A new front in the history wars? A new article on 'the five'

[erobitha]

The sexual depravity of a crime rests entirely on the murderer's shoulders, not the victim's.

I’m not sure what the opposite of such a statement would be here? I’m pretty certain that wasn’t the point being made.

The pattern of victimology tells us much about the psychological profile and mental state of the killer. Who the victims were and how they died tell us much.

JTR did not go checking door to door to see if any were open in the hope he would find someone like Annie Chapman asleep out the back.

There is simply no way Polly Nichols or Liz Stride would have picked those spots as ideal sleeping places either.

Eddowes maybe decided that a dark corner of Mitre Square would be a nice place to catch some z’s. As we all know Kelly wasn’t on the street. This theory of vagrancy simply doesn’t make any sense.

The police and eye witnesses if not directly tell us, they most certainly allude to the fact these women were soliciting at the time of their deaths. This is much more plausible for the crime scene locations.

Therefore JTR had a grudge against ‘immoral’ women for reasons only known to him.

[rjpalmer]

The pattern of victimology tells us much about the psychological profile and mental state of the killer. Who the victims were and how they died tell us much.

Have it, then. Enlighten us.

People have been saying this for many years, and they've pointed the finger of blame at everyone from a Jewish schizophrenic to a middle-class Liverpool cotton broker to a local carman to a band of homosexuals from Cambridge to a well-known painter to an anonymous ex-groom to a school teacher in Blackheath to an occultist in the London Hospital to a foreign sailor.

I'd say your insights have their limitations.

I don't disagree that the victims tell us something, I just disagree what it is.

RP

[MrBarnett]

Hi Gary.

For the sake of clarity, why on earth does the rough sleeper have to be supine? Did Rubenold make that argument? That's rather a strange requirement, isn't it?

Can't a murderer roll a woman onto her back?

The final position of the corpse doesn't tell you how the woman was positioned when attacked, regardless of whether she was sitting, standing, soliciting, walking, or slumped against a gate.

Obviously, I agree that the 'beat' system is a major problem for Rubenhold's theory.

I don't care much for Bleakley's essay, but he does link 3 modern cases of people attacked while sleeping rough. A young woman found dead while presumably sleeping rough in a park in Melbourne; a Chinese man beaten to death in New York while sleeping on the sidewalk at night; an Irishman beaten and burned to death while sleeping in a homeless camp near Cork.

People out after dark in slummy areas are at risk of being victimized whether they are soliciting or not.

RJ,

What are you presenting here? A woman in India somewhere lying on comfortable bedding?

Is that the best you can do?;-)

I’m looking for a rough-sleeper lying on the pavement with nothing to cushion their head. Supine? Perhaps not essential, but HR is adamant that they victims were killed while they slept. Moving them about might wake them and cause them to make a noise and according to HR that just didn’t happen.

She’s also big on the victims having had experience of rough sleeping.

Gary

[rjpalmer]

Hi Gary - You showed me a picture of a vagrant sleeping in "what could be the corner of Mitre Square" --which is exactly where Kate Eddowes was found--and then seemingly protested when I showed you a vagrant sleeping on a sidewalk next to a short wall, even though both Chapman and Eddowes were within spitting distances of corners and walls, and Nichols within spitting distance of a locked gate. So I'm a little hesitant to play this game.

And anyway, I'm not Rubenhold, so I don't feel the need to argue points I do not believe. I am confident both Stride and Eddowes were standing upright when they met their killers.

I'm just not convinced that 'Ripperologists' referring to the victims as prostitutes rather than vagrants is a meaningful distinction, or even psychologically accurate.

If push came to shove, I'd say that Rubenhold and Begg have fought a largely meaningless battle. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Under the lodging house system, if one didn't have money for a bed, one either slept in the streets, or one turned a trick. So the point is rather moot. Same victim, same circumstance, same desperation. If calling them prostitutes rather than vagrants is more historically accurate, then have at it. It seems like a largely hollow argument to me.

Caz now implies that the 'vagrant' explanation must be wrong, because the victims were sexually mutilated.

Ouch.

What the hell? Tell that to Andre Chikatilo's victims. They were runaways and homeless people, almost none of them known as prostitutes, yet they were sexually mutilated. So were Kurten's victims, who were mainly just women out walking alone. I'm not going to jump aboard the bandwagon and insist that all the Ripper victims were actively prostituting themselves if I don't know that this was the case.

When last seen, Polly Nichols was so drunk she could barely stand with the aid of a wall. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if she sat down or collapsed on the sidewalk sometime in the next hour. Of course, she could have met with a client. I wasn't there, but neither was anyone else.

Here's some more photos for your enjoyment. Victorians didn't have the technology to go around photographing vagrants at night, and most modern examples are obviously taken by pedestrians walking around town in broad daylight.

When I visited Dublin in the mid 1990s, there were children as young as 8 or 10 sleeping on the sidewalk. This was downtown, near O'Connell's Bridge.

Being from a small town in the U.S., this shocked the hell out of me, and later, when in a pub in the Clontarf Road, I asked an old man about it.

He waved his hand. "They are druggies."

Now, maybe he was right. Maybe they were all druggies. I have no way of knowing. But I doubt he knew all of them personally, but such comments are often made by people who want simple answers to complex social problems. It makes it easier not to think about them.

Obviously a great many homeless people are either mentally ill or have drug and alcohol problems.


All the best.

[caz]

Hi Caz, of course these are Bleakley's examples, not mine.

Sometime back I did post on Howard site the case of an 'unfortunate' attacked, and I believe raped, while sleeping rough in an outhouse. I also posted a case of a woman sleeping in the countryside in Kent in the early 1890s that was attacked and had her throat slit by a wandering soldier. Women are attacked in their sleep by cowards. Women are also attacked when simply walking down the sidewalk.

While I certainly don't deny that the East End victims were humiliated in a sexual way, how does it follow that the murderer saw them as 'prostitutes' rather than vagrants?

Haven't mutilating murderers targeted college women? Children? Minorities?

The sexual depravity of a crime rests entirely on the murderer's shoulders, not the victim's.

All the best,

RP

It doesn't follow, RJ. Not at all. There were easy pickings to be had in the Whitechapel of 1888. But if the evidence suggests our murderer wasn't attacking women who were sleeping rough and effectively already "dead to the world", it might just follow that he actually preferred his prey alive, if not kicking, and fully conscious when he pounced. Does a hunter enjoy his sport in the same way if he simply waits for the deer - and his juicy venison haunch - to take a nap?

Love,

Caz
X

[MrBarnett]

Fascinating stuff. Not sure it changes my views at all.

Rough sleepers generally tuck themselves into corners or against a wall. Of your four examples, two are doing that and one, who looks well-dressed might have been completely wasted or unconscious rather than sleeping. How many hundreds - thousands - of images of tucked-away rough sleepers did you have to skip over to find those?

So, kids sleep on the pavement in modern day Dublin? Interesting. And you found a man in a Dublin pub who expressed unfounded opinions? Fascinating. The relevance of that to the WM victims is? Perhaps your Dublin pub man’s name was Tim Donovan.

Sláinte.

[caz]

People have been saying this for many years, and they've pointed the finger of blame at everyone from a Jewish schizophrenic to a middle-class Liverpool cotton broker to a local carman to a band of homosexuals from Cambridge to a well-known painter to an anonymous ex-groom to a school teacher in Blackheath to an occultist in the London Hospital to a foreign sailor...

...I don't disagree that the victims tell us something, I just disagree what it is.

RP

The victims, RJ, tell us that a serial killer was active in the area. No more, no less. And potential serial killers/offenders come in all shapes and sizes; all races and classes; any age from young to old; pretty much any profession you can think of; any marital status yet defined. They will all have their own criteria for what makes the ideal victim; what makes the whole experience worth the risks; and what they believe they can get away with. The obvious example was Dr Harold Shipman, who bumped off his elderly patients by the hundred, before anyone cottoned on. His weapon of choice was the humble syringe, now saving countless lives across the globe.

The Whitechapel five [or four for Stride excluders] were just one man's idea of how to get away with murder, and it worked.

Just as Shipman's patients were innocent lambs to the slaughter, so were the five we discuss here.

Love,

Caz
X

[Trevor Marriott]

The victims, RJ, tell us that a serial killer was active in the area. No more, no less. And potential serial killers/offenders come in all shapes and sizes; all races and classes; any age from young to old; pretty much any profession you can think of; any marital status yet defined. They will all have their own criteria for what makes the ideal victim; what makes the whole experience worth the risks; and what they believe they can get away with. The obvious example was Dr Harold Shipman, who bumped off his elderly patients by the hundred, before anyone cottoned on. His weapon of choice was the humble syringe, now saving countless lives across the globe.

The Whitechapel five [or four for Stride excluders] were just one man's idea of how to get away with murder, and it worked.

Just as Shipman's patients were innocent lambs to the slaughter, so were the five we discuss here.

Love,

Caz
X

We must not get carried away with this argument because there is no conclusive proof one way or the other but if we look closely at the evidence and the crime scenes we are able to draw inferences which do give us a clearer picture in my opinion, that being that the victims were not killed while sleeping rough, and that clearly shows Rubenhold has misled her readers in order to overexagerate the lives of these victims.

Tabram
Found on a staircase, was she sleeping and the killer just happened to find her by chance? - Not on your nellie

Nichols- Found in the street does the crime scene location suggest that it was a location for anyone to go to sleep- Highly unlikely

Stride- Crime scene and time of death suggest that where she was killed she was not sleeping

Chapman- Found in a back yard was she sleeping rough and the killer just happednd to find her- Not on your nellie

Eddowes -Again crime scene location does not suggest it was a suitable place to sleep having regards to the weather that night and the close proximity to her lodgings

Kelly- This argument does not apply

Throughout the investigation I do not see any evidence to show that any of the above victims regularly or occasionally slept on the streets.

As has already been said people wanting to sleep rough seldom just plonk themselves down on any old pavement leaving themselves open to the elements

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[caz]

Caz now implies that the 'vagrant' explanation must be wrong, because the victims were sexually mutilated.

Ouch.

You chose to infer this from something I wrote, RJ, but that was not what I set out to imply. It is the evidence which strongly implies that this particular sexual mutilator did not attack women while they were sleeping rough. If you want to argue that this was because he couldn't find any, and had to make do with women who were up and about and unsuspecting of his motives, then fine. But it would be a strange argument.

Obviously a great many homeless people are either mentally ill or have drug and alcohol problems.

I'm not sure why that's relevant, RJ. Our killer could in theory have attacked men, women or children, who were on the streets alone because of such problems, but that's simply not what the evidence suggests about the criteria for his victim selection in the series we are discussing.

It doesn't follow that Jack had a particular downer on women who were actively soliciting, or at least appeared like they might be. It could just be that he went the lazy route, and preyed on women who were not obviously averse to his company, or seemed unlikely or unable to put up much of a fight. He attacked them because they were there. But where is the evidence that he would have turned to attacking rough sleepers for the same reason - if they had been there in sufficient numbers? We can only work with what we are given.

Love,

Caz
X

[Trevor Marriott]

You chose to infer this from something I wrote, RJ, but that was not what I set out to imply. It is the evidence which strongly implies that this particular sexual mutilator did not attack women while they were sleeping rough. If you want to argue that this was because he couldn't find any, and had to make do with women who were up and about and unsuspecting of his motives, then fine. But it would be a strange argument.



I'm not sure why that's relevant, RJ. Our killer could in theory have attacked men, women or children, who were on the streets alone because of such problems, but that's simply not what the evidence suggests about the criteria for his victim selection in the series we are discussing.

It doesn't follow that Jack had a particular downer on women who were actively soliciting, or at least appeared like they might be. It could just be that he went the lazy route, and preyed on women who were not obviously averse to his company. He attacked them because they were there. But where is the evidence that he would have turned to attacking rough sleepers for the same reason - if they had been there in sufficient numbers? We can only work with what we are given.

Love,

Caz
X

But we cannot rule out the fact they they did solicit the killer

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[caz]

But we cannot rule out the fact they they did solicit the killer

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Absolutely, Trev. It doesn't follow from the limited evidence we have, but the same evidence doesn't rule it out either.

In Stride's case, it could be that her killer saw her in the company of another man - or men - and assumed she was soliciting, and lost his temper when she snubbed him. That could apply whoever her killer was.

Love,

Caz
X

[Trevor Marriott]

Absolutely, Trev. It doesn't follow from the limited evidence we have, but the same evidence doesn't rule it out either.

In Stride's case, it could be that her killer saw her in the company of another man - or men - and assumed she was soliciting, and lost his temper when she snubbed him. That could apply whoever her killer was.

Love,

Caz
X

I am in total agreement that Stride was not killed by the same hand as the rest of the victims ,and I concur with Donal Rumbellow that she could have been the victim of a domestic assault.

To that end there seems to be very little on the police investigation into Michael Kidney, perhaps the police were blinkered in their approach to Stride by the fact that Eddowes was killed a short time later and they fell into the trap that some researchers have fallen into by suggesting that two victims were the work of the same killer when they may not have been. Coincidences do often occur.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Abby Normal]

Im not sure im understanding the argument from either side.

what difference does it make if the ripper found them sleeping or not? any of the c5 could have been asleep and or passed out from drink when he found them.
It has nothing to do with whether they were prostitutes or not.

and RJ
it does matter psychologically.. if the ripper assumed they were prostitutes he may have thought they could be more willing to accompany him to a secluded spot-easier targets. and many serial killers have used that their victims were prostitutes as an excuse-as in they are getting rid of something they find wrong, or what does it matter-thyre just prostitutes.
thats their problem, not ours. we dont feel that way.

but to deny they were prostitutes is just denying the truth. they were, to one extent or another. its unfortunate, but true.
and I DONT think they were all actively soliciting the night they met the ripper. I think kelly and stride probably werent.

[erobitha]

When I visited Dublin in the mid 1990s, there were children as young as 8 or 10 sleeping on the sidewalk. This was downtown, near O'Connell's Bridge.

Being from a small town in the U.S., this shocked the hell out of me, and later, when in a pub in the Clontarf Road, I asked an old man about it.

He waved his hand. "They are druggies."

Now, maybe he was right. Maybe they were all druggies. I have no way of knowing. But I doubt he knew all of them personally, but such comments are often made by people who want simple answers to complex social problems. It makes it easier not to think about them.

Trust you to reference the city I have lived in for the past 13 years, having moved to Dublin from London in 2008. It’s a city I know intimately well. A minor correction to get out the way first. It is O’Connell Bridge not O’Connell’s Bridge. Fun fact, it has the distinction of being wider than it is long.

Dublin’s homeless population today is driven on the whole because of drug addiction, mainly heroin. Alcohol addiction then follows a close second. There are families who have been on the street, but I am glad to report much has improved in the way of services and supports since your last visit. Still much work to do.

It is a fair comparison. Addiction has driven them to the streets and forces them to commit acts that they would not in a reasonable state commit. Much like the victims of JTR. I would argue alcohol addiction is major driver for why most, if not all, the victims had to turn tricks. It was a needs must kind of deal.

Casual prostitution is exactly that and that is exactly what they did. Is it fair we define them as just prostitutes? Probably not, as ironically the only one who seemingly had any brothel experience was Mary Jane and she was killed in her bed. However, to simply pretend that all the evidence does not point to them being engaged in solicitation, potentially drunk solicitation, at the time of their deaths is just pure folly. The drunken selling of their bodies is what most likely triggered him. That gives a very telling insight into his psychological state.

Mary Jane was 100% upright when last seen alive but found dead in her bed. Maybe it was just sleeping women he had an issue with?

[erobitha]

Im not sure im understanding the argument from either side.

what difference does it make if the ripper found them sleeping or not? any of the c5 could have been asleep and or passed out from drink when he found them.
It has nothing to do with whether they were prostitutes or not.

and RJ
it does matter psychologically.. if the ripper assumed they were prostitutes he may have thought they could be more willing to accompany him to a secluded spot-easier targets. and many serial killers have used that their victims were prostitutes as an excuse-as in they are getting rid of something they find wrong, or what does it matter-thyre just prostitutes.
thats their problem, not ours. we dont feel that way.

but to deny they were prostitutes is just denying the truth. they were, to one extent or another. its unfortunate, but true.
and I DONT think they were all actively soliciting the night they met the ripper. I think kelly and stride probably werent.

95% agree with all the above with exception of Kelly. In my view she was soliciting and she too had a few drinks on her that night. Knowingly or unknowingly the killer got ‘lucky’.

Stride is a curious one I grant you, but the manner in which she was killed with the throat being slit in that manner, and then only for Eddowes to be butchered an hour later is too much a coincidence as Trev describes. The chances of that really? Although I am open to the possibility that perhaps JTR thought Stride was soliciting and maybe because of her accent thought she was drunk. But to suggest the same hand did not kill Eddowes is too big a leap for me.