Jacks Day Job?

[DVV]

...and allow me to add (to repeat) that if the killer really had tried to behead his victims in the streets, Mary Kelly's spine would have logically bore more furious signs of such an attempt.
Throats savagely cut through the vertabrae: that's all we have.

Amitiés,
David

[Ashkenaz]

A point I have made numerous times, and that once again fills itīs place, is the fact that any skilled butcher would have known how to decapitate! And we have the medicos words that decapitation was tried - and failed! - in the cases of Kelly and Chapman. The bone in the neck was notched in both cases.
So no, I do not for a minute think that we are dealing with a trained butcher here! Such am man, described as he has been on this thread as a man who confidently cut get the job done with a blindfold on - would such a man come up with jagged, tentative wounds and stabs like those on the lower abdomen of Nichols? I donīt think so.

The best!
Fisherman

The "experts" tell us that these murders were sexually motivated. The act of murder and mutilation stand in for sex.

How likely is it then that he was paying great attention to what he was doing ? He was in a sexual frenzy as he cut their throats. By the time it registered in his brain that he had reached bone, he stopped and moved on to his next objective. It is not significant that the vertebrae had several notches. Neither does it indicate that an attempt at decapitation was made.

He was in a sexual frenzy.He was insane. He was rushing, he had to get his jollies and get away from the crime scene to avoid capture.

[Fisherman]

Hi again, David!

You write:

"whatever, we can't always trust Phillips, can we?
Wasn't this guy who discarded Eddowes as a Ripper victim, while he put Stride in the frame?"

...and I do believe you are trying to tease me here. Nevertheless, I find no reason whatsoever to deviate from what I have already said. And the fact of the matter is that while I rest my case against the medical reports, you rest yours against unsubstantiated guesswork.
It kind of makes me wonder; why are you so eager to refute dr Phillips words, when you have no more than a gut feeling to back it up? Whatīs in it for you, David?

This, David, was what was said about the cut to Eddowes neck:

"All the deep structures were severed to the bone, the knife marking intervertebral cartilages."

It is, of course, the voice of dr Brown we are listening to here, but Phillips was one of a few assisting doctors. And though we know that he saw an attempt to decapitate in Chapmans case, he does not raise his voice to witness about the self samt thing in Eddowes case?
Now, why would that be? Did he forget to take a look?
And why did he speak of an attempt of decapitation in Chapmans case? Whatīs your guess on that one, David? That he wanted to make himself a remarkable figure in the press? That he had nothing better to do than to stir things up a bit?

Of course not. Phillips was a very experienced medico, and since, in Chapmans case, he knew that he was facing a woman who had been subjected to very powerful physical violence at her neck by the use of a knife, he would be expecting to find something along the lines described by Brown in Eddowesīcase: a cut down to the bone, either notching the bone itself or doing some damage to the invertebral cartilages.

To make him go far enough to suggest an attempted decapitation, now that would have taken something else, like obvious sawing movements through the structure of the neck, movements that obviously exceeded what could be rendered by a single cut or two.
The killer had been sawing away, simple as that, and that was what must have been evinced by the physical evidence.

Now, to say that Phillips could not be trusted, which you seem to imply, on such a thing is - if you forgive me - slightly ludicrous. To weigh together the evidence from two cases and come up with the gut feeling that the killer may not have been one and the same, that is another thing altogether. And in that case, there may of course be sentiments of prestige involved, as offered by many researchers. Moreover, David - we cannot be completely sure that Phillips was not right about the damn thing, can we? As far as I know we have not caught the guy/s who did it, have we?

In conclusion: clear physical evidence in the shape of sawing away at the neck is something that we should not throw in the waste paper bin. And the fact that Phillips said that it "may" have evinced an effort to sever the head is very little to lean against for you, since that was all he could say, was it not? For all he knew, the killer may just have enjoyed sawing for a bit, with no further intentions. That, though, does not mean that the evidence was not there and the most viable interpretation of it would have been that he was indeed trying to decapitate!

To Ashkenaz:

You write:

"He was in a sexual frenzy as he cut their throats."

and

"By the time it registered in his brain that he had reached bone, he stopped and moved on to his next objective. It is not significant that the vertebrae had several notches. Neither does it indicate that an attempt at decapitation was made."

Taking it from the beginning, although I agree that the murders were probably sexually motivated, I would not go so far as to regard it as proven. Moreover, the cutting of the throat need not have had any elements of sexuality at all to it, as far as he was concerned. My belief is that the throat-cutting was merely a practicality.

Moving on, you are stumbling a bit on the logic, are you not, when you first say that as his brain registered that he had reached the bone, he stopped and moved on, only to in the next sentence claim that it is unsignificant that the vertebrae had several notches.

If he had stopped and moved on - then why were there several notches from the outset? Would that not be very clear evidence that he did NOT "stop and move on" as he reached the bone?

Back to the drawing boards, perhaps?

The best, guys!
Fisherman

[Ashkenaz]

To Ashkenaz:

You write:

"He was in a sexual frenzy as he cut their throats."

and

"By the time it registered in his brain that he had reached bone, he stopped and moved on to his next objective. It is not significant that the vertebrae had several notches. Neither does it indicate that an attempt at decapitation was made."

Yes I wrote this.

Taking it from the beginning, although I agree that the murders were probably sexually motivated, I would not go so far as to regard it as proven. Moreover, the cutting of the throat need not have had any elements of sexuality at all to it, as far as he was concerned. My belief is that the throat-cutting was merely a practicality.

Many psychologists would say it was a sexually motivated homicide. I agree with them.

I cannot see how the throat cutting was merely practicable. If the throat cutting had no meaning at all to him, why would he do it ? The victim was already dead after all, so it was not done to kill.

Either he obtained some sexual gratification from the act, or else it made his mutilations easier in some way. I have read that very little blood escaped the throat incisions as the victims were dead. So it cannot be that it was done in order that he would get less blood upon himself during the mutilations he wished to do to the victims.

Please explain your practicality idea. In what way was it practicable to cut the victims throats? What did it facilitate?

Moving on, you are stumbling a bit on the logic, are you not, when you first say that as his brain registered that he had reached the bone, he stopped and moved on, only to in the next sentence claim that it is unsignificant that the vertebrae had several notches.

I mean that he cut their throats in a frenzy, as quickly as he could. All the while distracted by thoughts of pursuit, escape and capture.He was distracted. He may not have noticed he had reached bone immediately he did. Hence the several notches.

When I say I do not think it is significant that there were several notches. I am saying that in my opinion no attempt was made by jtr to decapitate the victim. The multiple notches are explicable as above.

If he had stopped and moved on - then why were there several notches from the outset? Would that not be very clear evidence that he did NOT "stop and move on" as he reached the bone?

See above

Back to the drawing boards, perhaps?

We are all at the drawing board.


The best, guys!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Ashkenaz (whoa, that IS difficult to spell!) writes:

"If the throat cutting had no meaning at all to him, why would he do it ? The victim was already dead after all, so it was not done to kill."

Slow down, please! Wherefrom did you get the idea that the victims were dead when he cut?? They were not, as effectively proven by the medical reports!

"Please explain your practicality idea. In what way was it practicable to cut the victims throats? "

Silence, Ashkenaz - much valuable if you are to set about cutting up a woman! I believe that this was his sole reason for severing the necks - and thus also the windpipes of his victims!
His sexual interest - if your psychologists are right - would have lain in the eviscerations.

"He may not have noticed he had reached bone immediately he did. Hence the several notches."

Aha, so now you are NOT saying that he cut til he felt the bone, and then moved on? Now you are saying that he cut one, two, three, four, God knows how many times, without noticing that he reached the bone - and then moved on?
Wouldnīt you say that a number of notches in the vertebrae corresponds with the very same number of cutting movements, Ashkenaz? And if two strokes in the neck caused the gaping wounds on Chapman, whereas she had numerous notches and damage to the vertebrae - wouldnīt you agree that he that he increased his efforts as he felt that back bone? Did the knife bounce, resulting in the notches? Were they the results of severe trembling on his behalf?

"We are all at the drawing board"

Admittedly so. Letīs not waste our time there!

The best, Ashkenaz! (Wasnīt there a pianist who added a "y" to that name?)

Fisherman

[Sam Flynn]

The best, Ashkenaz! Wasnīt there a pianist who added a "y" to that name?

Yup - Vladimir Ashkenazy, a winner of the Tchaikovsky Prize and an internationally renowned virtuoso pianist, despite having comparatively small hands. He's still going strong, largely as an orchestral conductor these days. I think we can safely say that Jack was unlikely to have pursued either career.

[Fisherman]

Thanks for filling that gap in, Sam! I will take the opportunity to fill another one in, for Ashkenaz (the one without the "y", that is). It is about whether the victims were dead when Jack cut their necks or not.
This is what was said at inquests and in death certificates:

The blood was produced by the severance of the cartoid artery, which was the cause of death
(Kelly)

The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate
(Eddowes)

Violent injuries to throat and abdomen
(Chapman)

Violent syncope from loss of blood from injuries in throat and abdomen
(Nichols)

That, I believe, is that!

The best, Ashkenaz and Sam (Whoa - THAT was easier to spell!)
Fisherman

[Ashkenaz]

Fisherman please learn to quote. It is difficult to engage you when you dollop jumbled text onto the page, where some of it is yours and some of it is mine.

[Fisherman]

Ashkenaz writes:

"It is difficult to engage you when you dollop jumbled text onto the page, where some of it is yours and some of it is mine."

Well, then, Ashkenaz, if you are having such trouble keeping things apart, please do not believe that the assumption that the victims were dead when they had their throats cut is something that came from me. That was your thinking, and I am much interested to find out how you are going to bolster it!

My last post (post 37) on this thread only contains my own words, so that one should be perfectly simple for you to take part of. It contains four reasons to why I think your reasoning is wrong, each authored by the responsible medicos concerned. It would be nice to speak of more important matters than my technical shortcomings, I think.

The best, Ashkenaz!

Fisherman

[Ashkenaz]

Ashkenaz
Slow down, please! Wherefrom did you get the idea that the victims were dead when he cut?? They were not, as effectively proven by the medical reports!

Strangulation renders the victim unconscious quickly. It kills quickly too. Apparently just two minutes without oxygen is enough to secure brain death.

In some of the ripper books that I have read it says that little blood was found about the victim even though the carotid arteries had been severed.

The explanation is that the victims were already dead when those blood vessels were opened. At death, the heart no longer beats. Without a beating heart there is zero blood pressure. Some blood oozes out, but this is localised blood within close proximity to the trauma.

The medical reports prove nothing. In fact they are all scientifically wrong. A severed artery is just a milestone on the route to death, it s not the cause of it.

It matters not whether a victim was stabbed, shot, boiled alive, electrocuted or drowned. Everybody actually dies of the same thing. And it is not any of the things you quote from those reports.

Silence, Ashkenaz - much valuable if you are to set about cutting up a woman! I believe that this was his sole reason for severing the necks - and thus also the windpipes of his victims!
His sexual interest - if your psychologists are right - would have lain in the eviscerations.

Let us suppose that you are right, and the victim was alive, though unconscious as jtr cut her throat. In such a circumstance, there is not silence, but actually quite a lot of noise !

I saw a murder victim being beheaded in the Middle East at ogrish.com. It is not something I want to see again, but here is what happened: The head came away, and the body continued to breath. It was very laboured and noisy. I'm not sure for exactly how long it continued as the video stopped quickly after the deed. But silent it was not !

Aha, so now you are NOT saying that he cut til he felt the bone, and then moved on? Now you are saying that he cut one, two, three, four, God knows how many times, without noticing that he reached the bone - and then moved on?

Please go back and read my previous post. I've already told you what I think.

Wouldnīt you say that a number of notches in the vertebrae corresponds with the very same number of cutting movements, Ashkenaz? ?

Possibly. But surely this depends on his hacking style. Perhaps he sawed back and forth with the blade in contact with the vertebrae. Perhaps the blade made a grove in the bone with the first contact. Perhaps the blade remained in that grove for several further sawing motion. If so, there may be just one grove/notch for several sawing strokes.

So we cannot assume that he number of notches equal the number of sawing actions

The best, Ashkenaz! (Wasnīt there a pianist who added a "y" to that name?)

I'm not sure. Ashkanazi is the Hebrew or Yiddish word for the Jews of Northern Europe.

There must have been a Jew in my ancestry, as until the generation before mine there were Jewish names in my family. Ashkenaz is one of them. It was my great grandfathers name. I have a lithograph of him. Another repeating name is Rue. This is short for Ruven, which I'm told means: Behold a boy child. There is also a Serug, but I dont know what that means. My family lived in London then, and my great grandfather is buried in East London.

Neither my grandfather, nor my father knew the significance of these names. We are/were all fair and blue eyed.
Fisherman[/QUOTE]

[Ashkenaz]

Thanks for filling that gap in, Sam! I will take the opportunity to fill another one in, for Ashkenaz (the one without the "y", that is). It is about whether the victims were dead when Jack cut their necks or not.
This is what was said at inquests and in death certificates:

The blood was produced by the severance of the cartoid artery, which was the cause of death
(Kelly)

The cause of death was haemorrhage from the left common carotid artery. The death was immediate
(Eddowes)

Violent injuries to throat and abdomen
(Chapman)

Violent syncope from loss of blood from injuries in throat and abdomen
(Nichols)

That, I believe, is that!

The best, Ashkenaz and Sam (Whoa - THAT was easier to spell!)
Fisherman

All these causes of death are inaccurate. The cause of death is the same for everyone. Everyone actually dies of the same thing, and it is not any of these, you quote from..

Death certificates are written by doctors for non doctors to read and keep. For this reason they are fairly brief. The death is usually attributed to something readily understandable to non doctors. Hence- a severed artery. A head injury, a heart attack, internal injuries, drowning, electrocution etc.

[Fisherman]

Well, then, Ashkenaz, perhaps you could enlighten us a bit more? It is an interesting wiew of yours, that doctors would accomodate the ignorance of ordinary people by supplying causes of death that are readily understandable to more simple minds.
To accept that this was the case also in the most high-profile case in criminal history is even more interesting...

...and probably quite wrong, if you ask me.

But donīt let that stop you - please elaborate. This thread seems to mainly concern itself with wiews that disagree with the medical findings - we have already been asked to digest that notches and carvings in the vertebrae of the spinal column does in no way have to point to efforts of decapitation - and so it will be interesting to see where we end up. Maybe Tabram was actually battered to death with a loaf of stale bread, and for all we know Chapman could have been drowned by that witnessed-about fluid on her skin?
If we go on like this, we will have it all solved in no time at all!

Joking aside, Ashkenaz, I really feel that when (and if) we are to challenge the medical wiews, we must be able to point at something substantial. And thus far I have seen absolutely nothing of the sort.

The best,
Fisherman

[Ashkenaz]

Well, then, Ashkenaz, perhaps you could enlighten us a bit more? It is an interesting wiew of yours, that doctors would accomodate the ignorance of ordinary people by supplying causes of death that are readily understandable to more simple minds.
To accept that this was the case also in the most high-profile case in criminal history is even more interesting...

...and probably quite wrong, if you ask me.

Non doctors are not simple minded. They just have no familiarity with medical terms. They simply need a death certificate for various reasons. Its a very simple one sheet document. It does not require lengthly explanations as to actual cause of death.

[Fisherman]

Ashkenaz, you will be familiar with the wording from the inquest on Chapman:

"The face was swollen and turned on the right side. The tongue protruded between the front teeth, but not beyond the lips. The tongue was evidently much swollen."

That is the only piece of evidence we have that points to strangulation, in any of the cases, at least as far as medical reports are concerned. Now, please consider that the doctor (Phillips) that saw and recognized these features of indications of strangulation still opted for a verdict of the cut in the neck being the cause of death. And take into account that Annie was the second of the canonical five, meaning that just like the doctors looked for evidence of attempted decapitation concerning the following three canonical victims (and found it in Kellys case!), they also would have looked thoroughly for any sign of suffocation or strangulation in those cases. But they did not come up with any evidence of it. No swollen tongues, no petichae, no nothing that could help them to establish that strangulation or suffocation was involved. It just was not there, Ashkenaz, and there is no way anyone can invent a method of lethal suffocation that leaves no traces!

You speak of strangulation being something that would take about two minutes before you were ensured that your victim was dead. How does that fit with the Eddowes slaying, where we know that the killer would have been desperately pressed for time, and where it seems odd that he had seconds enough to inflict all that damage? What happens if we withdraw two of the minutes he had at his hands?

And you also state that the throttling would have brought the blood-flow in the bodies to a slow-down and halt - but if you take a look at the wooden fence at the side of Chapman - the one victim that displayed signs of having been suffocated - you will notice that there were splashes of blood on it, some fourteen inches over the ground. Same thing with Kelly; splashes hit the wall at her side.

There would have been some sort of subduing preceding the cut, Ashkenaz, that is a reasonable suggestion. To some extent, it could have involved a partial suffocation, at least regarding Chapman. But it need not have been any more sophisticated than the sudden placing a hand over the victims mouth and nose and pressing her to the ground, thereafter swiftly and deeply cutting the neck.
What defence would a much drunken Nichols put up? A seriously ill Chapman?
Furthermore, there is no need, I feel, to accept that the deeds were completely silent in all cases. We are not dealing with a phantom here.

All the best,
Fisherman

[Billy Bulger]

Hi everyone,
Regarding the idea that the Ripper was a slaughterer/furrier/butcher couldnt it be argued that he would not have been free to roam the streets (post murder) in bloody clothing because the murders took place during non-business hours? Now I understand that the working day in Whitechapel in 1888 began for many as early as 1 am, it could be argued the Ripper was one of those employees but isnt work of this ilk done in company- that is, alongisde many other slaughterers/employees? If so, it seems a stretch to believe the Ripper would have risked leaving the premises to murder.

...and its how he learned the alleys and lanes at night.

Hi Perry and all,
I can see where youre coming from with your theory and youre certainly not alone. But I've always felt that the Ripper was not as familiar with the Whitechapel streets as many scholars assume. This is mere opinion but I've always felt that if the Ripper was indeed possessed by a detailed knowledge of the Whitechapel streets he would not have chosen Hanbury Street or Mitre Square to take life. Both of which posed ungoldy risks to Jack and I believe they may demonstrate a lack of familiarity.