If There Were Multiple Killers Wouldn't We Expect to See More Killings?

[caz]

I meant, don't cite me when you publish your book. Mike Barret seems to have some sort of color-blindness when it comes to shades of truth.

Er, the book was published ten years ago, Rivkah.

All Mike Barrett's 'confessions of a master forger' remain provable fantasy. Or palpable rot, if you prefer.

He was a very poor conman, but his strength was in other people's desire to believe him.

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

Perhaps. But correct me if I'm wrong, I'm strictly Southern American but I watch a lot of BBC and read a lot of British literature, but doesn't not the average Englishman refer to his superior as "Governor"? Would it likely read: "I was not codding, Gov, "?

Whatever a Brit, Englishman, person who had lived in London a long time, whatever, would actually use isn't really the point.

I am an American, but when I have been in England, I have not used words I thought people would not understand. I've read enough books, and I went to embassy school when I was 10, with lots of British kids, and a teacher who was English, that I know that if I want French fries in a restaurant, I need to order "chips." If I persist in using the wrong term, I'm either going to look like an ass (sorry, arse), or just not get what I want.

If the Ripper were an American, he didn't just get off the boat the day before the Polly Nichols murder, or he wouldn't know where he was going, what the "Central News Office" was (surely, someone asked around the post offices if someone with a US accent wanted to know who was in charge of the newspapers, if the police we so convinced that this "Americanism" was all that significant), or a host of other things we can be pretty sure the killer knew.

So, unless whoever was in charge of the Central News Office, was by some quirk of preference, known as "Boss," then the word sounds like an affectation meant to make the letter enigmatic. Also, the word couldn't have been such an Americanism as to have been entirely obscure, or it would have looked like gibberish.

TRIVIA: the Zodiac signed one of his letters written in December "Happy Christmas," probably using a "Britishism" is reference to "Boss."

Well that was kind of my point, Rivkah. And of course there were more murders, pretty much on cue, to help the whole thing along.

And yet today's 'wisdom' is that nobody in mid-September 1888 would have known what the hell serial murder was, and what they had on their hands wasn't it.

I don't think anyone has said that no one knew what the hell serial murder was to the point of being unable to recognize that the same person could kill more than one victim. People have correctly noted that the term "serial killer" wasn't in use, and that people's (not necessarily the police, just the general public) idea of a repeat murderer who wasn't making financial gain would be that of some sort of fiend, foaming at the mouth, and just so obvious from a distance that he was a monster, that it was a mystery that no one had found him yet.*

That doesn't mean there were not some people whose thinking was slightly ahead of its time.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mike said a lot of things about the diary - mostly contradictory - and very few turned out to be true unfortunately.

I meant, don't cite me when you publish your book. Mike Barret seems to have some sort of color-blindness when it comes to shades of truth.


*There was actually a scientific theory taken very seriously about the "born criminal." Some criminals, it went, were "made," as in the person who steals food to feed his family, but some people were "atavistic"; they exhibited traits of animals earlier in our evolutionary descent, and could not control their behavior, so they had to be locked away for the good of society. Supposedly, there were identifying physical attributes of the "criminal type," which the justice system could use to distinguish people who deserved leniency from those who should be put away forever.

When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, he lifted his physical description of the title character almost word for word from a treatise on the "criminal type."

[caz]

I believe in his confession, he said he dictated it to his wife. Don't quote me on that, though.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mike said a lot of things about the diary - mostly contradictory - and very few turned out to be true unfortunately.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Which BTW, has anyone compared any letters of Michael Barrett with the so called Maybrick diary to check on this very thing? Just wondering...

Yes.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

At the time of the Chapman murder, I think the police theorized a series of at least three by one hand: Tabram, Nichols and Chapman. It's not such a stretch of the imagination that someone who has killed three people in a fairly short time span will kill again...

Well that was kind of my point, Rivkah. And of course there were more murders, pretty much on cue, to help the whole thing along.

And yet today's 'wisdom' is that nobody in mid-September 1888 would have known what the hell serial murder was, and what they had on their hands wasn't it.

Love,

Caz
X

[RavenDarkendale]

Perhaps. But correct me if I'm wrong, I'm strictly Southern American but I watch a lot of BBC and read a lot of British literature, but doesn't not the average Englishman refer to his superior as "Governor"? Would it likely read: "I was not codding, Gov, "?

[Wickerman]

I looked it up, and the theory is that is comes from Dutch, and was a Naval form of address for a captain, that was used in the colonies to distinguish someone who oversaw paid workers from a "master" who oversaw slaves, ...

That may well be I couldn't say, but I do know "Boss" was a particularly common term in East Anglia and around that part of the country in the 16-17th century. I came across the term quite frequently while researching Mathew Hopkins, Witchfinder General.
It traveled the Atlantic, we might presume, with the first colonies, so it did come from England.
Calling it an Americanism is perhaps a misnomer.

[RivkahChaya]

The sheer volume of letters in a variety of different handwriting has to show that almost all were bull.

The writing goes from barely literate ( the Lusk missive),

I was always slightly suspicious of the fact that he knew to preserve an organ in alcohol, and to use the word "preserve," even if he spelled it wrong, which was exactly the word a medical or other scientific research person would use, and yet did not know that blood would clot.

use of Americanisms (Dear Boss)

I have always heard that this is an Americanism, but exactly how is it an Americanism?

I looked it up, and the theory is that is comes from Dutch, and was a Naval form of address for a captain, that was used in the colonies to distinguish someone who oversaw paid workers from a "master" who oversaw slaves, so I can see how it would have persisted in the US, and trumped "master" after the Civil War (which in the north meant "schoolmaster" to most people, anyway).

My point is, that if it really is an American word, practically unknown in Britain, then why would anyone use it, including an American Ripper, who, one presumes, wants to be understood.

It really only makes sense as a word that is associated with the US, but that most Brits understand the meaning of, that a British hoaxer uses in order to muddy the waters, or be enigmatic.

Unless reporters really did refer to the head of the Central News Office as "Boss" for some reason.

What do people in England call their supervisors? or, more to the point, what word did they use in 1888?

Even disguised handwriting will show use of terminology, key phrases, a certain way of speaking,etc. It has caught many a document forger.

Or, it will hide the original writer, but it will still be transparently a forgery, because it will be a mishmash of different styles and vocabularies that it unlikely one person would naturally combine.

Which BTW, has anyone compared any letters of Michael Barrett with the so called Maybrick diary to check on this very thing? Just wondering...

I believe in his confession, he said he dictated it to his wife. Don't quote me on that, though.

[RavenDarkendale]

The sheer volume of letters in a variety of different handwriting has to show that almost all were bull. The writing goes from barely literate ( the Lusk missive), to use of Americanisms (Dear Boss), to some who seem highly educated (signed Mathematicus) A leopard does change his spots. Even disguised handwriting will show use of terminology, key phrases, a certain way of speaking,etc. It has caught many a document forger.

Which BTW, has anyone compared any letters of Michael Barrett with the so called Maybrick diary to check on this very thing? Just wondering...

[RivkahChaya]

I thought it was agreed by "people who really know anything" that the same hand was responsible for Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky.

I just wonder at the timing of the former, if the very idea of a serial killer is as daft as some appear to believe. By rights, in any remotely average year, there would have been no more 'work' in the wake of Chapman and the Dear Boss letter, in which case "Jack the Ripper" with his oh-so confident promises about getting back to work again should have been the dampest squib going come November.

At the time of the Chapman murder, I think the police theorized a series of at least three by one hand: Tabram, Nichols and Chapman. It's not such a stretch of the imagination that someone who has killed three people in a fairly short time span will kill again, and even if it doesn't happen, what has the writer got to lose by being wrong?

When you think about it, he has more to lose by being right, on the off-chance that the police track him down through the letter somehow, but he probably doesn't think that will happen, and if he is wrong, then he has a really good defense if he is tracked down.

But, assuming the letter was a prank and a hoax, what does it really matter? If it's taken seriously, it increases the chance that a close-in-time murder by someone else will be credited to the earlier killer, but that's about it. If it's dismissed as a hoax upon reception, then what happens next is irrelevant.

The writer probably has no idea that writing a hoax letter regarding a real crime is considered a crime in itself, and doesn't think what he is doing is risky. He probably has not thought about how it could affect the investigation, either, slowing it down, or sending it in the wrong direction, since catching a killer back then involved usually either catching him in the act, or having someone inform on him.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Caz,

I agree.

Horsemeat burgers make more sense than a serial killer named Jack.

Regards,

Simon

[caz]

I thought it was agreed by "people who really know anything" that the same hand was responsible for Dear Boss and Saucy Jacky.

I just wonder at the timing of the former, if the very idea of a serial killer is as daft as some appear to believe. By rights, in any remotely average year, there would have been no more 'work' in the wake of Chapman and the Dear Boss letter, in which case "Jack the Ripper" with his oh-so confident promises about getting back to work again should have been the dampest squib going come November. It was only the double event and MJK that kept his kettle boiling and saved him from becoming a forgotten white elephant of a red herring.

Why was he, like everyone else in the country at the time, expecting more of the same? And how come they appeared to get more of the same, if they were all wrong and the murders after Chapman were unpredictable and coincidental events, committed by men who each wanted a specific woman to die for a specific reason?

I must go now before I get trampled by speeding pink and white striped zebras. At least horsemeat burgers make some kind of sense.

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

Hi Rivkah,

By the "second letter" do you mean the Saucy Jacky postcard?

Regards,

Simon

The second of the two missives to the Central News office, yes, wasn't that the Saucy Jacky one?

[Simon Wood]

Hi Rivkah,

By the "second letter" do you mean the Saucy Jacky postcard?

Regards,

Simon

[RivkahChaya]

As I'm preparing a lengthy article on the subject, for the moment I'll plead the fifth amendment.

"The fifth"? Does that mean you wrote the letters?