Stratford Johns's Charlie Barlow was the most famous detective on British television from the early 1960s to the mid 1970s, appearing successively in Z-Cars; Softly, Softly; Softly; Softly: Task Force; and Barlow at Large.
His most interesting spin-off, however, was Jack the Ripper, in which Johns and his perennial sidekick, Frank Windsor's John Watt, investigated, in character, the notorious East End murders of 1888.
The series ran to six parts and included reconstructions of the inquests of the murder victims so the viewer could hear the contemporary evidence being given as well as Barlow and Watts's assessment of it.
What I didn't realise until now is that this series appeared three years before Stephen Knight published his Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which treated Sickert's story as the explanation of the murders. That story has been discredited by more recent research and it appears that Joseph Sickert was not even the artist's son.
The video above will show you Joseph Sickert and a little of Barlow and Watt's discussion afterwards. If you want to watch the whole series, episode 1 is here and YouTube will offer you the rest.
It's a tenuous connection, but when I was delivering leaflets for Sarah Dyke in Martock the other day I saw a Blue Plaque for William Wynne Westcott - surgeon, coroner, theosophist and Grand Magus of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Whilst I was photographing it, the homeowner proudly told me that Dr Westcott was a prime suspect for Jack the Ripper.
ReplyDeleteAnother appearance by Stratford Johns...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7n53nIBb3g
Thank you both.
ReplyDelete