Surgical knowledge?

[lynn cates]

second place

Hello Dave. Actually, both Bagster and Baxter were on about organ removal. But, for me, that is a distant second to how one makes cuts (mutilations).

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

hunting

Hello Cris. Thanks. Sounds idyllic. Here locally, they have placed a bounty on feral hogs. Seems they are proliferating and making a nuisance of themselves. You should pop round for a visit.

I agree about locating organs. Kate's killer had to know where to find what.

Cheers.
LC

[Errata]

Hello Errata. But that is not what he said. He referred to "mutilations" only.

Cheers.
LC

But that's what I mean. A certain amount of mutilation is necessary to accomplish the task of removing organs. Anything beyond that indicates a lack of control, or a diversion of focus. Chapman didn't have that, but Eddowes did. Therefor it was less professional, meaning goal oriented and focused on the task at hand.

[Cogidubnus]

Sometimes I think "skillful" really meant "professional". And the only reason Eddowes injuries weren't "skillful" is because he was not as business like in the handling of the body as the others. He made extraneous cuts not related to ether death or procurement of organs. So Eddowes killer was being unprofessional, and messing with the body instead of immediately getting down to business.

Hello Errata. But that is not what he said. He referred to "mutilations" only.

I suspect the distinction Phillips made wasn't just in cutting, or even the method of the excisions, but more so the fact that in Eddowes the bowel was cut...resulting in a mess...

All the best

Dave

[Hunter]

Hello Cris. Thanks. Quite possible. But what caused him to come up with that cornball theory in the first place?

You are a hunter. I am sure you can tell the difference in someone who can carve and someone who cannot?

Hi Lynn,
As a matter of fact that's what I'm doing now...perched over a beautiful hardwood bottom with a crystal clear spring running through it. Just saw a hawk do some amazing acrobatics negociating the trees to catch a squirrel. Amazing how they can see something that small from so far.

This may relate to hunting and the topic... Once I volunteered to help in a does survey. Hunters were asked to bring the uteri in from harvested does so the biologists could determine if they had been bred. Each hunter had illustrated instructions to guide them on how to remove a deer's uterus.

Well, you wouldn't believe what all was presented at the checkpoints. Some brought the bladder instead.Some simply started at the vagina and cored the whole area out and said, "maybe you'll find it in there somewhere." Some managed to extract most of the uterus but didn't have the ovaries- which made it useless. And a few actually followed the instructions and did it right.

The point is someone better at least know something about a female mammal's uterus if they really want it for something.
Gotta go...I here something coming.

[lynn cates]

mutilations

Hello Errata. But that is not what he said. He referred to "mutilations" only.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

carving

Hello Cris. Thanks. Quite possible. But what caused him to come up with that cornball theory in the first place?

You are a hunter. I am sure you can tell the difference in someone who can carve and someone who cannot?

Cheers.
LC

[Errata]

Sometimes I think "skillful" really meant "professional". And the only reason Eddowes injuries weren't "skillful" is because he was not as business like in the handling of the body as the others. He made extraneous cuts not related to ether death or procurement of organs. So Eddowes killer was being unprofessional, and messing with the body instead of immediately getting down to business.

[Hunter]

If one looks at what was going on at that time with Baxter, it is easy to make of what Baxter was saying. He had proposed his Burke and Hare theory during his summary of the Chapman inquest on Wednesday, Sept. 26. The killer had to be 'skillful' for his theory to hold water. He even went so far as to suggest the murderer was acquainted with the autopsy room. He included Nichols because it was generally considered that both murders were by the same hand. But there is no evidence that Nichols' injuries showed any 'skill'. With what was done to her there was no evidence to suggest that.

On the eve of the double murder, Baxter was catching hell from all quarters - especially the medical community. The Lancet especially went after him. Then the double murders happened and it was obvious by all who examined Eddowes' body that anatomical specimens weren't the purpose for that murder, even though Eddowes' uterus was singularly removed instead of simply cored out as was done with Chapman. The testimony of the medicos at the Eddowes inquest was in response to Baxter's theory. That was the purpose for the line of questions by City Solicitor, Crawford, and the answers given by Saunders and Sequeira. Brown went into more detail because he was the only one asked about the specific injuries.

Baxter was not going to admit he might have been wrong about his theory so he turned the testimony of the medicos at the Eddowes inquest into a proposal that her murderer was less skilled and might be an imitator. Who knows who killed any of these women, but comparing the actual forensic evidence of the Chapman and Eddowes murder shows that Chapman's injuries did not display more skill than Eddowes - if there was any 'skill' really at all in either of them. There was some anatomical knowledge displayed in both because the killer knew where specific organs were. But he could have gained than knowledge anywhere... just like Gein did.

Baxter had dug himself into a hole. He went on to inject that Stride's killer may have been the same as Chapman and Nichols by stating this regarding Stride:

“In the absence of motive, the age and class of woman selected as victim, and the place and time of the crime, there was a similarity between this case and those mysteries which had recently occurred in that neighbourhood. There had been no skillful mutilation as in the cases of Nichols and Chapman, and no unskilful injuries as in the case in Mitre-square - possibly the work of an imitator; but there had been the same skill exhibited in the way in which the victim had been entrapped, and the injuries inflicted, so as to cause instant death and prevent blood from soiling the operator, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection, which, unfortunately for the peace of the inhabitants and trade of the neighbourhood, had hitherto been only too successful.”

What he said there..."the same skill exhibited in the way in which the victim had been entrapped, and the injuries inflicted, so as to cause instant death and prevent blood from soiling the operator, and the same daring defiance of immediate detection," could be applied to Eddowes as well... and Stride wasn't even mutilated.

Baxter was trying to dig himself out of that hole. All one has to do is look at the actual forensic evidence in each case and see that his logic is problematic.

[lynn cates]

Baxter

Hello Ben. Indeed. But Baxter did refer to Nichols's mutilations as "skilful"--just like Annie's. Kate's were "unskilful." This lead him to interject, "possibly the work of an imitator."

Make of it what you will.

Cheers.
LC

[Ben]

Seeing notes isnt seeing the victims themselves.

It shouldn't make any difference to any competent doctor, Mike.

Unless the other doctors withheld details from their autopsy reports, Bond was just as qualified to pass judgment on the strength of these, whether he'd personally attended to the bodies of not.

I notice that Nichols has also been mentioned, but all Llewellyn observed is that the perpetrator had some "rough" anatomical knowledge, which describes most people!

Cheers,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Tecs,

The distinction between anatomical knowledge and surgical skill is, I believe, an important one. I have some "knowledge" of sumo wrestling, but I am in no way "skillful" at it, and as such, we shouldn't read "skill" into medical reports where none was mentioned. The only doctor who referred to any "skill" - as opposed to familiarity with the knife, or organ locations, or whatever else - was Phillips, but what tends to get glossed over is that he also attributed the Eddowes murder to a different killer, which is almost certainly erroneous (I know Lynn and Mike would disagree!). If Phillips was capable of an error of judgement in misattributing Chapman and Eddowes to different killers, he could have been equally errant with regard to to the degree of skill he detected in the former case.

I've noticed a number of authors ignore all this, and go straight to quoting Dr. Brown's evidence in the hope that it will lend gravitas to the theory that "Jack the Ripper" had medical knowledge, which of course it doesn't. Brown's views on the level of skill evinced by the Eddowes mutilations were not shared by the THREE other doctors who examined the body, one of whom was Phillips.

Dr. Sequeira, for instance, opined that:

"the murderer had no design on any particular organ of the body. He was not possessed of any great anatomical skill"

Dr. Bond studied the Eddowes notes and came to very much the same conclusion.

To have four doctors attesting to a lack of skill, and one doctor claiming the opposite does tend to undermine the authority of that conspicuous minority opinion.

Equally, Baxter's theories should not be invested with more importance than they warrant. His theory that the killer was fulfilling the needs of an American doctor seeking specimens was based on a faulty knowledge of the true circumstances of that doctor's request, and was accordingly refuted in the British Medical Journal.

The vast majority of eviscerating serial killers extract organs for their own gratification, and often resort to cannibalism afterwards. When viewed criminologically and after studying other serial cases, the idea that the ripper targetted organs for profit should be regarded as a complete non-starter, in my opinion.

Bagster Phillips does not comment on any skill or lack of it, nor does Bond's post mortem, although they expected that an opportunity to go into more detail may arise later but didn't.

But Bond did go into more detail. He observed that the offender had no anatomical knowledge whatsoever, not even that ordinarily possessed by a butcher.

All the best,
Ben

[Hunter]

Hi Mike,

Let's set the medical and coroner opinions aside for a moment. I'm sure we'll get to Phillips and that will be fine by me... but for now, which two murders do you think exhibited more skill than the others, and on what basis looking at the forensic evidence?

[Michael W Richards]

Im sure you knew this

Which two would that be, Mike?

Hi Hunter,

Well, since youre setting me up for a pronouncement,... ... I believe that the documentation shows us that based on the medical analysis of the bodies of Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman,.. Medical Students, Butchers, Slaughterhouse men, and any men who used knives frequently and have some idea of the composition of internal structures were sought out as potential suspects. The Police contacted medical colleges.

Phillips did not see the same skill sets when he viewed the Eddowes autopsy, and that murder would be the only other one among the 5 that could have been done by someone with the above characteristics. I think it was because the cuts were so sloppy, and the inclusion of superfluous cuts, made a concrete determination impossible.

For my money, the skilled semi-surgical fiend who killed the first 2 did not kill any other Canonicals. And that ties in well with a suspect for only those 2 murders that Lynn Cates has published material on.

Cheers Hunter

[Hunter]

And if we use that logic, then 2 Canonical victims murders showed a medical expert that skill and knowledge were used.

Which two would that be, Mike?