Walter Sickert

Walter Richard Sickert (May 31, 1860 in Munich (Germany) – January 22, 1942) was an English impressionist painter.

The Ripper theory

In recent years, Sickert's name has been connected with Jack the Ripper. Sickert himself was interested in the crime and believed that he had lodged in the room used by the murderer, having been told this by his landlady, who suspected a previous lodger. He painted the room, entitling it "Jack the Ripper's bedroom", portraying it as a dark, brooding, almost unintelligible space. The painting is in Manchester City Art Gallery. http://www.manchestergalleries.org/mcgweb/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=941&reftable=ecatalogue&refirn=8432

Related Topics:
Jack the Ripper - Manchester City Art Gallery

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In 1976, Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution contended that Sickert had been forced to take part as an accomplice in the Ripper murders. His information was derived from a man who claimed to be Sickert's illegitimate child. From this developed the popular "Royal conspiracy theory". Jean Overton Fuller, in Sickert and the Ripper Crimes (1990), claimed that Sickert was the actual killer instead of just an accomplice. The opinions of Knight and Fuller are no longer widely accepted by other Ripper scholars.

Related Topics:
Stephen Knight - "Royal conspiracy theory"

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In 2002, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, in Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed (2002), presented her theory that Sickert was responsible for the murders. She also believes he committed many other murders. She bases her assertions on DNA comparisons, opinions about Sickert's paintings and sketches, and the suggestion that Sickert had a penis that was deformed from birth, which she claims would make him incapable of sexual intercourse.

Related Topics:
2002 - Crime novelist - Patricia Cornwell - DNA - Penis - Sexual intercourse

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Cornwell purchased 31 paintings by Sickert and is said to have destroyed one or more of them searching for Sickert's DNA, which Cornwell denies. She DNA-tested numerous stamps and envelopes she believed to have been licked by Sickert, and compared them to stamps and envelopes from letters claiming to be written by Jack the Ripper. Most of these contained no DNA evidence at all, which is unsurprising considering how old they are and how they have been treated over the years. She reports that, in one case, the mitochondrial DNA that she assumes is from Sickert cannot be ruled out as being a match to the mitochondrial DNA found in one of the "Jack the Ripper" letters.

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Critics of her theory note that the comparisons have only focused on mitochondrial DNA, which, depending on the expert queried, would be shared by between 10% and .1% of the population. Given the number of people who handled the many letters, finding a match to any mitochondrial DNA sample at some point would be highly likely. Critics also note that most, if not all, of the letters are believed by most Ripper experts (including Scotland Yard) to be hoaxes. Even if Cornwell can eventually prove that Sickert wrote one or more of the letters claiming to be from the Ripper, that would not be proof that he actually was the killer.

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Cornwell's claim that Sickert had a deformed penis has also been disputed. The artist was known to have several wives and lovers, reportedly resulting in several children (including Joseph Sickert, the man Knight got his Royal Conspiracy theory from). This would seem to make the theory that Sickert could not perform sexually unlikely. Further, the doctor that Sickert visited for his fistula problem did not normally treat penises, but rather was more of a proctologist. Fistulas also can develop on anuses, a fact which would seem to fit the available evidence better than Cornwell's claims that he had disfigured penis.

Related Topics:
Fistula - Proctologist

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Most problematic for Cornwell's theory is the fact that a number of letters from the Sickert family place the artist as vacationing in France for a length of time that overlaps the dates of most of the canonical Ripper murders. Cornwell and her supporters claim that he could have traveled on a ship back to London and then returned to France on all of these occasions, but have shown no evidence that he did so.

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