Lusk Letter sent to George Lusk of the vigilante committee

[Cap'n Jack]

I'm not speculating with you, Sam, I'm disagreeing with you... that a fine pathologist like Openshaw would have known more about sections of kidney than you or Dan is absolutely bloody obvious.
Your arguments in this regard are becoming tedious.
They start off with 'well it could have been a pig's kidney', then when it is established that the kidney is without a doubt a human kidney, you argue left and right kidney, when any decent pathologist will tell you that in a second; then it comes to male and female kidney and you claim that there is no distinction, when there has been a medical distinction between the male and female kidney since biblical times.
I'd trust you with a hill walk in Wales, Sam, but little else.

[Sam Flynn]

I'm not speculating with you, Sam, I'm disagreeing with you... that a fine pathologist like Openshaw would have known more about sections of kidney than you or Dan is absolutely bloody obvious.
Your arguments in this regard are becoming tedious.

Neither the science nor the techniques by which one could have sexed or karyotyped this portion kidney was available at the time. Period. Full stop. End of story. Openshaw could no more have said with certainty that it was part of a woman's kidney, still less Eddowes', than he could have analysed its DNA.

And - yes - since the pig's kidney is morphologically very similar to a human's, there is a legitimate reason to doubt whether, for all his knowledge, he might have been hoodwinked. If he had never studied the comparative anatomy of the pig, to the level where he understood the subtle difference between pork and human offal, then we have even more reason to question his opinion. I wish to God that Lusk and co. had taken the darned thing to the nearest vet, then we might have known for certain. As it is, I can't rule out the possibility.

If I have to repeat these points of fact to the point of tedium, it's because of your tedious refusal to accept them.

[Cap'n Jack]

So according to you, Sam, the police did not want to publicise the fact that it was a pig's kidney because it was in fact a human kidney?
I would suggest a stiff brandy, Sam.

[Dan Norder]

Be careful of lumping people and positions together, AP.

I'm not trying to argue that it wasn't a human kidney, or even that it might not have been. I only brought up the human kidney part to point out that that was what the police didn't want to get out, not your idea that the doctors claimed kidney really came from Eddowes.

Yes, Openshaw would have known more about human kidneys than Sam or I do. Openshaw said it came from a human. But that's all he said... he did not say that it was from a female, not that it had Bright's disease, not that it was of a certain age, etc.

So if you, AP, want to say that we should respect Openshaw's opinion, great -- but he and other doctors thought it was not taken from Eddowes and that it was probably a prank by a medical student. So if you respect Openshaw's opinion then you'll have to change your position, AP, because there's no medical evidence to support what you are trying to claim here.

[Sam Flynn]

So according to you, Sam, the police did not want to publicise the fact that it was a pig's kidney because it was in fact a human kidney?

No - they might have genuinely believed that it was a piece (I reiterate, a PIECE) of human kidney. Doubtless the accompanying letter, and the fact that Eddowes had had her kidney removed, helped point their opinion in that direction. Ditto Openshaw. However, there's a possibility that he, and they, were mistaken in that belief.

Whether they were mistaken or not, the fact remains that neither the techniques nor the knowledge existed at the time to prove it was female, still less the person - or pig - that it might have been taken from. Openshaw could no more have done that than run an MRI scan on it, cloned it, injected its mitochondria into a rat embryo, or attached it to the back of a Von Neumann probe and fired it off to the outer reaches of the Solar System.

Is this "lack of science and technology" thing finally sinking in, AP?

[Cap'n Jack]

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.
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.

[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.

[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?

[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]

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.

[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.

[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]

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

[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]

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'.