The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper Read Online Free PDF

superimposing themselves like the jig-saws of a modern German film. The faces of individual school-fellows—Sanders, the big ginger-headed Scot; another whose name I have forgotten, the son of a local publican and a fearsome fighter; the prig Humphreys with his curious backward-jutting skull; the lean, dark Wellcome continuously afflicted with a snuffling cold. And a seemingly endless, ghostly procession of assistant masters like the nun’s lovers in Reinhardt’s production of “The Miracle.” Young or in broken middle-age, smug, shabby, bad-tempered, nervous or hopelessly resigned. But in place of the Spielmann’s piping I hear, as an obbligato, references to, and hymns about, blood. Emanuel’s blood; the blood of the Lamb; shedding blood; washing in blood. Blood.
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    But I fear my inexperience as a writer is betraying me; I have said nothing about the physical aspect of this school where I spent such a large proportion of my waking hours. And yet perhaps I am not so far wrong in trying to convey at first the general atmosphere which assisted the budding of my youthful mind.
    The school was a private house situated about a mile from my home; and as the house still exists and may, for aught I know, be occupied by members of my late principal’s family, I will refrain from specifying the exact address. A large back room on the ground floor of the house had been converted into a school-room. It was panelled to a height of about three feet with deal match-boarding stained a horrible yellowish-brown. Above this woodwork the walls were whitewashed. I think a portion of this room must have been a built-out extension of the original house, for a large skylight had been let into one end of the ceiling and the rear wall of the room consisted almost entirely of glass-work.
    The school-room was warmed by an iron stove standing upon a stone slab, and beside this was an earthenware water-filter with a mug hanging from it by a piece of cord. Upon the wall near the stove hung a baize-covered notice-board which usually bore announcements of forthcoming missionary lectures, lists of positions and marks gained in class, a syllabus of the Mutual Improvement Society, and so forth. A door at one end of the room led into the private part of the house and by this were a series of book-shelves untidily stacked and, on the opposing side, the wooden dais of the principal, bearing a black-board and a large desk finished to the same offensive colour as that of the wall panelling. Running across the room, and facing this dais, were rows of desks and forms, while further desks ran along the right-hand side of the room.
    We boys, numbering about forty, had entry to the school-room by a rear door leading from a “cloak-room,” which, in its turn, communicated with the playground. To provide this playground Dr. Styles had sacrificed the greater part of what had been a fairly large garden. It was covered with knee-biting gravel (for most of the “play” indulged in was of a rough and tumble violence) and enclosed by high brick walls. At one end the gravel ceased, giving place to the surviving remnant of the original garden. This, so far as we could judge, consisted almost entirely of masses of raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes, and was protected from our intrusion by a light wooden railing. Our principal appeared to be passionately fond of gooseberries, and during the mid-morning play-times of summer he could always be discerned, wearing a pseudo-clerical hat, moving in a crouching posture amongst his bushes like an Indian brave patiently tracking the foot-prints of an enemy. So great was our respect for this holy piece of ground, and so dreadful did the penalty for intrusion appear to our imaginations (though never actually specified by our principal), that never once during my school career do I recall that any spirit was bold enough to overstep the wooden rail. Yet that rail was more a symbol than a