The Caseback Issue 4: The Ripper

Hey friends,

Welcome to the third issue of The Caseback, the second one for paying subscribers. If you're one of them, thank you (if you're not, you can subscribe here). You're paying for something I write on weekends because I can't stop thinking about these stories, and I don't take it lightly.

This issue lands in your inbox on Halloween eve, so I'm keeping this spooky.

In the spring of 1993 a security guard on the Wirral opened the back of a gold watch he'd bought for £225 and found "J. Maybrick" and "I am Jack" scratched inside, along with the initials of the five women killed in Whitechapel in 1888. The long read tells the story of that watch: the diary that turned up a year earlier, the Liverpool cotton merchant whose name is on it, his wife's trial for his murder, and two laboratories that agreed the scratches were decades old without being able to say how many decades. Was James Maybrick Jack the Ripper? Doubtful. But the watches are cool.

That got me going, so we're dealing with a lot of markings on watches. School explains how to read hallmarks, the marks that date the Maybrick case in the 1840s. The Carry is a loupe you'd read them with, led by Eagle Eye's 6x from France. In Dead Seconds I look at what auction houses charge for a good story, and how to tell when the story is actually evidence.

Your favorite segment, "Your Next Watch", goes with a Halloween theme, with mostly black-cased watches that you could wear on a spooky night. Odd One Out is the Seiko TV Watch from 1982, which today picks up nothing but static, just like the TV in Poltegeist. The film essay is Halloween (1978). Carpenter is back two issues after The Thing because is there a better movie for Halloween than Halloween?

If you're a paid subscriber, the whole issue is below. If you're not, this letter is where it stops for you this week. Unless you subscribe here.