Ripperology: Questioning the Dogma

[Fisherman]

Jeff writes:

"I´d agree with your logic fisherman, especially if you factor in Tabram, who clearly met a much messier end than the others, possibly even regained conciousness during the attack."

I do factor in Tabram, Jeff. I even think she holds the key to how the Ripper was formed.

"But I think you should be careful with the 'Down on whores' line, which is reminiscent of a line from a letter that was probably Hoaxed."

I don´t subscribe to any "down on whores" line, Jeff. Just as I don´t believe in the Ripper communicating by way of letters.
The fact that the Rippers victims were at least partially prostituted is something that I think was of a very secondary nature to Jack. Vulnerability combined with accessibility would have been what he was looking for - and prostitutes fit the bill perfectly.

The best, Jeff!
Fisherman

[Fisherman]

Dark Passenger writes:

"Five murders, a short space of time, over a short area. In that way we can pretty much rule out the idea that the victims of JTR were killed for reasons other than serialist motives"

That, DP, is so compelling and tempting a thought, that it may well prove to be what has hindered us to find the Rippers name for 120 years. I think the solution to the riddle may well lie in accepting that the driving force and motives behind the deeds were NOT one and the same in all cases.

The best!
Fisherman

[Jeff Leahy]

I do apologise Fisherman, I've been muddling posts up, unforgivable. I think we concur over Tabram

Its strange but i've just come off the phone discussing the similarities between Ipswich murders and Hammersmith nudes. Though I'm not convinced that the Hammersmith Nudes were the result of a lone killer and do wonder whether Wright also acted totally alone?

But the JtR killings are unique. You might draw comparisons to Sutcliffe but we are dealing with very different MO. Different time frame. Sutcliffe wasnt even a typical Schizophrenic.

Pirate

[Roy Corduroy]

The only reason we suggest JTR had syphllis was because of the obvious mental degredation he was going through, and because it may - stress, may - explain why he targeted prostitutes, even though he probably did simply for ease of access,...

Thank you for your reply, DarkPassenger,

Go back to that time and place, London 1888, and picture a man, any man. He drinks and consorts with prostitutes and he comes down with syphilis. His treatment options are limited. The disease has unmistakable physical signs, and he knows eventually he will die from it.

He is angry. Angry at himself and at prostitutes. So he seeks revenge. He hunts the most vulnerable of the prostitute class, the unfortunates. And here is the key - the targeting of the private parts of the female anatomy is not due to lustmord, it is revenge. He is attacking the source of his anger.

Yes, a sexual serial killer could have syphilis, too. It's not mutually exclusive, considering that day and age. But that is not my point. And no, I am not thinking along the lines of conspiracy, of Dr. Stanley or J K Stephen or any other such theory.

Syphilis is a package deal. It makes Jack angry and crazy.

Roy

[Natalie Severn]

Hi All,
I wrote about what I see as a false dichotomy developing between the prime motivation to kill by that of Shipman and that of the ripper,viz " Power and control "in both cases over an elderly frail victim, who was for different reasons , accessible.I looked at what they had in common.They both went for these elderly,frail victims and not "young girls" of whom in the Ripper"s case there were several hundreds available as prostitutes at night in the East End of 1888--- Mary Kelly,while not exactly a "young girl"was also,we understand,somewhat frail that particular night ,being well in her cups and was therefore comparable in availability ---may even have been sound asleep.
I know the "stereotypical" and pretty crass ,male view is all about a "Carmen" like Mary Kelly the whore, being slashed and torn apart etc,and I am aware that that is something that gets "gloated" about here on casebook----- from time to time------but only by certain individuals we all know about,a sort of graphic story of a great "whore slashing" Ripper " etc but the truth of the matter is that the Ripper"s victims were NOT young or stereotypical "whores", but were among the weakest, oldest and most vulnerable people in the entire East End.
Having said that I certainly admit ,the fact he chose elderly people least able to defend themselves ,does not mean his urges were therefore not about "thrusting" his 'knife"[as a substitute for something else] into their dead bodies and their exposed internal organs in particular ---as in a perverse kind of necrophilia .They could well have been about just that ,but its not a definite fact---and by no means proven as yet.So isn"t it worth discussing other serial murderers rather than just "sexual" serial killers? After all sexual or not sexual ,they are still,fundamentally, much the same urges prompting both sets of murderers:absolute power and control over the life and death of someone they know they can get away with killing-usually a frail elderly person,and usually a woman.I will address the other question of the strangulation issue when I have had time to get the books and quotes by various doctors and police at the time.

[perrymason]

Hello all,

We can only compare individual murders within the Canonicals when using contemporary serial murderer data, as the Canonicals are not proven murdered by the same man. Before anyone cites serial stats as offering any answers, that should be a consideration.

You have unique crimes, in a unique time, in a unique setting, in an age without even having something as simple as fingerprints to be used in crime scene analysis and investigations. No wonder unsolved murders became a "spree"......god knows what the truth would have read like....."we have possibly many men using knives to kill unfortunates horribly and we have no idea who they are, or why they are doing this".

One mad serial killer is almost what was needed to keep the streets from exploding,...you could almost believe in a ghoul when you hear of the crimes and the flawless escapes.....a ghoul is hard to catch, mystical....but a few horrid men? How can none of them leave traces? What kinds of fools are the police anyway? Maybe they arent in any hurry to catch him, as he is only killing us dirt poor folks.....were just a thorn in the side of the Crown anyway.

Best regards all.

[Jeff Leahy]

Hold on a minute Nat, yes they were vulnerable, but their murder was about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kate had just been Hop picking, a tuff old job and walked back from Kent. If you ask me she was as hard as Nails and I thick Liz could probably look after herself too.

Jack was on the prowl in his territory. He new it like the back of his hand. They were there. He proposed business, they took him somewhere quiet. He took them by surprise and speed. I'm not convinced that one of our recent Olympic rowers would have faired any better. They were vulnerable in as much as they needed to be on the street to earn a few pennies. But these women were tough enough and wise enough.

They just met a one off. A 'sexual Maniac' as Anderson put it. And while it is perfectly lagitimate to look at other serial killers and draw comparisons the fact remains that what ever lead to the Creation of JtR was a unique set of circumstance, other wise we would see other similar cases. Of which there are very few and NO complete matches.

Pirate

[Varqm]

RJPalmer,

Whats is it that make people view/perceive other people that makes them want to have power and control over them ? I understand that a lot of values especially cultural/ethical are second hand info that one does not really understand it, sort of just get on with the program. I think I agree that there are a lot of factors involve. It would be hard to pinpoint the
Rippers behaviour as just sexual gratification.
Looking forward to your follow-up post.

[DarkPassenger]

In the cramped, deprived and depraved conditions of 19th Century slums, a serial killer targeting prostitutes was inevitable.

For a good explaination to that question, Varqm, I suggest you read A Plague of Murder by Colin Wilson, and The Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman. It is a mammoth answer.

[Fisherman]

Dark Passenger writes:
"In the cramped, deprived and depraved conditions of 19th Century slums, a serial killer targeting prostitutes was inevitable"

Because...??

And are we speaking of the Ripper here? If so, how did you reach the conclusion that he actually targetted prostitutes?

Your conclusions are in no way dislogical - but they are likewise in no way proven. I think that he targetted vulnerability and easy prey, a description that was useful for many a prostititute.

The best,
Fisherman

[Natalie Severn]

Jeff,
I agree that Kate Eddowes and the other victims sound tough in "character"--they probably wouldn"t have survived at all at that time in the East End otherwise.
But they were all quite unhealthy.Each had problems over alcohol.Four,if not all ,were ill-nourished ,due to their semi vagrant life on the streets .According to the doctors who examined them , Annie Chapman"s and Mary Kelly"s lungs were damaged, Kate Eddowes"s remaining kidney was pale and unhealthy looking ,and she was extremely thin from living a semi vagrant life and getting drunk and disorderly etc,Polly Nichols was staggering about,on the fateful night, mostly from exhaustion but also from drink and homelessness.Elizabeth Stride , also thin and undernourished,had also spent a lot of time in the last years of her life, up before the beak for being drunk and disorderly.And four out of the five victims were in their forties and at that time,in the East End ,were considered to be elderly.
I also don"t understand either ,Jeff, how you can be sure the Ripper had schizophrenia.The Ripper clearly had psychological problems of some sort or other,wanting to murder and mutilate these elderly women, but whether he was schozophrenic is up for discussion.

[joelhall]

i fail to understand why some people insist on trying to be too clever when they analyse these crimes. the conclusions are mostly pre-conceived notions or guess-work. for instance there is no evidence which suggests schizophrenia, nor that the killer had anatomical knowledge of the cardio-vascular system. these crimes were not planned with minute precision, they were rapid attacks on the street... outside in a densely populated part of the capital.

there is no specific illness mentioned here which is a motive to murder. obviously it could be a factor, though those who cry schizo, are usually the fans of kosminski. schizophrenia is a mental illness which is characterised by the subject having difficulty with their experiences of reality. im also highly doubtful that syphilis played a role.

really more can be told about the motives from the choice of victim than the method of killing.

[Jeff Leahy]

Jeff,
I agree that Kate Eddowes and the other victims sound tough in "character"--they probably wouldn"t have survived at all at that time in the East End otherwise.
But they were all quite unhealthy.Each had problems over alcohol.Four,if not all ,were ill-nourished ,due to their semi vagrant life on the streets .According to the doctors who examined them , Annie Chapman"s and Mary Kelly"s lungs were damaged, Kate Eddowes"s remaining kidney was pale and unhealthy looking ,and she was extremely thin from living a semi vagrant life and getting drunk and disorderly etc,Polly Nichols was staggering about,on the fateful night, mostly from exhaustion but also from drink and homelessness.Elizabeth Stride , also thin and undernourished,had also spent a lot of time in the last years of her life, up before the beak for being drunk and disorderly.And four out of the five victims were in their forties and at that time,in the East End ,were considered to be elderly.
I also don"t understand either ,Jeff, how you can be sure the Ripper had schizophrenia.The Ripper clearly had psychological problems of some sort or other,wanting to murder and mutilate these elderly women, but whether he was schozophrenic is up for discussion.

Nat your missing my piont, it mattered not whether they were old and hardly capable of walking or Olympic Athletes ready to break the whitechappel egg and spoon race record..

They were on the street needing money. They Took jack somewhere quiet and met an untimely death. They never new what hit them..well perhaps Annie and MJK had a moment of realization but whether they were old, knackered or on their last legs they wouldn't have faired much better had they been twenty years younger in the same situation.

As for the Schizophrenia or course its up for discussion. Thats what we are doing?

And to you all, I'd refer you back to Dr Bonds autopsie report on MJK. The organs were quite clearly placed in deliberate pattern and purposeful position. There was an inate logic and reasoning behind his work.

For me Schizophrenia is the best explanation to that thought process.

Pirate

[Sam Flynn]

And to you all, I'd refer you back to Dr Bonds autopsie report on MJK. The organs were quite clearly placed in deliberate pattern and purposeful position. There was an inate logic and reasoning behind his work.

No more logic and deliberation than that employed by a child emptying a toybox, for the most part, Jeff. The killer had to slop the bits down somewhere - his only "purpose" being seemingly to empty the cavities in front of him, and to hack great lumps of flesh away.

[perrymason]

Hello again all,

I neglected to thank you Nats for posting some comments on mine, and I do feel some kinship with you on the nature of these crimes. One sticking point though is that he (they)understood the workings of human anatomy and circulation and that is shown in his (their) actions. I think the severity of the knife wounds to the throats indicate the killer (s) just used an "overkill" technique, which would be consistent with someone who hasnt neccesarily killed before but doesnt want resistance or struggle and just wants a dead subject quickly. By using overwhelming force and severe knife strokes he gets silence, and a quicker start to the main attraction which are the post mortem mutilations.

But there is evidence that at least one victim was killed by someone who intended to cut her abdomen afterwards and remove her uterus. That was the opinion of one senior medical man at least. One cannot say with any degree of certainty that Kate was killed for her kidney, or Mary for her heart, as we can see the many wounds having nothing at all to do with the extraction of organs. And in the "glut wallowing" murder, the objective with most organs seems to be to use them in "staging" a scene....they are not being coveted by the procurer, they are being used as props to create a tableau either for the killer himself or the people who would find her.

In short there is nothing consistent in his treatment of victims bodies or the crime scenes that appears in all 5 Canonicals. There is also "contemporary opinion" evidence that it is possible one or more of the Canonicals were targetted for organs....which would of necessity involve a killer with some understanding of their location and a method of extracting them.

Thats why I cant subscribe to these 5 women being the victims of the one man they called The Whitechapel Murderer, or Jack....there is room to debate motivations or goals, methods, and skill or knowledge on any one of them, so its virtually impossible at this time to try to shape one mans dysfunctional psyche into a serial killer profile for all 5 women.

Best regards all.....nice to see ya Norma.

edit: Im not saying that I believe there are no multiple murderers within the 13 or 14 women killed who have at one time been considered as Ripper victims. I just dont think this particular Canonical Group makes sense. But there may be different combinations of cases in this group that do. For instance, what about a group that includes Martha and Mary.....2 examples of "glut"...one more tentative and external...stabbing, shallow and deep....the second more intimate and curious. I could see those behaviours being involved in the evolution of a single killer.