Why that ?

[Leatherface]

Not to add fuel to the fire, but there is Marriott's theory that the cloth was not left by JTR, but was left by Eddowes herself after she used is for hygenic purposes earlier that afternoon or after she was released. I don't know if I buy it, but it certainly is interesting.

R

[Leatherface]

Do we know where these "spiggots" were

According to Paul Harrison, a senior official found what looked to be a blood stained sink on Dorset Street. I am trying to find more.

R

[The Good Michael]

Leather,

The problem with that theory is that a very poor woman tearing up a perfectly good apron, makes no sense. She would have known, from the plying of her trade, where all the wash taps were in the area and all the privies. No need to clean soil in the middle of the street with your own clothing.

Mike

[Stewart P Evans]

Unfortunately

According to Paul Harrison, a senior official found what looked to be a blood stained sink on Dorset Street. I am trying to find more.
R

Unfortunately this was the hoary old story told by Major Smith of the City Police in his 1910 book - it has no apparent foundation in fact at all, but has been repeated by many Ripper authors.

[Victor]

Leather,

The problem with that theory is that a very poor woman tearing up a perfectly good apron, makes no sense. She would have known, from the plying of her trade, where all the wash taps were in the area and all the privies. No need to clean soil in the middle of the street with your own clothing.

Mike

Didn't she have quite a few odd bits of cloth on her as well?

[Mitch Rowe]

Its most likely Kate never even had cycles anymore. She was a drunk(gin). She was starving. And we know her to be sort of a runabout.

[caz]

Hi Mitch,

Maybe Kate's cycle was a penny farthing.

Time-pressure and clingy contamination, CD. Remember that this was the one occasion where we can be fairly sure that Jack had fæces on at least one of his hands. That stuff takes quite some time to remove effectively for, not only does it cling to the hands, but - unlike blood - it has an unmistakable odour. Not the sort of thing to have on one's person or clothing, if caught at large on the streets after a woman has been disembowelled in a nearby square, with fæcal matter smeared all over her externalised entrails.

Hi Sam,

Hate to drag this up again but doesn’t it completely defeat the object of ridding himself of this ‘unmistakable odour’, so he won’t be stopped en route from Mitre Square for being in possession of an offensive smell, if all he achieves is to transfer the pong to the pinny, which he keeps on his person until he reaches a certain doorway in Goulston Street that has recently been polluted by our Juwe-friendly door-to-door graffiti artist?

I would suggest that by the time Kate’s killer stopped touching cloth and no longer whiffed of his distinctive eau de colon, the immediate danger he had been in from being a smelly old sausage, as he sprinted or sauntered from the scene, would have receded somewhat anyway.

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

Hi Caz,

I can't help getting away from the fact that Eddowes was the only one of the C5 where it is known that fæces were smeared over part of her body. Furthermore, Eddowes was the only one for whom a piece of clothing was conspicuously missing and found later, with fæcal matter on it.

To my way of thinking those facts would seem to be connected in a rather obvious manner, much simpler than some of the alternative apron theories proposed over the years.

(Good puns, by the way!)

[Supe]

Sam and Caz,

Again, we can't necessarily impose our own experiences on Jack. In this case, we cannot simply assume that Jack was able to urilize his olfactory nerves that night--permenantly or temporariy.

At the moment, I am suffering from that irksome malady know as a "late-summer cold" and am so stuffed up I couldn't niff out a Limburger plant if dropped in middle of it. Moreover, among a limited circle of intimate friends are two who can't smell at all. One was born that way and the other, my brother, lost his ability in an automobile accident at age 19. Dip one cloth in fecal matter and the other in perfume and sight unseen neither could tell the difference.

Obviously, their situations are far from common and even the common cold icould be a stretch, but the examples must be borne in mind when otherwise assuming that of coirse Jack would have been aware any odors.

Incidentally, the two of you being quite literate, do you know of a general term for the non-smelling condition as there is blind for those who cxannot see, dumb for those who cannot speak or deaf for those who cannot hear?

Don.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Don,

do you know of a general term for the non-smelling condition.

It's called "anosmia". The inability to smell a full garbage can is "anosmia bin-laden".

[Supe]

Sam,

Thanks, but I would not exactly say anosmia was in a league with deaf, dumb and blind.

Then there's the old vaudeville wheeze with two doctoprs talking shop.
Doc 1 - I had a patient today who didn't have a nose.
Doc 2 - Really? How did he smell.
Doc 1 - Terrible!
Bada boom!

Don.

[Sam Flynn]

Thanks, but I would not exactly say anosmia was in a league with deaf, dumb and blind.

...I don't suppose "anosmic" is much of an improvement, either, Don

[Supe]

Sam,

I would say that here is an opportunity for some one of us to coin a word. I'll open the game with "snowt" or "snaught."

Don.

[Sam Flynn]

I would say that here is an opportunity for some one of us to coin a word. I'll open the game with "snowt" or "snaught."

What about "ni"? (As in "no f in niff")

[caz]

Hi Supe, Sam,

Actually my late pa-in-law had no sense of smell and my daughter has very little. By sod's law she can make out the nastiest niffs but wave the sweetest smelling flowers right under her hooter and nothing doing.

So Sam, you didn't really explain why taking the whiff with him to Goulston would not have defeated the whole object, if that object was to avoid being caught literally in the sh*t on his flight from Mitre by someone with a keen nose for such things. While I appreciate that the distance isn't far, it was quite far enough to have involved an odour-transferring, rather than an odour-eating operation, for the riskiest part of Jack's onward journey, whether his own sense of smell was acute or he had no f in niff.

In any case, I'm not entirely sure that someone still pumping adrenaline, who can revel in the blood and guts of a woman he's just slit open in a public place where he could have been surprised at any second, is going to be overly sickened or terrified by a bit of her poo on him, as he dodges the horse muck along with the coppers. I hear that it can even excite some men.

Love,

Caz
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