In the fine tradition of Fiona And Cake, Dr Jekyll And Sister Hyde and the new Ghostbusters, some Ripper investigators have suggested that everyone else is on totally the wrong track - by gender swapping the infamous serial killer. There are many who suggest that the culprit may actually have been a woman, which necessitates changing her name to Jill The Ripper, we guess. Less offensive than her other nickname, the Mad Midwife, at least. Mary Pearcey was actually convicted of murder, albeit of her lover's wife and child, and executed around the time The Ripper's killings all but stopped. Depending on who you ask. This isn't just one of those fringe theories, by the way. She was actually the favoured suspect of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - you know, the guy who created Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective in history. Okay, so Doyle wasn't a detective himself, but there's plenty of people who agree with his assertion that a woman done it. She would have found it easier to avoid the police, for one thing, since they were always searching for a man. There's no contemporary physical evidence or eyewitnesses linking Pearcey to The Ripper, true, but a 2006 DNA testing of envelopes from letters thought to have been sent by the killer suggested it was a woman...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
