Jack the Ripper. How Sherlock Holmes Would Have Tracked Him
Jack the Ripper. How Sherlock Holmes Would Have Tracked Him is an article published in The Evening News (Portsmouth) on 4 july 1894.
Jack the Ripper
(4 july 1894)
How Sherlock Holmes Would Have Tracked Him
Dr. Conan Doyle, in an interview with an American journalist, has explained how "Sherlock Holmes" would have set about the work of tracking the notorious Whitechapel miscreant. He says:—
"I am not in the least degree either sharp or an observant man myself. I try to get inside the skin of a sharp man and see how things would strike him. I remember going to the Scotland Yard Museum and looking at the letter which was received by the police, and which purported to come from the Ripper. Of course, it may have been a hoax, but there were reasons to think it genuine, and in any case it was well to find out who wrote it. It was written in red ink in a clerkly hand. I tried to think how Holmes might have deduced the writer of that letter. The most obvious point was that the letter was written by someone who had been in America. It began 'Dear Boss,' and contained the phrase, 'fix it up,' and several others which are not usual with the Britishers. Then we have the quality of the paper and the handwriting, which indicate that the letters were not written by a toiler. It was good paper, and a round, easy, clerkly hand. He was, therefore, a man accustomed to the use of a pen.
"Having determined that much, we can not avoid the inference that there must be somewhere letters which this man had written over his own name, or documents or accounts that could be readily traced to him. Oddly enough, the police did not, as far as I know, think of that, and so they failed to accomplish anything. Holmes's plan would have been to reproduce the letters facsimile and on each plate indicate briefly the peculiarities of the handwriting. Then publish these facsimiles in the leading newspapers of Great Britain and America, and in connection with them offer a reward to anyone who could show a letter or any specimen of the same handwriting. Such a course would have enlisted millions of people as detectives in the case."
