what is the general opinion ?

[Jason]

on why there were no murders in the month of october 1888 ?

[Graham]

on why there were no murders in the month of october 1888 ?

He was on holiday in Blackpool.

Graham

[Jason]

hadnt thought of that....now all we need to do is get all the hotel registers for that month in Blackpool and see if a Mr Ripper stayed there for the month ...case solved

[Paddy Goose]

He was on holiday in Blackpool.

And sure enough -

[Jason]

the murdering bastard...up to his knees in blood once again....then again a month in Blackpool is enough to turn one into a deranged 19th century serial killeer

[JTRSickert]

To me, it's simple. It's one of 2 things. Either he was not in London during the month of October, or he decided to "law low" for awhile until the heat was turned down. Remember, 2 murders occured in one night, with 2 different police agenicies hunting him, not to mention the Mile End Vigilance Committee. So, until things returned to a bit of normalcy in his area, he head to chill for a bit. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the damage he did to MJK's body was not only because he had an element of privacy, but because he needed to vent all his pent up frustration and desire.

[curious]

but because he needed to vent all his pent up frustration and desire.

Then why did he stop?

[Brenda]

The school of thought used to be that serial killers didn't quit...but the BTK killer and the Green River guy have proven this just isn't true. Maybe JTR died or went to prison....or.....maybe he just stopped killing.
I'm starting to truly believe we may never know.

[Jonathan H]

I provisionally agree with the late Assistant Commissioner, Sir Melville Macnaghten, and the late Member of Parliament, Henry Farquharson, and a late member -- or members -- of the Druitt family, who all believed that Montie was the Ripper.

Therefore, Druitt may have skipped October because the 'Double Event' had frayed his nerves as he was so close to getting caught.

Or, he was two busy as a barrister, with a big civil case coming up for the Tory Party, and as a school master. So over-stretched that it may have gotten him dismissed from his teaching job, a decision he disputed by refusing to resign.

Or, having unexpectedly achieved an unplanned double homicide Druitt decided to rest until Lord Mayor's Day in Nov. which he wanted spoiled by the most hideous murder yet -- to ruthlessly and effectively bring to the attention of the 'better' classes the appalling conditions of the East End, if Tom Cullen's thesis is correct.

[Gman992]

Well, considering that with each murder, he only had a limited amount of time, and let's face, he almost got caught 3 out of 5 times---Mary Nichols, Catherine Eddowes, and Elizabeth Stride. You had double patrols, two city police departments looking for him, not to mention that vigilante's every where...plus I do believe that a couple of prostitutes were attacked, but they screamed bloody muder and got away. So, it is not really interesting though, that the next murder was completly indoors where he took his time.

[Limehouse]

I provisionally agree with the late Assistant Commissioner, Sir Melville Macnaghten, and the late Member of Parliament, Henry Farquharson, and a late member -- or members -- of the Druitt family, who all believed that Montie was the Ripper.

Therefore, Druitt may have skipped October because the 'Double Event' had frayed his nerves as he was so close to getting caught.

Or, he was two busy as a barrister, with a big civil case coming up for the Tory Party, and as a school master. So over-stretched that it may have gotten him dismissed from his teaching job, a decision he disputed by refusing to resign.

Or, having unexpectedly achieved an unplanned double homicide Druitt decided to rest until Lord Mayor's Day in Nov. which he wanted spoiled by the most hideous murder yet -- to ruthlessly and effectively bring to the attention of the 'better' classes the appalling conditions of the East End, if Tom Cullen's thesis is correct.

That doesn't seem to be a very good way to show concern for the poor - chop them up and leave them on the streets/in their beds with their innards and privates on show!

Maybe the killer went out looking for a victim in October but the opportunity to kill did not present itself. Couldn't it be as simple as that?

[Jonathan H]

Actually 'chopping up' prostitutes and leaving their 'innards on show', as a form of direct action to help the poor, was both evil and brutally effective.

This is nothing new. Terrorists and political extremists, then and now, justify their carnage against innocents by claiming that the ends justify the means, that the few must be sacrificed for the many, and so on ad nauseum.

As the young George Bernard Shaw and the East End poor's champion, the Rev Barnett and his wife, all noted -- amongst others at the time -- the Ripper murders helped turn around the attitude of the middle and upper classes towards looking upon the impoverished of Whitechapel/Spitalfield's 'evil quarter-mile' with sympathy and shame.

The Ripper crimes actually spurred the state towards some attempts towards progressive reforms in housing and sanitation. Barnett said that at least the 'crucifixion' of these Unfortunates had led to some social good.

Shaw, with his delicious, tasteless wit, hoped that the Fiend would next murder a Duchess and see if that brought about even more Socialistic reform. That the murderer, he wrote, was 'some independent genius' who had worked out that pamphlets, marches, and meetings were useless compared to just offing a few dregs in the street -- in rubbing the collective face of the ruling elite with the shocking misery of these people's lives via their ghastly deaths -- had 'converted the proprietary classes' to a primitive form of Communism.

In 1965, in his flawed but masterly 'Autumn of Terror', the American Marxist Tom Cullen took Shaw's sick joke about a 'deranged social experimentalist' seriously, arguing that this was Oxonian Druitt's true motive for murdering prostitutes miles from where he lived and worked -- especially after it was so risky to keep making Whitechapel his killing zone.

[Limehouse]

Hi Jonathan,

You are quite correct to point out the attention drawn to the plight of the poor as a result of the murders but I seriously doubt that this was the objective of the murderer.

[Jonathan H]

Not only do you doubt it, but this theory never got traction even as a populist myth in the 60's, despite Cullen's successful book coming out a mere two years after Kim Philby, a Cambridge gentleman, had defected to the Soviet Union. Philby had betrayed his country since college as the KGB's 'third man'. In fact, Philby was a full colonel in the Soviet spy service and worked only for the Russians, and thus technically was not a double agent.

Small comfort to the English victims he destroyed.

One might have expected in the Cold War, and in the shadow of Philby's defection, that Cullen's 'deranged social reformer' would catch on, regardless of its merits or demerits as an historical theory.

It did not and is long, long forgotten, and today considered no more than an archaic footnote and, at best, baseless conjecture.

I think that Macnaghten's 'errors' about Druitt were so inherently disappointing in the 60's that out of the ashes of the Drowned Doctor paradigm emerged the Royal Watergate myth. The new belief that Druitt was such a weak suspect, and so many police lies were woven around him, that the Yard and the govt. were deflecting us from the devastating truth, and on the nonsense goes ...

I am trying to revive the 'deranged social reformer' theory for debate, though so far I have no fellow adherents -- not even among die-hard Leftists.

[Hunter]

Hi Jonathan,

I remember Cullen; my first ripper book. He was the end of a long line of "social reformers' demonstrating the so-called moral injustice of capitalism by making Jack the creation of it or a perverted avenging angel for the greater good of humanity; the same excuse Stalin used to purge out undesirables of the state. Everything these people ever created was a myth because Eutopia is and never can be based on reality.

We have to admit, however, that it was people like this, starting with the Pall Mall Gazette, then Shaw, London and so on, that actually made and perpetuated the Legend of Jack the Ripper; the same theology that later made heroes out of Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger and other miscreants during the great depression. The likes of Anderson, Macnaghten or even Sims couldn't have done so much giving their narrow scope of influence.

The reality of a lone psychopathic serial killer destroying a half dozen or less "unfortunates" in the autumn of 1888 for his own deranged, selfish desires would probably have, over time, become a mere footnote in the local history of London's East End.