Cleaning Up The East End by Aunt Agonist - Ceiling Fan, Park Ranger, Bathhouse - Short, Historical

I had to read this twice to get the just of things, I think mainly because of the historical twang with the dialogue which reads quite authentic and rich.

I'm still not sure of the whole story though. I see Eddie is trying to flog these ceiling fans and he won't stand for anyone making moves on married women, but I'm not sure if he's killing, beating, or sending these guys off to the navy?

And that chap at the end he meets, is that supposed to be Jack the Ripper?

A Jack The Ripper tale, with a pair of alternate killers.

The Eddie- Jemma duo are the main characters. They are protags by definition (i an anti-hero sense) but them actually running into The Ripper and being coy didn't work for me. There is the ripper theory of multiple killers, after all. You could have went with that without involving a personification of The Ripper. ("the Man")

Overall it's a decent piece.

Okay, so a couple of the criteria are a little shoe-horned in, quite creatively- well done!

But I did like the atmosphere this evoked, could picture it.

The story is a little muddled in places but overall this worked for me.

Good effort

This outta be good. Your requirements are bad enough and then you picked historical? Here we go....

Right out of the gates: Thank you for a proper SUPER. It's nice to have a time and place:) Oh, wait, there seems to be a conflict in SUPERs. The first is 29 Sept. 1888 at night and your 3rd SUPER is the same but day. Not sure the 2nd SUPER is necessary. We can tell it's a bath house unless it's important to know the name of it. Maybe hang a sign instead.

Milord? Or m'lord, or perhaps my lord?

Well, you seemed to cram all your requisite items in your entry - good for you. It made for an interesting read for sure. A bit difficult to make sense of it all when I first read it but a second read helped.

A nice yarn spun.

Great concept this with some nasty variables ( I’m surprised I didn’t get these lol).

Read more like a comedy at times with some decent lines. I particularly laughed in the opening scene when Eddie tips out a ‘man’s worth of severed body parts’ from the basket lol!!

Things did get tad muddled maybe due to deadline probe but overall it had that real London period feel.

Another thing to add to John’s comments on the SUPERS: make sure the whole super is in CAPS    And to peeps in general: if your script is in a different era, then we need to know as soon as possible - location, year, even month if it’s important

Haha your main character is a real hoot.

The variables were blah!! What is it - park ranger and baths... these are the hardest. Therefore You have all the viriables in and all of them matter. The villain is your protag - great job here.

The part I'm not sure about - did Jack kill women too? I mean Eddie was killing men but Jack probably did women. And Eddie didn't like it and now has to kill Jack. Hope I got it right. But it's intricate plot if I'm right.

At any rate, I laughed a lot and got entertained. Which is very important for me.

And also the dialog and setting is very 18th century England for me.

Hi,

I love a good Jack the Ripper story, no matter how tenuous, bit of a passion of mine.
I think you nailed the era well, very descriptive and authentic feeling.
Dialogue was good and well written.
I enjoyed this very much.

Well done

Interesting idea. Pretty much everyone was a villain so you had that covered. Lots of characters who didn't add much to the story took up space maybe better used for more character development. I wanted more of Eddie and Jemma...so nice job there. They definitely grabbed my interest.

Nice effort. Best of luck.

Just wanted to weigh in and say that I liked this. Though it's a little confusing with the competing villains. I like the meeting of the amateur (in comparison) killer Eddie and the Ripper himself, and I like the fact that he's killing because he's chivalrous. Villain as anti-hero. Well done.

AJR

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who read and commented. It was a fun exercise trying to write "British," and it was actually harder keeping everyone in character for the period.

"I'm going to make allowances for your Victorian attitudes because, well, you actually are Victorian." -- the time traveler Bill Potts on Doctor Who

Not the most egalitarian time, though I did my best to show that Bessie didn't really need Eddie's help. He's taken his brand of chivalry way too far, which is what makes him the villain in this story.

Quoted from MarkRenshaw I'm not sure if he's killing, beating, or sending these guys off to the navy?

Hacking people into pieces or putting them in shallow graves tends toward the killing category. I shortened some things for page length, though, and I seem to do a bad job of picking what to prune and what to keep.

Quoted from JEStaats Oh, wait, there seems to be a conflict in SUPERs. The first is 29 Sept. 1888 at night and your 3rd SUPER is the same but day. Not sure the 2nd SUPER is necessary.

The first one was a typo. It's supposed to start on 28 September, though I suppose it's possible that this whole tale could happen in 24 hours.

Quoted from JEStaats We can tell it's a bath house unless it's important to know the name of it. Maybe hang a sign instead.

This was my way of telling everyone we're in Whitechapel. For Ripper fans, the opening date was the first clue and Whitechapel the second. I suppose I could embellish a sign so that it includes the neighborhood name as well.

Quoted from MarkRenshaw And that chap at the end he meets, is that supposed to be Jack the Ripper?

Quoted from DarrenJamesSeeley There is the ripper theory of multiple killers

Quoted from khamanna The part I'm not sure about - did Jack kill women too? I mean Eddie was killing men but Jack probably did women. And Eddie didn't like it and now has to kill Jack. Hope I got it right. But it's intricate plot if I'm right.

Quoted from Geezis I love a good Jack the Ripper story, no matter how tenuous, bit of a passion of mine.

Yes, the "Man" is supposed to be Jack the Ripper. There are eleven victims associated with what were at the time called "the Whitechapel murders," and investigators' best guess is that five of them were by one person and the other six basically random street crimes. The third and fourth of the five similar murders happened in the early A.M. of 30 September 1888.

I had an idea for a better ending after submitting, and Kham seemed to have a similar idea. Tack another scene on the end where Eddie is disposing of a hacked-up body (maybe shoveling it into the steam engine on a docked ship) while berating an unseen Jack about drawing the police to Whitechapel. Closing shot is when Eddie gets to the head, and it's Jack's. In the real world, the end to the similar killings seems suspiciously sudden.

Just a historical note: the name "Jack the Ripper" was made up by a reporter in a hoax letter he mailed to his own newspaper. My nod to this is when the man says "People call me Jack."