Facial Mutilations

[Natasha]

Hi All,

Why did the ripper mutilate the victims faces?

It has been mentioned before on here, but was the reason for attacking the nose maybe a message saying Eddowes stuck her nose into someones business?

In medieval times the nose being cut had association with betrayal, the eyes are the window to the soul and slitting/cutting someones lips was a punishment for blasphemy.

I also discovered that nose amputations had happened to women by jealous vengeful women in 18th century Paris.

In the 9h century nuns at St Cyr Monastry in Marseilles, had cut of their own noses to avoid sexual attacks by the Saracens who did indeed spare sexual attacks at the cost of the nun's lives.

What do you lot think, why did he inflict facial mutilations?

[lynn cates]

recognition

Hello Natasha. Thanks for starting this thread.

One possible explanation for Kate and "MJK" is that it was done to avoid anyone recognising them. If so, it may, or may not, have been successful.

Cheers.
LC

[Natasha]

Hello Natasha. Thanks for starting this thread.

One possible explanation for Kate and "MJK" is that it was done to avoid anyone recognising them. If so, it may, or may not, have been successful.

Cheers.
LC

Hi Lynn

I agree, that is a very valid reason. The connection between Kelly and Eddowes is strengthened by the fact that they were the only 2 to have their faces mutilated.

[c.d.]

Not to be smart ass but you could say because it was there. There is only so much flesh on a human body. So if you start cutting then some part is going to be cut. You could also ask why he cut throats. Does that symbolize something? What did he have against abdomens? If you start down that road it will take you a very long way.

c.d.

[lynn cates]

Robots R Us

Hello CD.

"You could also ask why he cut throats."

I presume that, in Polly and Annie's cases, it was to finish killing them--strangulation possibly not being complete.

Of course, the others show no signs of strangulation, so the throat cutting would cause death.

Abdomens? Well, Liz did not have a cut abdomen but . . . wait, Jack wasn't a robot was he? Jack did not always kill the same did he? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[c.d.]

Hello CD.

"You could also ask why he cut throats."

I presume that, in Polly and Annie's cases, it was to finish killing them--strangulation possibly not being complete.

Of course, the others show no signs of strangulation, so the throat cutting would cause death.

Abdomens? Well, Liz did not have a cut abdomen but . . . wait, Jack wasn't a robot was he? Jack did not always kill the same did he? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

Maybe you could work on a multiple robot killers theory.

c.d.

[lynn cates]

E M P

Hello CD. Thanks.

Who would want to kill multiple robots? Besides, one big EMP and they are dead in their tracks.

(By the way, there is an idea for a pub thread--What to do if the earth has another EMP like the Carrington event of 1859? The odds are 12% for any given decade. Estimates are that 6 of 7 billion would die.)

Cheers.
LC

[Natasha]

Not to be smart ass but you could say because it was there. There is only so much flesh on a human body. So if you start cutting then some part is going to be cut. You could also ask why he cut throats. Does that symbolize something? What did he have against abdomens? If you start down that road it will take you a very long way.

c.d.

Hi C.D

If that's the case why not cut the skin on their backs? Also victims, apart from Kelly, had no cuts on their arms or legs, and of course the facial injuries were just inflicted upon Kelly & Eddowes. I know the obvious is that the victims were mutilated while on their backs, but in the case of serial killer Holmes he did completely strip the body of skin.

I think he cut the throats to drain the rest of the body of blood to avoid splashes, and also if he suffocated the victims he probably cut the throat to make sure they were dead.

The abdomen must have had some significance to the killer, he knew what he was after and took what he wanted.

[John Wheat]

Jack made the facial mutilations to Mary Jane Kelly and Kate Eddows because he could. I doubt it had anything to do with hiding the victims identity. Although I question how well we as ordinary Joe's so to speak, can understand the perverted mind of a killer such as the Ripper.

[sepiae]

Hi Natasha, hi everyone,

I don't think one should read too much into the details of the facial wounds/mutilations; they're not really [I]precise[I], are they. You brought Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly rightly into a connection, but it's a simple one - Eddowes being the victim prior to Kelly. On the danger of boring a number of people stiff, but I do think that this is illustrating the escalation hypothesis. Mutilations increasing with each victim [exception: Liz Stride, either because he was disturbed or because she wasn't a Ripper victim; to name two possible reasons]. Facial disfiguring on Eddowes, then on Kelly; the jump from the extent of wounds on Eddowe's face to what he's done to Kelly's face can [and to my mind should <-- opinion] be explained by the relative privacy and time he had at hand with Kelly.
That's what I think about why nose.

Cut throat [Lynn]:
Concur. Strangling is the safest form of first attack, immediately preventing a victim from screaming, by means of the most familiar and best to manipulate tools, one's hands. Ultimately not a means to be 100% positive about, so the throat is cut to make sure.
Sounds like a convincing model.

Blood:
I heard the idea of blood being drained before. As intriguing it is, draining blood, that has quite some requirements. Particularly in the case of Catherine Eddowes he wouldn't have time for this. Polly Nichols was first thought to have been killed some place else, hasn't she, for the same notion of only little blood around? The thought had been discarded, and it is assumed she was killed on the spot where she was found.
I think a general, perhaps convincing, idea is that much of the blood soaked into the clothing. It depends of course on the victims position when her throat was cut, when it's about blood from the throat. Most likely, perhaps even as established, they've been stretched out on the ground when the throat was cut.
I don't have it in my head right now: anyone can say something about the blood right beneath the victim's head/neck?

[Natasha]

Hi Natasha, hi everyone,

I don't think one should read too much into the details of the facial wounds/mutilations; they're not really [I]precise[I], are they. You brought Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly rightly into a connection, but it's a simple one - Eddowes being the victim prior to Kelly. On the danger of boring a number of people stiff, but I do think that this is illustrating the escalation hypothesis. Mutilations increasing with each victim [exception: Liz Stride, either because he was disturbed or because she wasn't a Ripper victim; to name two possible reasons]. Facial disfiguring on Eddowes, then on Kelly; the jump from the extent of wounds on Eddowe's face to what he's done to Kelly's face can [and to my mind should <-- opinion] be explained by the relative privacy and time he had at hand with Kelly.
That's what I think about why nose.

Hi Sepiae

Its the cuts on the eyelids (they appear to have been delicately cut, otherwise there would have been damage to the eye) that interest me as well as the nose being cut on Eddowes, which made me think there was a deliberate reason for targeting the face.

Kelly did indeed have more extensive cuts, do you think it is possible that Eddowes was mistaken for Kelly? If that was the case then, JTR having discovered this, may have gone a step further

[sepiae]

Hi Sepiae

Its the cuts on the eyelids (they appear to have been delicately cut, otherwise there would have been damage to the eye) that interest me as well as the nose being cut on Eddowes, which made me think there was a deliberate reason for targeting the face.

Kelly did indeed have more extensive cuts, do you think it is possible that Eddowes was mistaken for Kelly? If that was the case then, JTR having discovered this, may have gone a step further

Hi Natasha,

sorry for the late reply, but I'm not online every day...

I wouldn't be too positive about how delicate a cut it. Bear the following in mind:
the crime here had been committed within a very, very tight frame of time, in fact so tight that it's actually quite astonishing what has been done altogether. And it has been done in darkness; from what we can tell, that corner of Mitre Sq. had been very dark indeed.
If a face is attacked, leaving these marks, say with quite a frenzy, some cuts going deep, others not so. It is bound to be irregular - note that the wounds here are indeed irregular. I personally can't see a particular direction.
That's not to say you're wrong - I wasn't there. But try and picture such an attack in the dark: when people die their eyes half close, in most cases [which makes them in fact look drunk rather than as if in horror]. A knife coming down and across the lids might be expected not to necessarily cut through. It can be this way or not. The lids are still flexible, and so is the eyeball. If the cut is not deliberately made to cut through it remains a chance issue.
The same goes, in my opinion, for the nose. If you attack the face the nose is bound to be hit.
Deliberate reason: I assume you referring to what you wrote in your 1st post. Again, I cannot disprove you. At the same time, I do see a more or less deliberate reason - I believe there's not only motive for a deed as a whole but also for the particular details of how it is enacted. But my idea of a deliberate reason here, to attack the face, is a little more boring than yours: be it out of hatred, or disgust, or a feeling of inferiority before the other sex, or perhaps a combination of all of it - or a hatred that is actually the feeling of inferiority but is aired as hatred, and ofc causes hatred. This might not be as deliberate as a message as suggested by you, but there's cause in it, and hence expression.
We're deep in speculating about the motive of the whole: indeed, why these particular details.
My opinion is that it is likely that if his next victim after Eddowes would also have been someone in the streets the facial mutilations might have gone farther. Not everybody agrees with the escalation-hypothesis. I think the series is quite an example of it.
As for JtR mistaking Eddowes for Kelly, this idea has been expressed, and I call it a myth. I'm not positive this very moment, but I believe it was also part of at least some variations of the darn Masonic/Royal conspiracy. One of the reasons why it remains so popular is probably because Eddowes had used the nom de plus Kelly; people in the East End often did, if chances were good they'd be detained by police more than once. But Eddowes partner's name was also Kelly. Lots of Irish around, and the name was a very common one.
And that's all to the idea, no good reason to believe she was mistaken. No good reason that the names behind particular individuals were specifically sought by the killer.
As for Mary Kelly, my opinion as stated before: the reason for the jump from increasing mutilations to a virtual explosion of mutilations was the relative safety of a room and time.

As for time with Eddowes. Eye-witnesses are such a thing. One has to be careful, and in this whole case many eye-witnesses are plainly bad witnesses [Pearly Poll], or witnesses who need themselves further attention [Hutchinson], or simply what eye-witnesses are to science: the least significant source. So first thing is to vet a witness. Then to compare times and what have you.
Altogether I cannot help feeling that Joseph Lawende is an untypically good witness. He was found by the police, so no apparent wish for his 10 secs of fame. He could tell the time because he'd just left the club, and people do look at their time pieces when they leave a place. He was in the company of two. He stated that he saw the man's face, but added that he couldn't be sure to recognize him a 2nd time - which sounds a lot more plausible than people saying, 'yes, I would'; he had no reason to stamp the face into his memory at the time. He identified the clothes Eddowes was wearing. In my eyes he's a very good eye-witness, which means he most probably saw JtR with Eddowes. And that gives us the time-frame until the discovery of her body:
approx. 10 minutes. 10 minutes for the perp to kill her, to mutilate her torso, to remove organs [unless Trevor Marriott is right and he didn't, and the organs were removed by someone else in the morgue, which doesn't explain why only with these killing, and anyway, I got other more reasons for not believing that], and to mutilate her face.
10 minutes. I keeps puzzling and amazing me.
So I find it hard to believe that certain wounds to the face had composure to them.
But that's just me

[Vincenzo]

Eddowes and Kelly were the last two victims and the facial mutilations got worse from one to the next. This may be a part of his escalation as a killer.

[lynn cates]

epistemic considerations

Hello Vincenzo. How do we know these were the last two victims?

Cheers.
LC

[Ausgirl]

Eddowes and Kelly were the last two victims and the facial mutilations got worse from one to the next. This may be a part of his escalation as a killer.

I find this excellent article very useful, when considering the topic of escalation:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-victimwounds.html

Mainly as it illustrates very clearly the damage from victim to victim. And I think there's an extremely clear escalation of damage, from Nichols to Chapman, to Eddowes and then Kelly. Including escalation of facial mutilation.

What about the others tho?! Well, I dunno and I don't want to speculate on it right now. But the notion of escalation had never struck me quite as profoundly as when looking at those four, in that article. It's such a clear progression from victim to victim.