HYPNOSIS MADE ME DO IT
The Hypno-Ripper – Donald K Hartman (editor)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a blog on the internet must be in want of free swag. And so it has come to pass with Cosmic Pancakes!, with this latest book post.
I recently wrote about Donald Hartman’s Death by Suggestion, an anthology of 22 short stories from the 19th and early 20th century where hypnotism is the cause of death.
Having come across the post, Hartman got in touch to ask if I’d like to read another of his hypnosis-themed works, The Hypno-Ripper, comprising two ‘Jack the Ripper’ stories.
And with a title and theme like that, how was I to resist?!
But before I delved in, I was curious to know more about Hartman’s interest in hypnosis…
The retired US librarian has carved out a niche as an author, editor and compiler of reference works connecting the literature and history of the 19th and early 20th century. Hypnosis is just one of the myriad topics explored via the ‘Themes & Settings in Fiction Press’ series.
As he told weirdhistorian.com, Hartman has been scouring old magazines, books and databases for references to hypnosis during this period for more than 30 years. His interest was sparked early in his library career when a colleague suggested hypnosis as a book display theme. He has since amassed more than 800 works on hypnosis.
The Hypno-Ripper brings together two stories prompted by the infamous murders of five women in London’s Whitechapel in 1888. The Whitechapel Mystery is a novel by NT Oliver originally published in 1889; while ‘The Whitechapel Horrors’ is a short story published anonymously in two American newspapers in 1888.
I should say I take no pleasure in the salacious ‘Ripper industry’. The horrific murders of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly have been subsumed into the gothic fiction tradition; five Victorian ‘prostitutes’ seem too far in the past to trouble ourselves with fact vs fiction, and thus can seem expendable in the face of a fun, lucrative guessing game as to who the enigmatic murderer really was.
This isn’t a criticism of The Hypno-Ripper, of course, as it is hypnosis as a theme which is of relevance and interest. But I was moved when reading, back in 2019, of Hallie Rubenhold’s work to restore the women’s humanity and dignity, and so read these contemporary tales with this in mind.
What fascinated (and saddened) me more so than the salacious hypnosis angle was that these murders, and other such sensational deaths and crimes, spurred this kind of writing. Hartman’s preface and the foreword by independent scholar Rebecca Frost tell us of the public’s appetite for all the gory details, and of editors and publishers keen to feed them. A cottage industry of writers would take true crimes and meld them with fictional unfoldings, motives and perpetrators – the fact-based accuracies of, in these stories, mutilated, murdered women uncomfortably fitted around gripping tales of gentlemanly derring-do.
Both stories in this book, written and published in the US by American authors, feature American protagonists hypnotically influenced to perpetrate the Jack the Ripper murders.
The Whitechapel Mystery tells of a former detective drawn to a mysterious doctor with mesmeric powers – and a grudge against the fallen women of London… As was a theme with Death by Suggestion, a hypnotically suggested exact day of death is the denouement of this tale.
In ‘The Whitechapel Horrors’, meanwhile, a man fixated with the murder of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols uses self-hypnosis to realise a shocking truth.
However, linking hypnosis to the case came not just from the minds of these two authors. As Hartman’s preface informs us, Stuart Cumberland, editor of sensationalist occult publication The Mirror, worked industriously to spread the rumour that hypnotism had a role to play in the murders – one of several magazine editors to capitalise on this sensational possibility.
The book ends with an extended biography about the writer of the first novel, NT Oliver. As well as being an author, “Oliver”, aka Edward Oliver Tilburn, was “a minister, actor, lecturer, secretary for several cities’ Chambers of Commerce, snake-oil salesman, Christian psychologist, as well as an accused embezzler, shady real estate broker, and a self-proclaimed medical doctor.” And maybe a bigamist..? Phew!
Tilburn’s story is well worth a read in and of itself, and, while Hartman found no significant link to his being a hypnotist, he certainly sounds like one: keen to stand on his soapbox at any given opportunity and profess his ‘expertise’ on any given subject to a receptive, admiring public!
Trilby was a defining moment in fiction in terms of hypnosis as a cultural meme. But it is stories and works such as these that shape and propagate our perceptions over time and space.
Thanks again to Hartman for collecting these stories, and for bringing us the backstory on one of their authors – and, of course, for sending us his book!
