Lusk Letter sent to George Lusk of the vigilante committee

[Sam Flynn]

Maybe Sam, it is Paul Begg to whom you should direct your quarrel.

My only quarrel - if that it be - is with the ghost of Gurgling-Plughole Smith, and those of a sufficiently humourless disposition to say they disrespect me for coining that rather catchy nickname, Nats.

Everything I wrote above about Smith's account of himself, Sutton and the kidney still stands - because it's da facts.

[Natalie Severn]

Maybe Sam, it is Paul Begg to whom you should direct your quarrel.He quotes reliable periodicals such as the British Medical Journal,The Lancet as well as Medico -Chirurgical Transactions regarding the reknowned expertise of Sutton and explains his reasons in quite a bit of depth----one regarding the City Police Surgeon ,Gordon Brown,whom Acting City Chief Commissioner of Police ,Henry Smith, called upon to examine the corpse of Catherine Eddowes and conduct a post mortem.Paul Begg states , as being of crucial significance here,the fact that this City Police Surgeon, Gordon Brown asked Dr Sutton as well "as another senior surgeon of the London Hospital" to meet with him,in consultation.The consensus being that the kidney had been put in spirits within a few hours of being removed from the body.Thus "dispelling of all hoaxes in connection with it" etc etc.
As I say your dispute should really be addressed to the author ,Paul Begg ,rather than myself,although I myself am perfectly happy to accept the surgeons opinions and therefore Paul"s reasoning over the matter in question.
Best
Norma

[Cap'n Jack]

By this, Sam: "Gurgling-Plughole", are you not doing that:
'All this smacks of the usual "impressive detail" that is sometimes wheeled out to give the tang of credibility to urban legends, I'm sorry. And we have more than our fair share of those in the Ripper case.'

'Gurgling Plughole'... where you going with that?

Total disrespect to you.

[Sam Flynn]

Sorry, Nats, but I don't see that this follows at all. For one thing, as mentioned, there was no definitive test available at the time that could have identified the organ as having come from a woman, still less from Catherine Eddowes.

Secondly, we believe - from contemporary sources - that Dr Brown, FS Reed and Thomas Openshaw saw the offending article. Where was Sutton in all this?

Thirdly, where were any of them in confirming that Catherine Eddowes suffered from Bright's Disease, and where is the contemporary evidence that the Lusk kidney-portion showed evidence of the same syndrome? The best the contemporary press give us, for what it's worth, is that the kidney was "ginny" - and we know that deduction to be dubious.

The rest comes from Major "Gurgling-Plughole" Smith in 1910. It's worth remembering that Smith's reference to Sutton has the good doctor commenting only on the state of preservation of the specimen, rather than bringing his considerable expertise to bear on the diagnosis of Bright's Disease. One would have thought he might have done so - being as he was an acknowledged expert in that syndrome, as opposed to being a world authority on the finer points of pickled offal.

All this smacks of the usual "impressive detail" that is sometimes wheeled out to give the tang of credibility to urban legends, I'm sorry. And we have more than our fair share of those in the Ripper case.

Lest any doubt exist about the reliability of Smith's memoir, it's worth bearing in mind that not once does George Lusk get a mention therein. Neither for that matter do FS Reed and - remarkably! - Thomas Horrocks Openshaw. As if that weren't enough, let's see precisely what "Gurgling-Plughole" has to say for himself about what happened immediately the package was received:

"some days after the murder what purported to be that kidney was posted to the office of the Central News, together with a short note of rather a jocular character unfit for publication. Both kidney and note the manager at once forwarded to me."

Some points to note:

1) We know that the kidney was sent to George Lusk, not the Central News;

2) The content of the letter was far from jocular; in fact, it was one of the most sinister missives of them all. Either Smith never saw the "From Hell" missive (probably), or he had forgotten the gist of what it said (how could one forget that?). Either way, he appears to have cottoned on to the myth of "Joker Jack", much as the "Maybrick" diarists seem to have done, and erroneously attributed this jocularity to the Lusk Letter;

3) The notion that the letter was unfit for publication is nonsensical - most newspapers printed the text of the Lusk Letter practically in its entirety, including the Star, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Times.

4) Finally, the manager of the Central News did not send Smith the kidney/letter combo - least of all "at once" - simply because the manager of the CN never received it in the first place.

All those bits I posted in bold, taken directly from Gurgling-Plughole's memoirs, are either delusional, or outright lies on his part.

[Dan Norder]

Paul Begg reminds readers therefore in his book "Jack the Ripper: The Facts",that Major Smith may well have been talking" with the backing of Henry Gawen Sutton" and that one must therefore give credit to what Smith says and accept the possibility that the lusk kidney had been extracted from Catherine Eddowes.

In other words, Paul Begg made a highly speculative hypothesis about what could have happened without anything to back it up and expects it to be given serious consideration just because he came up with it. This is a particularly odd idea to believe when important parts of what Smith said about the kidney can be shown to be false by consulting far more reliable sources. In general Smith's comments are quite unreliable.

[Natalie Severn]

All we have on any sort of authority is that Openshaw thought it to be a human kidney. All the rest - from its "ginniness", the remnant of the renal vasculature, to the supposed sex and age of its owner - derives from press agency reports regurgitated in various papers, or from demonstrably suspect memoirs written years after the event....how about an eighteen year-old male's? Don't forget that, as far as the kidneys and most other organs are concerned, "maturity" might span several decades.

Besides, it's worth repeating, we are not talking about "A" kidney - we are talking about a "PIECE" of kidney that had been soaked in absolute alcohol for some time before it was examined.

Henry Gawen Sutton was a physician and lecturer in pathological anatomy at London hospital.This has a very particular relevance to what Major Smith wrote on the subject.......for Sutton was indeed THE leading authority on Brights disease and with no less a chap as William Withey Gull,[the William Gull of Ripper fame] they both published a revolutionary paper "on the pathology of the morbid state commonly called Brights" Disease with contracted kidney[arterio-capillery fibrosis].Indeed, Gull and Sutton gave their names to "Gull -Sutton syndrome" ie -arteriosclerotic fibrosis of the kidney.
Paul Begg reminds readers therefore in his book "Jack the Ripper: The Facts",that Major Smith may well have been talking" with the backing of Henry Gawen Sutton" and that one must therefore give credit to what Smith says and accept the possibility that the lusk kidney had been extracted from Catherine Eddowes.

[joelhall]

We don't know that Openshaw did deduce as much, other than from sources of dubious authenticity or integrity. I say again, there was nothing that could have identified a piece of kidney as female in 1888. There still isn't today - at least not anatomically, or even within the grasp of a light microscope.

Just in case, I've just read the entire relevant chapter in my copy of Gray's Anatomy (36th Edition, 1980; pp. 1,387-1,402) and it has nothing at all to say about anatomical sex differences in the kidney. In fact, all it mentions is the average weight (females approx. 135g, males approx. 150g), which we've been through already.

correct... though my puzzle was why he believed it to be female. youve now answered this for me thanks (yet again) i was of the belief that he stated this first hand live & learn eh?

joel

[Sam Flynn]

i still think there may be something missing from this puzzle, which lead him to deduce it was female.

We don't know that Openshaw did deduce as much, other than from sources of dubious authenticity or integrity. I say again, there was nothing that could have identified a piece of kidney as female in 1888. There still isn't today - at least not anatomically, or even within the grasp of a light microscope.

Just in case, I've just read the entire relevant chapter in my copy of Gray's Anatomy (36th Edition, 1980; pp. 1,387-1,402) and it has nothing at all to say about anatomical sex differences in the kidney. In fact, all it mentions is the average weight (females approx. 135g, males approx. 150g), which we've been through already.

[joelhall]

One thing we can say for certain is that in 1888, with all his training, he would have been completely unable to sex the organ - sorry, HALF organ, trimmed - without getting into a TARDIS and speeding forward into the 20th Century to analyse its sex-chromosomes. Even then, he would have been unable to ascertain its age with any great certainty, and might even have found to his horror that it belonged to a creature more used to snaffling acorns than quaffing gin.

im still not completely convinced this is the case, as i still doubt hed give a legal-medical opinion if he wasnt more certain than not. im not saying that he knew 100% but it seems unlikely hed take this risk and lead the police up the garden path.

i still think there may be something missing from this puzzle, which lead him to deduce it was female, but as i said already, i do not believe it came from eddowes.

[Sam Flynn]

To credit the most eminent clinical pathologist of his age as not being able to distinguish the difference between a pig and human kidney, does you no credit.

I'm not doing anything of the sort, AP. Apart from the fact that Openshaw himself may well have blushed at being called "the most eminent clinical pathologist of his age", my quibble is with Major Smith, the Central News Agency and - possibly - the sorcerer's apprentice himself, FS Reed. All we have with any reasonable certainty from Openshaw is that the kidney - sorry, HALF kidney, trimmed - was likely to have been human.

We don't know the extent of Openshaw's scrutiny of the organ - he may just have looked at it in its box, or dangled it from a pair of tweezers, for all we know. It's worth bearing in mind the possibility that the story of Catherine Eddowes' nephrectomy was so well-publicised that his judgment may have been swayed in this matter. I certainly wouldn't put it past the press to have "managed expectations" - the public's, if not Openshaw's - in this regard.

One thing we can say for certain is that in 1888, with all his training, he would have been completely unable to sex the organ - sorry, HALF organ, trimmed - without getting into a TARDIS and speeding forward into the 20th Century to analyse its sex-chromosomes. Even then, he would have been unable to ascertain its age with any great certainty, and might even have found to his horror that it belonged to a creature more used to snaffling acorns than quaffing gin.

[joelhall]

Joel, Sam is always on stronger ground than me, they have hills in Wales, and all I have is a flat earth theory.

they also have close-harmony singing not all good in wales haha

[Cap'n Jack]

Joel, Sam is always on stronger ground than me, they have hills in Wales, and all I have is a flat earth theory.

[joelhall]

Sam, you are being very overbearing here.
Openshaw had the science to determine right or left kidney, without question; he also had the science to tell him that the kidney came from a person who took too much alcohol, that without question.
The Victorian doctors believed they had found a reliable indicator from kidney secretions in determining the sexual origins of that kidney.
You are arguing with them, not me.
You are out of date by over one hundred years, and you are introducing modern research into a subject that died with the victims.
I believe that Openshaw was making an opinion based on the science of his time, and I believe that his opinion was right.
To credit the most eminent clinical pathologist of his age as not being able to distinguish the difference between a pig and human kidney, does you no credit, Sam, and if the old boy could stand up from his grave I'm sure he would punch you for that.

to be fair to both of you...

sam - i would take the opinion of a pathologist over the opinion of a surgeon, as he is more qualified and experience to make pathological calls, whereas a surgeon would not have this.

jack - sam i feel is on stronger ground here. the science may have changed but human body structure has been the same for quite a few millenia.

joel

[Cap'n Jack]

I wouldn't let Nick Warren anywhere near my brandy let alone me kidlies.

[joelhall]

You might be interested to read, in that article I referred to, the opinions of Nick Warren, a qualified surgeon, on this matter.

ok. thanks for the link

joel