John Gill

[Monty]

That's okay. I doubt if you could rub me up the wrong way

Rob

Dude,

Youve been hanging around me too much recently.


Its an interesting case......anyone remember Scott Medine?

Monty

[Rob Clack]

Dude,
Youve been hanging around me too much recently.

Thankfully I'm still teetotal.

Its an interesting case......anyone remember Scott Medine?

Monty

Yeah, I remember Scott from when I first joined, about 6 years back.

Rob

[Robert]

Monty, what happened to Scott Medine? He was writing a book, and trying to use computer technology combined with the putative height of the Hanbury St fence to prove something or other....then his computer crashed and he lost his book....and then he disappeared.

[Monty]

Rob, Robert,

I lost contact with Scott some years back, last I heard of him life had taken over with church work and youth football taking a lot of his time.

The reason I mention him is because Ive private correspondence somewhere regarding Gill. He was interested in the connection, or speculated connection between Jack and this case. If I remember right the editor of the Bradford Argus got involved. Let me have a gander.


Monty

[Tom_Wescott]

Monty, what happened to Scott Medine? He was writing a book, and trying to use computer technology combined with the putative height of the Hanbury St fence to prove something or other....then his computer crashed and he lost his book....and then he disappeared.

I too fondly remember Scott Medine and hope he one day returns to the fold. I can certainly relate to his frustration as I've not once but at least TWICE lost a great deal of notes and material to a computer crash.

Silver, AP, Rob, Archaic, et al

I've greatly enjoyed this thread, not having been very familiar with the Gill case at all. Good work, guys.

Silver,

Are you convinced from your research that Phillips saw no connection between the Gill murder and the Ripper murders? I ask only because of the other blurbs on here to the contrary.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Monty]

What a co-inky-dink

All,

Ive trawled through my correspondence with Scott. Didnt realise it was way back in 2002.

Anyway, theres nothing new the the mails, its all been pretty much reported/mentioned here. However Scott does mention an article about the case written in the local Rag (Telegraph & Argus) in the November of 2001. The reporters name was a David Barrett !

Anyway, Silver, Im going to forward you the guys E-mail addy. As I say this was around 7 years ago so do with it what you wish.

Cheers
Monty


PS David Barrett my arse, Old Montys eyes are going. Its David Barnett (Doh!) Anyway, Im mailing the info Silver

[Cap'n Jack]

I'd certainly be interested in the opinion of posters here as to the motive behind the murder and mutilation of John Gill. especially the mutilation.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi AP,

Without knowing who the killer was, it's hard to say what motivated him. I would say he was comfortable with the murder site. Perhaps he worked around there, or even slept in the stable. It's very difficult to imagine that the killer left without some significant bloodstains to his hands and clothes. What other unsolved murders occurred in that area within the two years before and two years after the Gill murder?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Cap'n Jack]

I thought this a good summary of the situation:




Daily News
United Kingdom
31 December 1888


The Bradford Murder

The Bradford murder is as horrible as any of the series to which by its nature it belongs. It is not more horrible. These crimes have reached a pitch of cold blooded atrocity which leaves comparison out of the question. The victim is a little boy of eight, named John Gill, who was last seen alive on Thursday morning, and whose remains, mutilated with a barbarity that must have been almost grotesque in its effect, were found on Saturday morning in a stable yard at the back of the street in which his parents live. They had been placed there shortly before daybreak, for a policeman who had searched the place in the ordinary course of his duty between four and five on Saturday morning found no trace of them. The little fellow was in the habit of accompanying a milkman on his rounds, and on Thursday morning early he was seen on the man's cart, as he had often been seen before. He never returned home. His distracted parents, poor working people, advertised for him in the papers, and searched for him everywhere, except in the yard within a stone's throw of their own house, where the body was found. The mutilations were indescribably ghastly. They were evidently effected with great deliberation, though without skill; and the fragments of the body were found to the outside of the garment in which the trunk was packed. They entirely preclude the notion of a purpose of mere concealment. The ingenuity of the murderer seems to have run riot in inventions of cold blooded butchery. Every circumstance of the crime, therefore, seems to have reached the extreme limit of horror. We can never hear of anything worse.

William Barrett, the milkman in whose company the child was last seen alive, has been arrested, and on Saturday afternoon he was brought before the magistrates for a first examination. According to his account, the little boy left him at half past eight to go home to breakfast, but at present no one has come forward to confirm the statement. The circumstances warrant a suspicion, but, of course, no more than that, in the present stage of the affair. The stable of this man's employer is close to the scene of the crime, and when the police went there on Saturday morning they found that part of the flooring had been quite recently washed. Some sacks lay in a corner, and folded up beneath them was a piece of coarse cloth bearing stains which have been submitted to the examination of the borough analyst. The prisoner at first denied all knowledge of it, but he afterwards gave an account of his possession of a similar piece of cloth which has not been confirmed, though, on the other hand, it has not been disproved. A large bread knife, said to correspond in make to the shape of some of the wounds, has been found in his house. It has been recently cleaned, but the man's wife says it was cleaned by her in the ordinary course of her housework. The police think that the murder was not committed in the place where the body was found, but that the remains were taken into the yard at an hour of the morning at which the accused might have been about. It is needless to say that they will want much more evidence than this to connect him with the crime. Our Bradford correspondent telegraphs that they have more. On the value of the evidence already adduced it is neither possible nor desirable to say one word. It ought to be stated, however, that Barrett expresses confidence in his ability to prove his innocence, and that on the whole his demeanour is not that of a guilty man. The Bradford police, on the other hand, deserve credit for their promptitude in making an arrest that may at least be described as one of consequence. They have instituted an immediate and vigorous search of the premises of the suspected person, and they have taken the precaution of photographing the remains in the exact position in which they were found. All this may be no more than their obvious duty, but it is much to be thankful for, after the fatuity which erased the handwriting on the wall in Whitechapel, and after the series of futile arrests in that neighbourhood on no better principle of selection than that which governs the game of blindman's buff.

There is nothing to show that this murder has any other connection with the crimes in Whitechapel than that of a general identity of horrors. It may, indeed, by pretty safely assumed that, like the atrocities at Havant and at Poplar, it is the work of an independent hand. It is too much to believe that one single monster is ranging the country, and signalising his presence in every town by a deed of blood. On the other hand, it may safely be said that but for the Whitechapel crimes neither the tragedy of Bradford nor that of Poplar would have been signalised by these ghastly and purposeless mutilations. Crime is imitative, and one monster often sets a fashion for a score. The Gateshead murderer, recently executed, would no doubt in ordinary circumstances have killed his victim by one swift stroke, and there left her, but for his known emulation of the miscreant of Buck's row. He was always talking of the Whitechapel murderer, and, when at length he had a crime to commit on his own account, he made a clumsy imitation of his hero's method of procedure. The mutilations are the signs of the epidemic, and it is, unfortunately, a good deal too early to say that we have heard the last of them. They owe their origin to peculiarities of nature which are among the mysteries of mental disease. No one who is not in the dreadful secret of the lowest forms of moral perversion can even begin to understand them. If the author of but one of them could be found, his confession might afford the indispensable clue to the discovery of all the rest.

[Rob Clack]

The Graphic, 5 January 1889 thought a copycat may be at work:



Rob

[Archaic]

"The Clackish Lad"

Hi, everyone. Monty, was this 'Scott' you are discussing working on the Gill case too, or just something esoteric about the Hanbury St fence? I ask because I have the 2002 (Prehistoric) Casebook archive on CD.

> Or did you mention Scott because you thought perhaps he might be a little clackish? (Wink, wink)

It's OK. Rob; I already let Silver know I'm actually female. It's just that his post #60 stating that I'm "A man after his own heart" was so perfectly timed, coming right on the heels of your (3rd?) "I'm a genie/ rub me" joke, that I couldn't resist. Ha, Ha.
Thanks for the scans.

Your pal, Miss Archaic (Later on I might introduce you to my friend, Miss Anthropic)

PS: Silverstealth thinks the Marie Campbell info from her "Brontes" book needs to be taken with a VERY large grain of salt, so if you click on the link I provided a few posts back, which will let you read most of the John Gill section of her book, you might want to bear that in mind. Regards, Archaic

[Rob Clack]

It's OK. Rob; I already let Silver know I'm actually female.

Didn't doubt it for a minute

Rob

[silverstealth]

All,

Ive trawled through my correspondence with Scott. Didnt realise it was way back in 2002.

Anyway, theres nothing new the the mails, its all been pretty much reported/mentioned here. However Scott does mention an article about the case written in the local Rag (Telegraph & Argus) in the November of 2001. The reporters name was a David Barrett !

Anyway, Silver, Im going to forward you the guys E-mail addy. As I say this was around 7 years ago so do with it what you wish.

Cheers
Monty


PS David Barrett my arse, Old Montys eyes are going. Its David Barnett (Doh!) Anyway, Im mailing the info Silver

Many thanks Monty for the email...

here is the original scans from the Bradford Telegraph October 1888 relating to the hoax letters posted by a Bradford Woman..


Jack The Ripper In Bradford October 17th 1888



Below the apprehension, 22nd October 1888

[silverstealth]

Interestingly there was quite a famous murder and attempted murder at 58 Westgrove st, the same street where the girl Coroner lived on the 28th September 1878

[Monty]

Hi, everyone. Monty, was this 'Scott' you are discussing working on the Gill case too, or just something esoteric about the Hanbury St fence? I ask because I have the 2002 (Prehistoric) Casebook archive on CD.

> Or did you mention Scott because you thought perhaps he might be a little clackish? (Wink, wink)

It's OK. Rob; I already let Silver know I'm actually female. It's just that his post #60 stating that I'm "A man after his own heart" was so perfectly timed, coming right on the heels of your (3rd?) "I'm a genie/ rub me" joke, that I couldn't resist. Ha, Ha.
Thanks for the scans.

Your pal, Miss Archaic (Later on I might introduce you to my friend, Miss Anthropic)

PS: Silverstealth thinks the Marie Campbell info from her "Brontes" book needs to be taken with a VERY large grain of salt, so if you click on the link I provided a few posts back, which will let you read most of the John Gill section of her book, you might want to bear that in mind. Regards, Archaic

Archaic,

Scott was working on a book I believe. It was around the time of Cornwells piece. Scott had heard Patsy had made a connection between Gill and the letter mentioned on this thread and Jack (Gills ears/Eddowes ears). He asked me if I could track down the letter but he found it himself in Letters From Hell. Anyways, Scotts research brought him to the 2001 article in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus mentioned above, about Maria Coroners hoax letter.

There was nothing in it really.....unlike his Lusk connection, however thats for a different thread on a different day.

Monty