Poem: ‘The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper’

The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal ...

Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’

I were just cleaning up streets our kid. Just cleaning up streets.

Peter Sutcliffe to his brother Carl: Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son by Gordon Burn

Ower t’ills o Bingley
Stormclouds clap an drain,
Like opened blood-black blisters
Leakin pus an pain.

Ail teems down like stair-rods,
An swells canals an becks,
An fills up studmarked goalmouths,
An bursts on mind like sex.

Cos sex is like a stormclap,
A swellin in thi cells,
When lightnin arrers through thi
An tha knows there in’t owt else.

Ah’ve felt it in misen, like,
Ikin ome part-fresh
Ower limestone outcrops
Like knuckles white through flesh:

Ow men clap down on women
T’old em there for good
An soak up all their softness
An lounder em wi blood.

It’s then I think on t’Ripper
An what e did an why,
An ow mi mates ate women,
An ow Pete med em die.

I love em for misen, like,
Their skimmerin lips an eyes,
Their ankles light as jinnyspins,
Their seggy whisps an sighs,

Their braided locks like catkins,
An t’curlies glashy black,
The peepin o their linnet tongues,
Their way o cheekin back.

An ah look on em as equals.
But mates all say they’re not,
That men must have t’owerance
Or world will go to rot.

Lad-loupin molls an gadabouts,
Fellow-fond an sly,
Flappy-skets an drabble-tails
Oo’ll bleed a bloke bone-dry:

That’s ow I ear em spoke of
When lads are on their tod,
An ow tha’s got to leather em
To stop em gi’in t’nod.

An some o t’same in Bible
Where Paul screams fit to bust
Ow men are fallen creatures
But womenfolk are t’wust.

Now I reckon this fired Peter,
An men-talk were is goad,
An culprit were our belderin God
An is ancient, bullyin road.

No, Pete weren’t drove by vengeance,
Rountwistedness or ale,
But to show isen a baufy man –
But let me tell thi tale.

* * *

Peter worked in a graveyard,
Diggin bone an sod.
From t’grave of a Pole, Zapolski,
E eard – e reckoned – God,

Sayin: ‘Lad, tha’s on a mission,
Ah’ve picked thi out o t’ruck.
Go an rip up prostitutes.
They’re nobbut worms an muck.

‘Streets are runnin sewers.
Streets are open sores.
Get in there wi thi scalpel
An wipe away all t’oors.’

Pete were pumped like a primus.
E felt is cravin whet.
E started cruisin Chapeltown
But he didn’t kill, not yet.

E took a job on t’lorries,
A Transcontinental Ford.
E felt reet good in t’cabin.
E felt like a bloody Lord.

E’d bin a bit of a mardy,
Angin on t’old dear’s skirt.
E didn’t like folks shoutin,
Or scraps wi lads, or dirt.

E’d watch is dad trough offal –
Trotters, liver, tripe –
Or pigeon scraped from t’by-pass,
Or rabbit, ung an ripe,

An all e’d felt were babbyish,
A fustilugs, alf-nowt,
An wished e were is younger kid
Tekkin lasses out.

But now e’d started truckin
An ropin up is load
An bought isen a Bullworker
E swelled up like a toad,