Challenges to writing history

Every writer and every blogger face the same exact challenge each day: the terror of the blank screen (or page). For bloggers, the satisfaction point is reached far more easily. Scan a favorite newspaper, magazine, Web site or message board and, BANG, you have something to react to.

That’s the essence of blogging. Reacting to something someone else wrote. Spouting off an opinion that may or may not be based in careful consideration of and research into the item to which one is responding. That’s where the challenge of the person who dabbles in history is a bit more daunting.

History, or even the true-crime spin-off of history I am currently dabbling in with my Jack the Ripper research, is not written via off the cuff remarks in knee-jerk fashion. It requires careful, sometimes exhausting as well as exhaustive research, and quite a bit of analysis and thought, before one can be certain enough of the prevailing facts to even begin to speak authoritatively on anything.

That’s where blogs and history crash, and probably why there’s not too many blogs dedicated to the study of history. Either the research has already been done any it is in a textbook somewhere, or the research is incomplete and it’s far too soon to speak authoritatively on the subject.

Even in Ripperology, there are plenty of good examples. As Tom Wescott pointed out on the Casebook: Jack the Ripper message board recently, few Ripper researchers discount Mary Jane Kelly as a Ripper victim and only one researcher he is aware of even attempted to do so based on the evidence: Stewart Evans, in the course of investigating Ripper suspect Dr. Francis Tumbulty. Even then, Evans did so hesitatingly and only called it a remote possibility. Wescott further pointed out that further research proved Tumbulty may have been out of custody after all at the time of the Kelly murder, and quickly added Kelly back into the canon of Ripper victims.

Such caution is worthwhile when dealing with history; conclusions, especially if they contradict previous understandings and interpretations, should not be asserted too hastily. Yet it happens daily on sites like the message board. Without a whisper of research or understanding of the prevailing facts, all too often Ripper enthusiasts will boldly proclaim they’ve discovered an incontrovertible fact that sheds new light on everything and their word is Gospel.

Of course, upon further questioning, some of these folks are merely smoke-blowers; they want to fit in with the research heavyweights, but are unwilling to do the work themselves, instead challenging others to “prove me wrong.”

Sorry, but it’s not our work to prove you haven’t done yours. Most of the minds in Ripper research are bright, well-reasoned, careful folks who, sure, want to write an essay that garners them some attention, but more importantly, want to be sure that if they do discover something new about the case, it is something that won’t be easily dismissed or disproved. Too often, these “overlooked facts” that “shed a whole new light on the case” are things most Ripper scholars have known for a long time but realized were either untrue myths that grew up around the facts of the case, or not of any real significance.

It takes time, caution and diligence to put together a solidly-researched historical essay, even of the true-crime variety. Yet some less-restrained message board boasters are more than willing to rip such work to shreds on a whim, rather than look into any of the evidence the author researched to at least see if there is another way to interpret it.

While such an atmosphere makes for a lively message board community, I fear that it can grow out of control and draw precious time away from researchers who would be better off checking for the real birth records of Mary Jane Kelly or something else far more useful than quarreling with a simple attention-grabber addicted to contradiction.

Writing and maintaining a history blog promises similar challenges and pitfalls. It will be interesting to see if I maintain the slow, careful pace of my research and still find things to blog about at a pace that makes search engines happy.