Jack and the Red Glow

[Stephen J Ash]

Something a little different.

The first canonical murder of Nichols was on a spectacular night, a thunder storm earlier and the sky is said to have glowed red with two warehouse fires.

The second murder was at dawn, quite probably the sky was blood red then too.

The double event was the exception, a dark night with little moon.

Could the Ripper have in some neurotic or compulsive form of 'magical thinking' have associated problems during the double event with the lack of a red glow.

During the Kelly murder he thus creates his own red glow with the fire.

Just a thought

SJA

[Doctor X]

I think the double event calls that into question right there. While some doubt Stride's inclusion, most agree with Eddowes. So he would be killing Eddowes on the wrong night.

You do raise a problem with reconstructions when there is no definitive evidence. A big mistake in scientific research is to assume a significance/connection, look at a pile of data, and try to find it. With SCIENCE [!--Ed.]; however, you can try to repeat such under better conditions to determine if the significance/connection is spurious or suggestive.

Obviously, one cannot do that with Jack!

Yours darkly,

--J.D.

[Dan Norder]

The second murder was at dawn,

Not necessarily.

quite probably the sky was blood red then too.

If the sky were blood red every morning it'd kind of take any special meaning you might assign to the night of the dock fire, wouldn't it?

[Stephen J Ash]

Exactly. Science is no good for 'Ripperology'.

But you miss my point. Nichols' murder had a definite red sky, the Chapman murder may well have had a red sky. Both are successful. The first attempt on a night without a red sky is a failure (ignoring scepticism on Stride), and he leaves a damaging trail of evidence on the second attempt. Looking back on this, Jack being insane, he adopts a typical crazy form of magical thinking and wrongly associates the red glow with success, perhaps even divine favour if he has a puritanical streak. So he seeks red glows for success, hence the fire in Kelly's room.

Not a major point, just a good story

I think the double event calls that into question right there. While some doubt Stride's inclusion, most agree with Eddowes. So he would be killing Eddowes on the wrong night.

You do raise a problem with reconstructions when there is no definitive evidence. A big mistake in scientific research is to assume a significance/connection, look at a pile of data, and try to find it. With SCIENCE [!--Ed.]; however, you can try to repeat such under better conditions to determine if the significance/connection is spurious or suggestive.

Obviously, one cannot do that with Jack!

Yours darkly,

--J.D.

[Stephen J Ash]

Not necessarily.

I think its fairly well established the sun rose shortly before 5:30 that day, and this is Chapman's last sighting.

If the sky were blood red every morning it'd kind of take any special meaning you might assign to the night of the dock fire, wouldn't it?

I'm not assigning any meaning, I'm ascribing insane thinking to the killer.
The argument assumes there was a red sky on the morning of the Chapman killing no more. Its not a proof its mere idle speculation of the entertaining kind.

[Vigilantee]

Everything on this website is idle speculation of the entertaining kind.

What makes you think a fire would glow red?

I think its fairly well established the sun rose shortly before 5:30 that day, and this is Chapman's last sighting.



I'm not assigning any meaning, I'm ascribing insane thinking to the killer.
The argument assumes there was a red sky on the morning of the Chapman killing no more. Its not a proof its mere idle speculation of the entertaining kind.

[Dan Norder]

I think its fairly well established the sun rose shortly before 5:30 that day, and this is Chapman's last sighting.

Last alleged sighting. Although the coroner put a lot of stock into the idea (as did many of the early Ripper authors, making it the conventional wisdom for many years), the police and medical opinions were quite skeptical. See Wolf Vanderlinden's article "'Considerable Doubt' and the Death of Annie Chapman" for more info.

In short, while the rotation of the earth is pretty reliable, witness reports are quite the opposite.

Its not a proof its mere idle speculation of the entertaining kind.

Fair enough. It could work well enough in fiction anyway, but if the killer wanted to work with a red sky and the dawn made the sky red (instead of a just a lighter shade of gray -- the air was extremely polluted) then he had no real reason to ever kill at night after that.

[Luke111]

Red Sky/ Glow due to Volcano?

While doing some research about a red glow/sky on some of the ripper murders I came upon the eruption of indonesian volcano krakatoa in 1883
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa)

Excerpt from wikipedia:
Global optical effects
The dramatic skyline in Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893) is thought to be based on the global optical effects caused by the eruption and seen over Oslofjord, Norway.

The eruption darkened the sky worldwide for years afterwards, and produced spectacular sunsets throughout the world for many months. British artist William Ashcroft made thousands of colour sketches of the red sunsets half-way around the world from Krakatoa in the years after the eruption. In 2004, researchers proposed the idea that the blood-red sky shown in Edvard Munch's famous 1893 painting The Scream is also an accurate depiction of the sky over Norway after the eruption.[11] Munch said: "suddenly the sky turned blood red ... I stood there shaking with fear and felt an endless scream passing through nature." Also, a so-called blue moon had been seen for two years as a result of the eruption.

Weather watchers of the time tracked and mapped the effects on the sky. They labeled the phenomenon the "equatorial smoke stream."[12] This was the first identification of what is known today as the Jet stream.[13]

This eruption also produced a Bishop's Ring around the sun by day, and a volcanic purple light at twilight.

Maybe this could be another reason for a reported red glow.

[The Bounder]

I don't think a red glow in the sky would have effected the rippers thinking, unless for some reason he killed for the first time because of the sky being red, but this psychologically is very unlikely... the killer would have probably built himself up psychologically for the kill for a day or in all probability much longer before committing the actual murder of Nichols and the incidental fire in the sky shouldn't have had much impact on his thinking. The fire in Millers Court seems to simply have been to help the killer see better in dim light, and in the Mitre Square killing the ripper seems to have operated remarkably well in the dark unaffected by light or colour of the sky.