One of the least credible theories regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper insists the serial killer was Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a practicing physician prior to gaining wider fame as the creator of Sherlock Holmes with the publication of \u201cA Study in Scarlet\u201d in 1887. There is no evidence \u2013 not even the most frayed wisp of preposterous circumstance \u2013 to place Conan Doyle in Whitechapel at the time of the killings, let alone providing him with a motive for the crimes. <\/p>\n
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But that\u2019s not to say that the author of Britain\u2019s most celebrated mystery fiction did not have a link with Britain\u2019s most baffling real-life mystery. In 1894, a newspaper in Portsmouth, England, called The Evening News ran a brief article with the title \u201cHow Sherlock Holmes Would Have Tracked Him.\u201d The text of the article went like this: <\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Conan Doyle, in an interview with an American journalist, has explained how \u2018Sherlock Holmes\u2019 would have set about the work of tracking the notorious Whitechapel miscreant. He says:\u2014<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Separate from the interview, Conan Doyle speculated that Jack the Ripper disguised himself as a woman while enacted his gruesome crimes. The cross dressing was done to avoid detection and capture, and in women\u2019s clothing he would be able to gain closer access to the unsuspecting prostitutes who became his victims. The idea of the killer in women\u2019s clothing was floated by Frederick Abberline, the chief inspector for the London Metropolitan Police, who was flummoxed by testimony by Caroline Maxwell that she saw Mary Kelly twice several hours after she was murdered \u2013 Maxwell claimed the person she saw was wearing “a dark shirt, velvet bodice and a maroon-colored shawl.” When pressed if these were Kelly\u2019s clothes, Maxwell insisted that she recalled Kelly wearing the shawl. <\/p>\n
Abberline had a different theory given to him by Conan Doyle \u2013 if the killer was wearing Kelly\u2019s clothing, it would have to be a woman rather than a cross-dressing man. He reportedly asked Dr. Thomas Dutton, “Do you think it could be a case not of Jack the Ripper but Jill the Ripper?” Dutton was skeptical of the theory, believing that only someone trained and active as a midwife and\/or an abortionist would have been able to possess the anatomical knowledge create the level of physical havoc resulting in the victims\u2019 mutilation. <\/p>\n
Conan Doyle never siphoned the Whitechapel murders for his Sherlock Holmes stories. While there is no recorded interview on why he opted to avoid a fictionalized account of the crimes, most likely Conan Doyle would have faced criticism for lacing the gruesome true-life murders into his literary creations. <\/p>\n
“A Study in Terror”<\/strong><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that the notion of putting Sherlock Holmes in pursuit of Jack the Ripper was conceived, and only then it came through an unlikely source \u2013 Herman Cohen, an American movie producer specializing in Grade-Z output such as \u201cI Was a Teenage Werewolf\u201d and \u201cI Was a Teenage Frankenstein\u201d (both in 1957), had relocated to London in the late 1950s to churn out a series of low-budget, high-energy mayhem features including \u201cHorrors of the Black Museum\u201d (1959), \u201cThe Headless Ghost\u201d (1959) and \u201cKonga\u201d (1961). Cohen wanted to continue his success in producing energetic exploitation films with a vehicle that offered a more significant degree of respectability. The brothers Derek and Donald Ford suggested creating a Sherlock Holmes thriller involving Jack the Ripper and wrote the first draft of the screenplay. Cohen obtained the rights to the Sherlock Holmes character from Sir Nigel Films, which controlled the rights to the Conan Doyle\u2019s intellectual property, and secured financing from Columbia Pictures that would help elevate the film above the cheapjack knockabout that Cohen previously created.<\/p>\n \u201cA Study in Terror\u201d is notable for the being the first Jack the Ripper-themed film that uses the some of the names of the killer\u2019s victims \u2013 although the only connection between the women and their real-life circumstances is their names.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s pre-credit sequence features a streetwalker who accosted on a Whitechapel street by an unseen assailant and left for dead with a knife through her neck. This character is later referred to as \u201cEmma Smith\u201d by another prostitute, Polly Nichols. But unlike the real Polly Nichols (also known as Mary Ann Nichols), the film\u2019s version \u2013 played by sultry German actress Christiane Maybach \u2013 meets her doom when the killer thrusts her head into the water of a horse trough before stabbing her.<\/p>\n The next victim is Annie Chapman, who is played with a broad Cockney comic tinge by the young blonde Barbara Windsor, who later gained popularity as part of the zany \u201cCarry On\u201d series. In this presentation, Chapman is denied access to her flat by her landlady for nonpayment of rent. After unsuccessfully seeking money from her meatpacker boyfriend Chunky, she is grabbed on the street and wrestled to the ground before being stabbed to death.<\/p>\n Somewhat more accurate is the killing of Elizabeth Stride, which is depicted with a throat slashing. But the film also reinvents her as a young woman (in this case, lovely actress Norma Foster) and it imagines her flirting with two sailors before being shooed off to her home by a humorless constable who finds her body minutes later.<\/p>\n Mary Kelly\u2019s murder occurs in her flat \u2013 the film presents her tossing the key to an interested client in the street \u2013 and her murder is under the glow of a red light. As with the other women, she has been glamorized for the film, in this case with Edina Ronay and her considerable cleavage barely contained in form-fitting corset.<\/p>\n Oddly, the film neglects to show Jack the Ripper\u2019s murder of Catherine Eddowes \u2013 although she is a character in the film played by an age-appropriate Kay Walsh in a wordless blink-and-you-miss-it moment as a pub patron with lamentable table manners. <\/p>\n To its credit, the film cites the \u201cDear Boss\u201d letter. But beyond that, no other aspects of the crime spree are included in the story, which finds Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as interested observers to the Whitechapel murders via the newspaper coverage of the killings. They are incorporated into the investigation after receive a mysterious parcel from an unknown sender. The parcel contains a case of surgical instruments with a missing scalpel, which they surmise is the weapon used in the murders. The case bears the crest of an aristocratic family which Holmes traces to the Duke of Shires (a fictional character). In speaking with the duke, they learn his eldest son Michael had studied to become a doctor, but disappeared during his studies and is believed to be dead; this is confirmed by Lord Carfax, the duke\u2019s younger son. Holmes theorizes the surgical instruments were pawned to a Whitechapel broker, whom he tracks down through extraordinary deductions including a sunlight fading of the case\u2019s cloth. <\/p>\n Holmes and Watson locate the missing Michael, who had been beaten into a brain damaged state by a pub owner named Steiner in a blackmail scheme that went awry and resulted in Steiner\u2019s lover being scarred with acid thrown in her face. Holmes unmasks Lord Carfax as Jack the Ripper, who has been killing prostitutes in a warped act of revenge on behalf of his brother. Lord Carfax, Angela and Steiner are killed in a fire at the pub, with Holmes being the only person to escape the blaze. But rather than share his findings with the police, Holmes decides to protect the honor of the Duke of Shire\u2019s family and keep the secret of Jack the Ripper to himself.<\/p>\n To be charitable, \u201cA Study in Terror\u201d makes little sense \u2013 but the film seems to be striving to achieve a victory of style over substance. Cinematographer Desmond Dickinson, who shot the classics \u201cHamlet\u201d (1948) and \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest\u201d (1952), happily used the Eastman Color film stock in capturing the garish excesses of Whitechapel\u2019s seedier corners, and Polly Nichols\u2019 death is joltingly captured as her blood\u2019s red hue quickly filled the inky water of the trough where she was submerged while being stabbed. Curiously, producer Herman Cohen originally wanted the film to be called \u201cFog,\u201d which might have raised too many questions from viewers noticing the absence of fog in the film\u2019s twilight London streets.<\/p>\n \u201cA Study in Terror\u201d followed a trend in 1960s films of packing the cast with recognizable stars in smaller roles. In this case, Frank Finlay plays Inspector Lestrade (this was the same year he turned in his Oscar-nominated performance as Iago opposite Laurence Olivier\u2019s Othello), Robert Morley turns up as Sherlock Holmes\u2019 brother Mycroft (also the first time Mycroft is a character on-screen), Anthony Quayle is a mortician, West End musical star Georgia Brown is a pub singer and champion British boxer Terry Downes is the meatpacker Chunky. Smaller roles went to little-known actors Patrick Newell (who later gained small screen fame as Mother on \u201cThe Avengers\u201d) as a constable, and Corin Redgrave and Jeremy Lloyd as pub patrons. <\/p>\n As for Holmes and Watson, \u201cA Study in Terror\u201d is the rare film of this genre where Holmes and Watson are the least interesting characters. John Neville and Donald Houston seem to have patterned their performances after the popular interpretations by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, albeit without Rathbone\u2019s zestful line readings and Bruce\u2019s lapses into charming bumbling. Neville\u2019s Holmes even takes a moment to declare \u201cElementary, my dear Watson!\u201d \u2013 a catchphrase not found in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories.<\/p>\n \u201cA Study in Terror\u201d opened in the United Kingdom in October 1965 to audience favor, but Columbia Pictures held up its United States release until August 1966. The studio seemed baffled on how to market the film, opting for an advertising campaign that heralded the cape-wearing Sherlock Holmes as \u201cthe original caped crusader\u201d amid cartoon balloon sound effects of \u201cBANG!\u201d, \u201cCRUNCH!\u201d and \u201cBIFF!\u201d \u2013 why the studio hoped to confuse Sherlock Holmes with the television \u201cBatman\u201d series is unclear. <\/p>\n A novelization published as an Ellery Queen mystery was also offered as a tie-in, but this only added to further confusion by having the pseudonymous Ellery Queen reviewing a manuscript that presents the film\u2019s story.<\/p>\n