I have written before about the importance of association to the value of objects coming up for auction. Royalty and celebrity associations are perhaps the most obvious; music and sport are others. The appearance of a postcard on the market in Kent in the past week has reminded me of another: notoriety.
The postcard in question is alleged to have been written and sent by Jack The Ripper, the Whitechapel serial killer who struck viciously at the end of the 1880s, killing five women in a matter of about ten weeks before disappearing, never to be heard of again.
There have been other murderers, but none has captured the public’s imagination like Jack, so interest in anything associated with him is inevitable among some collectors, especially those who retain hopes of unmasking him, none more so than the crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who has spent several million pounds, concluding that the guilty party was the well-known painter Walter Sickert.
The postcard now up for sale, sent to the police station Ealing on October 28, 1888, promises to kill two unnamed women and arrived at its destination 11 days before the murder of Mary Kelly.
With an estimate of £600-900, it clearly has a great deal more value than an ordinary postcard of the era. If any doubt about the Ripper’s authorship could be removed, I suspect you could add another zero to the price.
