Jack the Ripper's secret confession : the hidden testimony of the Britain's first serial killer

Intro; Begin reading; Half-title page; Title page; Copyright page; Contents; Preface; Introduction; Acknowledgements and Endnotes; Index;With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life, first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history's most fiendish killer. Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it's narrated by "Walter," the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died. While Jack the Ripper spread fear throughout the East End of London in 1888, another man stalked the streets hunting flesh. He called himself "Walter". He was a rapist, voyeur, and fetishist obsessed with prostitutes. Walter was not only a wealthy man, but a literary one. In the same year as the Ripper killings, Walter first printed up his vast memoir of sex and perversion under the title My Secret Life. Fewer than 20 sets were struck off on a secret Amsterdam press between 1888 and 1894. Long banned for obscenity, only censored excerpts of Walter's masterwork were seen for a century. One of the few complete sets not destroyed by the authorities was locked away in the British Library's closed cupboard. This is the story of the volumes in that locked room and the horrific clue they contain - a clue that unlocks the diary as the final confession of Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession shows how this notorious work of Victorian pornography reveals that its author had the means, the motive and the opportunity to be Jack the Ripper. As importantly, it delves into dark psychiatric motives within the text, to show Walter possessed the unique psycho-sexual fingerprint of a knife killer.

The identity of history’s most famous serial killer is finally revealed!

Publishers Weekly

Television director Monaghan and author Cawthorne (Serial Killers and Mass Murderers) fail to prove their case that Jack the Ripper, who murdered and mutilated five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel area in 1888, and a pseudonymous author known only as “Walter” were one and the same. The authors spend most of the book re-telling portions of Walter's story from his 11-volume erotic memoir, My Secret Life, and attempting to prove that Walter—who raped his first girl as 18 and had a lifelong obsession with raping virgins—was responsible for the Ripper killings. But the links Monaghan and Cawthorne try to establish with the Ripper (they note Walter's links to older prostitutes, the type of women Jack killed; they count the number of times certain common words appear in both the book and a letter Jack allegedly sent to the authorities) are flimsy. Whoever Walter was, the authors do not close the case of Jack the Ripper—a case that has mystified the public for well over a century. (Jan.)

With several million copies sold in the last fifty years, My Secret Life , first published by Grove Press in the 1960s, is one of the most famous pornographic works in literary history. What readers of this long-banned and troubling book of violent sexual fantasies failed to realize is that it is also the confession of history's most fiendish killer. Written during the era of Jack the Ripper, it's narrated by “Walter," the pseudonym of textile millionaire Henry Spencer Ashbee. Walter was a voyeur and rapist obsessed with prostitutes, and his writing revealed his darkest sexual secrets. He died in 1901, long before his book would be widely read. Only now have researchers finally come to the conclusion that “Walter" and Jack the Ripper were, in fact, one and the same. Jack the Ripper's Secret Confession puts all the pieces together, and its new theory will amaze and titillate scholars who for generations have pondered the true identity of history's most brutal murderer. A maniac on the loose The Ripper's lair In the mortuary The devil at large Defloration mania The London minotaur The maiden tribute of modern Babylon Blood sports The murder of 'Long Liz' Stride The young Walter The huntsman The murder of Catherine Eddowes The murder of Mary Jane Kelly More murders My secret life Who was Walter? Puts forth the theory that Jack the Ripper was a textile millionaire by the name of Henry Spencer Ashbee, who, under the pseudonym "Walter," wrote a troubling book of violent sex fantasies around the turn of the century.