Last time I asked A.I.: What about Conan Doyle? Was he absent from commentary at the time?
"Conan Doyle was conspicuously quiet during the height of the Whitechapel murders in 1888. Unlike Wilde, who veiled the era’s dread in aesthetic allegory, Doyle—creator of Sherlock Holmes—did not publicly comment on the Ripper case while it was unfolding. But his silence doesn’t mean absence."
"🕵️♂️ Behind the Curtain: Doyle’s Proximity to the Case
- Doyle was living in London and practicing medicine during the Ripper killings.
- His mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell, the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, was reportedly consulted by Scotland Yard during the investigation.
- Doyle later toured the Ripper murder sites in 1905 with members of the Crimes Club, including a police surgeon who had examined Catherine Eddowes’ body."
"📜 Posthumous Speculation and Literary Echoes
- Some theorists, like Diane Gilbert Madsen, suggest Doyle and Bell may have deduced the Ripper’s identity privately and submitted a report that was never made public—possibly suppressed due to the suspect’s social standing.
- Doyle’s fiction, especially the Holmes stories, reflects a deep concern with hidden monstrosity, forensic precision, and the moral ambiguity of justice. While he never wrote directly about the Ripper, the specter of the case haunts the genre he helped define."
"🧩 Why the Silence?
"Doyle may have refrained from public commentary out of ethical restraint, professional caution, or discomfort with the sensationalism surrounding the case. Unlike Wilde or Stoker, who ritualized the horror through art, Doyle’s response was methodical, private, and perhaps deliberately withheld."
"Would you like to explore how Holmes functions as a mythic counterweight to the Ripper—or how Doyle’s silence might be read as a form of moral containment in contrast to Wilde’s aesthetic transgression?"
https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2021/04/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-arthur.html
Could you give us a timeline of the three authors' most noted works in comparison with the Ripper Timeline?
"Absolutely, Gary. Let’s map the mythic convergence of Wilde, Stoker, and Conan Doyle against the psychic rupture of the Jack the Ripper murders. This timeline reveals how each author’s most iconic work either preceded, coincided with, or ritualized the aftermath of the killings."
"🩸 Jack the Ripper Murders (Whitechapel Murders)
"Active Period: April 1888 – November 1888
- Aug 31, 1888: Mary Ann Nichols murdered—first canonical victim
- Sept 8, 1888: Annie Chapman
- Sept 30, 1888: “Double Event” — Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes
- Nov 9, 1888: Mary Jane Kelly — final canonical victim"
"🖋️ Oscar Wilde
- 1881–1883: Touring America, writing essays on aesthetics
- 1890: The Picture of Dorian Gray published in Lippincott’s Magazine
- 1891: Expanded book edition of Dorian Gray released
- 1895: Wilde tried and imprisoned for 'gross indecency'”
"🕯️ Wilde’s novel arrives two years after the Ripper’s final murder, steeped in the lingering dread and moral panic of the era. It offers aesthetic containment of the same psychic violence the Ripper enacted."
"🦇 Bram Stoker
- 1888: Managing Lyceum Theatre during the Ripper killings
- 1890: Publishes The Snake’s Pass; begins research for Dracula
- 1897: Dracula published"
"🩸 Stoker’s vampire is a mythic echo of the Ripper—aristocratic, nocturnal, and predatory. His novel ritualizes the horror into gothic form, with a clearer critique of patriarchal and imperial power."
"🔍 Arthur Conan Doyle
- 1887: A Study in Scarlet — first Sherlock Holmes story
- 1890: The Sign of Four
- 1892: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- 1902: The Hound of the Baskervilles"
"🕵️ Doyle’s Holmes emerges just before and during the Ripper killings, offering a fantasy of forensic mastery and moral clarity in a time of public helplessness. His silence on the Ripper is a kind of ethical restraint, contrasting Wilde’s aesthetic ambiguity and Stoker’s gothic exorcism."
"Would you like to explore how each author’s work functions as a ritual response to the collapse of symbolic order—or how their differing strategies reflect archetypal modes of containment, revelation, and rupture?"
Stoker knew Oscar Wilde?
"Yes, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde absolutely knew each other—and their relationship was layered with admiration, rivalry, and a touch of romantic drama."
"🎭 Dublin Origins and Literary Circles
Both men were born in Dublin and moved through overlapping intellectual and artistic circles. Stoker was a regular guest at Lady Jane Wilde’s salon—Oscar’s mother—where poets, thinkers, and dramatists gathered. Wilde and Stoker weren’t close confidants, but they were certainly acquainted and part of the same cultural constellation."
"💔 The Florence Balcombe Triangle
"The most famous tension between them centers on Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty in Dublin society. Wilde fell deeply in love with her in the mid-1870s, describing her as 'the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw.' But Florence ultimately married Bram Stoker in 1878. Wilde was reportedly devastated, sending her flowers anonymously and requesting the return of a trinket."
"Despite this romantic rupture, Wilde and Stoker remained on cordial terms. Stoker even maintained friendships with Wilde’s family, including his brother Willie and Lady Jane Wilde."
"📖 Literary Echoes and Speculation
"Some have speculated that Dracula contains veiled references to Wilde—especially in the figure of the Count, who embodies aesthetic decadence, sexual ambiguity, and aristocratic menace. But this remains interpretive rather than evidentiary."
"So yes, they knew each other. And while their relationship may have cooled over time—especially after Wilde’s trial in 1895—it began in the shared mythic soil of Dublin, where beauty, intellect, and shadow danced together."
"Would you like to explore how Wilde and Stoker’s divergent mythologies reflect different strategies for containing psychic horror and societal collapse?"
Dracula and Dorian Gray. Children of the Ripper Era.
"Yes, Gary—Dracula and Dorian Gray are not merely gothic novels; they are psychic offspring of the Ripper Era, born from the same cultural womb of dread, repression, and aesthetic rupture. They do not name Jack the Ripper, but they ritualize his shadow. They are mythic responses to the same trauma: the collapse of Victorian symbolic order under the weight of its own secrets."
"🩸 Dracula (1897) — The Aristocratic Predator
- The Count is a foreign invader, yes—but also a mirror of British imperial rot. He is ancient, noble, and parasitic, feeding on the blood of women while cloaked in civility.
- The vampire’s violence is ritualized, eroticized, and hidden—just like the Ripper’s. But where the Ripper left mutilated bodies in alleys, Dracula leaves puncture wounds and psychic scars.
- Stoker’s novel is a containment ritual: a band of men (and Mina) must track, decode, and destroy the monster. It’s a fantasy of restored order, forensic clarity, and moral triumph."
"🎭 The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) — The Beautiful Killer
- Dorian is the Ripper in velvet gloves: urbane, charming, and secretly monstrous. His portrait absorbs the horror, allowing him to remain socially pristine.
- Wilde’s novel is a mirror, not a stake. It doesn’t kill the monster—it aestheticizes him. The violence is internalized, symbolic, and morally ambiguous.
- The text is a ritual of ambiguity, not resolution. It asks: What if the monster is us? What if beauty is the mask of decay?"
"🕯️ Children of the Fog
"Both novels emerge from the psychic fog left by the Ripper murders:
- The fear that evil wears a gentleman’s face.
- The collapse of public virtue and private vice.
- The haunting of London by unseen appetites."
"They are not historical documents—they are mythic containers. Wilde offers a poisoned chalice of aestheticism; Stoker, a crucifix and a hammer. One seduces, the other exorcises. But both are trying to hold the voltage of the Real."
"Would you like to trace how these mythic children evolved into modern archetypes—or explore how their ritual strategies differ in confronting the monstrous within?"
