In 1888, on this day, the Stodgy Clergyman Thomas Vere Bayne informed Oxford Police that he feared his oldest friend, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson had been travelling up to East London to murder prostitutes in the guise of "Jack the Ripper".

Jabberwocky, RebootOf course the allegation that the real identify of the Whitechapel Murderer might be the stiff-backed, pale-skinned former Oxford don caused great dismay short of total surprise. Generally regarded as a dreary unpopular sociophobe with a creepy interest in young girls, certain unmistakable facts soon emerged that suggested it might perhaps be true. Because his multiple personality disorder was driven by s-xual p-rversions and drug use which in turn were triggered by his hidden tragedies and emotional frustrations.

An illuminating such incident had occurred during the winter of 1864 when the father of a young neighbor Alice Liddell cast his manuscript into fire and banned the author from entering his home. Unfortunately for Dodgson, that man was a dean of Oxford University, and the resulting uproar forced him to resign his post.

Subsequently, he appeared to descend further into a dreamscape; this inverted universe was his "looking-glass" world. But it was the authoring of the nonsense poem Jabberwocky that finally exposed him. Bayne told the police that he had discerned true evil in the stanza "His vorpal blade went snicker-snack". Because in some twisted way, Dodgson was trying to protect innocence, by killing it.

The police were indeed able to establish a pattern between his absences and the murders in Whitechapel. But they also discovered that Bayne had been undertaking some journeys of his own.
This alternate history was conceived by Robbie Taylor with a tenuous link to an unrelated story by Jeff Provine.