “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or “the simplest explanation is usually the best one.” Even if 36 years has passed since the Swedish Prime Minister was shot down in open street and the murderer has not yet been convincingly identified, speculations and crack-pot ideas remain endemic.

Personally, I believe in the theory that it was the US citizen Francis Tumbelty who was identical with Jack the Ripper. He was a famous quack with a lugubrious collection of female body parts in his New York home. Tumbelty had traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada and also visited England. As a shameless and big-lying self-promoter he sold worthless herbal medicines and even performed surgery. Tumbelty became known for reckless dithyrambs against women, especially prostitutes, whom he hated after his failed marriage to a woman who eventually turned out to be a prostitute. 

In 1996, former Detective Commissioners Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey published Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer, in which they presented evidence that Tumbelty had resided in a Whitechapel guest house during the short period that Jack the Ripper ravaged the East End. He was arrested on suspicion of “gross indecency”, which at the time was the term for “illegal homosexual activity”. Scotland Yard had Tumblety on its list of suspected Jack the Rippers and when he was released on a bail of £ 300, the quack did under false name escape to France, from where he four days later boarded a ship destined for the US. Scotland Yard immediately requested that Tomblety be extradited, but US authorities refused on the grounds that there was no evidence of Tomblety' s involvement in the Whitechapel murders and the crime for which he had been detained in London was not grounds for extradition from the United States. The American authorities completely ignored the fact that Jack the Ripper’s bloody progress ceased completely when Tumblety left London.

Most experts critique of Patricia Cornwell's bestseller Portrait of a Murderer was quite ruthless. An example is Caleb Carr’s review in The New York Times:

Portrait of a Killer is a sloppy book, insulting to both its target and its audience. The only way for Cornwell to repair its damage will be to stay with this case, as she says she intends to, continuing her research, studies and tests for the years required to complete them thoroughly. Perhaps then she can then do what she claims to have done already – prove Walter Sickert’s guilt decisively. Failing that, she should apologize for this exercise in calumny.

For several reasons Caleb Carr was the right man to criticize Cornwell’s book. After several years of study, he was an expert on most of what had been written about Jack the Ripper, as well as the time and environment in which the murders were committed. This is especially noticeable in Carr’s two novels The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness.

The two thrillers take place in New York by the end of the 1890s. The environment is accurately described in great detail. Several celebrities take part in the stories, such as the future president Theodore Roosevelt and the multimillionaire J.P. Morgan. Nasty mass murderers reminding of Jack the Ripper are ravaging the metropolis, though tracked down by child psychiatrist Laszlo Kreizler, the private detective Sara Howard and journalist John Schuyler Moore, who use modern methods such as investigative journalism, fingerprints and forensic psychology. The novels are well-written and constitute a quite exciting reading, and have furthermore become the basis for two excellent TV series.

If Jack London's and Gustave Doré's depictions of the misery in the East End provided a frightening depiction of the environment where Jack the Ripper committed his crimes, the Danish-born Jacob Riis’ (1849-1914) detailed depictions of the misery in New York's slums did the same for Caleb Carr's novels.

To bring about social reforms Riis tried to spread knowledge about the terrible situation of the poor. He was one of the first to use photography to document miserable conditions and thus make people realize the deplorable situation of destitute people. The new invention of photo flashes made it possible for Riis to take photos indoors and as a fearless, kind man he was able to move unmolested in lawless areas. In 1890 he published an upsetting, but nevertheless unsentimental and coldly documented social report How the Other Half Lives, richly illustrated with photographs and drawings.

In an interview Carr stated that it is important for him that everything in his thriller is true “except for the story itself.” Especially in The Angel of Darkness, Carr explores the lingering effects of childhood trauma and the destructive violence they might bring forth in their victims.

I had a lifelong fascination with all forms of violence, from war to personal violence, the latter being what I had the most experience with in my life, whether from the troubles with my father or battles on the streets of Manhattan . ... And that interest eventually evolved into wanting to understand the roots of violence.

Through his hero Dr. Kreizler Carr intended to portray how a skilled psychiatrist may gain insight into a murderer’s disturbed state of mind. Kreizler is able to enter the mind of a serial killer, by descending into his own memories and experiences he is able to fathom what controls a killer’s murderous instincts and guides her/his actions. The only difference is that Twizzlers and the killer went their separate ways. Carr created Kreizler by projecting his own personality on him. The author makes no bones about his own mental wounds “there was a lot of madness in my family, a lot of alcoholism among the adults" and he states that this has hurt him for life.

Caleb Carr's father, Lucien Carr (1925-2005) was a key figure in the so-called Beat Movement and especially close friend of Jack Kerouac. Carr knew the unusually mad William Burroughs from his youth in St. Louis. It was actually Carr who introduced the Beat Movement’s most prominent men – Burroughs, Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg – to each other. It has been suggested that Carr was a troubled and mentally unstable young man, nurturing a host of crazy, inventive and downright dangerous whims that fascinated the beat poets. Allen Ginsburg later stated that Lucien Carr was in many ways the center of the entire beat group, at least in the beginning – “Lou was the glue.”

The first time Jack Kerouac’s name appeared in the press was on August 18, 1944, when he and William Burroughs were arrested as material witnesses to a brutal murder. Even if the news of the day before had been dominated by the Allies’ successful landing on the south coast of France, the assassination was sensational enough to appear on the front page of The New York Times: “Columbia student kills friend and sinks body in Hudson River.”

David Kammerer and Lucien Carr had met in St. Louis at a summer camp for boys. The then twelve-year-old Carr was a student and the fourteen year older Kammerer sports instructor. Kammerer had a Ph.D. in English Literature and taught Literature and Sports at Washington University in St. Louis. Carr would later, like his friends and family, insist that a homosexual Kammerer had stalked the handsome Carr, and for the next nine years he had appeared wherever the young Carr found himself.

Much of that story, however, is doubtful. It is almost impossible to unravel the threads of insinuations, legal spins and lies surrounding Hammerer's death. There is no independent evidence that Kammerer actually had been a stalker, only Carr’s own words that it had been the case. However, there is compelling evidence that Kammerer was not gay and Carr often boasted about his ability to manipulate the older man. He even got Kammerer to write essays for his classes at New York’s Columbia University.

In any case, the then twenty-three-year-old Carr did on his own accord go to the police and admitted that in desperation and panic over Kammerer’s homosexual approaches had stabbed him to death with his scout knife. After the bloody deed he had wrapped his victim’s arms with his own belt, weighed his corpse down with stones and dumped it in Hudson River.

By all accounts, the two men had been seriously intoxicated, possibly also under the influence of drugs, and the motive for the murder has remained unclear. It is possible that Carr used Kammerer’s implied homosexuality and alleged stalking to mitigate his sentence. In any case, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but was released after two years. Lucien Carr then spent 47 years as a journalist at the United Press International’s (UPI) news agency.

Although Lucien Carr became significantly more established than his beat friends, he continued to hang out with them. His son Caleb found it disconcerting to be close to his father’s erratic friends:

They could be perfectly nice people one-to-one. Kerouac was a very nice man. Allen could be a very nice guy. Burroughs was a little strange for a child. But they weren't children people. You needed to be grown up to be around them if you wanted to not be terrified. What they were up to was not gonna make any child reassured.

Patrica Cornwell also had a difficult childhood. In an interview, she claimed that her interest in brutal murders and forensic techniques was based on childhood experiences:“It’s because I grew up with terrible fear. I grew up in such a frightening manner."

After her father, who was a medical doctor, had left the family and she had been assaulted by a police officer who turned out to be a well-known pedophile, Patricia moved with her mother and two brothers from Miami to North Carolina. There the mother suffered from a severe depression that made it impossible for her to take care of her children. Patricia Cornwell was placed in a foster home where she was bullied and frightened by foster mother. As a teenager Patricia suffered from severe anorexia and was later affected by recurrent depressions and intermittent alcoholism.

Thus, it seems that several detective story writers, and apparently many of those fascinated by Jack the Ripper, have suffered from severe childhood traumas and through their novels tried to conjure up and try to handle their inner demons. But, what about their readers? Several of my acquaintances devour detective stories and for some of them it is the only reading they are engage in.

It does happen that I occasionally read a thriller or detective story, but it is far from an immersive interest. Despite that, this blog post actually testifies that over the years I too have devoted a certain interest to Jack the Ripper. As long as I remember I have had a tendency to scare myself and even enjoying it. Even the Swedish children’ book author Elsa Beskow, whose ingenious and sometimes disturbing illustrated tales have etched themselves forever in my memory. Perhaps most of all the Tomtebobarnen, in English translated as The Mushroom Children, which she wrote and illustrated in 1910. It contained an image of a terrible troll that gave me an unforgettable fright when I first saw it:

An old mountain troll lives in a gorge next door,

the children walk quietly past, when they hear him snore,

cause sometimes it might happen he looks out and hollers “Boo!”

happily scaring the wits out of you.

Then the children rush home in highest speed,

scrubbing knees, while stumbling over tufts and weed.

But the troll bellows and laughs out loud:

“It’s great fun to see that frightened crowd!”

Elsa Beskow (1874-1953) was married to Natanael Beskow, a famous priest, author, artist and school principal. They had six boys, among them the artist Bo Beskow. While her husband was active as a pastor with his own church and later as principal, Elsa Beskow cultivated her art by creating lavish picture books and ingenious stories. She thus accounted for an important part of the household’s income, at the same time as she took care of both home and her writing while her boys were playing around her.

Like his wife, Natanael Beskow was a skilled artist and the talent was apparently inherited by his son Bo. Below we see Bo Beskow’s portrait of his close friend, the UN General Secretary and member of the Royal Swedish Academy, Dag Hammarsköld, next to a still life painted by Natanael Beskow.

Bo Beskow (1906-1989) wrote a charming book about his childhood, Krokodilens middag, The Crocodile's Dinner, in which Jack the Ripper suddenly appears in the otherwise obviously quite harmonious, Beskow home:

The wardrobes contained exciting treasures. In one of them, Father kept immoral literature, which he collected as a member of a committee dedicated to the eradication of such nuisance. My older brothers had found this treasure trove and a lot of extensive reading was done at night, when everyone was officially asleep. Bo was six years old and had just learned to read. Totally engrossed by the thriller Jack Uppskäraren, [“Jack the Slicer” the Swedish denomination for the killer] I took the book down to Sunday breakfast. “What is Bo reading?” I was never able to finish the book and since then tried in vain tried to get hold of it. Who was Jack the Slicer? The mystery has interested many, most recently I found that Blaise Cendrars claimed that his hero Moravagine was Jack the Slicer, which of course is bragging. My childhood hero remains undiscovered. I dare to say that no child lives in what is called a protected world, even if parents and themselves pretend that it is like that. Life becomes predestined by what you learn during the first five intense years of your existence, for better or worse. Even children’s parties and games could be a harrowing experience, especially refined variants of Blindman’s Bluff.

I assume that the book that Bo Beskow had found in his father’s secret e closet was Jack Uppsprättaren, which in 1889 was published with a title that might be translated as “Jack the Slicer: The Story of the Killer of Nine Women within the City of London and a Mournful Song about the Murderous Jack.”

The book was one of the first books published about the Ripper murders. It was written just after the murder spree had come to an end and contained detailed descriptions of the grotesque murder cases, not least new and sensational information about the Swedish victim, Elizabeth Stride. The anonymous author, who wrote under the pseudonym Ansgarius Svensen, was unusually well informed.

That a Swedish book came out so shortly after the Ripper murders is not so strange, considering that a lot of English, speculative books were written within weeks after Jack the Ripper’s disappearance. First of them all was The Curse Upon the Miter Square 1530-888, written by the Catholic and organist John Francis Brewer (1865-1921). This novel was published just a week or so after the discovery of the murdered Catherine Eddowes – Jack the Ripper’s penultimate victim. Brewer’s novel is far from a reportage book, it is a “Gothic” horror concoction about a mad monk who in 1530 murdered and maimed a woman in front of the high altar of The Church of Holy Trinity in Aldgate, a church that once lay in the same place where the murdered Catherine Eddowes was murdered. This spot was apparently considered be haunted and the scene of several other murders. The monk’s victim turned out to be his own sister whom he by mistaken had murdered and eventually dismembered. In spite of his mixture of fantasy and facts, Brewer gives a fairly correct and detailed description of the gruesome findings in connection with the Dowses murder, though he suggests that the restless ghost of the mad monk had a hand in the game.

In 2021, an estimated 437,000 people were murdered. During World War I, 20 million were killed, the subsequent Spanish flu is estimated to have claimed 50 million lives. Between 70 and 85 million people fell victim to World War II. In the Nazi concentration and death camps 6 million Jews, 3 million Soviet prisoners of war and an estimated 500,000 Roma/Sinti were annihilated. In the Soviet Union, between 15 and 25 million people were killed through Government action. The Vietnam War resulted in 3.6 million deaths. The last two wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its direct consequences have cost 5.5 million lives. Genocide in Cambodia led to between 1.5 and 3 million deaths, in Rwanda between 400,000 and 500,000 persons were massacred, in former East Pakistan between 300,000 and 3 million, in Indonesia between 500,000 and 1.2 million. In addition to these enormous death tolls have dictatorships and genocide claimed millions of victims around the world. Why are we among all these millions of victims so fascinated by the murders of a few individuals – like the five victims of Jack the Ripper?

Why are mass atrocities not as upsetting as individual murders and so often quite forgotten? One example among tens of thousands – who is today talking about atrocities like those committed by Romanian soldiers in Odessa during two October days in 1941?

The campaign that now ensued against the Jew of Odessa was reported by Germans who witnessed it. That same morning, October 23, nineteen thousand Jews were assembled into a square near the port, which was surrounded by a wooden fence; they were sprayed with gasoline and burnt alive. In the afternoon, gendarmes and the police rounded up over twenty thousand persons in the streets – again most of them Jews – and squeezed them into the municipal goal. The next day, October 24, they removed sixteen thousand Jews from the goal and in long columns they were forced to walk in the direction of Dlnik, a nearby village […] they were bound to one another´s arms and in groups of between forty and fifty they and shot dead. When this method proved too slow, they were pressed into four large warehouses which had holes in the walls. Machine gun nozzles were pushed into the holes, and in this manner mass murder was committed in one warehouse after another […] for fear that that some might escape, nevertheless, three warehouses, which were mainly filled with women and children were set on fire. Those who were not killed killed by the flames sought to escape through the holes in the roof, or through the windows; these were met with with hand grenades or machine -gun fire. Many women went mad and threw their children out of the windows. The fourth warehouse, which was filled with men, was shelled the next afternoon.

When I lived in the Swedish town of Lund and during cold winters looked out of the window over apparently endless snow fields, it happened that I sometimes thought of Göran Sonnevi's poem About the War in Vietnam. How he after a heavy snowfall in the morning goes out and shovels snow outside his house in Lund and then thinks:

The dead are numbers, they lie down, whirl

like crystals in the wind over fields. Up till now

they figure 2 million have died in Vietnam.

Here hardly anyone dies

except for personal reasons. The Swedish

economy doesn’t kill

many, at least

not here at home.

Maybe there is a connection with the man at Niehaus’ IKEApaintings. When the dead become too many, they are abstracted as the man among IKEA's constructed home environments. Reality becomes diffuse, constructed and difficult to understand.

I am reminded of a painting by Lorenzo Lotto – Michele arcangelo caccia Lucifero, The Archangel Michael Chases Lucifer, from 1545. If we look closely at that painting we find that the angel and the devil are the same person.

Begg, Paul och Martin Fido (2015) The Complete Jack The Ripper A-Z - The Ultimate Guide to The Ripper Mystery. London: John Blake Publishing. Cadwalladr, Carole (2025) ”Patricia Cornwell: ’I grew up with fear’”, The Guardian, November 1. Carr, Caleb (1994) The Alienist. New York: Random House. Carr, Caleb (1997) The Angel of Darkness. New York: Random House. Cornwell, Patricia (2002) Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Gainey, Paul och Stewart Evans (2013) Jack The Ripper: First American Serial Killer. New York: Random House. Garner, Dwight (1997) ”Interview with Caleb Carr”, Salon, October 4. Gilbert, Martin (1987) The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy. London: Fontana/Collins. Homberger, Eric (2005) ”Lucien Carr: Fallen Angel of the Beat Poets, Later an Unflappable News Editor with United Press”, The Guardian, February 9. Knight, Stephen (1979) Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. New York: HarperCollins. Knight, Stephen (1988) The Brotherhood: The Secret World Of The Freemasons. London: Grafton Books. Lilly, Marjorie (1971) Sickert: The painter and his circle. London: Paul Elek Publishers. Moore, Alan och Eddie Campbell (1999) From Hell. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions. Riis, Jacob (1997) How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. London: Penguin Classics. Sickert, Walter Richard (1910) ”The Naked and the Nude,” The New Age, 21 July. Sonnevi, Göran (1982) The Economy Spins Faster and Faster. Translation from Swedish by Robert Bly. Pawcatuck CT: Sun Publishing. Tatar, Maria (1997) Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press.

Ett av mina och min yngsta dotters nöjen är att besöka IKEA, där jag fascineras av de inredda rummen. De får mig att tänka på de rekonstruktioner av äldre miljöer som finns på flera muser. Skillnaden är att på IKEA rör sig människor bland möblerna. Annars är IKEAmiljön minst  lika livlös som museiuppställningarna.

Nyligen upptäckte jag i ett konstmagasin den amerikanska konstnären Rikki Nihaus Swedish Landscapes. De konturskarpa, hyperrealistiska oljemålningarna visar hur samme man, klädd i en grå kostym och svart slips har placerat sig bland IKEA:s möbler. Kanske utgör konstverken en kritik av konsumtionssamhället. Inte vet jag. Bilderna är känslokalla, vittnande om yta, och alienation. Mannen tycks höra samman med möblerna – stel och uttryckslös speglar han en illusion av ”verklighet”, en livlös sterilitet.

En av Nihaus målningar tycks vara ett återsken av den engelske konstnären Walter Sickerts Ennui, Tristess. En cigarrökande man blickar tomt mot något bortom oss alltmedan en kvinna lutar sig mot en byrå och tycks stirra in i väggen, eller möjligen betraktar hon drömmande en tavla. I Nihaus Svenska landskap blickar mannen också mot något utanför bilden och liksom mannen på Sickerts tavla har ett halvfyllt fyllt glas framför sig, och möjligen ett askfat eller en tändsticksask, så har den välklädde mannen som sitter bland IKEA:s möbelexpositioner glas och porslin framför sig. Kvinnan som befinner sig bakom honom vänder sig bort. De har ingen kontakt. De är fullständiga främlingar för varandra. IKEA framstår här som en Twilight Zone, en värld bortom det ”verkliga” livet.

Personerna i Sickerts tavla känner möjligen varandra alltför väl, under alla förhållanden har inte heller de någon kontakt.

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) var utan tvekan, tillsammans med sin samtide Philip Wilson Steer, Englands främste impressionist, fast hans misantropiska läggning gör att Sickert ofta tycks befinna sig i en skymningszon mellan impressionism och expressionism. Nedan syns den allvarlige Sickert och den mer jovialiske Steer på en tavla av Henry Tonks.

Sickert målade atmosfäriska landskapskildringar från Venedig, Dieppe och den engelska landsbygden, men gjorde sig mest känd som stadsskildrare.

Hans framställningar av krogar och kabaréer har ett viss tycke av Degas, i varje fall motivmässigt, fast Sickert använder sig mer av en fragmenterad färgyta och diffusare konturer.

Sickert mötte Degas i Paris 1883 och blev då djupt imponerad av honom och hans konst. Liksom Degas skildrar Sickert nöjeslokaler och avbildar prostituerade och liksom den virtuose fransmannen använder sig Sickert av oväntade vinklar, djärva beskärningar och är uppmärksam på subtila ljusskiftningar.

Men om Degas i sitt måleri tycks stå mitt i livet så finns hos Sickert, som ofta greps av djupa depressioner, en känsla av utanförskap, parad med en misogyn människosyn som ibland tycks gränsa till perversion. Själv brukade Sickert konstatera att han betraktade mänskligheten som uppdelad mellan ”vårdare och patienter”.

I London rörde han sig med förkärlek i fattiga, nerslitna kvarter. Sickert tycks i sina bilder av prostituerade inte liksom Degas träffa på dem i bordeller, utan i sjaskiga hotellrum och han skildrar dem med en skoningslös, i det närmaste föraktfull realism.

Det är möjligt att Sickert, trots att han hade en mängd väninnor, hyste en förnedrande uppfattning om kvinnor. Faktum är att han uttryckligen förbjöd kvinnor att medverka i den konstgruppering han grundade 1911 och benämnde Camden Town Group. Under tre år träffades sexton konstnärer regelbundet i Sickerts ateljé och arrangerade gemensamma utställningar. Flera av dem var redan då välkända artister, som Robert Bevan, Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis och Duncan Grant.

Robert Wood var en konstnär som likt Sickert var bosatt i Camden. Han var dock alltför ung och obemärkt som konstnär för att bevärdigas medlemskap i ett illustert konstnärskotteri. Wood var främst gravör och arbetade som designer på London Sand Blast Decorative Glass Works. Sickert kände säkert till honom eftersom han och Wood delade samma intressen. Wood var ofta sedd på pubar, restauranger och olika förlustelseställen och känd som en blasé men charmig man.

Emily Dimmock, som emellanåt var verksam som prostituerad, blev 1907 funnen med halsen avskuren i en lägenhet hon delade med en järnvägsarbetare. De var inte gifta och då mannen var borta på långa arbetspass tog Emily emot forna kunder i parets gemensamma lägenhet. Förövaren hade medan hon sov skurit halsen av Emily och därefter osedd försvunnit från brottsplatsen.

Mordet blev en sensation och följdes upp av en mängd sensationella tidningsartiklar, Det spekulerades vilt om att Jack Uppskäraren åter hade uppenbarat sig. En f.d. flickvän till Robert Wood, Ruby Young, som även hon var prostituerad, visste att Wood haft ett förhållande med den mördade Emily. Konstnären tvingade Ruby att ge honom ett falskt alibi för mordkvällen. Ruby berättade dock vad som hänt för en bekant, som gick till polisen som då de pressade Ruby och dessutom visade henne ett vykort de funnit i Emilys lägenhet kände hon igen Woods skrivstil. Rubys vittnesmål sammanställdes med det faktum att flera av Woods bekantskaper på mordkvällen hade sett honom tillsammans med den mördade Emily. Wood häktades, men frikändes efter skickligt försvar.

Genom sitt stiligt ungdomliga utseende och lugnt vänliga uppträdande charmade Wood under rättegången en stor del av åskådarna, alltmedan andra stördes av hans lättsamma, uppenbart nonchalanta beteende. Under rättegången och häktningstiden gjorde Wood en mängd skisser som omgående publicerades i pressen. Efter frikännandet levde den förmodade mördaren ett tämligen obemärkt och stillsamt liv, tills han avled 1966.

Walter Sickert var utbildad skådespelare och kunde med lätthet identifiera sig med olika personer, inte minst förmodade mördare. Han blev ryktbar efter att ha ägnat flera teckningar, etsningar och tavlor åt vad han benämnde The Camden Town Murder. Samtliga konstverk framställde hur en klädd man befinner sig i ett rum tillsammans med en naken kvinna.

Redan tidigare hade Sickert gjort sig känd för ”vulgära” nakenstudier, men hans framställningar av Camdenmorden skapade en allmänt uppmärksammad skandal. Sällan hade en välkänd konstnär på ett så brutalt sätt ägnat sig år ett verkligt mordfall, som dessutom antydde sexuellt våld. Sickert gick ut i försvar. I en artikel motsatte han sig salongskonstens läckert, lockande nakenakter och förordade istället en hämningslös realism:

En motsägelsefull och samtidigt liderlig puritanism har lyckats skapa och utveckla ett ideal som den försöker ge glans åt genom att kalla det hela för ”nakenakter” och därmed sätta sådana framställningar av en naken människa i motsatsställning till någon som verkligen är ”naken”. […] Uppskattningen av denna moderna störtflod av uselt andefattiga ”nakenakter” utgör en intellektuell och konstnärlig konkurs som inte kan anses vara annat än förnedrande, även för dem som inte anser att den nakna människokroppen på något vis är moraliskt, eller religiöst, förkastlig.

Emellanåt målar Sickert nakna kvinnor med vanställda ansikten och kroppar, något som får mig att tänka på Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873–1949), en kommersiell fotograf som i New Orleans ägnade sig åt porträtt- och landskapsfotografering. Bellocq kom från en välsituerad familj och var något av en dandy, som enligt vänner och bekanta inte hade andra intressen än fotografering. Bellocq attraherades av Storyville, stadens sjaskiga och illa ansedda red light district, som också var jazzens födelseplats. I dessa ökända kvarter tillbringade Bellocq mycket av sin tid i bordeller och opiehålor.

Efter sin död blev Bellocq känd för sina tidigare hemlighållna nakenstudier. Något som gjort Bellocq till föremål för en mängd filmer och biografier, ofta av det mer lugubra slaget, är att flera av de nakna kvinnor som porträtterats på hans fotografier har fått sina ansikten sönderskrapade. Något som skett redan då emulsionen fortfarande var fuktig, dvs. vätskeblandningen av gelatin och ljuskänsliga silversalter som tidiga fotografer använde vid framkallandet av sina bilder.

Att Bellocq förfor på ett sådant sätt är tämligen gåtfullt, speciellt som flera av kvinnorna på hans nakenbilder har sina ansikten i behåll. Han försåg dock ofta sina modeller med ansiktsmasker.

Bellocqs och Sickerts nakenmodeller påminner genom sina tämligen sjaskiga omgivningar om Francis Bacons talrika gestaltningar av förvrängda, hjälplöst nakna och i det närmaste massakrerade gestalter som vrider sig i sängar.

Bacons ofta otäcka, ensamma och i allmänhet frånstötande köttstycken som placerats i solkiga sängar påminner om de lugubra och flitigt publicerade, forensiska fotografier som gjordes på Jack Uppskärarens offer. Jack the Ripper var beteckningen på en okänd seriemördare som mellan augusti och november 1888 mördade minst fem kvinnor, de s.k. ”kanoniska offren”, det kan nämligen finnas fler. 

Att morden blev uppmärksammade berodde på att den aldrig avslöjade dråparen härjade i Londons East End:s mest ökända kvarter, odödliggjorda genom Gustave Dorés etsningar i Jerrold Blanchards London, A Pilgrimage från 1869 och Jack Londons imponerande reportagebok Avgrundens folk, The People of the Abyss, från 1903.

Mord var vanligt förekommande i East End, inte minst de utfattiga och rättslösa prostituerade kvinnorna levde farligt. Allmänhetens oro och fantasi hetsades dock alldeles speciellt genom att Uppskäraren skändade sina offer genom att skära upp deras buk och avlägsna inre organ. I några fall arrangerade han de utskurna kroppsdelarna tillsammans med olika föremål i samma rum där brotten blivit begånget. Det skedde på ett sätt som tycktes antyda makabra ritualer. I andra fall tog han med sig en del av organen. Ett av offren var den svenskättade Elizabeth Stride, född som Elisabet Gustavsdotter i Torslanda.

En bakomliggande skräck var även den anonymitet som skapades i framväxande megametropoler. Den bestilaikse mördaren kunde obemärkt försvinna bland Londons väldiga, okontrollerbara människomassor. Även hans offer kunde vara obemärkta; oanseliga, ersättningsbara och föraktade. Som de prostituerade kvinnor han mördade. Såväl förövare som offer var uppenbarligen alster av den omänskliga, människoslukande kapitalismen, ett industri- och konsumtionssamhälle där individer förvandlats inte till Sickerts ”vårdare och patienter” utan till varor och konsumenter.

När uppståndelsen var som störst kring den okände mördaren mottog polis och press hundratals brev vars avsändare utgav sig för att vara Jack the Ripper. De flesta av dem kunde avvisas som skrivna av journalister, eller av folk som ville avnjuta effekten sina upptåg. Flera forskare anser att samtliga brev är falska, men ett av dem brukar på grund av sitt speciella innehåll lyftas fram. Det så kallade Från-Helvetet-brevet som adresserats till ledaren för ett medborgargarde som assisterade poliskåren i sökandet efter Jack Uppskäraren.

Brevet skickades i en liten låda som även innehöll en halv mänsklig njure. Det groteska föremålet härrörde möjligen från ett av offren, Kate Eddowes, som led av samma njursjukdom som den avsända njuren visade tecken på. Brevskribenten, det är det enda brev som inte är undertecknat med ”Jack the Ripper”, sa sig ha stekt och ätit upp den andra halvan. Det felstavade, underligt skrivna och sedermera försvunna brevet har fått sitt namn av inledningsorden From Hell.

Jack the Ripper’ s framfart bland East End:s prostituerade kvinnor upphörde lika plötsligt som den börjat. Hade han helt enkelt tagit livet av sig? Eller var han kanske en välsituerad herre från stadens överklass som ansåg att jägarna kommit honom på spåret? Under alla förhållanden gav de gräsliga morden upphov till en uppsjö av rippologer som sedan 1888 tills idag i en mängd skilda former har presenterat ett otal teorier om vem mördaren kan ha varit; reportage- och dokumentärböcker, pjäser, musikaler, operor, serietidningar, tavlor, rockmusik och inte minst romaner. Gärningsmännen har utpekats som varande namngivna lärare, tjuvar, jurister, kirurger, slaktare, mentalpatienter, vampyrer, demoner, läkare, frisörer, utpressare, mordbrännare, kungligheter, författare, konstnärer, affärsmän och poliser. Judar, frimurare och präster har misstänkliggjorts. Förutom engelsmän, skottar och irländare har de förmodade gärningsmännen varit polacker, ryssar, amerikaner, tyskar, fransmän, belgare, italienare, eller australiensare.

Efter att ha presenterat sina skildringar av Camdenmorden började Sickert visa ett alltmer uppslukande intresse för Jack Uppskäraren. Han fortsatte måla nakna kvinnogestalter på sängar i torftiga miljöer och föreställde sig att hans bostad, 8 Mornington Crescent, även hade hyst Jack the Ripper. Hans värdinna hade nämligen försäkrat honom att en hyresgäst, en ung man som studerade till veterinär, som bott där 1881 hade varit den beryktade seriemördaren.

Att Sickert ofta var uppslukad av sitt intresse för brutala mord konstaterades bland andra av hans konstnärskollega Marjorie Lilly (1891-1980), som i sin minnesbok Sickert: The Painter and His Circle från 1971 skildrade hur Sickert då hon en gång besökte honom var fullkomligt gripen av en ”brinnande vurm för brottslighet personifierad i Jack Uppskäraren”.

Även konstnärinnan och galleri-innehavarinnan Helen Lessore (1907-1994), som under trettiotalet umgicks flitigt med Sickert och skrev flera artiklar om honom, påpekade hans stora intresse för mordscener och påstod att hon ofta tillsammans med Sickert uppsökt platser där avskyvärda brott begåtts. Inom parentes sagt kan nämnas att det var Lessor som först på allvar uppmärksammade den unge Francis Bacons konst och 1953 i sitt Londongalleri, Beaux Arts, arrangerade konstnärens första utställning, då bland andra upprörande verk hans sedermera så berömda Vrålande påve ställdes ut.

Flera av de målningar och skisser som Sickert gjorde av sitt sovrum benämnde han The Bedroom of Jack the Ripper. I en speciellt gåtfull framställning betraktar vi rummet genom en öppen dörr. Det är mörkt och konturerna oskarpa, ljuset kommer från springorna i fönstrets persienn. Det tycks som en hotfull gestalt står med ryggen mot oss och blickar ut genom fönsterspringorna – Döden, Jack the Ripper? Vid jämförelser med flera andra av Sickerts framställningar av samma rum inser vi att det i själva verket inte rör sig om en mansgestalt, utan om en spegel.

Stod Sickert ofta framför den där spegeln medan han förställde sig vara Jack Uppskäraren? En fantasi som han möjligen gestaltade i sina framställningar av vanställda, nakna kvinnor? Han gjorde en stor mängd målningar av nakna kvinnor exponerade på en säng i samma rum. Rörde sig även de om fantasier kring Jack Uppskäraren?

Någon gång under 1969 fick Helen Lessore, som var svägerska till Sickerts tredje hustru, i sitt galleri besök av en märklig man och därmed inleddes ett nytt kapitel i den underliga historien om Jack Uppskäraren.

Joseph Gorman, en tämligen misslyckad konstnär och tavelrestaurator, påstod att han var oäkta son till den annars barnlöse Walter Sickert. Gorman hade sökt upp Lessore eftersom hon var känd som en auktoritet om sådant som gällde Walter Sickert, om hon accepterade Gormans historia vore det en viktig del av hans bevisföring.

Det var inte enbart Walter Sickerts faderskap som Gorman avslöjade för Lessore, mest sensationellt var att enligt honom var Jack Uppskäraren inte alls var en galen massmördare. Det för att dölja en skandal inom kungafamiljen som de fem kvinnorna hade mördats. Mördaren skulle enligt Gorman ha varit Sir William Withey Gull, en av Drottning Victorias livläkare och Walter Sickert hade även han varit inblandad i det blodiga dramat.

Genom Helen Lessore fick BBC kontakt med Joseph Gorman, eller Joseph Sickert som han nu kallade sig och det blev upphovet till en konspirationsteori som fortfarande spökar på film, i böcker och tidningar.

1973 sände BBC i sex avsnitt en serie om Jack Uppskäraren. Programmen presenterades delvis som en diskussion mellan två ”detektiver”, varvad med dramatiserade scener som utspelade sig på 1880-talet. I avsnitt sex dök Joseph Gorman upp och berättade sin häpnadsväckande historia.

Enligt Gorman hade hans farmor, Annie Elizabeth Crook, i hemlighet gift sig med den engelske tronarvingen Albert Victor och med honom fått en dotter. I samband med denna tämligen otroliga berättelse hävdade Gorman att Rippermorden var del av en konspiration för att tysta ner varje potentiell skandal genom att mörda alla som kände till att Albert Victor hade en dotter med en commoner, en ofrälse kvinna som arbetade i en tobaksaffär.

Prins Albert Victor, hertig av Clarence och Avonddale, var äldste son till Albert Edward, prins av Wales, sedermera Kung Edward VII, och därmed var Albert Victor på andra plats i den brittiska tronföljden. Han dog dock 1892, enbart 28 år gammal, och emedan Edvard VII dog barnlös skulle det innebära att Gormans mor, Albert Victors i lönndom födda dotter, var den rättmätiga arvtagerskan till den brittiska tronen och Joseph Gorman var därmed en prins. Det var dock Albert Victors son, George Frederick Ernest Albert, som under namnet George V blev brittisk konung då Edward VII dog 1910.

Enligt Gorman kände Walter Sickert samtliga som varit iblandade i konspirationen – de var alla frimurare. Han kände även Albert Victor, som tillsammans med Edward VII och den blivande George V var medlem i samma frimurarloge. Att Sickert kände George V är bland annat baserat på att han gjorde flera porträtt av honom, som så många andra av Sickerts ”porträtt” utgick de dock från tidningsurklipp.

På begäran av sina frimurarvänner hyrde Sickert, fortfarande i enlighet med Gormans fantastiska historia, en barnflicka till Prins Albert Victors hemlighållna dotter, hennes mor hade av konspiratörerna förpassats till ett mentalsjukhus. Barnflickan var i själva verket en prostituerad kvinna, Mary Jane Kelley, som då hon fått reda på sanningen kring barnets härkomst började utöva utpressning mot det brittiska kungahuset. Mary Jane Kelley blev Jack Uppskärarens sista offer, innan dess hade Sir William Withey Gull på uppdrag av kungahuset och under medverkan av sina frimurarkollegor mördat fyra av Mary Janes väninnor, de var samtliga prostituerade, och gjort så att det hela framstod som brott begångna av en perverterad kvinnoföraktare.

Allt detta hade påstod Joseph Gorman/Sickert att han hade fått berättat av sin föregivne far, Walter Sickert, som enligt honom haft ett förhållande med Prins Albert Victors förmenta dotter, som därigenom blivit mor till Joseph Gorman.

Orsaken till att jag blev intresserad av den märkliga historien berodde på att medan jag 1983 undervisade i religionshistoria i Santo Domingo kom en av mina vuxenelever fram till mig och hälsade mig genom ett något märkligt handslag. Han blinkade konspiratoriskt och konstaterade: ”Jag förstår att du är en av oss”. Då jag tycktes vara helt ovetande om vad han menade viskade han: Los Masonicos, Frimurarna. Något senare upptäckte jag det där handslaget på omslaget till en bok av Stephen Knight The Brotherhood, Brödraskapet, som förutom att den gav en intressant redogörelse för Frimurarnas historia presenterade en mängd mer eller mindre fantastiska konspirationsteorier kring det legendomspunna sällskapet. Hos Knight fann jag Joseph Gormans fantasirika berättelse, som författaren av allt att döma tagit på fullt allvar.

Efter att ha sett BBC:s serie om Jack the Ripper hade Stephen Knight (1951-1985) sökt upp Joseph Gorman i hans sjaskiga lägenhet i norra London. I timmar hade Knight fascinerad suttit och lyssnat på mytomanens snillrikt konstruerade berättelser. Knight var dock till en början ytterst tveksam om det hela kunde vara sant och grävde därför ner sig i omfattande efterforskningar och undersökande journalistik, något som gjorde att han upptäckte märkliga sammanhang och oförklarliga tillfälligheter. Slutligen blev Knight övertygad om att Gorman i stort sett talat sanning. Resultatet blev 1975 en bestseller – Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, som grep den offentliga fantasin inte enbart på grund av den fantastiska historien Knight redogjorde för, utan även hans upptäckt av en konspiration på hög nivå. Om dolda krafter i hjärtat av det brittiska samhället – de enligt Knight mäktiga Frimurarnas lugubra manipulationer. som under århundraden präglat engelsk politik och vardag. Därmed sällade sig Stephen Knight till den stora mängd konspitationsteoretiker som ständigt spinner de mest knasiga nät kring vad de är övertygade om är mäktiga sammanslutningars globala och skadliga intrigspel.

En uppretad Gorman förstörde dock delvis Knights skickligt hopsnickrade teorier kring Frimurarnas manipulationer. Knight hade nämligen förändrat sin version av Gormans berättelse genom att understryka en misstanke om att Walter Sickert varit mer inblandad i morden än vad som tidigare antagits. Knight antydde till och med att det var Sickert och inte Dr. Gull som varit Jack Uppskäraren. Joseph Gorman, som envist fortsatt hävda att han var Sickerts son, gick till Sunday Times och erkände att han hittat på det mesta av sin fantastiska berättelse.

Knight gav sig dock inte och skrev The Brotherhood, ännu en bästsäljare i vilken han vidareutvecklade sina teorier om Frimurarnas kontroll av brittisk politik, ja – hur de hade ett skrämmande inflytande på hela det engelska samhället. Vid det laget hade Knight blivit en av Bhagwan Rejneshs, ”Oshos” lärjungar och kallade sig Swami Puja Deba. Två år efter utgivandet av The Brotherhood avled Knight genom en hjärntumör.

Knights teori fick flera uppföljare som spann vidare på såväl konspirationsspekulationerna som möjligheten att Walter Sickert varit Jack Uppskäraren. Då det gällde konspirationen blev Alan Moores och Eddie Campbells ”grafiska roman” från 1998 inflytelserik, främst därför att den utgjorde underlaget till bröderna Hughes 2001 film From Hell.

I sin film förvandlar dock bröderna Hughes Walter Sickert till Prins Albert Victor, som då han rör sig i East End och gifter sig med Anne Crook utger sig för att vara konstnären ”Albert Sickert”. I sin grafiska roman tonar dock Morre och Campbell ner Sickerts roll och koncenterar sig på läkaren och frimuraren William Gull, som framställs som en misogyn galning vars kvinnohat eldas på då han på uppdrag av Drottning Victoria som Jack Uppskäraren mördar den ena prostituerade efter den andra. Moore/Campbell låter Gull ansättas av märkliga visioner inspirerade av Douglas Adams humoristiska deckare Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, som Douglas beskrev som en ”ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics.”

I sin Sickert and the Ripper Crimes från 1990 pekade Jean Overton Fuller, författarinna till en mängd biografier, ut Walter Sickert som den misogyne kvinnodråparen.

Uppenbarligen kan ett uppslukande intresse lätt utveckla sig till en fobi. Jag skulle tro att sådant kan ske med uppslagsrika människor som upptäcker sammanhang och möjligheter där andra inte ser dem – artister, författare och vetenskapsmän. Det tycks som om speciellt konspirationsteorier har en förmåga att besätta folk, att färga av sig på all deras tolkning av tillvaron.

Patricia Cornwell, som arbetat på ett kriminaltekniskt labb och sedan dess lärt sig alla de finesser som ingår i en kriminalteknisk utredning, blev mångmiljonär genom sina Kay Scarpetta-deckare, som sålts i mer än 100 miljoner exemplar. Romanerna om rättsläkaren Scarpetta innehåller en mängd detaljer kring kriminaltekniskt tillvägagångssätt och lösningen på de skildrade, oftast ytterst makabra morden står alltid att finna i någon detalj som uppkommit i samband med obduktioner och brottsplatsundersökningar.

Vid slutet av förra seklet greps Cornwall av en mani som innebar att hon till varje pris måste bevisa att Walter Sickert varit identisk med Jack Uppskäraren. Det tycks som om hon med sin obduktions- och författarbackgrund blivit besatt av tvångstanken att hon till varje pris måste lösa Londons mest kusliga deckargåta. Cornwell satte satte sitt grundmurade rykte som skicklig spårhund på spel genom att utifrån en tolkning av Walter Sickerts mörka, provocerande och gäckande målningar finna bevis för att den framstående konstnören i själva verket var identisk med den legendariske mördaren.

Ett tillvägagångssätt som får mig att minnas hur jag tillsammans med en skolklass besökte en av Sveriges mest välkända rättsobducenter. Det var hans iakttagelser som gjort att en seriemördare avslöjats.

Mellan oktober 1978 och januari 1979 hade en 18-årig beredskapsarbetare vid Långvårdsklinken på Malmö östra sjukhus förgiftat åldringar med frätande rengöringsmedel. Totalt fick 27 patienter livshotande symptom och 24 av dem dog under svåra plågor. Rättsläkaren förklarade för oss:

Jag obducerade de flesta av de där åldringarna. Det var ren rutin och som vanligt gällde det bland annat att fastställa dödsorsaken. Samtliga hade alla lidit av svåra ålderskrämpor och många hade varit gravt dementa. I sådana fall kan en obducent med lätthet finna en mängd dödsorsaker. I min roll som sjukhusobducent söker jag i allmänhet inte efter brott och i samtliga fall kan jag i allmänhet finna vad som skulle kunna kallas naturliga dödsorsaker. Men då det under en kort tid kom in en ovanligt stor mängd avlidna från samma långvårdsavdelning vaknade rättsobducenten inom mig. Till saken hör att det inte alls är ovanligt att det från en stor långvårdsavdelning periodvis blir en anhopning av lik, något som antagligen gjorde att jag först inte fann det hela speciellt märkvärdigt. Men … så fort jag antog att det låg ett brott bakom dödsfallen fann jag dödsorsaken nästan omgående. Den var så uppenbar att jag inte kunde begripa att jag inte upptäckt den tidigare. Samtliga lik hade en starkt lila missfärgning i luftstrupen och jag kunde snabbt konstatera att någon hällt i dem dödligt Gevisol, eller Ivisol.

Gärningsmannen dömdes till sluten rättspsykiatrisk vård för elva mord och sexton mordförsök. Han hade tillåtits arbeta med de gravt invalidiserade åldringarna trots att han avskedats från sin tidigare verksamhet som vårdbiträde på ett annat sjukhus, med motiveringen:

Avd. har uttalat sig muntligen ang. honom. Har ingen som helst initiativförmåga. Ter sig konstig på avd.; verkar inte alls fatta vad man säger till honom. Skall ej återanställas.

Den sista meningen var understruken med flera streck.

Patricia Cornwells alltmer uppslukande ansträngningar att identifiera Walter Sickert som Jack Uppskäraren tycks ha fått henne att agera i motsatt riktning än den som en brottsutredare i allmänhet använder sig av. Istället för att utgå från en kedja av indicier som leder fram till en förövare har hon redan från början beslutat att det var Walter Sickert som begick de gräsliga morden och det var hos honom; hans tavlor, biografi och efterlämnade dokument, som hon sökte de ledtrådar som skulle binda honom vid Rippermorden.

För att lösa mordgåtan har Cornwell använt en del av sin förmögenhet för köpa inte mindre än trettiotvå av Sickerts oljemålningar, samt en mängd av hans teckningar och etsningar, samt en stor mängd annat Rippermaterial.

Cornwells fixering vid Sickert som styckmördare gör att hon i hans konst inte finner annat än ledtrådar till de mord hon tror att han begått. En inskränkt konstuppfattning som skulle kunna göra Picasso till kvinnomördare.

För att nu inte tala om Sickerts samtida bland tyska expressionister som onekligen hade ett morbidt intresse för kvinnomord och lemlästade kvinnokroppar. Ett fenomen som har gett upphov till flera specialstudier.

Dessutom förbigår Cornwell flera särtecken på Sickerts konst. Tvärsäkert konstaterar hon exempelvis att ”Denne konstnär målade aldrig något han inte hade sett". I själva verket använde Sickert i stor utsträckning såväl fotografier som tidningsurklipp som förlagor till sina konstverk. Cornwell förbigår även det faktum att Sickert i uppseendeväckande syfte ofta gav sina konstverk namn som alluderade på brott och skandaler.

Då för flera år sedan läste jag Cornwells bok om Jack the Ripper tyckte jag den var riktigt bra, speciellt hennes skildringar av eländet i East End och det hämningslösa våldet mot och föraktet för den tidens prostituerade. Redan då tyckte jag dock att hon i sin noggranna analys av Walter Sickerts antagna karaktär gick alltför långt, vilseförd av sina förutfattade meningar. Misstagen är mångfaldiga, inte minst hennes ytligt lättvindiga analys av Sickerts egenartade konst – den rör sig långt ifrån om ett återsken av en mördares dåliga samvete. Så enkelt är det förvisso inte. Likaså är resultaten av de undersökningar som gjordes av hennes generöst betalda grafologer och DNAexperter inte speciellt övertygande. För det första är det osäkert om ett enda av de omsorgsfullt undersökta Ripperbrev som finns arkiverade hos Scotland Yard verkligen är skrivet av seriemördaren. För det andra är hennes slutsats att frimärkena på två av dem motsvarar DNA på frimärken funna bland Sickerts stärbhus. Det mitokondriella DNA som fanns på frimärkena återfinns hos en till tio procent av Englands befolkning, alltså minst tiotusentals individer. Likaså var det brevpapper som flera av Ripperbrven var skrivna på visserligen identiskt med det som Sickert använde, men det var förvisso det vanligast förekommande engelska brevpappret vid den tid då breven skrevs.

Trots detta och flera andra suspekta slutsatser fortsätter Conwell envist att framhärda med att hon är hundra procent säker på att Walter Sickert var Jack Uppskäraren och att:

Om någon bevisar att jag har fel, kommer jag inte bara att framstå i dålig dager, jag kommer att förlora mitt goda rykte.

Olösta mord leder ofta till komplicerade konspirationsteorier och om de möjligen är politiskt motiverade kan de som söker efter en lösning lätt förirra sig i en labyrint där orelaterade, men ibland inte helt osannolika fakta blandar sig i leken tills dess fantastiska mönster uppkommer. Tänk enbart på den snårskog som vuxit upp kring Palmemordet där Ockhams rakkniv sällan tillämpats: ”man skall inte anta fler företeelser eller ting än de som behövs för att förklara de observationer man gör”.

Själv tror jag på teorin att det var amerikanen Francis Tumbelty som var identisk med Jack Uppskäraren. Han var en berömd kvacksalvare som i sitt hem i New York bland annat hade en samling kvinnliga kroppsdelar. Tumbelty färdades över hela USA och Kanada och besökte även England. Som skamlös och storljugande självpromotor sålde han värdelösa örtmediciner och utförde t.o.m. kirurgiska ingrepp. Tumbelty blev även känd för besinningslösa dityramber mot kvinnor, speciellt prostituerade som han avskydde efter ett misslyckat äktenskap med en kvinna som visat sig vara prostituerad.

1996 publicerade de tidigare kriminalkommissarierna Stewart Evans och Paul Gainey Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer i vilken de presenterade bevis för att Tumbelty under den korta period som Jack Uppskäraren härjade i East End varit inneboende på ett pensionat i Whitechapel. Han greps som misstänkt för gross indecency, grov oanständighet, som vid den tiden var beteckningen på ”olaglig homosexuell verksamhet”. Scotland Yard hade Tumblety på sin lista över misstänkta Jack Uppskärare och då han släpptes mot en borgen på £300 flydde kvacksalvaren under falskt namn till Frankrike, varifrån han fyra dagar senare avseglade till USA. Scotland Yard begärde omgående att Tomblety skulle utlämnas, men amerikanska myndigheter vägrade med motiveringen att

det finns inga bevis för hans delaktighet i Whitechapel-morden och brottet för vilket han blev frihetsberövad i London är i USA inte någon grund för utlämning.

Faktum är att Jack Uppskärarens blodiga framfart slutade samtidigt som Tumblety lämnat London.

Kritiken av Patricia Cornwells bästsäljare Porträtt av en mördare blev från experthåll tämligen skoningslös. Ett exempel är Caleb Carrs recension i New York Times, som slutade med omdömet:

Portrait of a Killer är en slarvigt hopkommen bok, förolämpande mot såväl den förmodade mördaren, som sin läsekrets. Det enda Cornwell kan göra för att reparera skadan är att gå vidare i sin undersökning, precis som hon säger att hon har för avsikt att göra. Det krävs år av grundlig forskning, studier och vetenskapliga tester för att möjligen komma fram till en tämligen korrekt bevisföring. Möjligen kan hon då belägga något hon påstår sig redan ha gjort – nämligen att på ett avgörande sätt fastställa Walter Sickerts skuld. Om det misslyckas borde hon be om ursäkt för denna manifestation av förtal.

Caleb Carr är av flera orsaker rätt man för att kritisera Cornwells bok. Han är efter flera år av studier expert på det mesta som skrivits om Jack Uppskäraren och den tid och miljö då morden begicks. Detta märks inte minst i hans två romaner The Alienist och The Angel of Darkness.

Deckarna utspelar sig i New York vid slutet av 1890-talet. Miljön är träffsäkert och detaljrikt skildrad. Flera kända personer medverkar i berättelserna, som den blivande presidenten Theodore Roosevelt och mångmiljonären J.P. Morgan. Otäcka massmördare av Jack Uppskärarens karaktär och sinnelag härjar i den stora staden alltmedan de efterspanas av barnpsykiatrikern Laszlo Kreizler, privatdetektiven Sara Howard och journalisten John Schuyler Moore, som använder sig av moderna metoder, som undersökande journalistik, fingeravtryck och kriminalpsykologi. Det är välskriven och spännande läsning som blivit underlag för två utmärkta TV-serier.

Om Jack Londons och Gustave Dorés skildringar av misären i East End ger en skrämmande belysning av bakgrunden till Jack Uppskärarens miljö så gör den danskättade Jacob Riis (1849-1914) ingående skildringar av misären i New Yorks fattigkvarter detsamma för Caleb Carrs romaner.

Riis försökte sprida kunskap om de fattigas fruktansvärda situation för att därigenom få till stånd sociala reformer. Han var en av de första som använde fotografi för att dokumentera miserabla förhållanden och propagera för social förändring. Den nya uppfinningen av fotoblixtar gjorde det möjligt för Riis att ta foton inomhus och orädd rörde han sig oantastad inom laglösa områden. År 1890 gav han ut det upprörande, men osentimentala och kyligt dokumenterade socialreportaget How the Other Half Lives, rikligt illustrerad med fotografier och teckningar.

I en intervju konstaterade Carr att det är viktigt för honom att allt i hans deckare är sant ”förutom själva berättelsen”. Speciellt i The Angel of Darkness utforskar Carr de kvardröjande effekterna av barndomstrauman och det våld de kan ge upphov till, samtidigt som han skildrar kontrasten mellan rika och fattiga, de som har makt att tala och bestämma och de som saknar officell röst.

Jag hyser en livslång fascination för alla former av våld, från krig till personligt våld, det sistnämnda är det jag haft mest erfarenhet av i mitt liv, allt från problem med min far och våld på Manhattans gator. . .. något som så småningom utvecklades till en vilja förstå våldets rötter.

Genom sin hjälte Dr. Kreizler vill Carr skildra hur en skicklig psykiatriker kan få inblick i en mördares ondska sinnelag. Inte på grund av sin utbildning utan genom sina egna mörka erfarenheter. Kreizler förmår sätta sig i en seriemördares tankesätt, förstå varför han blev en männsikoslaktare. Enda skillnaden är att Kreizler och mördaren gick skilda vägar. Carr sticker inte under stol med att ”det var mycket galenskap i min familj, mycket alkoholism bland de vuxna” och att det skadat honom för livet.

Caleb Carrs far, Lucien Carr (1925-2005) var en nyckelfigur in den så kalade Beatrörelsen och speciellt nära vän med Jack Kerouac. Carr kände den mer än lovligt galne William Burroughs från sin ungdomstid i St. Louis och det var Carr som introducerade Burroughs, Kerouac och Allen Ginsburg för varandra. Det finns mycket som tyder på att Carr var en orolig och mentalt instabil yngling, men han hade en mängd galna, uppfinningsrika och rent av farliga infall som fascinerade beatpoeterna. Allen Ginsburg konstaterade senare att Lucien Carr i mångt och mycket stod i centrum för beatgruppen, i varje fall i början av dess tillblivelse –”Lou var limmet”.

Första gången Jack Kerouacs namn dök upp i pressen var den 18:e augusti 1944, då han och William Burroughs greps som material witnesses, ögonvittnen till ett brutalt mord. Även om nyheterna dagen innan hade dominerats av de allierades framgångsrika landning på Frankrikes södra kust, så var nyheten om mordet sensationellt nog för att dyka upp på New York Times första sida: ”Student vid Columbia University dödar vän och sänker kroppen i Hudson River”.

David Kammerer och Lucien Carr hade träffats i St. Louis på ett sommarläger för pojkar, där den då tolvårige Carr var student och den fjorton år äldre Kammerer instruktör. Kammerer hade en Ph.D. i engelsk litteratur och undervisade i litteratur och idrott vid Washington University i St. Louis. Carr skulle senare, liksom hans vänner och familj, insistera på att Kammerer hade stalked, sexuellt förföljt, den stilige Carr och under de följande nio åren hade Kammerer dykt upp varhelst den unge Carr befann sig.

Mycket av den historien är dock tveksam. Det är i det närmaste omöjligt att nysta upp trådarna av insinuationer, juridiska spinn och lögner. Det finns inga oberoende bevis för att Kammerer verkligen var en stalker, enbart Carrs ord på att så var fallet. Det finns dock övertygande bevis för att Kammerer inte var gay och Carr skröt ofta om sin förmåga att manipulera den äldre mannen. Han fick honom till och med att skriva uppsatser för sina klasser vid New Yorks Columbia University.'

Under alla förhållanden uppsökte den då tjugotreårige Carr själv polisen och erkände att han i desperation och panik över Kammerers homosexuella närmande med sin scoutkniv hade knivhuggit honom till döds, varefter han lindat sitt offers armar med hans eget bälte, tyngt kroppen med stenar och dumpat den i Hudsonfloden.

Av allt att döma var de båda männen ordentligt berusade, möjligen även drogpåverkade, och motivet för mordet är oklara. Det är möjligt att Carr använde Kammerers antydda homosexualitet och påstådda stalking för att därigenom mildra sin dom. Under alla förhållanden dömdes han till tjugo års fängelse, men släpptes fri efter två år. Lucien Carr tillbringade sedan 47 år som journalist på nyhetsbyrån United Press International (UPI).

Även om Lucien Carr blev betydligt mer stadgad än sina beatkompisar fortsatte han att umgås med dem, fast sonen Caleb fann det oroande att vistas i närheten av faderns oberäkneliga vänner:

De kunde var trevliga på tu-man-hand. Kerouac var en väldigt trevlig man och Allen kunde också var en mycket trevlig kille. För ett barn var dock Burroughs lite väl underlig. Men ingen av dem var barnmännsikor. Om du inte ville undgå att vara skräckslagen i deras sällskap så måste du vara vuxen. Vad de sysslade med kunde inte få något barn att känna sig tryggt.

Även Patrica Cornwell hade en besvärlig barndom. I en intervju berättade hon att hennes intresse för brutala mord och kriminaltekniker grundade sig i hennes barndomsupplevelser:

Det beror på att jag växte upp med en fruktansvärd rädsla. Jag växte upp på ett så skrämmande sätt.

Efter att hennes far, som var läkare, hade lämnat familjen och hon själv antastas av en polisman som visade sig vara en välkänd pedofil flyttade Patricia med sin mor och sina bröder från Miami till North Carolina. Där drabbades modern av en svårartad depression som omöjliggjorde hennes omhändertagande av sina barn. Patricia Cornwell placerades i ett fosterhem där fostermodern mobbade och skrämde henne. Som tonåring kom Patricia att lida av svår anorexi och senare drabbades hon av återkommande depressioner och periodisk alkoholism.

Det tycks alltså som om flera deckarförfattare, och uppenbarligen de som fascinerats av Jack the Ripper, har lidit av svåra barndomstrauman och genom sina romaner försökt besvärja sina inre demoner. Men, hur är det med deras läsare? Flera av mina bekanta slukar deckare och för en del av dem är det den enda läsning de ägnar sig åt.

Det händer visserligen att jag också läser en och annan deckare, men det är långt ifrån ett uppslukande intresse. Trots det vittnar ju faktiskt det här blogginlägget om att även jag genom åren har ägnat en ett visst intresse åt Jack Uppskäraren. Det får mig underligt nog att tänka på barnboksförfattarinnan Elsa Beskow, vars geniala och ibland oroande böcker för alltid etsat sig in i mitt minne. Kanske främst av dem alla Tomtebobarnen som hon skrev och tecknade 1910 och vars bild av ett ruskigt troll satte ordentlig skräck i mig:

Ett gammalt bergtroll bor där i berget näst intill,

förbi hans dörr går barnen så rysligt tyst och still,

för tänk, ibland så händer (jag narras inte nu)

han tittar fram ur berget och ropar: ”bu-u-u!”

Då rusar barnen hemåt i allra värsta sken,

de snavar över tuvor och skrubbar sina ben.

Men trollet bara skrattar och pustar: ”Ack, ack, ack,

jag jag fick så roligt att magen nästan sprack!”

Elsa Beskow (1874-1953) var gift med Natanael Beskow, en känd präst, författare, konstnär och rektor. De fick sex pojkar, bland dem konstnären Bo Bekow. Medan maken var verksam som pastor med egen kyrka och senare som rektor för Djursholms samskola odlade Elsa Beskow sin konst genom bilderboksskapande och sagoskrivande. Hon stod därmed för en viktig del av hushållets inkomster, samtidigt som hon skötte såväl hem som sitt skrivande med pojkarna lekande omkring sig.

Liksom hustrun var Natanael Beskow en skicklig konstnär och talangen gick tydligen i arv till sonen Bo. Nedan ser vi Bo Beskows porträtt av hans nära vän Dag Hammarsköld, bredvid ett stilleben av Natanael Beskow.

Bo Beskow (1906-1989) skrev en charmig bok om sin barndom, Krokodilens middag, där Jack Uppskäraren plötsligt dyker upp i det annars så uppenbart harmoniska, beskowska hemmet:

Garderoberna rymde också spännande skatter. I en förvarade Far osedlig litteratur, som han i egenskap av medlem av en kommitté för utrotande av dylik samlade på. Detta listade mina äldre bröder ut och det lästes flitigt på nätterna, när alla officiellt sov. Bo var sex år och hade just lärt sig läsa. Helt fascinerad av ”Jack Uppskäraren” tog jag den med ned till söndagsfrukosten. ”Vad är det Bo läser?” Jag har aldrig fått läsa boken färdig och har har förgäves försökt få tag i den senare. Vem var "Jack the Ripper?” Gåtan har intresserat många, nu senast ser jag att Blaise Cendrars påstår att hans hjälte Moravagine var Jack the Ripper, vilket naturligtvis är skryt. Min barndoms hjälte är oavslöjad. Barn finner alltid en väg att korrigera det som brister i en alltför omtänksam uppfostran, jag vågar påstå att inget barn lever i vad man kallar en skyddad värld, även om båda parter låtsas att det förhåller sig så. Livet blir vad man lärt sig de fem första intensiva åren, av gott och ont. Till de mera chockartade upplevelserna hörde väl att vara borta på barnkalas och leka sällskapslekar, oftast raffinerade varianter på blindbock.

Det är mycket möjligt att boken som Bo Beskows bröder fann i garderoben var Jack Uppsprättaren eller Berättelsen om den niodubble qvinnomördaren från staden London samt en ömklig visa om den blodiga Jack, som i början av 1889 gavs ut av C. M. Bååths Boktryckeri i Malmö.

Boken publicerades alltså enbart några månader efter Rippermorden och innehöll detaljerade skildringar av de groteska mordfallen, inte minst information kring det svenska offret, Elizabeth Stride. Den anonyme författaren, som skrev under pseudonymen Ansgarius Svensen, var ovanligt välinformerad.

Att en svensk bok kom ut så kort efter Rippermorden är inte så underligt, med tanke på att det redan då fanns en mängd böcker skrivna om Jack the Ripper. Den första av dem alla var The Curse Upon the Mitre Square 1530 – 1888, skriven av den katolske författaren och organisten John Francis Brewer (1865-1921). Boken kom ut enbart någon vecka efter fyndet av den mördade Catherine Eddowes, Jack the Rippers näst sista offer. Brewers bok är dock långt ifrån en reportagebok utan en ”gotisk” skräckroman om en galen munk som 1530 mördar och lemlästar en kvinna framför högaltaret i The Church of Holy Trinity in Aldgate, en kyrka som en gång låg på samma plats där man långt senare fann den mördade Catherine Eddowes. Platsen ansågs tydligen vara hemsökt och scenen för flera andra mord. Munkens offer visade sig vara hans egen syster som han mördat och styckat av misstag. Brewer ger dock även en tämligen detaljrik skildring av mordet på Eddowes och tycks antyda att den galne munkens ande haft ett finger med i spelet.

År 2021 mördades uppskattningsvis 437,000 människor. Under Första världskriget dödades 20 miljoner, den efterföljande Spanska infuensan anses ha skördat 50 miljoner liv.  Mellan 70 och 85 miljoner människor blev offer för Andra Världkriget, i de nazistiska koncentrationslägren dödades 6 miljoner judar, 3 miljoner sovjetiska krigsfångar och uppskattningsvis 500 000 romer/sinti. I Sovjetunionen dödades mellan 15 och 25 miljoner genom statliga åtgärder. Vietnamkriget resulterade i 3,6 miljoner dödsoffer. De senaste två krigen i Demokratiska Republiken  Kongo och dess direkta följder har kostat 5.5 miljoner människoliv. Folkmord i Kambodja ledde till mellan 1,5 och 3 miljoner dödsoffer, i Rwanda mellan 400 000 och 500 000,  i forna Östpakistan mellan 300 000 och 3 miljoner, i Indonesien mellan 500 000 och 1,2 miljoner, förutom dessa ofantliga dödssiffror har diktaturer och folkmord skördat miljontals offer runt om i världen. Varför fascineras vi bland alla dessa miljoner offer av morden på ett fåtal individer – som Jack Uppskärarens fem offer?

Blodiga massakrer påmtusentals människor blir ofta bortglömda. Ett exempel bland tiotusentals – vem talar idag om de vidriga grymheter som under två oktoberdagar 1941 iscensattes av rumänska trupper i Odessa?

Det följande blodbadet på judar inrapporterades av tyskar som bevittnat det. Samma morgon, den 23:e oktober, trängdes nittontusen judar samman på ett torg nära hamnen. Det var kringgärdat av ett trästaket; judarna besprutades med bensin och brändes därefter till döds. På eftermiddagen samlade gendarmer och polis ihop ytterligare tjugotusen personer – återigen var de flesta av dem judar – och föste in dem i det kommunala häktet. Följande dag, den 24:e oktober, avlägsnades sextontusen judar från de som häktats och tvingades sedan i långa kolonner vandra ut ur staden i riktning mot Dlnik, en närliggande by […] de bands arm vid arm i grupper mellan fyrtio och femtio personer, fördes ner i redan grävda diken och sköts ihjäl. När denna metod visade sig vara alltför långsam pressades de blivande offren in i fyra stora lagerlokaler vars väggar försetts med hål genom vilka munstycken till kulsprutor fördes in. Offren besköts i den ena lagerlokalen efter det andra […] för att ingen skulle undkomma sattes de tre lokaler vars fångar beskjutits, de flesta var kvinnor och barn, i brand. De som inte bränts ihjäl av lågorna försökte fly genom öppningar i taket, eller genom fönstren; samtliga av dem mejades ner av handgranater eller maskingevär. Många kvinnor blev galna och slängde ut sina barn genom fönstren. Den fjärde lagerlokalen var fylld med män, de besköts följande eftermiddag och även den lokalen sattes sedan i brand.

Då jag bodde i Lund och under kalla vintrar genom fönstret blickade ut över snöfälten hände det att jag ibland tänkte på Göran Sonnevis dikt Om krtiget i Vietnam. Hur han efter ett ymnigt snöfall på morgonen går ut och skottar snö och då tänker att

De döda är siffror, som vilar, virvlar

som kristaller, i vinden över fälten.

Hittills beräknas 2 millioner ha dött i Vitenam.

Här dör knappast någon

av annat än personliga skäl

Kanske finns det ett samband med mannen på Niehaus IKEAbilder. Då de döda blir alltför många abstraheras de som mannen bland IKEA:s konstruerade hemmiljöer. Verkligheten blir diffus, konstruerad och svårbegriplig.

Massmord blir till siffror. Enskilda mord kan däremot kopplas till våra egna erfarenhet och de mördade får därigenom en helt annan närvaro. Vi kan sätta oss in i deras död. Och mördarna? Samma sak gäller nog även där. Var och en av oss funderar möjligen en och annan gång om vi skulle förmå oss att ta livet av en annan människa … eller oss själva. Vi kan nog tänka oss som både förövare och offer. Ett sådant rollspel ligger kanske till grund för att att deckarläsning och därmed  även  mord, kan betraktas som en form av underhållning, för att nu inte tala om alla våldsbejakande  filmer och videospel.

Kommer att tänka på en målning av Lorenzo Lotto – San Michele arcangelo caccia Lucifero, Ärkeängeln Mikael jagar Lucifer, från 1545. Betraktar vi noga den tavlan finner vi att ängeln och djävulen är samma person.

 Beskow, Bo (1969) Krokodilens middag. Stockholm: Bonniers. Beskow, Elsa (1910) Tomtebobarnen. Stockholm: Bonniers. Begg, Paul och Martin Fido (2015) The Complete Jack The Ripper A-Z - The Ultimate Guide to The Ripper Mystery. London: John Blake Publishing. Cadwalladr, Carole (2025) ”Patricia Cornwell: ’I grew up with fear’”, The Guardian, November 1. Carr, Caleb (1994) The Alienist. New York: Random House. Carr, Caleb (1997) The Angel of Darkness. New York: Random House. Cornwell, Patricia (2002) Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Gainey, Paul och Stewart Evans (2013) Jack The Ripper: First American Serial Killer. New York: Random House. Garner, Dwight (1997) ”Interview with Caleb Carr”, Salon, October 4. Gilbert, Martin (1987) The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy. London: Fontana/Collins. Homberger, Eric (2005) ”Lucien Carr: Fallen Angel of the Beat Poets, Later an Unflappable News Editor with United Press”, The Guardian, February 9. Knight, Stephen (1979) Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. New York: HarperCollins. Knight, Stephen (1988) The Brotherhood: The Secret World Of The Freemasons. London: Grafton Books. Lilly, Marjorie (1971) Sickert: The painter and his circle. London: Paul Elek Publishers. Moore, Alan och Eddie Campbell (1999) From Hell. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions. Riis, Jacob (1997) How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. London: Penguin Classics. Runerheim, Sten (1995). ”Morden på Malmö östra sjukhus”, Sydsvenska medicinhistoriska sällskapets årsskrift.  Sickert, Walter Richard (1910) ”The Naked and the Nude,” The New Age, 21 July. Sonnevi, Göran (1974) Dikter  1959-1973. Stockholm: Aldus/Bonniers. Tatar, Maria (1997) Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press.

It became a lengthy blog post and a parable is at hand – it seems as if I had been seized by an octopuses’ sucker-covered tentacles and unable to offer any resistance was dragged down into the depths of a sea of stories. It was difficult to get out of it all. When I finally have surfaced again, I realize that down there I found so much more than could be contained within the text below.

A walk through central Rome stimulates the imagination, trapdoors open up, leading down to forgotten history. Shortly after I finished writing my previous blog post about Victor Hugo and The Toilers of the Sea, I ended up in Piazza Navona. Standing by a fountain depicting how Neptune fights an octopus, I came to think about Hugo’s novel and Gilliatt’s fight against with the sucker equipped monster. However, could that story really have been an inspiration for such an old sculpture? I asked an Italian friend of mine if he knew who had created the fountain. Like so many others, he replied that it must have been Bernini, the master who made the magnificent fountain in the middle of the square. It did not sound right, to me. The octopus fight was well done, but it did not “feel” like a Bernini sculpture.

After returning home, I visited Wikipedia and … the so-called Neptune Fountain had been completed in 1878, more than 250 years after Bernini in 1651 had created his obelisk-decorated Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Four Rivers Fountain. Since 1570, what is now the Neptune Fountain had been a basin used as a source of drinking water and for washing clothes.

It was not until the beginning of 1870 that the Sicilian sculptor Gregorio Zappalà turned it into a fountain and along the edge created baroque-inspired nereids, cupids and seahorses. In 1878, the fountain was crowned with Neptune’s octopus fight battle, made by the Roman sculptor Antonio della Bitta, about whom I have not been able to find any information. Accordingly, it would not be impossible that this della Bitta had been inspired by Hugo’s portrayal of Gilliatt's struggle with Le Piuevre. After being published in 1866, The Toliers of the Sea immediately became an international success. In Italy as in the rest of the world, the bad reputation of the octopus was permanented as a predatory monster attacking and feeding on humans.

The octopus had long before that, throughout the Mediterranean, been a well-known creature, both admired and feared. Already around 1400 BC we find the strange animal depicted on a number of pots and vases from Knossos and Mycenae. It was for certain considered to be a delicacy and became a model for monsters like Hydra, Scylla and Medusa. 

The intelligent mollusk was also a symbol of smart activities and widespread influence. After all, it consisted almost entirely of a head and eight constantly active tentacles. This remarkable constitution made the octopus appear on Greek coins, such as the one below from the Greek colony of Syracuse on Sicily.

A Pompeian floor mosaic accurately depicts the octopus as a predator capable of attacking and cracking the shell of larger and complicated prey, like a lobster. Recent research has found that the strange mollusk, unlike a large number of other creatures, also is capable of using tools, for example stones to break mussel shells. In the Pacific Ocean, the octopus might seek out and carry away broken coconut shells, which that it use to build nests and hide itself from other predators.

Appropriately, the Pompeian octopus adorns the cover of Natural History: A Selection by Pliny the Elder, which I like to botanize in. A delightfully crazy, encyclopedic, all-encompassing “natural” history from the first century AD. 

The knowledgeable, well-informed and sometimes wildly fabling Pliny the Elder wrote quite a lot about the marvelous octopus; its great adaptability, ability to change colour and astonishing intelligence. However, just like Victor Hugo, who may of course have been inspired by Pliny, the Roman writer incorrectly describes the great mollusk as a predator that tends to attack humans, kill and eat them:

… no animal is more savage in killing a man in the water: it struggles with him, embracing him with its tentacles, swallows him with its many suckers and pulls him apart, it attacks shipwrecked men or men who are diving.

Even though huge variants of such a monster did not often occur in the Mediterranean, Pliny knew how to tell that there were unusually large octopuses there. According to him, Emperor Augustus' good friend Lucullus had been presented with an octopus which head was the size of a barrel capable of holding 400 litres of water, its tentacles were nearly nine meters long, while the beast weighed 315 kilograms.

After looking at the Fountain of Neptune, I walked down Via dei Lorenesi, turned left onto Largo Febo, and followed a parallel street of Piazza Navona to Santa Maria dell’Anima, the main church for the German Catholic congregation in Rome.

A church, filled with art treasures, even a hint of the short span of European history when the Swedish Baltic Sea Empire was in the spotlight of Italian intelligentsia. Not far from the high altar of Santa Maria dell’Anima we find stately tomb monument of the Swedish brothers Magnus originally named Johan and Olof Månsson), equipped with magnificent baroque decorations and an impressive skeleton which in a bony grip carries Archbishop Olaus’ picture medallion.

All roads lead to Rome. Standing in front of the grave monument, I was a Swede caught by a feeling of slight dizziness. I was, as so often before in Rome, looking down into a historical abyss where by chance, reading fruits and personal thoughts became united into an almost incomprehensible unity. I had not expected to find in the German Church the brothers Magnus memorial, at least after just around the corner watching the fight against an octopus. In a strange way, the Magnus brothers connect Sweden with Rome and not the least with astounding octopus-like monsters.

Let me take the Swedish connection first. How did two Swedish archbishops end up in Rome? In 1512, Sweden was part of union with Denmark and Norway. The common kingdom was generally ruled by a Danish king. However, some Swedish nobles were dissatisfied with the arrangement. They wanted to break away from the pact and elect their own king. Leading member of this group was the Riksföreståndare, satrap, Sten Sture the Younger and it was he who sent the erudite, young priest Johan Månsson to the Pope in Rome. This was done on the advice of the Swedish archbishop Gustav Trolle, who in Rome had been installed in his office by none other than the Pope himself. Since then, Gustav Trolle considered Pope Julius II as a personal acquaintance and this was the reason why Johan Månsson, now with the Latinized name Johannes Magnus, was sent to Rome. Julius II was a adroit and aggressive politician who waged war on several fronts, including against France, while he with an iron fist defended his Church State against any foreign intrusion.

Unfortunately, Kristian, who a year after Johannes Magnus’ arrival in Rome under the name Kristian II, in Sweden called Kristian The Tyrant, had become king of the Nordic Union. Kristian already had better cards on hand than Sten Sture, the Dane had namely close contacts with the Pope’s most powerful ally – the German-Roman emperor and in 1515 Kristian II married Carlos de Habsburg’s sister, Isabella. After his grandfather Maximilian I, Carlos eventually become German-Roman emperor in 1519. Both the emperor and the pope were well aware of the fact they were forging schemes against the emperor and the papacy.

Sten Sture the Younger sent the scholar Johannes Magnus to Rome as part of a PR drive that intended to increase Sweden’s importance while diminishing Denmark’s influence among the papal courtiers. Johannes had through his research found that Sweden was the country of origin of the Goths, a mighty tribe of warriors who once had defeated the mighty Rome, as well as conquering large parts of Europe. Eventually the Goths had become devoted defenders of the True Christian Faith. According to Johannes Magnus the Goths’ Swedish descendants had remained faithful upholders of the pure doctrinal Catholicism of the Papacy and thus worthy of replacing the Danes as the rightful rulers over all the Nordic countries. Unfortunately, Johannes Magnus’ shaky argumentation for Swedish superiority did not convince Julius II, who died the year after Johannes’ arrival, though the Swedish prelate remained in Rome with the intention of trying to convince the new pope, Leo X, with his arguments about the Swedes’ preeminence, at least if compared to their Nordic neighbours.

After Sten Sture’s death three years after Johannes Magnus’ arrival in Rome, Christian II attacked Sweden, subdued his enemies and union breakers and was crowned king in Stockholm. Shortly after the three-day coronation party, Bishop Trolle, who had anointed Christian II, demanded compensation for his castle Stäket, which Sten Sture had attacked and burned down, after he rightly, assumed that Trolle had joined Kristian II’s union party. Under Kristian II's supervision, Bishop Trolle saw to it that rebellious and “untrustworthy” priests and nobles, who had sided with Sten Sture, were sentenced to death for heresy.

One week after the coronation festivities, the executions began at Stortorget, just below the royal palace. Even he nobles’ servants were also executed with sword and gallows. A total of 84 people fell victim to what came to be called Stockholm’s Bloodbath. The corpses were burned at piles on Södermalm, just outside the city gates. Sten Sture the Younger’s grave was dug up and his cadaver thrown into the fire. Johannes Magnus’ brother Olof was witness to all this.

After ten years in Rome, Johannes Magnus dared to return to Stockholm, where Gustav Vasa now had become king after Sweden had broken away from the union with Denmark an Norway. Gustav Vasa had offered Johannes to become Sweden’s new archbishop, but he considered it to be an overly dangerous position, especially considering that a small but influential group of priests, trained by Martin Luther in Wittenberg, now had the king’s ear and recommended a break with the Pope and offered Sweden’s new and autocratic ruler to become dictator of the Church as well.

On a diplomatic mission in Danzig (he was to find a wife in Gustav Vasa) Johannes chose to stay abroad. His two-year-younger brother Olof, who now called himself Olaus Magnus, was soon reunited with him. Like his brother, Olaus was also a learned man. In Sweden he found himself in a vulnerable position after making himself known as a convinced supporter of the papacy. Furthermore, he had on behalf of the Catholic Church traveled all over Scandinavia, selling indulgences. He had even for a time been living the Sami in northern Sweden.

For several years he brothers lived in Danzig, unsure if they could venture down to Rome. Johannes Magnus had not been undivided critical of Lutheranism and had furthermore been a fierce opponent to the introduction of the Inquisition in Sweden. Eventually, the brothers dared to travel up in Rome, where they were warmly welcomed by the Pope, hoping that they could be instrumental in winning Sweden back to the Catholic faith. When Johannes died in 1544, the pope appointed Olaus as archbishop of Sweden. It was a useless maneuver since the Lutherans by now had a strong grip on Gustav Vasa’s kingdom and Olaus never returned to his homeland.

In 1557, Olaus Magnus died in Rome, he had until the day of his death tirelessly been working on creating revolutionary and attractive impression of his previously internationally relatively unknown homeland. In several books he had described a fantastic, mysterious and basically wealthy nation. At first he published letters and pamphlets while propagating for his brother’s extensive volume Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus, The Story of All the Kings of Gothia and Sweden, written in clear and flawless Latin. The book became a bestseller and Olaus made sure that it ended up with Gustav Vasa’s sons.

Johannes Magnus had created comprehensive lists and detailed descriptions of members of Swedish royalty, all the way back to one of Noah's son, who according to him was called Magog and actually had been king of the Swedes, or Goths as he called them. In a similar vein he continued to tell tall tales composing wild and often quite funny fables, with one or two elements of proper reading fruits. Several of the kings he wrote stories about were of course Johannes’ own inventions. However, Gustav Vasa’s sons became firm believers in Johannes Magnus’ concoction and this belief was the reason to why they, as Erik XIV and Karl IX, adopted such high order numbers.

Olaus Magnus did not content himself only with spreading knowledge about Sweden’s marvelous history, he also spread, in the same fantastically fabulous spirit as his brother, knowledge about Sweden’s geography and wonderful history.

During their exile in Danzig, Johannes and Olaus had by the the Portuguese historian and geographer Damião de Góis been emboldened to write about their homeland and were in this endeavor financially supported by Johannes Dantiscus, a wealthy diplomat and poet, closely associated with Sigismund I, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. These men assumed that the Magnus brothers in the Nordic countries could contribute to a strengthening of the position of Catholicism. These influential potentates gave them access to books and manuscripts and were very interested in Olaus’ stories about his own travels up in the far North. After ten years in Danzig, the Magnus brothers went to Venice and in 1539 had their great map of Nordic countries published by a famous Venetian master printer.

The map is certainly a masterpiece. It is the earliest reasonably accurate map of the Nordic and Baltic countries, with accurate indications of cities, villages and geographical landmarks. In addition, the map was lavishly illustrated, not the least with imaginative sea monsters, something that made the Italians describe it as Mappa Marina, the Sea Map.

Above Lofoten, we glimpse the monster that became associated with Olaus Magnus – a depiction of the legendary Kraken, a giant octopus wonder capable of devouring entire ships. Two years before his death in 1555, Olaus Magnus was able to publish, in the same flawless Latin as his brother, a huge work which initially had been intended to be a complement to Mappa Marina, though over the years it grew in scope.

 In the preface to his work, Olaus Magnus emphasized his purpose of providing the educated readership with a

history about the Nordic peoples, their different conditions, customs, leisure activities, social conditions and their specific way of life. Their wars, buildings and tools, mines and other wonderful things, as well as descriptions of almost every animal living in the Nordic countries, being part of their nature. A work with a variety of knowledge, partly illuminated through foreign examples and partly with depictions of domestic things, to a large extent suitable for entertainment and a pleasure to read, for certain it will amuse and stimulate the reader’s mind.

Magnus’ extensive description of Nordic ways was the result of more than thirty-five years of hard work and is filled with the sheer joy of telling stories. A mixture of short reflections and stories based on his own youthful experiences, tall tales, reading fruits and pure fantasies,which in spite of a lot of nonsense actually contains a core of truth. The whole thing becomes a peculiar reading experience, augmented by strange images which are a mix of everything possible. It is almost impossible to read the work from cover to cover, but it is a pleasure to randomly read a paragraph or two in this remarkable book.

An example, among thousands of others, of the work’s idiosyncratic character is when Olaus Magnus came up with the idea of carefully trying to describe snowflakes. The lack of literary and artistic precursors becomes noticeable when Olaus Magnus draws our attention to hitherto unsubscribed phenomena. He writes about the “changing forms of snow” and then gets involved in a number of attempts to describe what snow really looks like, referring to Aristotle, chemistry and his own observations, and writes among other things:

it is obvious for people everywhere and especially in the Nordic countries, as well as neighbouring areas, to have an opportunity to perceive the variety of wonderful shapes and images of snow […] one may admire these phenomena rather than try to explore the reason to why and in what way so many forms and images might occur. It is beyond any artist’s creative ability to portray such soft and insignificant things. It is actually not uncommon to see 15 or 20, or sometimes even more, different shapes of snow and ice. At times, changing patterns appear on glass panes, which in order to exclude the cold are applied over window openings of heated cabins, and one might thus have the opportunity to appreciate how through the influence of the external cold and the wonderful art of nature, the glass becomes adorned with changing images that an artist, any one, at the sight of it may rather admire the glory of nature than imitate it.

The difficulty of describing something well-known, which nevertheless has never been described before, permeates the entire Olaus book, or rather books – his work about the Nordic peoples was published in thirteen volumes. The difficulties of depicting unknown things to the public are also noticeable in the images of the unknown illustrators, which accompany Magnus’ text. The artists apparently did not know first-hand what they were trying to portray. They were forced to build on what they knew and what Magnus had told them. Accordingly, turned to the work of other artists and took theses depictions as models for what they were trying to convey. For example, when they try to portray Swedish hospitality, which Olaus Magnus of course says is very generous, though according to him it had certain limitations – Russians, Muscovites and Danes generally smelled so bad that you could not keep them in your house for a longer time – so could for example, an artist working for Olaus Magnus make use of a woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger.