Eddowes' gut cut

[Batman]

I believe what Keppel is saying is that JtR shows an escalation and that if we backtrack we will find the picquerist before they gravitate towards mutilation. That the mutilations show evidence of also picquerism. That these can connect victims because it is a rare trait even among these serial offenders. Meaning Keppel has explained some of the wounds being a connection.

Martha Tabram seems to be a good example of a possible JtR candidate for reasons like this.

[Sam Flynn]

They are not mutually exclusive.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jip.22

That's Keppel's paper. The synopsis mentions it but the paper is much more detailed, IF, you can get past the pay-block. Sorry.

Thanks, Batman, but I purchased Keppel's paper not long after it came out. It's a fine piece of work, but I think he and his team were very wrong in conflating stabbing and cutting; two acts which produce very different results, and which are experienced very differently from the point of view of the person inflicting the wounds.

I'm also a bit of a stickler for linguistic rigour, and "piquer", from which piquerism derives, does not mean "to cut"; it means "to prick" or "to stab". Now, I don't believe that Keppel invented or defined the term "piquerism", but whoever did should have been more careful in his/her use of language.

[Batman]

Jack the Ripper was into cutting - big style - not jabbing or stabbing. To coin a phrase, Jack was into "couperism" (from French couper, "to cut"), not "piquerism" (from French piquer, "to prick").

They are not mutually exclusive.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jip.22

That's Keppel's paper. The synopsis mentions it but the paper is much more detailed, IF, you can get past the pay-block. Sorry.

[Sam Flynn]

Jack the Ripper was into cutting - big style - not jabbing or stabbing. To coin a phrase, Jack was into "couperism" (from French couper, "to cut"), not "piquerism" (from French piquer, "to prick"). To put cutting and stabbing in the same category is, in my view, a dangerous and potentially misleading blurring of boundaries, which Keppel (for whom I have the utmost respect) should not have done.

[Batman]

Jabbing would certainly link victims. That's a very rare disorder called Picquerism. Keppel did a paper on it.

I think JtR was somewhat inspired by the London Monster who may have existed or not and was said to have carried out jabbing attacks between 1788 and 1790. 100 years before JtR.

[Joshua Rogan]

The meaning of words do change over time. In the Victorian age "opposite" also meant "in front of".
Here we should replace "opposite" with, "in front of" the enciform cartilage (aka Xiphoid process).



The cut certainly began at the sternum (not the pubes), but just below the sternum. As the Enciform/Xiphoid is the lowest point of the sternum, the cut began just ahead (below) the xiphoid process (in front of it).
This was the initial stab, but the knife was thrust upwards behind the sternum and not directly into the chest. So, up and at an angle, then dragged down to the pubes.

For comparison, this extract from A System of Legal Medecine uses 'opposite' in a description of determining the sex of a body;

"...in the female the sternum is more convex and shorter, and the xiphisternal articulation is opposite the curve of the fourth rib."

[Wickerman]

That may be true - but it should have been obvious to them which way the kidney took out of the body, and there would have been press people and police alike who had access to the information about it. Somebody should have known.

Hi Christer.
I would say the doctors didn't say too much. This was a rigid class system, they were also concerned to protect their profession.
We can't know what they were thinking, and they were quite reserved in what they did say.

[Sam Flynn]

Lawson Tait - that was the name of the medico, I believe.

Correct, Fish. And you're right in pointing out that Tait's notion of a typical "London butcher style" wasn't viable.

[Fisherman]

Lawson Tait - that was the name of the medico, I believe.

[Fisherman]

I didn't mean to suggest that the killer was definitely a huntsman or whatever. Just that the details of the kidney extraction are not incompatible. They're pretty scant really - one cut, carefully removed. That could fit a variety of removal techniques. The abdominal opening looks very amateurish though.

Wasn't it around the time of the Pinchin St torso that someone suggested that London butchers had a recognisable style? The police and/or doctors didn't make mention of that. Or didn't see any similarity.
I don't think Bond saw Eddowes, but I believe he did hunt deer in the country so would most likely be familiar with gralloching - quickly removing the entrails before the meat spoils.

The suggestion of a typical London butchery technique was, I believe, suggested by a renowned medico from the Midlands who wasn´t necessarily very serious. I have forgotten his name, but the suggestion was seemingly not a very viable one.
Thanks for the clarification about the kidney removal.

[Elamarna]

If i recall correctly, Trevor's butchery expert, also said he would probably remove the Kidney by hand, not by cutting it out.


Steve

[Joshua Rogan]

I didn't mean to suggest that the killer was definitely a huntsman or whatever. Just that the details of the kidney extraction are not incompatible. They're pretty scant really - one cut, carefully removed. That could fit a variety of removal techniques. The abdominal opening looks very amateurish though.

Wasn't it around the time of the Pinchin St torso that someone suggested that London butchers had a recognisable style? The police and/or doctors didn't make mention of that. Or didn't see any similarity.
I don't think Bond saw Eddowes, but I believe he did hunt deer in the country so would most likely be familiar with gralloching - quickly removing the entrails before the meat spoils.

[Fisherman]

How many actually saw the cut - and, of those, how many would have been acquainted with the techniques of butchers or hunters? (Bear in mind that butchers and slaughtermen were already under scrutiny anyway, and that there can't have been that many hunts going on in London since the times of George the Fourth )

Well, there can be no telling how many saw the cut, but they would not have been many. But since we do know that hunters and butchers were looked into as reasonable suspects, one would have thought that their practices would have been scrutinized too.
If the technique employed to take out the kidney looked like Joshua suggests, then it would be very odd if it was not recognized by the ones handling the Ripper case that far into the proceedings.

[Sam Flynn]

That may be true - but it should have been obvious to them which way the kidney took out of the body

How many actually saw the cut - and, of those, how many would have been acquainted with the techniques of butchers or hunters? (Bear in mind that butchers and slaughtermen were already under scrutiny anyway, and that there can't have been that many hunts going on in London since the times of George the Fourth )

[Fisherman]

"Surely, such a process would be well known to the medicos if it was common practice with butchers and hunters?"

Not necessarily, Fish. How many London doctors would have been familiar with the practices of hunters, or butchers for that matter? Not many, I bet.

That may be true - but it should have been obvious to them which way the kidney took out of the body, and there would have been press people and police alike who had access to the information about it. Somebody should have known.
Then again, we are in all probability dealing with a time that was innocent, if you like - or ignorant. The business with the abdominal walls should have had alarm bells ringing, but it apparently never did.

Maybe we should not expect too much from their side.