Don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but not only do Wallace’s anagrams not make much more sense than the original Jabberwocky verse, they’re not even proper anagrams! (I’m assuming both verses are entered correctly on the web page.) I noticed just by looking that Carroll’s verse has 5 G’s to Wallace’s 4, so I decided to examine further. Wallace’s verse has a different amount of b, g, i, n, and o. Sum total, Carroll’s verse has 100 letters, Wallace’s 97. Apparently Wallace had to redefine anagrams to make it work for the verses he came up with.
The column in question is Do anagrams in Lewis Carroll’s poems prove he was Jack the Ripper?
Forget Lewis Carroll… It seems that Alice herself has developed a proclivity towards violence.
I’d just like to point out that of the twenty or so suspects who might have been Jack the Ripper, only one was certainly a victim of Routine Infant Circumcision (RIC). That suspect is Prince Albert Victor.
Queen Victoria assumed the throne in 1838 (7?) and then married Prince Albert in 1840. They had nine kids. All of the sons were circumcised (I don’t know about the daughters). This is when the tradition of circumcising the Royal Family started.
One son, Prince Edward, would assume the throne after the death of Queen Victoria. One other son was Prince Albert Edward who was the father of Prince Albert Victor, the suspect.
RIC didn’t begin in the English speaking nations of the world until 1870. From about 1850 to 1880, circumcision in Victorian England was mainly done as a punitive measure for masturbation. The White Chapel murders took place in 1888. So, Prince Albert Victor would have been one of the EXTREMELY few adult men walking around who was also a victim of RIC. Given the mounting evidence for the psychological damage that results from RIC, I don’t thing that it is any accident that the modern world saw its first sexual - serial killer at this point in its history.
:rolleyes:
Once more, with feeling:
Do you have a cite for this, Jack??? Or are you just taking up bandwidth again?
Place yer bets.
Cecil’s reply was good, but the definitive answer to the question can be found at Red Mike’s Reviews at http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/r_ripper.htp
Jack, HELLOOOOOO, if it was routine, then PAV wouldn’t have one of an “EXTREMELY few” men who were circumcised. And I second porcupine’s and Jodi’s comments.
Welcome to the SDMB, sunstar, and thank you for posting your comment.
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
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Cecil’s column can be found on-line at the link kindly provided by my colleague, all-around great guy and Jesuit-educated Alphagene.
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
I’m not sure I agree with your theory JDT. For one thing, from my readings in English literature, it seems to me that there would have been jews living in England for many years prior to the Jack The Ripper slayings (see examples in Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, etc…)
Perhaps you are familiar with the proverb “If you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” In this case I can’t help but think that your explanation sounds a little far-fetched.
He liked to photograph little girls. Little girls.
In the nude. :eek:
Welcome to the SDMB, Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor, and thank you for posting your comment.
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there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil's column can be found on-line at [Was Lewis Carroll a perv?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_185.html)Cecil did an update of the Carroll anagram column a few months later. Lewis Carroll cont’d in which he discusses a letter to the editor of Harper’s. The two letter-writers rearranged the letters of the first paragraph of Wallace’s article to reveal a shocking confession.
Jack, please keep your wee-wee issues contained in their proper threads.
Oh COME ON PEOPLE! Lewis Carroll was OBVIOUSLY Jack the Ripper. Have you ever read Jabberwocky? The whole thing is psychotic. In this poem, jabberwocky refers to women. Make sense now?
The man who advises the ‘hero’ to
“Beware the Jabberwocky my son!
The jaws that bite, the jaws that catch”
Was probably Carrolls father. This verse is a literary allusion to female wiles. The Jubjub bird and bandersnatch- Do i need to explain?
The hero is carroll, and how he saw himself when he did his evil. If you look at the poem line by line the similarities become… frightening.
“He took his vorpal sword in hand:” - Did not JtR kill with a blade? In carrolls madness he probably thought of the scalpel or whatever he used as a mystical weapon.
“Long time the manxome foe he sought” Refers to his selection and stalking of victims. Obvious- Also MANxome. Or Man X o’ me.
Or - non-man (Manx) die (X) (the x has a double meaning) or (o’) Me (carroll). The word expresses his fear and thoughts on his ‘foe’.
" So rested he by the Tumtum tree
and stood awhile in thought" The tumtum tree refers to lewis’s fixation on young girls. Did he not ponder by them? and ‘stand in thought’ as he took his depraved photos?
You be the judge.
" And as in Uffish thought he stood
The Jabberwock with eyes of flame
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
and burbled as it came"
Uffish - pertaining to violence
Jabberwock - Lewis’s derogeratory term for grown women who were in the lower castes of english society at the time
‘eyes of flame’ - Lewis’s paranoia kicking in
Whiffling - endless nattering
tulgey wood - londons foggy streets
burbled - a scream choked by blood.
The whole verse reads like something out of clockwork orange, does it not? Though less obtuse minds may fail to make these connections, that is something i have never had to concern myself with. Let us continue, though the squimish may shirk.
“One two! One, two! And through and through
the vorpal blade went snicker snack”
Describes the dismembering the victim. Notice how these lines are positive and exciting? That is how Carroll felt. The exctasy of the kill is well known among serial killers.
“He left it dead, and with its head
he went galumphing back”
Notice how carroll refers to the jabberwock as an ‘it’? He is dehumanizing his victim in his vile poetry.
Galumphing - Walk made jaunty by the thrill of the kill
“‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Calley!’
He chortled in his joy”
The voice of his father, that it is well known Carroll heard IN HIS HEAD (due to the syphillis that had crossed the barrier into his BRAIN), approving his godless slaughter.
And a final repetition of the first verse. I shall not interpret this verse as it is PURE PROFANITY and i shall not sully myself with it. If you choose to interpret it yourself BEWARE! for it is well known that madness is contagious?
Lewis Carroll? More like LORD CARCASE!!!
Jack the Ripper? More like Jack the LEWIS CARROLL!
I trust i have made my point.
This is, of course, preposterous. Prince Albert was in the can the whole time.
I thought warnings were suppose to be posted with links to icky, icky sites. My stomach heaved!
The only thing “icky” about that game is that it recommends that I purchase a 64MB video card to run it. Like I got that kind of money…
This is quite possibly the most blatantly anti-semitic post I have ever seen on Straight Dope.
Dim deed troth:
I assassinated George W. Bush vs Al Gore,
Every nth term yearning.
Thy ballgame will be a hot, hot, wild bomb time.
SpinneZiege, I think that now you are reading too much into things.