Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend is a 1996 book by Richard Wallace in which Wallace proposed a theory that British author Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles L. Dodgson, and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne were responsible for the Jack the Ripper murders. This theory was based primarily on a number of anagrams derived from passages in two of Carroll's works, The Nursery "Alice", an adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for younger readers, and from the first volume of Sylvie and Bruno. Carroll first published both works in 1889 and was probably still working on them during the period of the Ripper murders. Wallace claimed that the books contained hidden but detailed descriptions of the murders. This theory gained enough attention to make Carroll a late but notable addition to the list ofsuspects, although one that is generally not taken very seriously.
Criticisms
Carroll's recent biographers and Ripperologists have argued that this theory has some very serious flaws. One of the most vocal critics was Karoline Leach, who in a lecture about Wallace's theory gave three main arguments against it:
The same method of anagrams can be applied to any number of works written in the Latin alphabet and using the English language without proving any intention by the original author. Leach demonstrated her point by reworking passages of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh to indicate that Milne had also committed murder.
An August 26, 1891 passage of Carroll's diary reports that he spoke that day with Dr. Dabbs, an acquaintance of his, about "his very ingenious theory about 'Jack the Ripper'". Although the theory he refers to is unknown, the passage does not indicate that Carroll was personally involved in the murders, as many people throughout England were intensely interested in the case and followed its details closely due to the publicity given to them by the newspapers.
Similarly, anagram aficionados Francis Heaney and Guy Jacobson pointed out that similarly incriminating anagrams could be derived from Wallace's own book. When Harper's Magazine excerpted Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend, Heaney and Jacobson wrote in response that its first three sentences: are an anagram of: Carroll has been voted by the staff and readers of as the least likely suspect to have actually been Jack the Ripper.
