Lusk Letter sent to George Lusk of the vigilante committee

[Christine]

What do you mean by "heavier than a man" Cap'n? In a typical group of 100 men and 100 women, the smallest 10% will be mostly female and the largest 10% will be mostly male. But most of the men will still be smaller than the very largest female, and most of the women will be larger than the smallest man, so most women will in fact be "heavier than a man."

Now my statistics are less than perfect, and I haven't read through this article, (I will if I can figure out where you got it from) but it appears that a kidney that weighs 170g is equally likely to be from a man or a woman. Kidneys heavier than that are more likely to be male; smaller are more likely to be female. It should be possible to say something like "a kidney that weighs 160g is 55% likely to be female and 45% likely to be male." It may or may not be possible to say that from information given in the article you quote. The authors of that paper were not interested in that particular bit of information.

What you can say from the snippet you quote is that most kidneys are of a weight that could be either male of female. And as Sam Flynn points out, the range among each sex is large compared to the differences. Plus there's the fact that people are larger now than they were in the LVP, so any inferences we draw from the paper are not quantitatively correct, although they are probably still generally correct. And it was not a whole kidney, it was not handled with care, was not fresh, and was soaking in ethanol. So we don't even know how much the thing weighed, let along would have weighed had it been properly handled.

I've often thought that the kidney probably came before the letter. That is, some joker was dissecting a woman, said "hey, look, she's got Bright's disease!" and decided to send the thing off.

[Cap'n Jack]

Sam
are you going for the 3 women with heavier brains then men or the 97?

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, you are dismissing averages in favour of exceptions.

I'm not, AP. You're perhaps misinterpreting what an "exception" really means. Look at the following graph.


-|
-|o
-|o
-|oo
-|ooo
-|oooooo (150g)
-|ooooooo (155g)
-|ooooooooooo (160g)
-|ooooooooooooo (166g)
-|oooooooooooo (170g)
-|ooooooo (175g)
-|oooooo (180g)
-|ooo
-|oo
-|o
-|


The red column in the middle represents the average, but there are significant numbers of data points clustering either side of it, coloured amber, that span a wide range. However, these don't constitute "exceptions" at all. These are no more exceptions than a man of 5'7" would be considered "exceptional" if the average male height in a population were 5'9".

[Cap'n Jack]

Sam, you are dismissing averages in favour of exceptions.
As a for instance, out of 100 women and 100 men, how many women would have a heavier brain than a man?
Is it 3?
Or 97?
The same rule does apply to the kidneys.

I think the Openshaw letter to be pivotal to this case, as I do the Lusk letter, and I must say I'm not convinced by your arguments that a 'hoaxer' would have picked Openshaw to write to, when Brown and Bond were so much more obvious victims for such a letter.
Openshaw only put in one show at the Old Bailey, where he gave evidence in 1885 against an 18 year old boy who had slit his girlfriend's throat. The boy was from a 'good' family, liked to write letters, and was a part time barman.
He was found not guilty, and was roaming the streets in 1888.
My suggestion is that Ernest Payne wrote the Openshaw letter.

Thanks for addressing my points Stewart, though you seem to be far less convinced than I that this has potential to be an authentic "communique". I was under the impression that medical students and surgeons preserved organs in glycerine, not "spirits". Isnt that correct?

The science your applying is interesting Sam and Cap'n, but wasnt there some indication that the kidney section showed Brights Disease onset....which her remaining right one did as well?

I know Openshaws backpeddling...or "corrections" to his statements have left us with a kidney section that is only a human kidney section, without any clues to its origins....but Im with the Cap'n in thinking that there were other things that could be learned from it....with someone skilled like Thomas Horrocks Openshaw doing the assessing.

The fact that it had been extracted roughly at the time Kates was, surely must be factored as well. Only medical students or surgeons would regularly have access to such an organ, but again the "spirits" as a preserving agent wasnt what they would use normally. If they extracted a sample from a cadaver...it was likely under operating theatre conditions, and so why would spirits be used?

Best regards all.

[Sam Flynn]

But, AP - there is significant uncertainty above or below the average. Unless a sample is badly skewed, the peak of the curve will coincide broadly with the average, and there will "outliers" either side of the central point representing the natural variation in the population. In the case of the example you provide, the "outliers" are some 30 grammes either side of the average for both males and females - which means a total "window" of 60 grammes. This amount of variation is vastly greater than the trifiling 10 gramme difference between the male and female averages. This further implies that there is a large degree of overlap between the two genders in terms of kidney weight, and hence a significant margin for error.

It is precisely the same with other bodily characteristics - yes, there are averages, but there is a large amount of variation either side of those averages within both sexes, and there is a large degree of overlap. One can no more state that "a kidney weighs X grammes, therefore it came from a woman", than one can say that "a person is six feet high, therefore that person must be a man". It's as simple as that.

[Cap'n Jack]

Sam, there is plenty of information out there showing that there is a real difference in the weight of male and female kidneys, of course there is the always the exception to the rule, but I would have thought that any surgeon in the LVP would have weighed the kidney first to determine the sex of the individual concerned, and made his decision on the normal sequence, before perhaps hesitating over his decision because of the exceptions to the rule.

'This is supported by the same kidney to body weight ratio of female kidneys in ... underlining the difference between kidneys of female and male origin. ...
pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/kidn/fulltext.00005489-199905000-00039.htm - Similar pages

[Sam Flynn]

No worries, Sam, I'm quite sure that Openshaw was aware of the fact that male kidneys were heavier than female kidneys.

AP - the sample you gave above shows, without any fear of contradiction, that a male kidney could be fully 50g lighter than a female's. It also shows that a kidney's weight is related to the donor's gender AND their body mass index taken together. The multiple regression technique used is a means of finding correlations where one has to take more than one variable into consideration - in this case, gender, body mass index and weight of kidney - where a simple relationship between pairs of variables does not exist. In other words, it would be invalid to say "If a kidney weighs 172g, then it must have come from a man" - because 172g falls comfortably within the range given for female kidneys.

The notation "166.4 ± 29.2g" means that, in this sample, a woman's kidney on average weighed 166.4 grammes, but some weighed 29.2 grammes less than that, or 137.2g, whereas some other female kidneys weighed as much as 195.6g - which is way over the average of 177.5g for a male kidney.

Likewise, "177.5 ± 32.5g" for a male kidney means that some male kidneys were found to weigh as little as 145g - which is much less than the average weight of 166.4g for a female kidney.

One needs the other datum (i.e. body mass index of the donor) in order to make any reasonable assumption as to the donor's gender. The additional parameter is needed, if you like, as a "tie-breaker" to guard against drawing an incorrect conclusion as to the owner's gender. Taking a single datum in isolation (i.e. the mass of the kidney) would be no good at all, especially when the variation is around 30 grammes either way, which is what we have here.

[Cap'n Jack]

No worries, Sam, I'm quite sure that Openshaw was aware of the fact that male kidneys were heavier than female kidneys, and that this had no relation whatsoever to body mass.
I'll leave you to clutch at straws whilst I drink me brandy through 'em.

[Sam Flynn]

And just to warn you, Sam:

'The mean value of kidney weight was 170 ± 31 g (166.4 ± 29.2 g in women and 177.5 ± 32.5 g in men). The kidney weight had a correlation with the donor's BMI (r = 0.43, P < 0.001) and with the CrCl on the 12th month (r = 0.31, P = 0.001). Using multiple linear regression, the kidney weight could be predicted through the BMI and donor's gender (R2 = 0.21; P < 0.01). The CrCl after 12 months had a significant correlation with the graft weight/recipient weight ratio and with the donor age (R2 = 0.22; P < 0.01).

Conclusion. The kidney weight can be estimated using the donor's gender and BMI.'

No need to warn, AP, as I'm always interested to learn new facts - and I'm sure Openshaw would have been fascinated to learn this too. If only he'd had access to this sort of research back in 1888 he might have availed himself of it, although I doubt it would have helped him for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the parameters of "166.4 ± 29.2 g in women; 177.5 ± 32.5 g in men" contain such a wide degree of variation that it's quite possible that a woman could have a kidney more than 50g heavier than a man's. Secondly, this research tells us that one would need to know the donor's body mass index in order to draw any inference from the weight of the organ. Finally, this research was presumably carried out on fresh, living kidneys due for transplantation, whereas all poor Thomas "Horlicks" Openshaw had to work with was a mere portion of dead tissue that had been pickled in absolute alcohol for days before being sent across London wrapped only in a cardboard box.

[Cap'n Jack]

And just to warn you, Sam:

'The mean value of kidney weight was 170 ± 31 g (166.4 ± 29.2 g in women and 177.5 ± 32.5 g in men). The kidney weight had a correlation with the donor's BMI (r = 0.43, P < 0.001) and with the CrCl on the 12th month (r = 0.31, P = 0.001). Using multiple linear regression, the kidney weight could be predicted through the BMI and donor's gender (R2 = 0.21; P < 0.01). The CrCl after 12 months had a significant correlation with the graft weight/recipient weight ratio and with the donor age (R2 = 0.22; P < 0.01).

Conclusion. The kidney weight can be estimated using the donor's gender and BMI.'

[Cap'n Jack]

I think that we get to the smelly crutch of the business at hand.
Is it not true to suggest that Openshaw could have identified the kidney as male or female by simply weighing it, or even taking slices and then examining them under his Mikospoke?
Is it not true to suggest that he could have estimated the age of the victim from the damage to the kidney?
Is it not true to suggest that the kidney would have more likely been prasarved by a barman rather than a medical student?
Is it not true to suggest that the whole 'medical student' idea was brought about by this report in 'The Times' of the 22nd October 1888, which appears to damn any other victims to history as 'medical pranks'?

[diana]

Inconsistent Use of Spelling Rules

I was an elementary school teacher in another incarnation. Here is my analysis of the phonetic and spelling errors.
Mr Lusk,
Sor
I send you half [Author is aware of the silent l in half] the Kidne [Even though this is a misspelling, author knows that an e at the end of a word can be long when it is not silent. Examples: me, be, we.] I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece [author got “I before e except after c”, correct and thus avoided a common error] I fried and ate it was very nise [Author substituted s for sibilant c in nise but used sibilant c correctly in “piece” Why not “piese”?]. I may send you the bloody [Author recognizes that y at the end of a word can make the long e sound, but ignores the rule in “Kidne”] knif [This word is the most telling in the whole letter. Author recognizes the rule about silent k but ignores the much more common rule about silent e at the end of a word making the vowel in the middle long.] that took it out if you only wate [Author misspells the word but uses the silent e rule to do so. He ignores the silent e rule in “knif” and “whil”.] a whil [Author ignores the silent e rule in whil] longer
Signed [Author uses more complex less known rule that states that ign can be pronounced with a long i, a silentg and an n.]
Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

[Stewart P Evans]

Lusk Kidney

If anyone is still posting regarding the Lusk Letter "From Hell", does anyone have a comment or thought as to why Mr Lusk stuck the note and package in his drawer for a day roughly, before even telling anyone he had received it?
I personally agree with Elias...this of all the communications makes me wonder...and not because it had a kidney section. Thats sort of the "icing".
Even if there was no way to authenticate the kidney section as being from Kate Eddowes, it was believed to be human, and female, and taken from a body within the previous two weeks... from its arrival at Lusks, and preserved in a manner inconsistent with lab samples or student disections.

Lusk initially (and finally) believed the letter and kidney section to be a hoax which is why he at first didn't do anything with it but then decided to consult his fellow Committee members.

The result of the medical examination of the half kidney by Openshaw and Brown was that it was human. The embellishments of age and sex were 'press gilding' and were contradicted by Openshaw.

The kidney section was consistent with the idea of a medical hoax and this was stated at the time. Spirits of wine was a standard medium for preservation of such items.

Lusk's final opinion was that it was a hoax perpetrated by someone from the London Hospital.

[Sam Flynn]

I just take issue with the correction Sam....I did say it was in a manner inconsistent with Labs or teaching hospitals.

A thousand apologies, Mike. I mis-read totally what you wrote. Must've been tired.