Belief

[robhouse]

Hello Phil,

I am not actually familiar with Lynn's specific theory, although I am fairly well convinced that Nichols and Chapman were killed by the same person who killed the rest. If you send me a link to where her theory is presented, I will gladly read it.

RH

[robhouse]

Note: "without express and special authority..."

As today, the Police were well aware of both the usefulness of the Press and the problems caused by press coverage of their investigations.

The Police would use the Press when it served their purposes, and at other times, they would keep information from the press if they were concerned that publicity would harm their inquiries. They clearly monitored the press reports, and in some instances (again, when it suited their intentions) they fed false information to the press.

In the instance of the Ripper Letters, the Police used the press to publicize the letters and see if anyone could recognize the handwriting. Again, this makes sense, and it is exactly what the Yorkshire police did in the 1970s. In other cases, the police seem to have gone out of their way to suppress press coverage of their inquiries... the Batty Street lodger inquiries being (in my opinion) one example.

RH

[corey123]

Hello Phil,

Let me correct myself.

I don't believe they are witholding anything of great importance in this respect.

Yours tru;y

[Simon Wood]

Hi Mike,

The cops fell over themselves in their stampede to promote the Jack the Ripper phenomenon, thus riding roughshod over Howard Vincent's earlier strictures on dealing with the press–

"Police must not on any account give any information whatever to gentlemen connected with the press, relative to matters within police knowledge, or relative to duties to be performed or orders received, or communicate in any manner, either directly or indirectly, with editors, or reporters of newspapers, on any matter connected with the public service, without express and special authority . . . "

Regards,

Simon

[Phil Carter]

Hello all,

One can also wonder this. If the letter(s) were genuine, why did Warren, and later Anderson and Littlechild afford that they were hoaxes? From the 10th of October 1888 onwards, it appears...

Hello Rob,

I would respectfully suggest that Lynn Cates' theory about Ischensmid is not "far fetched" nor "absurd" at all. It is plausible in my own, and other peoples opinion. Corey describes it as "sensible". (see posting No.26)

Hope you are well.

Hello Corey,

"hiding"...no..."witholding" yes.

best wishes

Phil

[robhouse]

I preume you mean this statement:

"At present I think the whole thing a hoax but of course we are bound to try & ascertain the writer in any case."

This is a fairly clear explanation of what I was talking about. Obviously the police would have wanted to follow up on tracing the writer of the letter even if they suspected it was a fraud. Indeed, whatever they may have suspected, they could not be sure about it. It may have been authentic, it may have been a fake. It would be standard procedure to follow up on any lead, especially one so obvious as this, and especially as they had so little to go on. As more, obviously fraudulent letters were to follow the original Dear Boss and Saucy Jack ones, presumably the Police would have cared less and less to follow them up, and would have assumed (rightly in my opinion) that they were simply copycat letters following on the first ones... copying them in style etc.

In short, I do not think the police did anything wrong in publishing the letters... they were simply following up a lead, and following procedure.

Recall that the police did a very similar thing in the Yorkshire Ripper case, in publicizing the tape recording (presumably from the killer)--- the famous man with the Geordie accent. Of course the tape proved to be a hoax, but the Police suspected it was real... at least some of them did. But as usual, there was disagreement over this by the Police and various experts. Still they followed it up as a lead anyway. In that instance, they actually believed more or less that the tape may have been authentic, so it is not a perfect analogy with the "Jack the Ripper" letters...

RH

[corey123]

Hello Mike,

However, how do we know this has any relation to the murders? They may just be old SB files sitting around. Why would anybody care now about who the murder(s) were? Why would they want to keep it a secret this day? They wouldn't.

I don't think they are hinding anything of importance.

[mklhawley]

Hi Mike,

Why would Scotland Yard promote a single killer if that was not the case?

Your excellent question is the one we should all be attempting to answer, for it is the solution to the Whitechapel murders.

Jack the Ripper was hokum, pure and simple, designed to take people's eyes off the ball.

Regards,

Simon

Simon,

You had better have an article coming soon, because there is more about this you are not telling Rumbelow had made mention in one of his books that it was common practice for Scotland Yard to keep the newspapers in the dark. Joe Chetcuti had the hardest time collecting information from a prominent West End social club for the year 1888 (they claimed it was missing and then changed their story). As you have noted in another thread, Scotland Yard is still keeping info from the public.

Thanks Corey. I have not read the essay yet, but I will be.

Sincerely,

Mike

[corey123]

Hello Boris,

I don't believe a name would narrow someones veiw point. Shall we not call Ted Bundy Ted Bundy?

I know what he was, a serial killer, I also know what he could also be, a killer. There is no point in coming back to this point with no evidence helping either.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Rob,

Your interpretation of my implication is correct.

Warren had his 'Dear Boss as hoax' epiphany on 10th October, a mere week after he had authorised the expense of plastering facsimile posters across London.

Whoops!

Regards,

Simon

[bolo]

Hello Corey,

I do believe "Jack the Ripper" as a literary sence is fictional but not the inspiration behind the name. Yes the letter was ahoax, but was the hoax not set upon the story of truth?

In my opinion, we should stop narrowing down our our view by keeping the name Jack the Ripper alive that most probably was just a figment of an "enterprising journalist's" imagination, created to boost newspaper sales.

It's right the inspiration behind the name that I'm concerned about. I have a feeling that it not only makes finding answers difficult, it also lets us ask the wrong questions.

As Phil Carter mentioned, the question should be what, not who, was Jack the Ripper.

Regards,

Boris

[corey123]

Hello Rob,

I couldn't agree more.

[robhouse]

I think this thread is an example of people being frustrated with their inability to solve certain aspects of the case... certain seeming inconsistencies or conundrums... and as a result drawing the most farfetched and complex conclusions to explain them. It is one thing to say that the killer did not write the "Jack the Ripper" letters... fine. But to suggest that a serial killer did not exist at all, or indeed to suggest that a different person killed C1 and C2, is fairly absurd. Again, there is plenty of "evidence" to look at... none of it is "new" evidence, hence we are left with the same difficulties... yes for 120 years. The case has reached a stale mate, but that does not mean it makes sense to throw common sense out the window. Look at the wounds. It is clear that they are consistent all the way through the C5 (with the excepton of Stride, only because the wounds are less in number... despite this Stride's murder is still consistent with the Ripper's MO and wound types.)

Many of these conundrums are not very complicated at all, and have, in all probability, a very simple explanation. The fact that we do not know what that explanation is does not mean that the explanation must be complex or involve multiple killers, government conspiracies etc.

Take Simon's post about the Dear Boss letter. He writes: "But the top echelons in Whitehall did not make public their suspicions about the nature of this correspondence. Instead, they plastered facsimile posters of the letter and postcard across the city and encouraged belief amongst their divisional rank and file in the wholly mythical Jack."

This seems to imply, Simon, (correct me if I am wrong) that you believe that the Police intentionally mislead the police and the public to believe that "Jack the Ripper" (ie. the writer of the letters) was the killer. The much more plausible solution is that the Police considered that the letter writer might in fact be the killer, and only later (possibly years later) came to the "conclusion" that the writer was in fact a newsman. In any case, I doubt they had come to any real "conclusion" about the authenticity of the letters before October 20... They may have had their doubts, and various detectives and officers may have held differing opinions about this... but this is very far cry from the suggestion that the police knew (by October 20) that the letter was a fraud and publicized it as authentic anyway, so as to deliberately mislead anybody.

RH

[Simon Wood]

Hi Mike,

Why would Scotland Yard promote a single killer if that was not the case?

Your excellent question is the one we should all be attempting to answer, for it is the solution to the Whitechapel murders.

Jack the Ripper was hokum, pure and simple, designed to take people's eyes off the ball.

Regards,

Simon

[Rubyretro]

.

Sometimes alternative solutions are provided and a theory becomes 'thoroughly discredited'.You have to remember they are what they are ,alternative possibilities.
Think of the crop circles.We knew they weren't created by aliens(well most of us anyway) but did any of us seriously believe the alternate explanation by a professor given on tv at the time that 'they were probably caused by a wind vortex'.Nearly fell off my chair laughing.Thankfully the men with the plank of wood and ropes came forward to show that the modern day scientific explanations aren't always the written truth.

[/QUOTE]

This is just so true ! ;

It really brought me in mind of a training course that I did years ago, to be a
Tourist Guide in Avignon, and which was obviously based around the Pope's Palace. I didn't carry on with being a Guide -but I will always remember the pure privilege of attending all the private visits and lectures by the most
eminent Historians and Archeologists of the Region.

I remember that one thing that was stressed to us was 'this is the prevailing
consensus -interpretations of these events and motivations were different
30 years ago even -and they may be different in 30 years time. One can only
explain things in a nutshell to people using current 'Truth' -but it isn't necessarily the 'only' or even the 'right' Truth..because new information is being found and interpreted all the time'.

This was talking about very famous people (the Pope for one !) and medieval events (you'd think that there would be nothing new to discover ) -but of course new 'digs' and new brains turn up 'new evidence' all the time.

One 'Talk' during the course concerned 'Restoration' of Historical Buildings..
(I was particularly interested because I come from a Family of Architects..and the History and 'restoration ' of old buildings is my Brother's
particular interest). Someone mentioned on here recently that he was 'only
interested in Facts..which he maintained were like 'bricks and morter, number of windows' etc..but even those 'shift' ..because when it comes to History, buildings are adapted, added to, demolished in part constantly(without 'planning laws' these changes were linked to a rise in fortunes, a new business, birth of a child, a fashion concious wife) -so even the interpretation in the 'Truth' of a building is often a matter of tracking it to a certain date and trying to make a forensic 'snapshot', which is often 'subjective' on the part of the architect..who is a product of his own era.

In this way , alot of the Pope's Palace and ramparts of Avignon, are a Victorian vision by Viollet Le Duc. The best way to restore a Public Building
today would be with mocked up Polystyrene and projections -because the 'vision' of the architect is easy to change as we learn new things, gain knowledge, and mutate theories.

Ok -I've been sidetracked -but you 'get it' : We have so much to discover about 'Jack' ...still.