Goulston Street Apron - FOLDED?

[Sam Flynn]

If he cut himself while visiting the wounds upon Eddowes, then might he have folded the apron in order to make it into an improvised bandage? Just brainstorming.

Unique amongst the murders, he almost certainly got excrement on his hands (how else did fecal matter get _smeared_ over her intestines?), so my contention has long been that the apron piece was cut off to be used as an impromptu hand-towel.

[BooksbyBJThompson]

If he cut himself while visiting the wounds upon Eddowes, then might he have folded the apron in order to make it into an improvised bandage? Just brainstorming.

As it contained fecal matter, I rather doubt not.

[BooksbyBJThompson]

Interesting discussion.


The idea that the killer took time to display and present his victim, and subsequently place items/clothing belonging to each of the victims post mortem, does suggest the killer had the presence of mind and awareness to measure the risk of being caught, against the need to carry out his ritual.

We have Chapman's personal items at her feet, Eddowes apron removed and then placed under the GSG, Kelly's body parts distributed around the room, Mckenzie's clay pipe, and multiple victims hats/bonnets left by the head.

With Stride it's less obvious....but we have the Cachou in her hand, possibly placed post mortem.

All of the murder sites had an element of deliberate staging by the killer.

Call it compulsion, ritual, expression, necessity; the killer incorporated certain thought processes into his method and applied them accordingly at the time.

The combination of frenzied cuts with the knife, with a deliberate intention to display and present a victim post mortem, speaks of a killer with multiple faces; someone who was able to conceal their intentions when choosing their victim, and then drop their facade at the point of initial attack.

This does not suggest a raving lunatic, but more a calm and calculated killer, who at face value came across as just another regular guy.

Fascinating.

Example: Ted Bundy, raging killer, but colour-coded his carefully folded socks in two sock drawers.

[BooksbyBJThompson]

Unique amongst the murders, he almost certainly got excrement on his hands (how else did fecal matter get _smeared_ over her intestines?), so my contention has long been that the apron piece was cut off to be used as an impromptu hand-towel.

To enter his home... shall we find a folded handtowel?

[Abby Normal]

whos gonna wipe crap off their hands and then fold it up before discarding it!?! if it actually was folded, then imho it lends to the idea it was taken to a bolt hole first and or placed there on purpose.

good eye Books!

[BooksbyBJThompson]

whos gonna wipe crap off their hands and then fold it up before discarding it!?! if it actually was folded, then imho it lends to the idea it was taken to a bolt hole first and or placed there on purpose.

good eye Books!

Thanks, Abby Normal.
It was an easy catch, though, as nothing about this killer screams folded. Anyone here sees the word folded, and they would stop in their tracks, too.

Then you ponder...
Annie Chapman's items at feet
Eye nicks on Catherine Eddowes
Hands on chests

Time was Jack's friend, not his enemy.
That in itself is a major clue.

[The Rookie Detective]

Example: Ted Bundy, raging killer, but colour-coded his carefully folded socks in two sock drawers.

I think Bundy is a good example of how the real ripper was in terms of the way he came across to others.
Charming and enigmatic, but with a strong dose of maniacal rage concealed just under the surface.

[Robert St Devil]

Before this thread disappears off into the Casebook ether, I'm adding an alternative theory to Sam Flynn post regarding the "apron serving as a hand towel" theory. I'm NOT at odds IF that proved to be the case; there's a sensical logic to that notion when considering the matter ie. fecal matter. A Ripperologist might rightly conclude that the apron was used as a means of wiping clean his hands. Then again, it may have been a measure of preventing his hands from becoming filthy.
The theory came about when I wondered the following: I can accept that he may have required the towel to clean his hands; but... why the need to take the extra step of cutting away a piece of apron to serve that purpose? Why not simply wipe his hands on the apron [or her clothes] & be on his way?

I'm of the opinion that...
Catherine Eddowes was drunk on malt liquor. It was readily available in the East End, and [from my readings] sobering up from malt liquor didn't require much time, possibly explaining how she was p--- drunk 5 or 6 hours earlier & relatively sober by 1am. And also [from further readings] malt liquor can loosen the bowels into a running-consistency.
Now Catherine Eddowes had a thinner body frame from Annie Chapman, no need to cut away chunks of her belly, she didn't have the same type of fat padding her abdomen, and so his knife pierced deeper as he sliced along her midline, and its' sharp blade nicked her colon nearer to her xiphoid process thereby spilling out a loose fecal matter over her intestines.
Without a pun's intention, Jack the Ripper exclaims "Oh sh--e!" and then decides to cut off a piece of her apron for use in order to grab hold of the colon without touching the filth, cutting a length of the colon away from her body while incidentally stabbing her liver in the process. Then, he may have used the apron once more to remove the intestines from her body. [Or... maybe he simply used it to wipe clean her intestines as best he could before removing them]
Overall the idea being that Jack the Ripper didn't want to plunge his hands into her filthy bowels.

The mystery for me BooksbyBJThompson is why he chose to take an incriminating piece of evidence away from the scene of the crime with him? Why NOT simply discard it alongside all of her pocket-trinkets?

However to add to your examples of Mr. Time being his friend... I would add the Goulston Street Graffito IF it so turned out that he wrote it, meaning,
imagine him standing in that passageway with a bloody-filthy apron which ties him to that night's 2nd murder & there he is... taking the Time to scribble a message on a wall in cursive!

****** ** *****

As an aside...
I'm recently arrived upon the belief that Jack the Ripper slaughtered pigs by trade. My belief is more galvanized by the following report in Catherine Eddowes post mortem examination:

An inch below the crease of the thigh was a cut extending from the anterior spine of the ilium obliquely down the inner side of the left thigh and separating the left labium, forming a flap of skin up to the groin. The left rectus muscle was not detached.

There was a flap of skin formed by the right thigh, attaching the right labium, and extending up to the spine of the ilium. The muscles on the right side inserted into the frontal ligaments were cut through.

In a video which I recently viewed of a pig-slaughter, the slaughterer performed something similar to these cuts while explaining that these cuts were a means of "opening up the bowels", which [in the case of Jack the Ripper] is something that Catherine Eddowes' murderer would have desired.

[BooksbyBJThompson]

Before this thread disappears off into the Casebook ether, I'm adding an alternative theory...

Hey, Bob The Red Horned One (lol),

One would have to assume the placer of the apron was the writer of the graffito. I make no assumptions on this.

I do appreciate your take on how the Ripper's knife technique would have to vary, re: body size, shapes, but if we go by past serial killers, as they up their kills, they often become frenzied killers, desperate to seek the high they had with their first kill. In this vein, I see Jack as losing some of his cool, re: accuracy.

But yes, why cut a piece of cloth? Why not wipe your knife, hands there, and be off? Up to this point, as far as we know of his kills, which I feel the intial trial and error ones are not properly accredited to him, no such material cutting to take had been done.

Why take a fecal stained cloth with you???
Then, why drop it?
And per my post, why fold it???

It's the folding which niggles at me.
To take, but then find the cloth stench was too much, and then to discard, makes sense.

To FOLD the discard, no sense.
Just like cutting that 2 foot piece of intestine to place near Catherine's left arm.

It's in this minutia we find Jack.
NOT necessarily in the kills themselves.