A fragile and delicate matter

[Cap'n Jack]

I'd still like to hear an explanation of the activities of 'Bible John' in the 1960's who appeared to select his victims for murder from women who were menstruating.
It's not good enough to claim that the victims, known to one another, would have coincided their cycles, for the three victims were all unknown to one another.
The examining doctors of the LVP went to great pains to make the distinction in murder cases between menstrual blood and blood from knife wounds.
I think we should take the same great pain in this discussion.

[paul emmett]

I'd still like to hear an explanation of the activities of 'Bible John' in the 1960's who appeared to select his victims for murder from women who were menstruating.

Hello Cap'n.

I think it's difficult to refute your assertion that Bible John selected his victims because they were menstruating. Indeed, he put the sanitary napkin from the last victim in her armpit. It certianly seems to have something to do with smells. He picked up all his victims at a dance hall, and there was semen on at least one, so we don't know for sure how he discovered they were menstruating.

Besides showing that this CAN happen, how do you relate it to JTR?

[JSchmidt]

I have to agree with Paul and maybe even speculate a bit further: What if Bible John and/or your hypothetical ripper had regular sex encounters and only flipped if the object of their lust happened to have their period on these events?
Just out of curiosity, what brought you to question this as a possible motive?

[paul emmett]

I have to agree with Paul and maybe even speculate a bit further: What if Bible John and/or your hypothetical ripper had regular sex encounters and only flipped if the object of their lust happened to have their period on these events?

Speculating a bit further, since it had been suggested above that menstruation can trigger male impotence, perhaps this is why he/they flipped out.

[Tom_Wescott]

Is anybody going to bother to point out that the Ripper victims were not even menstruating?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Cap'n Jack]

That's where you get the rub, Tom.
Your whole motive thing in regard to the killer is based on the good old 'lust' murder, where a killer has a 'desire' for his victim, so he will want to kill more and more, two in one night if he can, quickly to the next job if he couldn't finish off the first job. Your magical, powerful, lustful killer.
But what if he was repulsed by his victims?
Did he kill them because they smelt bad?
Or did he kill them because they smelt good?

[Tom_Wescott]

I think lust motivates everything, but I've never said the Ripper was a classic John Douglas lust murderer, so shut up.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

P.S. Nichols and her clean thighs. Eddowes and her dry napkins. Kelly and her numerous customers. Stride and her alleged (by you) date. Bleeding indeed.

[Cap'n Jack]

Not tonight, Tom, some other night.

[caz]

Well someone in Lambeth certainly was aware of the situation in October of 1888:

'Jack the Ripper
Sir
you had better be carefull How you send those Bloodhounds about the streets because of the single females wearing stained napkins - women smell very strong when they are unwell'

Hi AP,

Would you agree that the reference to ‘single’ here could be a nod in the direction of the fact that most attached women at the time tended to be pregnant on an almost permanent basis during their child-bearing years, and therefore did not figure in the writer's thoughts? The observation would seem illogical to those of us in Britain today, because single and married women are equally likely to be ‘on the blob’, ‘off the blob’ or ‘up the spout’.

Assuming that some potential murder victims would have been too old or too malnourished to have periods; some would have been pregnant; and some could have felt too ‘unwell’ to go out looking for business (except that Annie kept going despite being literally sick unto death - no slacking for this poor love), the proportion 'wearing stained napkins' about the streets on any given night that Jack himself was on the prowl, would most probably not have reached the basic one in four, and could easily have been considerably less, say one in every seven or eight.

This would in turn suggest that if we go by chance alone the victims were not likely to have included more than one at most who was menstruating when she encountered her killer. Unless you have evidence that a disproportionate number of the victims had their period, I'm not sure where you are going with this one. If you think the killer was attacking women on the basis that they were already bleeding, for instance, and he was right on only one occasion at most, then his senses were deceiving him, but he was hardly suffering from ignorance of the female condition. But as usual you have provided us with something fresh to chew on.

Incidentally, my first husband’s mother, who was pregnant with him at seventeen, in the early 1950s, used to say how she thought she was dying when she had her first period, because her own mother had never said a word about it to her, and she had no idea what was happening or why. She was terrified. Fortunately my own mother, who married my father - an only child - in the late 1940s, was better prepared, because she found herself having to explain the facts of life to him! One can only imagine the joys of their honeymoon: “So Mummy was lying to me about the gooseberry bush? And you want me to put it where?? ”

Love,

Caz
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[Cap'n Jack]

Yes, Caz, you are right. The writer makes careful distinction with his use of 'single'.
And I would assume the writer would avoid and shun the company of such single women enjoying the vagaries of their period; and seek out women whom he thought 'clean' - in a menstrual manner I obviously mean - perhaps women from an older age group whom he would assume to be married?
And in some stage of pregnancy?
If the writer felt able to make such a distinction, then I see no reason why the killer should not imagine himself able to do the same.
It's all about imagination isn't it?

[Ravenstone]

Apparently, anal sex was quite common, at least according to Death at the Priory. One allegation was that Charles Bravo forced his wife to submit to anal sex on a regular basis, when not allowed to indulge in 'straight' sex as she wasn't allowed to get pregnant.

[caz]

Hi AP,

The trouble is, if the victims provide us with a sample that roughly represents what an opportunist killer of women might have encountered by chance (and I personally think that's exactly what Jack's victims provide), then his only concern may have been his ability to overpower each one in a suitably private location, where he could do his thing and get away safely. I think I would need some evidence that he 'sought out' victims on any other basis.

I'm not even keen on theories that he attacked unfortunates because he hated what they represented. Like Sutcliffe, he may not have been fussy as long as he could get enough time with a woman on her own - any woman - to do the deed and hope to leave no trace of himself behind. But in the LVP, 'respectable' women were not expected to go out late at night unaccompanied, unlike the 1970s, when there were no such social restrictions any more.

It's necessary to see any series of murders in the time and place they are committed, because the available options to anyone with a mind to attack strangers are not going to be the same. Whether it's a Jack or a Sutcliffe, he has to cut his garment according to his cloth. With the advent of much improved hygiene for all, Sutcliffe could hardly have claimed to be motivated by whether a woman happened to be 'clean', or 'unwell' (ie she smelled 'very strong'). But he had no trouble finding his own fanciful excuses for his behaviour, including the lie that he only attacked women who dressed provocatively.

Horses for courses here, because if Jack had been caught, he could not have claimed that the women's skirts were too short! He would have needed to invoke something from within his own experience, if he sought to shift the blame onto the feminine nature of his victims. Something related to a woman's 'hysterical' nature would be just one possibility. But it wouldn't necessarily tell us anything about Jack as an individual, or set him apart from Sutcliffe, Shipman, the Wests, or any other serial offender you could name.

I am beginning to suspect that they all have the one thing in common, but only the one thing - their 'thing' being to play with the lives and deaths of vulnerable human beings, who happen to wander into the path of their killer when he decides it's playtime.

Love,

Caz
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[Cap'n Jack]

I'm in complete agreement with you, Caz.
There has to be an excuse, a blaming if you like, even Richard Chase maintained that he needed the blood of his victims to cure himself from his ills... fair enough, but why the blood of women and babies?
Because he was too damned scared to attack a male.
I have never believed in a process of 'seeking out' a victim, but rather a 'chancing upon'.
The magical thinking employed by all serial killers of women and children is that the victim has presented themselves, there is no need to seek them out. They come to him.
This is where writers like Colin Wilson are so damned dangerous, because they reinforce that magical and distorted thinking, as for example his claim that female hitchhikers are asking for 'it'.
By 'it' he means rape and murder.
Never considering that they may have missed the last bus, or their car had broken down.
Personally I have always felt that Jack had no selection process, but rather as he hopped a fence he was presented with the spectacle of a woman cleaning herself up in some regard of toilet or sexual behaviour; and he didn't like the idea of women leaking.

[caz]

I'm in complete agreement with you, Caz.
There has to be an excuse, a blaming if you like, even Richard Chase maintained that he needed the blood of his victims to cure himself from his ills... fair enough, but why the blood of women and babies?
Because he was too damned scared to attack a male.

Hi AP,

Yes, I don't tend to see anything much more complicated than that, regardless of who the offender is - they appear to pick on people they consider to be expendable and easily overpowered.

Likewise, Shipman was too damned scared to play God with his younger patients. He didn't want the trip to end.

Personally I have always felt that Jack had no selection process, but rather as he hopped a fence he was presented with the spectacle of a woman cleaning herself up in some regard of toilet or sexual behaviour; and he didn't like the idea of women leaking.

But here is where we part company.

I don't think there is any evidence that Jack gave a damn about women leaking, any more than there is evidence that Shipman didn't like the idea of elderly patients smelling of wee making his practice untidy.

If anything, I see it the other way round: Jack would have used any excuse, so he would have loved the idea of a woman leaking if he could twist it into some sort of justification for murdering and mutilating her. Similarly, Shipman only seemed to be in control of his life while he had a continuous stream of elderly patients upon whom he could practise his deadly bedside manner. He would have been lost if he had done anything to make them all bugger off incontinently (pun intended) to another GP.

Love,

Caz
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