Dr Timothy R. Killeen

[Fisherman]

Hi Fish -- You probably won't accept this, and I am not sure I have the talent to convince you otherwise, but, personally I don't think Killeen ever meant to suggest that two different weapons were used. This is just how his inquest testimony has been (mis)interpreted by historians, because the transcripts we have are brief and incomplete and they leave us with the wrong impression.

We don't have any official report, so there is scope for great error. The notation mentioned by Ogen suggest that Killeen may, in fact, have suggested a bayonet had been used to make other wounds as well. I can't prove this, since any report he may have written has been lost.

Think of it this way: Dr. K isn't sure what weapon had been used. And this is entirely natural. He admits this uncertainty to the inquest jury. On the other hand, he notes that most of the wounds look thin and small--and suggests a pen-knife could have been used. BUT, he adds, one wound to the chest looks bigger. It looks like it couldn't have been made with a pen-knife, so--maybe-- the knife wasn't a pen-knife after all, but a bayonet. In other words, a bayonet could explain ALL the wounds...but a penknife couldn't. He is expressing doubt, but we can't see the "doubt" in the testimony we have, as reported by the ELO, etc..

I think that is all Killeen meant to say. He was going through his mental steps as to why he is thinking it was a bayonet---we only hear "pen-knife" for the lower wounds, and "some sort of dagger" for the sternum--and so historians have been off and running for 70 years or more. But--in my view--- two weapons is not really what Killeen was attempting to express--though it certainly sounds that way in a casual reading!

No one is going to stab a woman 38 times in a right-handed frenzy and then stop, switch hands, switch weapons, too, and then stab her once again with his 'weak' hand.

The scenario is an absurdity, and I don't think Killeen was so irrational as to have wanted to suggest this.

Well, we may at least agree that Killeen was probably not an irrational man. However, much as the scenario you outline is not a bad one, I do think that the inquest reports in the papers are quite enough to tell us that Killeen DID speak of two weapons. The Morning Advertiser worded it: "In witness's opinion the wounds were not inflicted with the same instrument, there being a deep wound in the breast from some long, strong instrument, while most of the others were done apparently by a penknife."

Here, we can see how it seems that Killeen said that in his opinion... und so weiter. Therefore, I believe he used that exact phrasing; the paper would not be likely at all to use it otherwise, simple as.

When you say that the scenario becomes an absurdity, you step right into the trap I started out by warning against: Rephrasing history to suit our own logic, dismissing a trained medicos view in the process. A medico who saw the wounds, who measured then and tracked them inside the body.

The thing about absurdities is that they only become absurdities when we are able to rule out alternative non-absurd explanations, if you take my meaning; many times, what we regard as absurd suddenly dissolves into something very non-ansurd once we get the story behind it all. And we do not have tahat story in Tabrams case. Rest assured that Killeen - rational as we bot think he was - would have realized that it will always be unexpected to find a murder victim with 38 wounds made by one blade and a single wound made by another. So much the more reason for us to accept that he would have been absolutely certain before taking that stance!

Last, but not least, I am as uncertain that I can sway you as you are that you can sway me. So maybe we are both hard to sway...?

[MrBarnett]

Benner’s Model of Expertise identifies five stages of learning:


The NOVICE rigidly adheres to rules or plans, has little situational perception and can’t make judgments. This individual is learning skills in clinical settings and must be closely supervised when delivering patient care.


The ADVANCED BEGINNER is a new graduate. The person functions with limited situational perception (the ability to put clues together to make decisions) and has difficulty discriminating between what is important.


The COMPETENT PRACTITIONER can see his or her actions within a broader context, and is capable of making sounder judgments. Conscious deliberate planning takes place along with standardized and routine procedures:


The PROFICIENT INDIVIDUAL sees the situation holistically rather than in terms of its component parts. This individual more readily makes decisions, perceives differences from the normal pattern of a patient, and functions better with ambiguity. The proficient person has learned from experience and has an easier time making decisions.



Bearing in mind that Killeen didn’t obtain his midwifery qualification until 1887, but the qualification does not appear in the Medical Directory for that year, he was seemingly still a medical student a few months before he arrived in Whitechapel.


Where would he fit in Benner’s model? Well, at the time it was said that there was virtually no pathological training available in Dublin, so I can’t see how he could be considered as having been anything other than a novice when it came to conducting PM’s on murder victims.

[MrBarnett]

As I think I suggested before, there’s one apparent error in Killeen’s evidence. He said, or so it was reported, that Tabram had 39 ‘punctured’ wounds. However, one of the wounds he described was not a ‘punctured’ wound, it was an incised wound.


In layman’s terms, a punctured wound is a stab, distinguished by its depth being greater than its width. An incised wound is a cut or a slash, its width being greater than its depth. The wound to the lower part of Tabram’s body was 3in wide and 1 in depth, so it was an incised wound. Yet there’s no mention of any incised wounds in the versions of Killeen’s evidence that have come down to us.


A journalistic omission? Or an error by the inexperienced Dr Killeen? Either way, we can’t be certain of how many wounds there were in total. It may have been 39 punctured wounds and x incised wounds. Or 39 wounds in total some (at least one) of which were incised wounds.


Don’t bother looking to Martha’s death cert for elucidation, for all the info that provides she may have been shot, strangled or bludgeoned to death.

[Losmandris]

No, they didn’t. And what’s strangest of all, there wasn’t even a medical cause of death shown on her death cert. That’s either a major oversight, or it shows they weren’t totally sure what killed her.

Wynne Baxter, the coroner, was a man of enormous experience. So we have to weigh the possibility of he and/or John Hall (the Whitechapel registrar) having made a glaring error or their not being sure what the cause of death was.

This is where blind faith in professionals lets you down. It becomes toss a coin time.

This makes me wonder if they took a bit of slap dash approach to this? Considering who the victim was, where it happened etc. If it was not for subsequent events, the murder would have probably been all but forgotten. Would the findings of the postmortem/inquest been more conclusive if it had taken place a few months later?

Tristan

[MrBarnett]

Question? Was the inquest for MT as thorough as later inquests for the other victims? Did they assign a motive to the attack?

Tristan

No, they didn’t. And what’s strangest of all, there wasn’t even a medical cause of death shown on her death cert. That’s either a major oversight, or it shows they weren’t totally sure what killed her.

Wynne Baxter, the coroner, was a man of enormous experience. So we have to weigh the possibility of he and/or John Hall (the Whitechapel registrar) having made a glaring error or their not being sure what the cause of death was.

This is where blind faith in professionals lets you down. It becomes toss a coin time.

[rjpalmer]

What of course needs to be addressed here is that the quotation on offer says that "some of the wounds are so narrow that a bayonet WAS FIRST suspected as the weapon. BUT bayonet wounds are quite UNMISTAKABLE".

The claim is that a number of the 38 lesser wounds (plural) could not possibly have been caused by a bayonet, since the wounds made by such a blade is unmistakable. Nowhere does it say that a bayonet could not have caused the sternum wound, though. So when R J Palmer says "It wasn't a bayonet wound. Killeen, in his inexperience, was simply wrong.", he is attributing what was said to the one wound it cannot be attributed to.

On the whole, I think the quotation as such is poorly worded. Why would a bayonet have produced narrow wounds? It is not a very narrow weapon at all, is it? It is a wide and sturdy one!

Hi Fish -- You probably won't accept this, and I am not sure I have the talent to convince you otherwise, but, personally I don't think Killeen ever meant to suggest that two different weapons were used. This is just how his inquest testimony has been (mis)interpreted by historians, because the transcripts we have are brief and incomplete and they leave us with the wrong impression.

We don't have any official report, so there is scope for great error. The notation mentioned by Ogen suggest that Killeen may, in fact, have suggested a bayonet had been used to make other wounds as well. I can't prove this, since any report he may have written has been lost.

Think of it this way: Dr. K isn't sure what weapon had been used. And this is entirely natural. He admits this uncertainty to the inquest jury. On the other hand, he notes that most of the wounds look thin and small--and suggests a pen-knife could have been used. BUT, he adds, one wound to the chest looks bigger. It looks like it couldn't have been made with a pen-knife, so--maybe-- the knife wasn't a pen-knife after all, but a bayonet. In other words, a bayonet could explain ALL the wounds...but a penknife couldn't. He is expressing doubt, but we can't see the "doubt" in the testimony we have, as reported by the ELO, etc..

I think that is all Killeen meant to say. He was going through his mental steps as to why he is thinking it was a bayonet---we only hear "pen-knife" for the lower wounds, and "some sort of dagger" for the sternum--and so historians have been off and running for 70 years or more. But--in my view--- two weapons is not really what Killeen was attempting to express--though it certainly sounds that way in a casual reading!

No one is going to stab a woman 38 times in a right-handed frenzy and then stop, switch hands, switch weapons, too, and then stab her once again with his 'weak' hand.

The scenario is an absurdity, and I don't think Killeen was so irrational as to have wanted to suggest this.

[Fisherman]

Question? Was the inquest for MT as thorough as later inquests for the other victims? Did they assign a motive to the attack?

Tristan

Itīs on the boards, of course:

https://www.casebook.org/official_documents/inquests/inquest_tabram.html

It is shorter than the ordinary Ripper inquest, and no motive was speculated about.

[Losmandris]

Question? Was the inquest for MT as thorough as later inquests for the other victims? Did they assign a motive to the attack?

Tristan

[Fisherman]

What of course needs to be addressed here is that the quotation on offer says that "some of the wounds are so narrow that a bayonet WAS FIRST suspected as the weapon. BUT bayonet wounds are quite UNMISTAKABLE".

The claim is that a number of the 38 lesser wounds (plural) could not possibly have been caused by a bayonet, since the wounds made by such a blade is unmistakable. Nowhere does it say that a bayonet could not have caused the sternum wound, though. So when R J Palmer says "It wasn't a bayonet wound. Killeen, in his inexperience, was simply wrong.", he is attributing what was said to the one wound it cannot be attributed to.

On the whole, I think the quotation as such is poorly worded. Why would a bayonet have produced narrow wounds? It is not a very narrow weapon at all, is it? It is a wide and sturdy one!

[Fisherman]

Hi RJ,

Where's this little gem from? I can't recall seeing it, if it's from the Home Office but didn't survive, where did Jon Ogan find it?
Interesting connotations.

You may want to take a look here, Al:

https://www.casebook.org/forum1998/messages/1/341689c3.html?1003324567

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

"a short note appended to a Home Office document gives the revised official view that "some of the wounds are so narrow that a bayonet WAS FIRST suspected as the weapon. BUT bayonet wounds are quite UNMISTAKABLE" --Jon Ogan, 1996.

It wasn't a bayonet wound. Killeen, in his inexperience, was simply wrong. The notation by the Home Office suggests someone else was called in to re-examine Tabram. We just don't know about it, since the documentation hasn't survived. It may have been a military surgeon associated with the Tower, but, whoever it was, they concluded it wasn't a bayonet wound.

Hi RJ,

Where's this little gem from? I can't recall seeing it, if it's from the Home Office but didn't survive, where did Jon Ogan find it?
Interesting connotations.

[Fisherman]

If there is any doubt about how bayonet wounds through the sternum appear,it might be a good idea to study or enquire of the military.

But we donīt know that it was a bayonet, Harry. It was a long, strong, dagger-like implement, that is all we know. I would say that such an implement will make a large hole when shoved through the sternum, and that in itself is enough to tell it apart from what a small blade would produce.
Some say the sternum is so hard that a blade may get stuck in it, and needs to be wriggled loose, thereby creating a larger hole. I say that such a wriggling will not only be given away by a not very clean hole through the sternum but also by how the underlying heart would be damaged in quite another manner than it would be by a clean stab.

And THAT iis when it is suggested that "maybe Killeen did not check?".

I say he did, and I say he did so all the more carefully becasue of the character of what he said about it. When you are making a claim you full well know is out of the ordinary, you are much more likely to check very carefully.

I accept that we will never know fur sure. But I donīt accept that this would mean that Killen was as likely to be wrong as he was to be right.

[Fisherman]

I think I'm right in saying that, by the rules of the Medical Witness Act, the deceased's regular physician would normally be consulted for the PM, but, being a street person, Tabram didn't have a regular physician, so Killeen apparently got the job by default. One puzzling question is why a police surgeon wasn't called in, considering it was a homicide.

It was also becoming standard practice to have two physicians at an autopsy, along with a competent person to take notes. It all seems rather slap dash. (Sorry, Fish, but that's how it looks to me!)

No need to be sorry - I have myself at times hinted at the possibility that unfortunates were less likely to have a Harley Street physician tending to them at their post mortems than dead prime ministers and members of the Royal family. When I did, I have actually often been reprimanded for that approach!

As I said to Gary, I am not claiming that Killeen was the best they had. But he was in all probability qualified enough, and his verdict of two weapons never had and never will have a 50/50 chance only of being correct. Without putting any numbers on it, the likelihood of him getting it right is much bigger than the other way around.

To prove me wrong on that point, we need either proven statistics telling us that the Victorian doctors didnīt assess but instead guess (did I hear the word Marriott being uttered...?) or clear and useful pictures of the damage done to Tabrams body.

Without any of those commodities, Killeen remains on top of things. It is as simple as that.

[Fisherman]

Hi Fish,

Does being a ‘trained medico’ necessarily mean that Killeen had any experience at all of conducting post mortems on people killed by sword bayonets?

I don’t think he was chosen to carry out the Tabram PM because he was particularly trained to do so. He was called out in the middle of the night to the crime scene, possibly because Dr Swyer couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed, and performed the PM in consequence.

We surely should acknowledge the potential difference in ability in any sphere between an experienced practitioner and a complete novice.

Gary


Gary

There is really no need to ask me whether Killeen had extensive post mortem experience and/or training in identifying weapons in murder cases. I think you and me have the exact same picture of that; he was relatively young and likely relatively inexperienced, and so he probably had neither in abundance.

Then again, that is not the point I am trying to get across. The point I am grying to get across is instead that he was a trained medico, and that he DID do the post mortem on Tabram, and as a consequence of this, he would be better suited to make the kind of calls he did than 99,9 per cent of the population in London back then. And certainly he would be a better judge than 100 per cent of those of us who never even saw the wounds in the first place!

Just like you, I would have preferred if a medico with decades of experience, involving murder cases where there was sharp violence involved, did the post mortem on Tabram. But since I cannot have it, I am quite prepared to settle for what I got - a man who would have been trained in how to treat wounds caused by sharp objects, and who would have trained in how to dissect dead people and identify various types of damage caused by various types of dangerous objects in our surroundings.

When such a man, who has that kind of training, does a post mortem and arrives at the conclusion that two weapons were used in an attack, he is of course not as qualified and experienced as the best there are. But he is nevertheless much more likely to be right than wrong, although I would not want to try and put any numbers on it.

[rjpalmer]

I don’t think he was chosen to carry out the Tabram PM because he was particularly trained to do so. He was called out in the middle of the night to the crime scene, possibly because Dr Swyer couldn’t be arsed to get out of bed, and performed the PM in consequence.

I think I'm right in saying that, by the rules of the Medical Witness Act, the deceased's regular physician would normally be consulted for the PM, but, being a street person, Tabram didn't have a regular physician, so Killeen apparently got the job by default. One puzzling question is why a police surgeon wasn't called in, considering it was a homicide.

It was also becoming standard practice to have two physicians at an autopsy, along with a competent person to take notes. It all seems rather slap dash. (Sorry, Fish, but that's how it looks to me!)