[Leica] IMG: Jack the Ripper's Pupil

[Douglas Barry]

According to US writer Patricia Cornwell about 20 years ago, she 
postulated the idea that the infamous Whitechapel serial killer was the 
well known painter Walter Sickert. Naturally, it's a theory which is 
totally unprovable right now, and probably for ever.

However, I was doing some work on our art - paintings, prints and old 
photographs we have that we never got around to hanging. We have been 
buying what we think is painterly art for over forty years in various 
auctions, including furniture ones, which are cheap, sometimes quite 
interesting and do turn up the odd surprising item. However, due to our 
downsizing, we have a fair bit stored in a corner of a room, and 
something has to be done with it before I shuffle off and join the Choir 
Invisible.

In going through it, I came across a couple of nice woodcuts from an 
artist called Mabel Allington Royds - see wikipedia - who it transpires 
was taught by Ms Cornwell's chief Ripper suspect.  It's not worth a lot, 
but in turn is worth a lot more than we actually paid for it. This lady 
worked in India and this picture is called "The Donkey Boy" and is 
probably a scene from Varanasi (then Benares) in the state of Uttar 
Pradesh. Nice to know that another copy of it is in the Victoria and 
Albert Museum in London.

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/The+Donkey+Boy.jpg.html

Can be seen larger. iPhone SE

Douglas