Talk:Robert Donston Stephenson

Article created
ΑΩ (talk) 23:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Article deletion/redirection and major changes
About a week ago this article was deleted/redirected by User:DreamGuy, with the following edit comment: ''"person has zero notability on his own separate from Jack the Ripper status, and the info in this article was very clearly pushing a POV, the summary on other article is much better".

These claims are simply not true, except in the general sense that a number of people have, one way or another, become notable because of their involvment in the 'Jack the Ripper' investigation. It is a matter of judgment who would be sufficiently notable, or not, to warrant a separate article. Most obviously, the notability of the murder victims rests entirely on their "Jack the Ripper status". In no other case have, as far as I'm aware, murder victims been accorded a similar status, or separate articles in any encyclopedia. In Stephenson's case there does in fact exist enough historical material to establish him as a historical figure in his own right, although very minor.

Stephenson does have a tenuous status as a 'Jack the Ripper' suspect. But this "status" is inseparable from the fact that it was caused by his active involvment in the investigation, first of all his letter to the City Police of 17 October. That letter, and Stephenson's article in the Pall Mall Gazette of 1 December, does without any doubt establish him as a contemporary example of a journalist advancing his own theory as to the identity of 'Jack the Ripper'. Beyond that there is also the fact that there exists a collection of Stephenson's writings that to some extent makes his involvment historically understandable, and makes him notable in his own right.

The claim that "the whole clue section is hopelessly slanted -- the guy didn't even speak French, and a French writer later tore the theory to part, and it's not notable to even bring up" is mere subjective opinion. The criticism raised by the "native French speaker" in the Pall Mall Gazette of 6 December merely shows that Stephenson's knowledge of French may have been somewhat cursory. Which does not, in itself, necessarily make Stephenson's theory any the less likely. And if the "clue section" seems "hopelessly slanted" there should of course first be made an attempt to make it more objective. The "French writer" did, for one thing, not "tear the theory apart". He pointed out that a native speaker would not use the word 'Juives' as a masculine noun. Anyone reading that article ought to be able to see that this Frenchman was mostly preoccupied with defending the language habits of his countrymen. But the theory does not refer to a Frenchman speaking his native French, but to a (hypothetical) French serial killer writing English in "the tremenduous hurry of the moment". Either way, it is not for us to judge Stephenson's theory, nor the claims of the anonymous Frenchman for that matter. No professional opinion exists, as far as I'm aware, of how likely a "bilingual slip-up" like the one Stephenson suggested would be. And even if one or more professional opinions, supportive or adversary, had been available it would not detract from the mere fact that Stephenson's article does establish him as a contemporary "Jack the Ripper theorist".

The photograph of Stephenson was also removed without any explanation. I'll be reinstating it, and a somewhat expanded version of the "clue section", under the more neutral heading "Involvment and suspect status".

Any further major changes to this article should be discussed here, on the talk page. ΑΩ (talk) 21:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You do not WP:OWN this article. When you edit an article, you explicitly agree "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it." The whole "Juives" theory is nothing but an insignificant footnote in the Ripper story, and a pretty ridiculous one at that, as it has no chance of being right, as that Frenchman you ignore pointed out. You can't take over a section of Wikipedia and use it to advance a fringe theory by some nobody. Because you don't seem to want to let anyone else edit this article, and because his only notability is as a suspect, I've redirect this article to the page dealing with suspects. You don't just get to declare yourself right, you have to follow Wikipedia standards. If you want to advance your own beliefs get a blog or something. DreamGuy (talk) 22:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The grounds for notability are one thing, the question of content another. Which means, that when the subject of the article has been accepted as sufficiently notable, it should be objectively presented. That is, Stephenson should, as far as possible, be described as the person he was, as should the circumstances leading to the suspect status. Stephenson's theory as to the identity of the murderer does of course represent a considerable part of those circumstances.


 * And merely claiming that someone acts as if owning an article does not make it so. I did start this article - about a year ago. And you have been aware of it since almost a year ago. And then, for some reason, you're suddenly redirecting it to a very short and insufficient section in the 'Jack the Ripper suspects' article. Notability and content are to be established by consensus, not by the assumed expertise of any single editor. Merely pointing at some policy certainly doesn't count as establishing consensus. And when I reinstated it you seemed to accept that Stephenson is notable. And I did not erase all of your edits. Now you're redirecting it because of our lacking consensus. That certainly cannot be right.


 * And calling an argument, or a theory, ridiculous or insignificant does not make it so. In fact, appeal to ridicule quite commonly signals a lack of real arguments. Which does, alas, seem all too common, within this field, as elsewhere. Stephenson's suspect status could be a case in point. Melvin Harris wrote three books about Stephenson as a 'Jack the Ripper' suspect. In Jakubowski's and Braund's Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper the surgeon Nick Warren still calls it a "risible conspiracy theory", while J&B calls Melvin Harris a "responsible and sceptical Ripperologist", John Eddleston, in Jack the Ripper - an Encyclopedia, says the mere idea of 'Jack the Ripper' routinely returning to the London Hospital beggars belief. Warren and Eddleston hardly argues against Harris's theory, but are instead resorting to glib comments. Eddleston may of course have been circuitously defending his own pet theory (Hutchinson) and Warren his own profession. The same tendency may be found in Martin Fido's comment on Stephenson's suspect status in the same book: "Not some self-inflating, self-incriminating fantasist with half-baked delusions of grandeur and loony beliefs in magic like Roslyn D'Onston Stephenson." No actual arguments, whereupon Fido quickly advances his own pet suspect David Cohen. The field of "Ripperology" is mostly populated by people like that, advancing one theory or another. I quoted Colin Wilson as his comment on Melvin Harris seemed the more balanced.


 * And I did not ignore "that Frenchman". Quite the contrary, thanks to you I was made aware of that letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and I have read it several times. And when you pointed out that the Stephenson article was slanted I made a fair quote of the essence of that Frenchman's argument - his one argument. Which ends, somewhat tellingly perhaps, with an appeal to ridicule. He merely countered one of Stephenson's four arguments. That one actual argument was directed at Stephenson's claim that the gender of the noun 'Juwes/Juives' must have been wrong. No other part of Stephenson's theory was addressed.


 * Now, Sir, to speak seriously, I do not at all deny that the assassin may be a Frenchman; there are plenty of French assassins in the world, and, though I venture to think that in London English assassins are more plentiful, I am willing to admit the possibility of "Jack the Ripper" being my compatriot. But I say that the arguments by which "One Who Knows" seeks to establish this are utterly baseless and absurd. Frenchmen may be, as he says "the worst linguists in the world," but if he were a better "linguist" himself he would know that bad "linguists" may know their own language, and in this respect, Frenchmen may be compared favourably with any other people. As to his assertion that they constantly make mistakes in gender, it is simply untrue. There are a few substantives, such as "hotel," "ouvrage," &c., which have a feminine sound to the ear, and as to which some utterly uneducated French people fall into the error of applying to them feminine articles or adjectives; such a person might therefore talk of "une hotel juive," or "une ouvrage juive," but no French man, woman, or child would ever mistake a feminine for a masculine substantive, and the idea that they could, under any circumstances, write Juives for Juifs when using the word as a substantive is enough to make a Frenchman hold his sides with laughter. Perhaps "One Who Thinks He Knows" also thinks that the uneducated Frenchman speaks of femmes when he means hommes! 1


 * In the first underlined passage it says 'arguments' - plural. But only one of Stephenson's arguments were countered. None of the other three of Stephenson's arguments were addressed: Not the double negative, not the employment of the definite article before a second noun, nor the fairly obvious similarity between the script images of 'Juwes' and 'Juives'. Instead there was an appeal to ridicule, in spite of the fact that the idea of some major gender identity confusion on the part of a serial murderer is, of course, not ridiculous at all. As at least some cases clearly show there does exist a grey area within this field of study where gender identity disorder and fetishism overlaps with serial murder and mutilation. Perhaps most obviously in the case of Jerry Brudos.


 * Shoppers in the area described seeing a very tall and strange-looking woman in the area. One witness said that when this person got close to her, she saw that it was a man in drag. He seemed fairly creepy, so people had avoided him. There was no reason then to link him to this incident, but in retrospect, it all went together . (...) when the authorities lifted her, they found that she was also clothed in a long-line black brassiere that appeared much too large to be hers (confirmed by her mother), and it had been padded with brown paper towels. In fact, this victim's breasts had been removed and the padding appeared to have been placed there to absorb the blood and fluid. (V ronsky says it was to create the illusion of a larger bosom, but it turned out to be a less mundane reason. ) (...) It seemed that he'd had an "adjustment reaction" to adolescence and was not considered dangerous, although he had developed a fetish for female shoes and underwear, and for nude female photographs. He seemed immature and unable to deal normally with his developing sexuality. But that did not strike anyone as the foundation for violence. As Rule put it, the doctors believed that he simply had to grow up. They can hardly be blamed for this misjudgment. Not much was known in 1956 about the development of serial sexual predators. (...) On another occasion Darcie (Brudos's wife) discovered a paperweight in the house shaped like a woman's breast. That really bothered her, but Brudos had an explanation. Not knowing what else to do, she accepted it and forgot the incident, just like she did when she caught him developing photographs of nude women.2


 * It would of course be even more right to say the same about the general knowledge of serial sexual predators in 1888 - not much was known. With 'Jack the Ripper' also, the reasons could certainly be "less mundane" than anyone might have thought. The case does, as you certainly must know, present some evidence of what may, without any resort to wild speculation, very easily be interpreted as a fetishistic obsession with sexual identity markers. If it had indeed been possible to fairly counter Stephenson's arguments his theory probably would have been forgotten a long time ago.


 * I'll be reinstating the article, again. But with a separate section on Stephenson's suspect status. ΑΩ (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Wow what a garbled mess of original research and stating your intention to use the article as your own soap box. "If it had indeed been possible to fairly counter Stephenson's arguments his theory probably would have been forgotten a long time ago." Well, it has been rejected long ago anyway, but lots of rejected theories are still remembered. DreamGuy (talk) 00:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Bizarre nonsense
I've rarely seen an article here about a Ripper-related topic so full of nonsense... but that's probably because most such articles are edited by a team of people who fix each others mistakes, whereas you seem to just want to revert anything that removes anything you've written.

The Juives claim, as mentioned above, is utter nonsense. It's true he had the theory, but it's a minor and ridiculous one, easily disproven,a nd it was. Police took no notice of it, and experts on Ripper studies dismiss it entirely as well. There's no reason to make the article promote such nonsense.

"He also claimed that he had killed a woman in Africa," = what?!?!? No, he most assuredly did not. He once wrote a piece of fiction in which a witchdoctor tried to curse the narrator, and the narrator had a talisman that reflected the curse back. It is beyond ridiculous to claim that Stephenson was making an admission of an actual murder.

It is precisely this sort of bizarre content that makes a redirect necessary. Some people lose all sense whenever they talk about this guy. DreamGuy (talk) 00:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Your claim that I was trying to push any point of view in the "suspect status" section is indeed nonsense. Until a week ago this article did not present much doubt at all, as to the dismissal of Stephenson as a suspect, by Inspector Roots. And I am the one that started this article, about a year ago. Personally, I've never had much doubt that Roots's assessment was reasonable, that there never was much real reason for suspecting Stephenson. But you pointed out that the article was slanted. And I found that you could be right, especially in view of the fact that an author such as Melvin Harris actually seemed to insist that Stephenson had to be the murderer. Perhaps he did "lose all sense". But that would be for a reason, like you're implying. Either way, I don't think it is for us to judge. At least some of the reasons why Melvin Harris may have "lost all sense" should be fairly presented.


 * Most other "Ripper articles" have a number of active editors. This is a minor article and very few people have been taking part in the editing of it. It means, of course, that errors may more easily be left unnoticed. That much is true. But there has been very few actual errors.


 * You have, for one thing, been aware of it for a year almost. But for some reason you suddenly found this need to redirect it to this very insufficient section in the 'Jack the Ripper suspects' article. And when that did not work, you're mangling it by removing an important part of the circumstances leading up to the suspicion directed at Stephenson.


 * Yes, Stephenson did make some bizarre claims. It may have been "bizarre nonsense" most of it, or even all of it. But these claims are still among the reasons why he was at all suspected. The acts of serial murderers are, after all, also very bizarre. Though they are not very often advertising their bizarre side openly. In the book by Jakubowski and Braund it does in fact say, about Stephenson, that "it may be that he killed his wife, and he claimed to have killed others". I took the latter part to refer to that story about the African woman. Not sure what else it could be. The first part seemed mere speculation, as it did not refer to a claim made by Stephenson himself. So I left that part out. The fact remains that Stephenson did make bizarre claims, seemingly confounding reality and fantasy. That is probably also a reason why some people have found him suspicious.


 * And there is no proof that the police entirely dismissed Stephenson's theory about the message in Goulston Street. The police had no general theory as to who or what the murderer might be. And as for that message, Charles Warren claimed that "It is not known that there is any dialect or language in which the word Jews is spelled JUWES". Which is why Stephenson made that suggestion. But a theory like that just wouldn't help them much, with no other sign of a French suspect available. The police did of course find good reason to believe that it may have been a misspelling. But that is not the same as to say any other idea would have been dismissed as sheer nonsense. According to Jakubowski and Braund "it appears that his (Stephenson's) cultured manner and eagerness to assist the police with arcane knowledge evoked their admiration rather than their suspicion". That would probably refer to Inspector Roots report, quoted in the article. In no way does it suggest that Stephenson's ideas were entirely dismissed.


 * And like I said, merely calling something "ridiculous" or "insignificant" doesn't make it so. Calling it "nonsense" makes it no better. The theory has not been disproven, certainly not by that Frenchman, as he merely addressed one of Stephenson's arguments. And there is no agreement among experts as to why that message was written the way it was, or even what it means. Most of these "experts" you are referring to are promoting some theory of their own, and they are not experts on this particular question. Neither are any one of us. So, surely, we should do our best to present Stephenson's ideas in a neutral way. ΑΩ (talk) 07:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

outside comment
(saw this on AN/I). It seems to me that for this particular series of crimes, perhaps the best known serial murders of any, world-wide, that articles on each of the suspects is warranted if there is enough information, as there is here. Every theory about the crime has been called ridiculous by someone or other. DGG (talk) 16:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Seems to be well-written and sourced - how ridiculous the claim is doesn't actually concern us. Cameron Scott (talk) 16:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree that it's well-written and sourced. It would be nice though to see a little bit more about the man other than Jack the Ripper theories. I have no problem with its being a stand-alone article. Franamax (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with DGG, with the (obvious) observation that BLP doesn't apply as all these suspects are long dead. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The difference here is that this particular theory has been called ridiculous both all modern experts on the topic and was already debunked back at the time it was first raised. The whole thrust of the argument was that this was a French word, but D'Onston didn't understand French, and French speakers pointed this oput at the time. Giving this much detial to a thoroughly discredited and bizarre theory but some guy off the street is a huge violation of NPOV. It's unfortunate the outside comments were made by people who didn't understand the context and thought merely that it was called ridiculous "by someone or other" instead of everyone. DreamGuy (talk) 15:30, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I am glad that this article has survived. Its content is no more bizarre than those of other Ripper articles and it has been well defended by the reasoned and even-tempered arguments of its creator. I left a query on the Vittoria Cremers page as to whether Stephenson was the person that Cremers identified as J the R; there may be other evidence. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC).