Poll What's the most important aspect of Ripperology?

[HelenaWojtczak]

Charles LeGrand I understand...personally it's another one I'm looking forward to...

All the best

Dave

Oh brilliant, thanks, now I have to go and google that name ....

I take it this is Christian Briscony, alias Charles Le Grand, alias Grant, alias "French Colonel," alias Captain Anderson... king of blackmailers?


Helena

[Cogidubnus]

Charles LeGrand I understand...personally it's another one I'm looking forward to...

All the best

Dave

[HelenaWojtczak]

writing a book at this point in time promoting one person as the culprit above all others.

Can someone save me from having to spend hours chasing Tom's threads all over Casebook by telling me which suspect he is writing about?

Cheers

Helena

[Howard Brown]

I'm flabbergasted that anyone who has been involved with studying the Whitechapel Murders for 14 years and is cognizant of the fact that new discoveries are being "constantly made" in Ripperology, would even consider writing a book at this point in time promoting one person as the culprit above all others.

Back to The Other Place.....

[HelenaWojtczak]

Hello Tom and everyone

To answer the two points that Tom has made.

I'm flabbergasted that Helena - who has created more threads on the Casebook in one year than I have in 14 - has remained unaware that new discoveries are constantly being made in Ripperology.

I'm not a ripperologist and therefore do not constantly keep myself up to date with new details, theories and books. I started those threads because I am researching the life of the serial poisoner George Chapman. It's sheer luck that he was once suspected of being Jack the Ripper, because that suspicion has meant that his life story has been researched and presented in Ripper books and magazines and his candidacy debated in various books and on this forum and The Other Place. That has given me a head start.

I don't need to read books promoting other suspects as they have no bearing whatever on the book I am writing.

I appreciate the hard work she's put into George Chapman and hope her book is the penultimate Chapman-as-Ripper thesis.

Thanks for the thumbs-up, Tom... but what do you mean by penultimate? Is there to be another book about him after mine?

Regards

Helena

[Rubyretro]

. The man admittedly was nightmarish and the women are really the more to be pitied. They did not deserve to be butchered. I constantly reflect it was good he did not torture them.

I have said this before, but I don't think that I could really allow myself to be interested in this case had Jack tortured his victims.

However gruesome MJK's corpse is, there is a consolation that she didn't suffer for less than a minute...and the others for less.

I guess you heard of the attack over here at the movie theatre in Colorado. A fruitcake satisfying his own murderous plans on the innocent. I have no pity for that murderer.

I have no pity for that man. I used to be against the Death Penalty whilst admitting that I wouldn't raise a word against others who executed a killer like that -that is moral cowardice, and not having the courage to shoulder a collective guilt ; Today I would vote for the Death Penalty.

[Beowulf]

He seems to have made 'friends' quite easily Beowulf, but he only kept them for a few minutes.

Lol. This really cracked me up. So...he wasn't really all that unpopular

I don't mean to be a bleeding heart liberal as my father used to call it. The man admittedly was nightmarish and the women are really the more to be pitied. They did not deserve to be butchered. I constantly reflect it was good he did not torture them.

I guess you heard of the attack over here at the movie theatre in Colorado. A fruitcake satisfying his own murderous plans on the innocent. I have no pity for that murderer.

[sdreid]

What? Most of the baby boomers are gone? That'll be a relief to the already overburdened Social Security System.

I'm still out here soaking up the benefits.

Funny thing - nobody complained when we were all paying into the system and Clinton was using those taxes to make his fictitious claim that he'd balanced the budget.

[Phil Carter]

Hey, where's "to impress chicks" on the list?

Hello Mags,

Err- ever tried using the 'My No.1 hobby is the intense study of Jack the Ripper' line?

It has to be said with an air totally devoid of any form of relish.

(Mind you- there could be some- whatever rows your boat I suppose!)

Licking one's lips after the chat up line won't help either methìnks! Lol

best wishes

Phil

[Magpie]

Hey, where's "to impress chicks" on the list?

[mariab]

What? Most of the baby boomers are gone? That'll be a relief to the already overburdened Social Security System.

Hope not, Cris, cuz both my bosses keep chin wagging about the day JFK got shot. My American boss is just past 60, and I certainly don't want him to die. My German boss wrote papers on Frank Zappa in his youth. :-)

but sad in that he won't get to experience the fun of searching and hunting and waiting for some rare musical treasure.

Well, I guess this still goes, thanks to mainstream music being so sh*tty. I certainly dug and searched when I discovered Silverchair, for instance.

As for outhouses, from age 6 to 11 my parents rented this summer hut in the woods where the “bathroom“ was an outhouse (though with plumbing). My friends and I were running around barefoot all day and my mom had a bucket of water where we had to wash our feet every night before going to bed. And one night there was a stray dog drinking from that bucket.

[Hunter]

... As Americans, we grew up hearing where people were when Kennedy was shot. There aren't many alive today who were around at that time, but there were lots when I was young, and I enjoyed hearing about the 60's and prior.

What? Most of the baby boomers are gone? That'll be a relief to the already overburdened Social Security System.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Phil, wow that's crazy. It reminds me when I was 17 and went to my girlfriend's ggg aunt's 100th birthday. She still lived alone in a house that had never had indoor plumbing or anything. I pissed in a real live, active, 100 year old outhouse with the quarter moon on the door. That was unreal, but reminded my very young mind that we Yanks weren't too far out of the wild wild west. My mother, who had me in her 30's when she had me, was only the 2nd kid in our home town to get a TV set. This would have been late 40's/early 50's. She used to tell me about that and how popular she was. When she was 13, rock and roll first came out, and my grandparents actually let her get the albums, whereas NONE of her friends were allowed. This was small town, midwest, Missouri, mind you. Again, very popular with the kids, not so much with their parents. As a result, I was allowed to own Ozzy and KISS records when I was little. This cost me a few friends whose parents thought KISS was satanic and wouldn't let them hang with me. Ironically, one of these kids owned the SEx Pistols album, which was one of those things us kids only dreamt about encountering back then! Now, I look at my son, and regardless what song he wants to hear, it's available to him immediately. This is good in that he's exposed to much more music than you or I could have been, but sad in that he won't get to experience the fun of searching and hunting and waiting for some rare musical treasure.

My apologies to Helena as well.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Phil Carter]

Hello Tom,

Like I said- I was lucky. She told me of things that today kids are shocked at- like the first time she sat in a car. Or the first time she switched on an electric light. (She was an adult)
My uncle went to live in the States in the early 60's and his brother, both Grans boys, bought a tape recorder in the mid 60's to send a taped Xmas msg to him in the USA. We all gathered in Grans back room to leave a message on the tape. Gran had a really hard time understanding the principle until we showed her what happens in a trial run and played it back to her.
She never owned a phone, thought 30mph was way too fast, never allowed a doctor in the house, refused point blank to go to a hospital, bore 4 kids at home, with the help of her sister only. Smoked strong roll up tobacco cigarettes, drank a pint of Guinness every night of her life, and tho uit the world of us kids at Christmas when we gave her a box of assorted tins of food..soups, canned fruit, etc.

Its a generation long long gone. I was very lucky to have heard what she had to tell me about life. Lord knows what she would made of Skype!

A final story. When she got married in 1912, she started paying a penny (old pence) per week as an insurance policy. She paid 1d every week until the week before she died. When the policy was realised (it took 4/5 years for each £1 paid in) the payout was the exact equivilant of the total cost of all funeral expenses! We worked out she paid in roughly £14-15 in total. The funeral cost a lot more than that! Under her bed we found a p*ss pot with loads of coins in- totalling £30. She never owned a bank account.

I told that to my kids(29 and 17) and they just sat there stunned. 'a world without electricity-imagine that' said the eldest.

Yup. I was really lucky.
apologies to Helena for transgressing. I blame Tom who is a bad influence. Lol

Best wishes

Phil

[Tom_Wescott]

All joking aside, that is indeed very interesting, Phil. As Americans, we grew up hearing where people were when Kennedy was shot. There aren't many alive today who were around at that time, but there were lots when I was young, and I enjoyed hearing about the 60's and prior. Just recently, I was telling my 16 yo about how I first heard of 9/11, Princess Di, the Oklahoma City Bombing. I'm not looking forward to learning what will be the 9/11 or Kennedy assassination of HIS generation that he will be telling his kids about.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott