Searching the Silver trail: Charles van Onselen, Joe Silver and Jack the Ripper

South African historian Charles van Onselen's discovery of the identity of Jack the Ripper is described. The author was consulted by van Onselen during the writing of the latter's book, "The Fox and the Flies: Joe Silver, Racketeer and Psychopath", which suggested the identity of Jack the Ripper and was first published earlier this year.

van Onselen's investigations into the life of Joe Silver, a Polish Jewish brothel owner in the early days of Johannesburg, revealed an extraordinary criminal career starting in London and covering the Atlantic zone before ending on the Eastern front during World War I, where he was executed by the Austrians. Research over decades showed that Silver fitted the profile of The Ripper and spent the rest of his life trying to cover his trail to avoid detection. Having contracted syphilis, he bore an extreme hatred towards women and initiated the Autumn of Terror in a catathymic crisis when his daughter was born. Driven by obsessive ambivalence towards his mother, at the end of his life he made a final doomed attempt to achieve some kind of union with her.