A Chronological Crossover (Part 1)

I love historical mysteries. Subjects like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the controversial death of Ambrose Bierce, The Shakespeare Authorship Question, what ultimately happened to Thomas P. 'Boston' Corbett (the man who shot John Wilkes Booth), and the 1888 London murders of Jack the Ripper are my kind of reading. Now, Sherlock Holmes has been tied to Mr. The Ripper many, many, many times, and it can get tiresome, but every once in a while something falls into my lap which begs me to read it. That's what we're going to discuss today.

We are right in the middle of what you might call "Ripper season." The five "canonical" murders all occurred in 1888, with four in September and one in November. And given that Hallowe'en is creeping up on us, this seemed fitting. I am not trying to glorify the murders, nor take away from the victims, but merely show you a glimpse into a couple of my worlds - ones that are crossing over into each other. Let's get to the good stuff, shall we?

Back in 1986 a Sherlockian named William 'Bill' Cochran published an article in one of his society's publications. Bill runs The Occupants of the Empty House in Du Quoin, Illinois. (That's really close to where I'm originally from.) I contacted him and asked if I could use said article on my blog, and he graciously granted me permission. As such, I am going to simply put the entire piece on here for you to peruse. I have scanned all the pages (with my little hand-held scanner)(which will explain some of the small irregularities) and will just paste them here. Transcribing it would take too long, and I'm lousy at condensing things.

I'm going to do the first five pages now, and the other five in a couple of days. The amount of research that went into this is staggering, and it shows how deep a chronologist sometimes has to go in order to secure a possible date for a case. Bill is not a chronologist, but after reading this he is definitely an honorary one. Enjoy.

Intriguing, eh? And it gets better. We haven't even gotten to the chronology part yet. Again, I believe this is a great paper, and it really gives a sense of the "pains" people like me go through just to put a date to just one case. And there are 58 more! (I don't count 'The Mazarin Stone' [MAZA]. I'm working on a theory that it was merely a play written by Watson and not an actual case.)

I'll see you in a couple of days with the rest of the article, so be good until then, and remember that The Great Pumpkin is watching you. See you then, and as always...thanks for reading.