The Double Event

[Abby Normal]

A moderately cut throat preceded by a violent struggle outside a noisy club, versus (apparently) a "coochie-coo" smooch outside a practicallly deserted Mitre Square followed by a savagely cut throat, disembowelment and nasty facial mutilations.

I don't see much of a pattern there, either in the killer's approach or in the outcome.

But Sarah brown was a known domestic far away. It has nothing to do with the ripper murders. That she was murdered on the night of the double event is a sheer coincidence.

Yes eddowes and stride is pattern.


They happened a few minutes walk and an hour apart from each other. Both had cut throats, same victimolgy, both unsolved, both murdered by cut throat.

Both were seen with a man with a peaked cap.

Any differences can be easily chalked up to circumstances. In this case because stride seemed to be reluctant to go into a secluded place as several witnesses saw her with the man with the peaked cap over the course of at least an hour. He lost his temper, and that is probably why she wound up with only the cut throat and no mutilation. And why eddowes wound up with both as the killers true motive, abdominal multinational and removal of organs was not satisfied.


Same victimology
Unsolved
Murder by cut throat
Hour apart
Close proximity
First victim not "finished"
Second victim "completed" and then some
Both victims being shmoozed before hand out on the street
Witnesses for both describe a similar man with a peaked cap

I would also add the anon church street sighting of the man in a peak cap wiping his hands about the same time in between the murders to show him seen en route.

Pattern.

[Abby Normal]

A moderately cut throat preceded by a violent struggle outside a noisy club, versus (apparently) a "coochie-coo" smooch outside a practicallly deserted Mitre Square followed by a savagely cut throat, disembowelment and nasty facial mutilations.

I don't see much of a pattern there, either in the killer's approach or in the outcome.

A moderately cut throat?!?
Sorry Sam, this is starting to sound a lot like your Ellen bury lttle scratch to the stomach argument.

[Abby Normal]

So am I, Abby. All I'm saying is that some assaults, muggings, heated arguments could easily have escalated into knife-murders but for the grace of God. There are several characteristics of Stride's murder that indicates that it might have been just such an event that went horribly wrong, and it's not inconceivable that it could have gone the other way. Neither is it unlikely that similar events occurred that might have culminated in murder if matters got out of hand. A lot of people carried knives back then, and it was a very violent time.

Nothing slippery about that at all.

But we were talking about how rare murders were. And specifically murders of women by knife. That's it. They were rare.

[Sam Flynn]

stride and eddowes a pattern.

A moderately cut throat preceded by a violent struggle outside a noisy club, versus (apparently) a "coochie-coo" smooch outside a practicallly deserted Mitre Square followed by a savagely cut throat, disembowelment and nasty facial mutilations.

I don't see much of a pattern there, either in the killer's approach or in the outcome.

[Sam Flynn]

wow. your a slippery fish.

we were talking about murders.

So am I, Abby. All I'm saying is that some assaults, muggings, heated arguments could easily have escalated into knife-murders but for the grace of God. There are several characteristics of Stride's murder that indicates that it might have been just such an event that went horribly wrong, and it's not inconceivable that it could have gone the other way. Neither is it unlikely that similar events occurred that might have culminated in murder if matters got out of hand. A lot of people carried knives back then, and it was a very violent time.

Nothing slippery about that at all.

[Abby Normal]

It's one thing to measure the official stats, but one has to take into account the non-injurious knife assaults, manslaughters or attempted murders, which may or may not have made the press. There's also the fact that, on occasion, some murders were classified as "manslaughter" or "accidents", perhaps inadvertently, but sometimes deliberately in order to keep a given police/coroner's district a better reputation than they really had.

wow. your a slippery fish.

we were talking about murders.

[Abby Normal]

Murder by means of throat cutting was incredibly rare in the late nineteenth century: http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=314649

Thus, considering the above statistics, there were fewer murders of females aged over 20 in 1885, by means of throat cuts, in the whole of England (50,000 square miles) than there were in area of about 1 square mile in 1888.

Regarding Sarah Brown, this murder had absolutely none of the hallmarks of Stride's murder, but all of the hallmarks of a much more common domestic murder. Thus, Brown was killed in Westminster (not Whitechapel) in her own home by her husband who, incidentally, quickly confessed by walking into a police station, informing the officer on duty, "I have killed my wife."

In stark contrast, Stride was murdered outside, in a dark passageway, adjacent to a club to which she had no known association. Moreover, there were no suspects and no witnesses to the murder-or it's immediate aftermath- which appeared to have been carried out with ruthless efficiency.

The simple fact is, whoever murdered Stride it was an exceptionallyy rare crime-at least outside of 1888 Whitechapel, of course!

exactly. sarah brown is a coincidence. stride and eddowes a pattern.

[John G]

Murder by means of throat cutting was incredibly rare in the late nineteenth century: http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=314649

Thus, considering the above statistics, there were fewer murders of females aged over 20 in 1885, by means of throat cuts, in the whole of England (50,000 square miles) than there were in area of about 1 square mile in 1888.

Regarding Sarah Brown, this murder had absolutely none of the hallmarks of Stride's murder, but all of the hallmarks of a much more common domestic murder. Thus, Brown was killed in Westminster (not Whitechapel) in her own home by her husband who, incidentally, quickly confessed by walking into a police station, informing the officer on duty, "I have killed my wife."

In stark contrast, Stride was murdered outside, in a dark passageway, adjacent to a club to which she had no known association. Moreover, there were no suspects and no witnesses to the murder-or it's immediate aftermath- which appeared to have been carried out with ruthless efficiency.

The simple fact is, whoever murdered Stride it was an exceptionally rare crime-at least outside of 1888 Whitechapel, of course!

[Sam Flynn]

I don't think throat cutting-or more specifically-murdered women by cut throat-was as common as you think. according to colin Roberts excellent research in the years before and after 88 there was a relatively low (about 10 give or take) women murdered by knife in London.

It's one thing to measure the official stats, but one has to take into account the non-injurious knife assaults, manslaughters or attempted murders, which may or may not have made the press. There's also the fact that, on occasion, some murders were classified as "manslaughter" or "accidents", perhaps inadvertently, but sometimes deliberately in order to keep a given police/coroner's district a better reputation than they really had.

[Sam Flynn]

Triple murder, if you we include Sarah Brown. Does this reduce the likelihood of Stride & Eddowe's murders being connected or the reverse?

I'd say that it should at least give us pause. Also, taking into account the violent nature of those days, there were possibly other serious knife assaults which could have resulted in a death but which, for entirely providential reasons, didn't. Some of these may have happened on the same night, in approximately the same district, but by no means all of them would have ended up in the newspapers.

Given the comparatively "mild" injuries - sorry, injury - suffered by Liz Stride (mild, that is, compared to other canonical JTR victims), she might have ended up in the same category. By which I mean, it's not inconceivable that she could have survived had (a) the killer not have inflicted quite so "successful" a blow; and/or (b) Dymshitz had turned up a little earlier. If you're not particularly wedded to the "interruption" theory, and I'm not, the possibility that her killer had fled a few minutes earlier than Dymshitz's arrival is by no means out of the question.

[DJA]

I wouldn't use stories instead of facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_hemorrhagic_telangiectasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechu

BSM was possibly Eddowes' Frank Carter,a Royal Engineers sapper.

[Mayerling]

It's rather odd, but the argument about whether or not one killer committed the double event in 1888 somewhat is like the reverse of the "Rillington Place" enigma of the death of the wife and child of Timothy Evans. Evans was posthumously pardoned or rehabilitated after his hanging and the hanging of the chief witness against him, John Christie, by the British Government, after a long series of public displays of questions and outrage. But the argument has boiled down to this: Because of Christie's own subsequent revelation of being a long term serial killer (and his grim way of hiding corpses), the pro-Evans public said Christie was responsible for the killing of Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine. It seems logical. But the campaign to restore the good name of Evans was frequently tied to anti-capital punishment figures like Ludovic Kennedy, who wrote the book "Ten Rillington Place". A kind of backlash has developed about whether the reaction was a rush to judgment or not - and one further book on the subject was called "The Two Killers of Ten Rillington Place". Personally I feel that Evans was a true, tragic victim of bad circumstances, but the existence of that argument is in it's way an inverse mirror of one or two separate murderers operating on Sept. 30, 1888 in the East End with similar violence.

Jeff

[Harry D]

One could as reasonably cite the rarity of double murders in 1888 London to argue that it was two different killers, I think.

Triple murder, if you we include Sarah Brown. Does this reduce the likelihood of Stride & Eddowe's murders being connected or the reverse?

[Ginger]

When considering the possibility that Liz Stride was not a Ripper victim, a large part of the argument is the two murders happening within a short time frame in such close proximity. Even by London 1888 standards that would be very unusual so tends to suggest it was the same killer.

One could as reasonably cite the rarity of double murders in 1888 London to argue that it was two different killers, I think.

[Harry D]

Hi Harry
agree for the most part. I tend to not include Mylett and coles. Mylett is too nebulous and there is not enough of same MO or sig. Coles I think the same, plus I still think that Sadler could probably still been her killer.

And that's fine. Like I said, there are arguments for both sides, and I'm not necessarily saying any of the non-canonicals were Jack's work, I just wouldn't want to put money on it. These days I favour the agnostic approach. Mylett might have been an interruption or a botched attempt, as could Coles because PC Thompson wasn't far behind. Coles wasn't mutilated like the previous victims but she did have her throat cut (three times), unlike Alice McKenzie whose throat was stabbed and the mutilations she did incur were superficial.