Emotional Reaction to Murders and Victims

[Barnaby]

I thought about this topic the other day when I realized that I could no longer read about child murderers, having had a child a few years ago and another on the way. It upsets/scares me too much.

This got me wondering about several items: What level of emotion toward a victim of homicide and his/her family is ideal for an investigator? What are they trained to do? It seems like a certain level of emotional detachment is necessary to keep one’s sanity and to effectively process information objectively. At the same time, emotion may drive the investigator to work harder, etc.

Relatedly, what level of emotion do you have for the Ripper victims as armchair detectives 125 years after they lived?

I suppose there is a large range. For me, I typically remember that they were “real people” on anniversaries of death dates. And I dislike murder scenes being reenacted as “art” or in quasi-pornographic fiction. Outside of that, I’m afraid I treat my interest very much like I did when I was 13 reading all of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot books. At heart, I'm still a kid in love with a Great Victorian mystery.

I’m wondering how many of us became interested because we were outraged at the crimes and desired justice for the victims and how many of us just enjoyed the mystery? I am decidedly in the latter camp but am sensitive to not dehumanizing these women. Is that enough, or is that still callous?

Why can’t I have a visceral reaction to these objectively horrific murders? I do remember that when I first started reading about Jack the Ripper as a teenager he scared the hell out of me, but the murdered victims never produced a sense of moral outrage. I suppose they should, and this bothers me.

[Limehouse]

Hi Barnaby,

What a great idea for a thread!

I think the people working 'on the ground' in this investigation and in similar investigations do have to develop a sense of emotional detachment so that they can focus fully on what needs to be done but I do think that, for some, the desire to see justice done drives them forward - and this is like having an emotional connection with the victim in the most constructive way.

The reaction to the victims at the time of the murders, I think, was very mixed. Much like the reaction in the Yorkshire Ripper case, some were dismissive, concluding that the women were bringing troubles on themselves by being out late and/or soliciting for business. There was a tendency to be very judgemental concerning the women's lifestyles. Contrastingly, there was also outrage - these were poor defenceless women, struck down and slaughtered like animals and left exposed and undignified on the pavements (and a bed, in the case of Kelly). The fact that so many people lined the streets to see the funeral carriages pass, some showing open displays of emotion demonstrates that there was an emotional reaction to their deaths.

For me personally, my interest is in the social conditions of the time and the contrast between a country rapidly becoming very wealthy whilst at the same time hosting some of the most squalid and deprived communities imaginable. I do feel deeply for the depths to which the victims were plunged, but I acknowledge also the fact that some of the victims had allowed themselves to fall into this lifestyle to some extent by their own behaviour (Chapman in particular). However, that does not in any way mean that they deserved the terrible punishment that was visited upon them by this monster.

What I do object to is the commercialisation of the ripper 'industry' which dismisses the victims as just characters in a computer game or a film and which casts the killer as a kind of bogey man like a fictional character. Of course, people will want to write books about the investigation and suggest possible candidates as the killer - and people will want to read them - but some 'ripper products' have been crass and disrespectful to the victims and their families.

[PC Fitzroy-Toye]

Im a detached creature and I do not feel much at all so my empathy is low I have found it to be an aid in getting through things but my social interaction is problematic, my intrest in mister J is focused more about him than his victims.

[No Luck Yet]

This is particularly interesting question to me - something I think about often. But, in answering it, I have to rat myself out a bit. Never mind the "Righteous Thirst for Justice" category, I can't even lump myself in with the "What an Intriguing Mystery!" crowd. I am a ghoul, and have been one almost from the cradle.

And so, as you'd probably expect, I am not often disposed to get upset about things. I generally wish people well, but, once they're dead, well, they're just dead.

Except when the focus is on them! As long as the focus is on Jack the Ripper, then you can say whatever you like about how horrible and how cruel and how sad... I'm never much affected. But if you turn it around and focus on the victims rather than the killer, it's an entirely different story.

You have to have some sticking point for the emotions to get caught on, is the thing, I think. Details of their lives. The first time I ever felt that empathy was when reading Patricia Cornwell, when she discusses Katherine Eddowes and her lover and the circumstances they parted under. That was five years ago now, I think, but it made so powerful an impression that I still remember sitting there with this new sense of tragedy.

I think that's probably akin to what Barnaby has said, about remembering at times that they were real people but tending to forget it...?

But, pardon my rambling on, I've had an kind of odd experience in this just lately. I'm a writer of sorts, and, not to get off topic talking about my work, but I had just finished a Ripper story that I had written entirely as a joke, one that could never be published. Then, when some friends persuaded me that the joke-story was too good to be just dropped and forgotten, started rewriting it as a serious novel.

What surprised me is how differently I felt in writing the two versions. In the joke, Jack could kill whoever he wanted and nobody cared. No one was named, and the story was so far removed from any facts of the case that you'd even be hard pressed to even say that any victim was supposed to be any real life person... And so it all went off like a joke.

But now? I was writing a scene with Mary Kelly in it (she's the only of the five women who plays a recurring part in the story, though a minor one) and I was just struck with this sense of obligation almost, like I had some kind of moral duty to get the portrayal right. Like, "After everything done to that poor girl, she is not getting a bad shake from you, ya little imp!" It surprised me. I'm trying hard to keep at least some of the energy of the original, but as soon as I started working with real names and real people, it's a whole different game.

If I may ask, though, about products that are "crass and disrespectful," where exactly do you folks draw that line? I've seen things as well as you all have, I'm sure, that's clearly inappropriate, but with the nature of this case, and the ladies' profession, it's easy to see how even portrayals that I don't find particularly disrespectful may offend others... I was just wondering, what tips the scales, so to speak, for you?

Personally, I think it's inappropriate if it either implies that the women deserved to die that way, or if it's handled like disemboweling prostitutes is supposed to be kinky (to the reader/viewer, that is. I don't much object if Jack feels that way). That's where I'd draw the line.

[John Wheat]

I'm firmly in the interested in the mystery camp.

[The Good Michael]

For me, because the murders seemed to have happened quickly, that's where the tragedy ends. The things that happened after their demise, because they were already gone, don't horrify me one bit. Instead they create the questions for me, the mystery.

Mike