Read A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper for Free Online

to display unusual behaviour caused by their radically altered thought processes. They may suffer from hallucinations and become delusional. Many hear imagined voices, normally as a precursor to some form of self-harm, or in some case leading to highly intense false beliefs, (delusions). Violence is not always a by-product of schizophrenia, and, when it is evident, it is usually self-directed by the individual into attempts to end his or her own life. Only in exceptional cases, (one of which I felt I was examining in the journal), will the violence be directed outwards towards strangers or groups of individuals as in this case. In our enlightened modern society the sufferer, once diagnosed, has the options of psychotherapy, group therapy, and drug therapy at his disposal in the search for a means to control and alleviate his suffering. A combination of antipsychotic, antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications can go a long way towards relieving many of the day to day symptoms of the illness. The disorganized speech pattern displayed in the wording of the journal also provided me with a clue, this, together with the equally disorganized thought processes revealed in the writing being a classic symptom of the disease.
    The writer of the journal however, was denied these miracles of modern medicine! Understanding and compassion were not the bywords of the Victoria era when dealing with the mentally ill, but I think I've already made that point!
    25 th August 1888
    Visited The Alma again tonight. Whores everywhere! What a vile house of ill-repute that is. Smelled of stale beer, cheap tobacco, and whores! Cracked music from a cracked piano. Such false jollity, and voices, voices everywhere. Singing, shouting, making merry as though there were no tomorrow, and there won't be soon for some of them whores. No tomorrows at all. I'll see to that! So loud in there, I could hardly hear my voices when they spoke to me. They made me retreat, it's not time yet, not the time to start the work, but, it won't be long, I've seen them, watched them, I know where they are, where to find the pestilence, where to go to rid the world of their smell, their sickness.
    My headache got so bad I had to leave, why won't it go away?
    So, the next bloody rampage was getting closer, and the headache was getting worse. I found it strange that my great-grandfather hadn't added any notes to the journal so far, the first inserted page of notes was still quite some pages further into the journal. Then I realized, at this time, he obviously hadn't met the writer! His own notes, when they came, would evidently appear after some form of meeting or communication between them. In other words, he didn't know the writer before the murders began or, if he did, he had no inkling of his illness, and this I couldn't believe. My great-grandfather was a physician after all, and though not equipped with the knowledge and science of today, I'm sure he would have recognized the delusional state of the writer had he been a personal acquaintance of the man. His notes, stuffed into the later pages of the journal, were therefore of importance in respect of the aftermath of the killings, I would wait and bide my time. They were arranged in that way for a purpose, and I decided to stick with the original plan, and read every page chronologically.
    A look at the printed texts I'd obtained showed me the writer was now only six days away from the next murder, that of Mary Ann Nichols. The last entry I'd read showed his anger was indeed increasing with each passing day, his headaches were getting no better, and the voices were speaking to him at what appeared to be ever decreasing intervals. As his anger continued to build I knew the pain in his head and the delusions in his brain would increase exponentially until something gave way. The next few entries would be crucial in helping to determine his state of mind at the time immediately before the night of the ghastly slaughter of the