Jim Ratigan
(February 3, 1929 – April 1989[1])
Jim Ratigan, also known as James Rattigan (for which see discussion on name variants below), was a London fan and pro artist active in the 1950s and to some degree into the 1960s. He married fellow fan Dorothy Jacobs sometime between the 1952 London SF Con and the 1953 Coroncon.
He appeared in fandom around the start of the 1950s; he is not listed as a member of the Loncon of 1949 but he is for Festivention of 1951. Ratigan was then in charge of publicity for the 1952 convention. He was also a talented artist and had cover art on several issues of Nebula between 1954 and 1958.
He seems to have largely dropped out around 1960. He may have attended the 1960 London Eastercon – his wife Dorothy was there – but there's no published membership list and no evidence of his presence. The Ratigans did '[show] up for a while' on the Sunday of the RePetercon (per Bob Shaw's report in Hyphen #36) but they do not appear on the membership list.
Name variants: Ratigan and Rattigan[edit]
Contemporary fanzines use both 'Ratigan' and 'Rattigan', sometimes in the same publication e.g. Post War. He is also referred to as both 'James' and 'Jim', although this is at first less remarkable as the latter is a common diminutive of the former.
Rob Hansen has theorised in personal correspondence that 'Ratigan' is correct as this is the name used on Dorothy's apazine Satan's Child and presumably she typed this herself and knew how to spell her own name. The cover of the souvenir book for the 1952 London SF Con gives the person in charge of publicity as 'J. Ratigan' and the single-T version is used in all editions of Ron Bennett's Directory of Science Fiction Fandom for 1955 to 1961.
However, Eye #4 which was co-edited by Jim uses both 'Ratigan' and 'Rattigan' within its pages. Some articles in Science Fantasy News are credited to 'James Rattigan, their 'film reporter'. And there is compelling evidence for 'Rattigan' in the form of Nebula where the six covers are credited to 'James Rattigan' and some, e.g. #13, are clearly and indisputably signed 'James Rattigan'.
However...
Online research conducted by Bill Burns at an ancestry site failed to locate anything about a person call 'James Ratigan' or 'James Rattigan' in the greater London area for the approximate timeframe, assuming a date of birth in the late 1920s or early 1930s. It did identify a 'Jim Ratigan' born in Croydon in the first quarter of 1929, and what seems a matching death record in Bromley more precisely fixing the birth date as February 3, 1929, and with the death registered in April 1989. Croydon and Bromley are south London suburbs, both close to one another and to the district of Sydenham when Jim and Dorothy lived in the 1950s. And the forename is specifically given as 'Jim' in these records and not 'James'. Further evidence comes from a 1957 London telephone directory which lists 'Jim Ratigan' at the Sydenham address given in Ron Bennett’s directories.
This suggests that his name was 'Jim Ratigan' although seemingly for some purposes he used ‘James Rattigan’ and it’s unclear why this was. Aside from the Nebula covers, the name appears as a byline in some issues of Science Fantasy News, and this may suggest it was a kind of transparent penname similar to Iain Bank's use of Iain M. Banks. It may even be a reflection of the general tendency of others to misspell his name and a conscious decision to lean into that. Sadly, most if not all the people in a position to know are no longer around to ask.
- Eye [#4 May 1955 only, as co-editor with others]
- 'Our 'Zine [1952] (one-shot, co-editor with others)
Links
| Person | 1929—1989 |
| This is a biography page. Please extend it by adding more information about the person, such as fanzines and apazines published, awards, clubs, conventions worked on, GoHships, impact on fandom, external links, anecdotes, etc. See Standards for People and The Naming of Names. |
- ↑ This is conjecture. See the discussion on name variants.
