I was going to solve the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ mystery. As a devoted Famous Five reader I just knew I would. I’d find a pattern the police had missed, like one of those Hitchcock puzzle pictures where the killer slips up by leaving his bicycle clips behind. Because the Ripper was as much a part of my 1970s world as Basil Brush and the Phantom Raspberry Blower, his reign of terror very often on the Six O’Clock News. With tea on my lap, I watched serious men report from streets of gloom and drizzle and orange sodium.
The freelance journalist Gordon Burn realized how important it was that Peter Sutcliffe didn’t stay an urban myth like this, a comic-book devil, another chapter in our fascination with ‘true crime’ and the kinds of ghoulish stories that first appeared in penny broadsides and chapbooks. Burn climbed into the nest where Peter Sutcliffe was made so he could write a vivid and intimate story of the man who murdered at least thirteen women between 1975 and 1980: a book closer to a psychological novel than a true crime exposé.
The 33-year-old Burn went to stay in a hotel in the town of Bingley, and ended up spending almost two years there, living out of a suitcase and visiting members of the Sutcliffe circle each evening, picking up on loose ends of conversations again and again. He was different from other journalists who’d come knocking on their doors: he wasn’t going to reach for the cheque book for an easy scoop.
So in Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (1984), we enter the Sutcliffe house in Cornwall Road for ourselves. We smell the meat and cabbage dinners. We sense the fat blobs of condensation on the windows, the boredom and claustrophobia of the three sons and three daughters and thei
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Subscribe now or Sign inI was going to solve the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ mystery. As a devoted Famous Five reader I just knew I would. I’d find a pattern the police had missed, like one of those Hitchcock puzzle pictures where the killer slips up by leaving his bicycle clips behind. Because the Ripper was as much a part of my 1970s world as Basil Brush and the Phantom Raspberry Blower, his reign of terror very often on the Six O’Clock News. With tea on my lap, I watched serious men report from streets of gloom and drizzle and orange sodium.
The freelance journalist Gordon Burn realized how important it was that Peter Sutcliffe didn’t stay an urban myth like this, a comic-book devil, another chapter in our fascination with ‘true crime’ and the kinds of ghoulish stories that first appeared in penny broadsides and chapbooks. Burn climbed into the nest where Peter Sutcliffe was made so he could write a vivid and intimate story of the man who murdered at least thirteen women between 1975 and 1980: a book closer to a psychological novel than a true crime exposé. The 33-year-old Burn went to stay in a hotel in the town of Bingley, and ended up spending almost two years there, living out of a suitcase and visiting members of the Sutcliffe circle each evening, picking up on loose ends of conversations again and again. He was different from other journalists who’d come knocking on their doors: he wasn’t going to reach for the cheque book for an easy scoop. So in Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son (1984), we enter the Sutcliffe house in Cornwall Road for ourselves. We smell the meat and cabbage dinners. We sense the fat blobs of condensation on the windows, the boredom and claustrophobia of the three sons and three daughters and their shared bedrooms; the old arguments hanging in the air; the girls, with their chatter and hairspray, on their way out into town, giving a wink to ‘our kid’ Peter, the silent brother. We hear the straight-faced but ripe Yorkshire voices (‘You seen me mother? We’re not gonna be late or owt’). And we see the old family photos: intimations of the bright springtime of the story’s beginning, the handsome face of John Sutcliffe, opening batsman, ballroom dancer, member of the local choral society, a dashing figure standing next to his attractive bride, Kathleen, with her long dark hair and big brown eyes. They’re proud of their tulips and the family caravan in the little Lake District seaside resort of Arnside. Churchgoers. John liked to speak of his family as ‘respectable’ working-class, how the kids never needed free school meals. That was the polished surface of things, the best knick-knacks on display on the mantelpiece, when in reality theirs was a precarious life, spotted over with ugly incidents. The Sutcliffes were affected by the collapse of local industry, had to rely on bits of manual work and night shifts, and suffered from bouts of poor health. There was something inauspicious in general about the hinterland in which they lived. On the ridge close to the moors. The ‘blowy council estates’ as Burn describes them, encircling Bingley ‘like a soiled collar’, where the gardens had ‘disintegrated into a single greasy patch littered with the husks of gas cookers and refrigerators and the skeletons of prams’. Petty crime and violence were an everyday trade for the residents in and around ‘Corny’ Road, including John and Peter’s younger brother Mick, who’d first been arrested for nicking crisps and bottles of pop from the youth club and went on to receive convictions for robbery and GBH. John might have been famous for cooking big roast dinners for guests on Sundays, but the ‘beef’ was more likely to be cuts of horsemeat he’d got cheap off a pal. He’d collect roadkill for stews and liked any kind of meat, tripe and chitterlings; what he called ‘man’s food’. Casual misogyny was as ingrained in the local pubs as the stale beer and fag ash were in the carpets. Men were suppin’ pints and boppin’ round the jukebox, seedy imitations of Elvis with their greasy quiffs and Teddy Boy suits. The wives – the ‘old dragons’ – would stay away. On their jollies to the coast the husbands would bring back sticks of rock popularly known as ‘wife-beaters’. John himself was famous for being overfamiliar with the ladies, all hands and beery breath and jokey excuses. Peter didn’t fit easily into this ‘man’s world’. He was a sickly baby. A boy with legs like matchsticks who avoided sports and was bullied. He was also famously ‘nice’, a courteous presence who liked to visit his elderly aunts for tea. The female visitors to Corny Road for parties were pleased when Peter was there. He was such a change from the other gruff and charmless blokes, a young man who disliked anything ‘mucky’, the ‘nuddy books’ and swearing, who stuck to a bottle of light beer while his mates took on board another eight pints of ‘heavy’. Among his family, Peter was also known for his invisibility. He’d be in his room with a Bullworker trying to do something about his weedy physique, or locked in the bathroom in front of the mirror tidying his black, closely curled hair. As the oldest child, and despite showing signs of being bright academically, Peter was expected to leave school at 15. He became a gravedigger (becoming immune to the sight of death), and then an HGV driver (coming and going at all hours). One of the great strengths of Burn’s book is that he never pretends he has an answer to the mystery of why a young man like this would want to commit such horribly violent and vindictive acts. It’s not a simple ‘whydunnit’. Peter seemed burnt by an electricity of insecurities and tawdry contradictions in the little world around him, as much damaged by his intimacies as by his alienation:His eyes, which were the first thing everybody noticed, were bulbous and bloodshot and ‘near-on-black’. Trying to keep track of their movements when conducting a conversation with him could make you dizzy, because they darted about so much, sneaking glances at everything in the room except your face.
On the one hand he would appear detached from everything, unresponsive to conversation. ‘All you would ever get is that daft smile,’ said brother Mick. Then he might burst into giggles: infectious, annoying, high-pitched giggles. A drinking pal told the story of how Peter once stood up in the pub behind ‘this right fat big ’un who was on her way to the toilet . . . when suddenly he just went boomph! Kicked her up the arse and sent her reelin’. And he got a right laugh out of that, did Pete.’ He’d steal jewellery from corpses; boast about sleeping with prostitutes when everyone knew it was a lie. When he could, Peter liked to visit a creepy, rundown branch of Madame Tussaud’s in Morecambe and its ‘Museum of Anatomy’, a room of Victorian-era exhibits fronted by chicken wire which was a dire warning against vice, and the sickly corruption of the flesh that resulted. The Ripper wasn’t only someone’s son. The murders began the year after he married Sonia Szurma. The Sutcliffes would sigh and put on a show of politeness whenever Sonia came round, such a grey and sobering presence, a walking reminder of her family roots in communist eastern Europe. Television wasn’t allowed in the Szurma household: they preferred games of chess, and most of their meals came from the same pot of goulash that had been bubbling on the stove all week. If she talked it would be in a whisper, and her remarks could be biting and superior. ‘“I am not a gushing person” she would later say, in the sort of tart understatement for which she had become renowned,’ wrote Burn. After Peter and Sonia set up home together in Bradford, Sonia became obsessive about cleanliness and would sweep carpets with her dustpan and brush in the middle of the night. Peter was often in trouble for entering the house in his shoes, and for the state of his socks (he had sweaty feet). It’s hard not to feel sorry for the police, however clumsy their attempts to find the Ripper look in hindsight. In an age without computers and CCTV they stumbled through a nightmarish maze of paper and unreliable tip-offs. There were so many files and evidence cards in the ‘Ripper Room’ in Leeds that the ceiling below had to be reinforced with metal props. By 1979 there had been 150,000 inter views, 27,000 house-to-house searches – and they still had 17,000 possible suspects (including Peter himself, who was interviewed three times). The essence of literature is that it deals in truths, and there’s an integrity and a beauty to the dedication involved in the resulting work. Even in this case, when the author is working with the material of sordid history. Burn is measured, unflinching and deft in his writing, never straining to create an effect or scandalize. There’s only a sensitive appreciation of real people, real lives. In this way, he manages to convey the self-conscious jubilation of senior police officers when Sutcliffe makes his confession, shaking hands and then jumping round ‘like they’d won the FA Cup’; as well as Sonia’s frozen sobs as she sits in the station waiting-room. There’s nuance and depth. Peter Sutcliffe never appeared to believe he’d done anything wrong. His letters were filled with rants about greed and the moral decay of society, and he was furious when he heard his family had sold their stories to the press, insisting they were worse criminals than he was. When Carl, the youngest brother, finally paid a visit, he asked the obvious question. Why did you do it, Pete? ‘Peter had looked at Carl and smiled: “I were just cleaning up the streets, our kid. Just cleaning up the streets.”’Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 90 © Tim Blanchard 2026
About the contributor
Tim Blanchard is a freelance writer and communications consultant.
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