Lusk Letter sent to George Lusk of the vigilante committee

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks for that, Investigator, very interesting indeed.
I trust Sam has taken note of your worthy comments.
The contention that the reports on this kidney are nowt but press hype and tripe has always struck me as being slightly out of balance with the true situation. If one examines this press clipping from the 'Evening News' of the 19th October it is obvious that we are dealing with a statement made by a senior member of the WVC, who appears to me at great pains to present a fair and reasonable summary of the events surrounding the examination of the kidney:

'
MR. AARON'S STATEMENT.

Mr. J. Aarons, the treasurer of the Whitechapel Vigilance Association, made the following statement, last evening: "Mr. Lusk, our chairman, came over to me last (Wednesday) night in a state of considerable excitement. I asked him what was the matter, when he replied, 'I suppose you will laugh at what I am going to tell you, but you must know that I had a little parcel come to me on Tuesday evening, and to my surprise it contains half a kidney and a letter from "Jack the Ripper."' To tell you the truth, I did not believe in it, and I laughed and said I thought that somebody had been trying to frighten him. Mr. Lusk, however, said it was no laughing matter to him. I then suggested that as it was late, we should leave the matter over till the morning, when I and other members of the committee would come round. This morning, at about half-past nine, Mr. Harris, our secretary, Mr. Reeves, Mr. Lawton, and myself went across to see Mr. Lusk, who opened his desk and pulled out a small square box, wrapped in brown paper. Mr. Lusk said, 'Throw it away; I hate the sight of it.' I examined the box and its contents, and being sure that it was not a sheep's kidney, I advised that, instead of throwing it away, we should see Dr. Wills, of 56, Mile End-road. We did not, however, find him in, but Mr. Reed, his assistant, was. He gave an opinion that it was a portion of a human kidney which had been preserved in spirits of wine; but to make sure, he would go over to the London Hospital, where it could be microscopically examined. On his return Mr. Reed said that Dr. Openshaw, at the Pathological Museum, stated that the kidney belonged to a female, that it was part of the left kidney, and that the woman had been in the habit of drinking. He should think that the person had died about the same time the Mitre-square murder was committed. It was then agreed that we should take the parcel and the letter to the Leman-street Police-station, where we saw Inspector Abberline. Afterwards some of us went to Scotland-yard, where we were told that we had done quite right in putting the matter into Mr. Abberline's hands. Our committee will meet again tonight, but Mr. Lusk, our chairman, has naturally been much upset."

[Investigator]

Hello folks, just popped in and noticed your debate on differences between a pig and human kidney, thought you may be interested in another opinion. Only the pig kidney could have any possibility of deceiving an experienced anatomist. Both the pig and human kidney is bean shaped, elongated and smooth. In the preserved state (in alcohol) they would have similar loss of colour to a grayish, fawn pink becoming grayish white over time in preservative. A human kidney measures about 11 cm long x 6 cm wide x 3 cm thick at the middle of the concave region (hilux). The pig kidney has a similar length and width but is thinner at the hilux. The pig has 10 – 12 papillae protruding into calyces while humans have 5 to 11 papillae. The plane of the non-vascular structure of the pig kidney, is transverse while that of the human kidney it is longitudinal. It is common that the pig kidney has two renal veins leaving the hilux, in humans, only one.
While Drs Openshaw and Brown may not necessarily be familiar with the pig kidney, they most certainly would be able to recognize any departure from normal human characteristics.
Perhaps another interesting point, using alcohol as a preservative is decidedly "scientific" since domestically there are a number of possible preservatives that could have been more readily available. Absolute alcohol has always attracted "excise duty" since Henry VIII and is not easily picked up without the law breathing down the neck. Would have been simpler to have salted the piece, even alcoholic tissues have a very offensive odour. The use of ethanol to preserve cadavars requires several months soaking before being released to medical students, additionally many corpses would have been injected with colouring agents to show up the vasculature system. Regards to all

[Stewart P Evans]

Procedures

I meant, Stewart, that there would not have been medical students involved unless the body had gone to a hospital for dissection purposes; which is what I said in the first place.
By the time the medical students got their grubby little hands on the body the kidney would have been no longer in the well preserved state it was.
Unless someone around here is speculating that a police surgeon might have nicked it at autopsy?

I fear that you misunderstand the procedures here. The very fact that the piece of kidney was not charged with a preserving fluid indicates that it was not from a body that had been used for dissection instruction.

That fact that it had been placed in spirits of wine does indicate that it was probably from an autopsied body. As was pointed out at the time, such specimens would have been easily available to medical staff ranging from mortuary attendants to medical students. It is also worth noting that during an autopsy the kidneys are sectioned (for examination) and this, too, could be a pointer to its origin.

[Cap'n Jack]

Well done, Sam, but would it not be correct to say that the result of your handiwork shows the writing to be of a disguised nature?
Which is why I thought this statement to be of import:

'The letter is in a peculiar sloping backhand writing which its writer sometimes employed'.

If this cant be accurately determined by the sciences available at the time, then isnt the answer likely to be one that involves passion....or emotions?

Whats the visceral reaction from Openshaw...supposedly human/female/adult. Was that provable? Apparently not. Does that mean he was wrong, even if so? Nope. What then becomes the "official" line? One that is provable...that a kidney section accompanied a note to Lusk, most likely human. And the duration from when it was last inside a human, based on the preservation methods and its state.

So ....What they could prove, and all that we can...does not eliminate Kate as being the donor, nor the note being from her killer. Its human, the right age from its rightful location, and its trimmed, as the author suggested by his contention he ate some. The author also suggests that Lusk will have other opportunities to "Catch him". Which seems in keeping with a serial killers desire to continue killing until stopped.

Its IMHO the best bet for a real communique from a killer of a Canon victim. And it addresses only one victim, at least from the "Double" Night. For any people who think Stride is a mistake in the Canon, an interesting detail.

Best regards all.

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, do you remember 'The Times' story from March 1985 where the handwriting expert Derek Davis pronounced on the Lusk letter?

If not, I'll quote:

'The letter to Mr Lusk showed evidence of a natural slant to the left'.

Thanks, AP. Tis pity, then, that - contrary to your perception - no such left-slanting bias occurs in the 17th September letter. I've drawn some red lines through the "axis" of each of the characters, as you can see below:



I've only done half the letter, because (a) I was getting tired; and (b) the rest of it carries on in the same vein. Whatever, you'll note that the majority of the strokes are right-leaning. Looking at the strokes on their own, in a slightly more eye-friendly shade, confirms this:



...no joy there, I fear. Out of 102 strokes in this sample, I count 25 sloping more-or-less to the left, 26 more-or-less vertical, whilst the majority (a total of 51) slope to the right.

[Cap'n Jack]

That's funny, Sam, you almost stopped the process on account of me spitting out a fine St Lucian rum when I read your post.

Sam, do you remember 'The Times' story from March 1985 where the handwriting expert Derek Davis pronounced on the Lusk letter?
If not, I'll quote:

'The letter to Mr Lusk showed evidence of a natural slant to the left'.

Do you know how rare that slant to the left was - and still is - and how few people employ that slant which was known in Victorian times as 'backhand writing'?
I've searched long and hard to find that slant in some connection to the Whitechapel Murders; and I believe it is visible in only the Openshaw and 17th September letters.
Oh, and of course here, the 'Sun' 13 February 1894:

'The letter is in a peculiar sloping backhand writing which its writer sometimes employed'.

[Sam Flynn]

I'd say, Sam, that your argument is flat, whilst mine is splendidly rotund.

...I should really defer to your superior knowledge of what organs look like after they've been steeped in strong alcohol for a period of time, AP, but I'm afraid I can't.

[Cap'n Jack]

I'd say, Sam, that your argument is flat, whilst mine is splendidly rotund.

[Sam Flynn]

Under his primitive microscope he would have continued to check the sample by examining the renal-arterial segments as they are radically different in porcine and human specimens.

...assuming the piece of kidney still contained sufficient of the renal artery to allow that to be done, AP, or that Openshaw knew enough about comparative pig/human anatomy to deliberately look for any such differences. This is somewhat doubtful, at least in respect of the arterial structure, as we find this in an article from 1996:

"The pig kidney is similar in structure and function to the human kidney, thus making it a useful model in understanding the human kidney in health and disease. However, little is known about the branching pattern of the pig renal artery as compared with the human and other animals.... Whereas the branching pattern of the renal artery of the human kidney has been carefully examined and illustrated (Graves, 1954), less information exists for the blood vessels of the pig kidney (Boyce et al., 1979; Xu et al., 1994)." (The Anatomical Record, Volume 246, Issue 2, pp 217-223)

If "little was known" about the branching of pig renal arteries vs the human equivalent in 1996, I doubt that Openshaw would have been that clued up about the subject some 108 years earlier. Incidentally, the article cited above begins:

"A variety of kidneys have been studied to understand the human kidney better. Of these, the pig possesses a kidney that most closely resembles the structural and functional features of the human kidney. In particular, kidneys from both are classified as multipapillary or multilobar with an identical papillary and calyceal organization. The adult organs have similar weight, size, and number of nephrons."

What you say in general is fine by me, AP, and I have no particular issues with Openshaw, except inasmuch as the best could have achieved in 1888 was to state his belief that it was part of a human kidney. Given the comparative vasculature of porcine and human kidneys was yet to be documented even as late as the 1990s, and given the high degree of other similarities betwen the two noted in the second excerpt above, I still don't rule out the possibility that he may have been hoodwinked as to the species from which it was taken. Or should that be "hog-winked"?

[Cap'n Jack]

Dan, I take umbrage with your suggestion that the police would have provided Lusk with police protection anyway even if the kidney had been the result of a prank or a hoax.
Police protection would only have been provided for Lusk if there was a genuine belief that his life was in danger from the Whitechapel Murderer, this in turn would indicate that they took the matter of the kidney very seriously indeed, and believed it to be a genuine threat against a member of the WVC.
The conclusion being that the police believed the letter and kidney to be genuine articles linked to the Whitechapel Murders.
Similarly the caution for one of their police surgeons to not publicise his findings concerning the kidney does appear to confirm authority on the articles being genuine.

[Cap'n Jack]

Sam, as laymen I don't believe we could tell the difference between a human and pig kidney, but let's at least give Openshaw the credit of being one of the finest pathologists of his age, and although he had no MRI scanner or the like, he did have his hands and his eyes.
Taking the kidney section in his hand he would have immediately checked to see if the section was flattish or slightly rotund. If flat he would have known that he was dealing with a pig kidney; if slightly rotund then human.
To confirm his diagnosis he would have examined the section under the microscope - which he did - and there he would have found a thin medulla if the section was of porcine origin; and a much thicker medulla if human.
Under his primitive microscope he would have continued to check the sample by examining the renal-arterial segments as they are radically different in porcine and human specimens.
Job done.

[Dan Norder]

Appreciated, Dan, but you'll find that all of the medics who examined the section of the kidney did reach one conclusive agreement, that the section of human kidney was very recent.

More recent, in fact, than Eddowes had been killed. About as recent as the news coverage of the inquest mentioning that her kidney had been taken.

[Cap'n Jack]

I meant, Stewart, that there would not have been medical students involved unless the body had gone to a hospital for dissection purposes; which is what I said in the first place.
By the time the medical students got their grubby little hands on the body the kidney would have been no longer in the well preserved state it was.
Unless someone around here is speculating that a police surgeon might have nicked it at autopsy?

[Stewart P Evans]

What?

As was pointed out in 1888 by the medics, a body would not have been released to a London Hospital for dissection until after a Coroner's Inquest, and only then in a case of manslaughter or murder.
I think you know that I follow this kind of thing.

What does this mean? A body was always autopsied before the inquest.