Kidney

[JacknJill]

I'm at school and so don't have much time so I'll check any replies later. A teacher I'm working on JTR with mentioned the kidney sent from Jack. He suggested that perhaps Jack didn't send the kidney. In those days it was easy to get kidneys and other human body parts from the black market and most of the poorer people who's parts they used had the disease Catharine was said to have.
And the reporters took as a big joke so perhaps it was one of them - like some of the letters are believed to be from.
So - I was curious to here other theories on the matter.
What do you think?

[Grim]

In those days it was easy to get kidneys and other human body parts from the black market and most of the poorer people who's parts they used had the disease Catharine was said to have.

I don't believe this at all, people were stupid back in those days and didn't know how to do organ transplants. If it was a prank it would have had to have been done by someone who is in constant contact with dead people.

[Mitch Rowe]

I think its the only letter we can even consider to be genuine. But only for a fleeting moment.

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Let's all remember that it was suspected that the package with the kidney and the letter was an evil prank sent from a student at the London Hospital.

All the best

[DVV]

Certainly Glenn,
but there is the problem of the Bright disease, the fact that the letter wasn't signed JTR and was sent to Lusk instead of the CNA...
So I will agree with Mitch... Genuine...for a fleeting moment.
Ah, if only Fleming was a student at the london Hospital...!

Amitiés,
David

ps: hope you're fine Glenn, best wishes.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi all. I believe it quite possible that the Vigilance Committee (though not necessarily Lusk individually) hoaxed the From Hell letter and kidney for their own benefit.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Howard Brown]

Tom:

On the Forums... in the newspaper archives,I found an article on an event that occurred... in the Philadelphia Inquirer, at least 10 to 15 years prior to the WM...where college students left organs on front porches and the mailboxes of citizens in West Philadelphia. They didn't go to some small college...they went to PENN. As an aside,,my Great Grandfather probably knew them as he was a University of Pennsylvania law grad in 1875. He went on to be a D.A. in Philly. It made the front page and was a bit of a shock to the community.

With all due respect to the theory that MEVC staged the kidney and accompanying letter, what benefit would they have garnered from its hoaxing?

First of all, the MEVC wasn't established to save prostitutes or women from the Ripper. That of course was a desire...no doubt...but a collateral and secondary objective/desire...not the raison d'etre of the MEVC. Their purpose was to get people back into their stores at night.

Staging the kidney/letter event would only give the local citizenry( read: customers) more to fear,since it would demonstrate that Jack The Ripper didn't give a flying one about the police..or the MEVC.

Just my observation on the potentiality of the MEVC hoaxing the event...

[brummie]

Lusk himself apparently didnt attach any importance to the kidney as, despite being the head of a group supposedly intent on capturing JTR, when he received a potentially important piece of evidence he put in a drawer for a couple of days until a friend suggested he take it to the police!

[Howard Brown]

Dear Brummie:

Lusk's actions upon recieving the article certainly don't appear to be in line with one who wants to recieve attention, do they ?

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

Certainly Glenn,
but there is the problem of the Bright disease, the fact that the letter wasn't signed JTR and was sent to Lusk instead of the CNA...
So I will agree with Mitch... Genuine...for a fleeting moment.
Ah, if only Fleming was a student at the london Hospital...!

Amitiés,
David

ps: hope you're fine Glenn, best wishes.

Hi David,

I'm fine thank you.

I wouldn't put too much stock on the Bright's Disease thing since that is a medical term of merely historical value. Nor do we have any confirmation of that Eddowes had some kind of kidney inflammation problems, as far as I know.

Secondly, it wasn't at all strange that Lusk received such a letter since he was very much a public figure, posting numerous debate articles concerning the rewards and also known as the founder of Whitechapel Committe, created as a response to the Tabram murder. So in the Ripper context he was quite a celebrity.

But I agree with you, that what makes the letter interesting - considering it being penned just when Jack the Ripper was established and had become popular - is that it isn't signed with the name the media had given the killer.

All the best

[Cap'n Jack]

An utterly childish letter, a boy killer playing peek a boo with the devil, but of course he would have had his aunt fry his breakfast, as he didn't trust his mother either...and written in his best ledger hand.
Wonderful bit of gear.

[slysnide]

Given the lack of sufficient tools to identify the gender, age, and overall condition of the kidney at the time, then it's more likely that any proper analysis wasn't attempted simply because the writer claimed to have taken the kidney from a victim, and because doctors at the time simply couldn't answer these questions sufficiently, but were pressured to do so given how sensationalized the case had become.

Nor were there any proper tests done to see what would become of other kidneys preserved in spirits wine for 16 days as the Lusk Kidney allegedly had been. That coupled with the mismanagement of evidence doesn't entirely rule out the possibility that it was a hoax, nor rule out the possibility that could've belonged to Eddowes. Hence, this argument in particular can only go around in circles.

And the motives for taking the organs also comes into play, such as why the killer would give away half an organ which he'd been taking for whatever reason. Cannibalism probably, and other killers have resisted the compulsion to confess such things for months on end, such as evident in California's Zodiac case in which the killer waited 7.5 months till he first wrote to the newspapers. Given that, and Albert Fish's habit of multilating dead children to eat their innards suggests that Jack could've done the same for the same reasons.

[Hunter]

I believe the letter and the kidney have to be considered together. The letter didn't seem to be contrived as a literate person emulating a semi-literate person. It was brief and personal to Lusk and I think he took it that way, otherwise he would have dumped it right off the bat. It troubled him because he had to think about it for a while before mentioning it to someone. The kidney was not preserved in formaline so it had to come from a body that had not yet reached the examining table.

[Stewart P Evans]

Not Sure

...
The kidney was not preserved in formaline so it had to come from a body that had not yet reached the examining table.

I'm not sure that I understand this, are you able to enlarge on it?

[Trevor Marriott]

The kidney would have had to come from some where. Lo an behold like the phoenix from the ashes rises up the question (yet again) of the removal of the organs from the victims from the mortuaries.

medical students and others who i am not going to name again would have had free and unrestricted access as I have previoulsy stated.

Other posters in the past long before my new theory came into the Ripper domain have sugggested this was a prank carried out by a medical student. I firmly beleive this to be correct and that the kidney was more than likely Eddowes.