Richard Whittington-Egan

Richard Whittington-Egan (born 22 October 1924) is a Liverpool-born writer and criminologist,^[1] the author of Liverpool Colonnade and Liverpool Roundabout, two colourful chronicles of Liverpool's historical characters, crimes and mysteries. He is acknowledged also as an expert on Jack the Ripper.

Early Biography

Born in Liverpool^[2] in 1924 and grew up spending half the year there and half the year in his other family home in South Kensington, London. He is, on his mother's side, the great-grandson of Jakob Zeugheer-Herrmann, the first conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, who conducted for Paganini and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, composer of several symphonies and of an opera, "Angela of Venice". Another maternal ancestor is Sir Jonah Barrington, the Irish High Court Judge, who was also a writer and author of several classic volumes of Irish history and local chatter and colour. On his father's side he is descended from Dr. Richard Whittington-Egan, his great-grandfather, who was Crown pathologist for Ireland.

Educated by a private tutor and at Stonyhurst College, the Roman Catholic English Jesuit public school near Clitheroe, Lancashire. Whittington-Egan originally read medicine in the family's traditional medico-legal tradition and was also to qualify for the Bar. During the Second World War, he served in the army, in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, where he broadcast to the Allied Forces. Illness while in Italy forced him to curtail his medical studies and concentrate on writing. As a freelance journalist, he contributed to many newspapers and periodicals, including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Contemporary Review, Books and Bookmen, Chambers's Journal, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Liverpool Daily Post, and the Liverpool Echo as well as the New York Times. He spent 30 years on Fleet Street with Associated Newspapers. He also served as a director of Contemporary Review.

Later Biography

For some years, Whittington-Egan has lived in Worcestershire with his wife, Molly Whittington-Egan, also a writer. During the last decade, Whittington-Egan has been working on a book entitled The Quest for Jack the Ripper first announced to be imminent from Rupert Books in 1998 but it has yet to appear. Whittington-Egan is a member of the Medico-Legal Society, the Crime Writers' Association, and the Society for Psychical Research. In the field of psychical research, he has been involved in reports that involved a Ghost, a Haunting, or a Poltergeist.

Selected publications

• Liverpool Colonnade (1955)
• Liverpool Roundabout (1957)
• Murder, Mayhem and Mystery
• Liverpool Characters and Eccentrics
• Liverpool Soundings (1969)
• Liverpool - This Is My City. Seel Street, Liverpool: Gallery Press. 1972. ISBN 0-900389-14-1. 
• Liverpool Dossier series (1985)
• Liverpool Shadows(2001)
• Quest of the Golden Boy (1960)
• Life and Letters of Richard Le Gallienne (co-authored with G T Smerdon)
• The Ordeal of Philip Yale Drew published in UK by Harrap (1972)
• A Casebook on Jack the Ripper published in UK by Wildy (1975)
• The Weekend Book of Ghosts and Horror (5 vols. 1975-1985)
• The Riddle of Birdhurst Rise (1975)
• William Roughead's Chronicles of Murder (1991)
• The Oscar Slater Murder Story" (2001)
• The Great British Torso Mystery (2002), about the Cheltenham torso mystery
• Speaking Volumes (2004)
• Stephen Phillips: a Biography (2006)
• Liverpool Murders (2009)
• The Devil in Bootle: A Life of Teresa Helena Higginson (2010)
• Talking of Books (2011)
• Lionel Johnson: Victorian Dark Angel (2012)
• Theo Marzials: Poet in a Gallery of Pigeons (2013)
• Jack the Ripper: The Definitive Casebook (2013)
• The Natural History Man: The Life of the Reverend J.G. Wood (2014)

Edited, with his wife Molly Whittington-Egan, who is a lawyer:-

• The Story of Mr. George Edalji (1985)

...and collaborated with her on:-

• The Bedside Book of Murder (1988)
• The Murder Almanac (1992)
• Murder on File (2005)

References