The artist Walter Sickert as Jack the Ripper.  We see the charismatic Sickert and his extraordinary life within the upper echelons of West London society. For once we get to see who the five East End prostitutes were and the lives of poverty that they led, in the Victorian England of the late 1880's. We get to hear the conversations that Jack the Ripper had with the victims, that were overheard by witnesses, as reported in the police records. We see the police and the public's unsuccessful attempts to catch Sickert/the Ripper. We learn that Sickert did reveal the truth to a friend and fellow artist before he died. 

SYNOPSIS:

In the 1800's, Victorian England, Walter Sickert is a charming and charismatic, larger than life character who dealt with all levels of society. Once an actor and is now an impressionist artist (his tutor was James McNeil Whistler and later Edgar Degas). He lives off his wife, Ellen’s income. He has secret studios in Whitechapel in the East End. He sketches scenes from the Music Halls and goes on long walks. He was born with a fistula (a hole in his penis) and as boy an old crone held him down as his penis was cut and cauterized without any pain relief. As an adult he seeks revenge. In the dark, gas lit alleys, his first victims are older prostitutes that remind him of that nurse. He throttles them, slashes their throats and mutilates their sexual organs. His later victims are the pretty girls that he cannot sleep with. We see their characters and lives. He poses his victims to look like Hogarth's engravings and he hides clues to his crimes in his paintings. It is a great game to him. He writes letters to the police (in many handwriting styles) calling himself Jack the Ripper. They fail to notice that the Ripper is writing on fine paper and believe the killer to be of the lower classes despite the fact that the witnesses describe him as having the appearance of a gentleman. As a result of the doctors’ post-mortems, the police think that the killer is a butcher or a horse slaughterer, a doctor or a medical student. Walter is a genius at costume and the witnesses describe the Ripper as having dark hair, a dark complexion and a moustache. The police question John Pizer, a Jewish Pole known as Leather Apron. He is a boot maker who is known to blackmail and threaten violence against prostitutes and a leather apron was found at the second crime scene. Upon reading about this in the paper, it gives the Ripper fits. Abberline, a former the East End Inspector who is fondly regarded in the neighbourhood he knows so well, is up all night looking for the killer. Detectives go under cover visiting common lodging houses and public bars. Amazingly the Ripper is almost caught by a P.C but he lets him go. When Walter writes graffiti in chalk on a brick jamb doorway in the Jewish area, (pointing the finger at the Jews), the autocrat and Metropolitan Commissioner Charles Warren hastily has it removed. He does not want another Bloody Sunday on his hands (the Irish complained about the lack of jobs and were crushed, on his orders, by the police). The City Police Commissioner Henry Smith (who is brought into the case due as a victim was murdered in the city lines) thinks this is a mistake. But Warren says that a P.C has made an accurate copy of the writing. The police favourably compare the graffiti writing style to that of the letters. They do not believe the letters to be hoaxes anymore as the killer cut the ears off a victim as he threatened to do in his last letter. Warren has a letter and a postcard put up on posters asking any persons who recognize the writing to come forward. Warren increases the police presence. He is under pressure from Mr Matthews, of the home office, who has received a petition from the tradespeople saying that their businesses are suffering because the residents do not deem it safe to venture out at night. Mr Matthews threatens Warren that if the killer is not caught it will be a danger to the very government itself. Deeming it no longer safe to kill on the streets the Ripper kills his next victim indoors. Warren resigns and is replaced by the ex-assistant commissioner Monro. The mutilations are so horrifying that the police try to stop the press from getting all the gory details. The press stop printing the letters. Abberline and Dr Bond (who has previously profiled the killer) believe that a prostitute named Alice McKenzie is the latest victim of the Ripper. Matthews disagrees. Abberline returns to Scotland Yard and is replaced by Inspector Moore. Ellen divorces Sickert due to neglect. Without his wife’s income it is cheaper for him to move to Dieppe France (whilst here Sickert visited his tutor Degas in Paris). When Sickert returns to England in 1907, to teach and exhibit at galleries (including the Whitechapel Gallery) He uses his friends and fellow artists Jacques Émile Blanche and Florence Pash, to obtain income from sales and teaching. Another prostitute living in Camden Town (near Sickert) is killed in the fashion of the Ripper. Sickert wants the truth known after his death: He sketches the Camden crime scene and paints it (the main suspect Woods posed for him). He poses with a lay figure (a mannequin), re-enacting the Camden murder to shock his friend Florence when she visits. He shows her sketches and paintings of his crimes that can never be exhibited. He says he knows who the Ripper is, that he saw the bodies and painted them. She does not believe him and assumes it is one of his jokes. He takes her for a frightening walk in the alleys that he walked at the time of his killing spree. By 1941 he ends up poor, sick and bored but he has the last laugh when as an 81-year-old man he writes a letter to the Torch Theatre, who are doing a play about the Ripper: It's premise is that he was a doctor. He claims responsibility for all the Ripper murders including the last one in 1907. He says they never caught him, and they never will. A policeman and journalist compare this letter to the police poster containing the letters that were written in 1888. Allowing for the shaky writing of an old man, the writing is a match.