JTR: Not even the skill of a butcher?

[paul emmett]

No, Paul.

They both expressed the opinion the killer had no designs on any specific organ, and that he didn't have "any great anatomical skill". This was said at the inquest, which for obvious reasons carries more weight than The Star. Sugden is simply incorrect to say that they were "explicitly endorsing Brown". They weren't.

Kinda, Ben. After Brown talks about the skill and the pursuit of the kidney. Seq says I heard all Brown said, and " I quite agree with the Doctor in every particular." Then he goes on to say what you said he said, but which certianly contradicts Brown. Saunders says something equally confusing. So you are right regarding what they said, but Sugden is right in that they did, indeed, explicitly endorse Brown.

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

His opinion was that the abdominal injuries in this case had been a "clumsy piece of butchery" and had shown none of the "finesse and skill" of the Whitechapel miscreant.

Well, that's pretty much how Phillips viewed the wounds on Catherine Eddowes.

The point is that Phillips did detect skill in Chapman but not on Eddowes, which at first made him believe it was not the same killer.
Most likely Phillips found himself bound to revise his earlier opinion of the Ripper as a man with surgical knowledge.

His views on Chapman is also full of ridiculous exaggerations, with statements like 'one sweep with the knife' which hardly could have been the case and which does not qualify as a scientifically valid expression.

All the best

[JSchmidt]

I'm sure to get at least some flak for writing it but:
We should try to apply entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Occam's razor).
We already have another killer active in London at the same time, the perpetrator of the cut up victims found in the thames and the "Whitehall Mystery" who has a distinct style to his murders, but even those murders have a broader range of injuries inflicted upon the victims.
Dividing up the c5 into 2 double hits and a copycat leads us to having 3 mutilators active at the same time or at least in a rather narrow timeframe.
And one person willing to mutilate a dying woman even more horribly than the "real" mutilators to mask a "normal" murder.
Seems a wee bit unlikely to me. But I have to admit that I'm hardly as knowledgeable as most readers of this board regarding JtR.
My question is: are the mutilations and taking of organs the only parts of the MO that remain the same? I seem to remember that JtR allegedly strangled or at least throttled his victims before using his knife. And from what I read so far this larger pattern of his MO remained the same for the c5.
Maybe he did not take the organs in this last mutilation because his drive was already spent? Or he was in a haze from the excitement?
It's hard to say in what kind of state he was during the murders.

[Natalie Severn]

No, Nats - the fortysomething who still has his faculties, rather than the old fart exclaiming "By Jove, 'pon my soul! An hysterectomeh? Fifteen minutes at least!".

And hardly a layman, by the way. No surgeon, admittedly, but someone who's cut up enough rats, rabbits and dogfish (not to mention sausages) to have a fair punt at sussing out what JTR did to Annie Chapman, without letting the starch in my collar affect my judgment.

Dr Phillips was 54 at the time and Dr Bond 47.While its true that many police retired at 40 [then as now],because physical fitness /demands of the job etc , the same criterion doesnt and didnt apply to Police Surgeons . 54 is a perfectly acceptable age for a Police Surgeon.
No, you are being subjective Sam.Dr Phillips findings simply dont concur with what you want to believe------or who you want to believe the Ripper was.In your case, its George Hutchinson - a reasonable suspect but not without drawbacks.So in your determination to have "unskilled Hutch" as The Ripper you need to make Dr Phillips out to be a complete fool since someone like Hutchinson is unlikely to have had anatomical knowledge or skill .


regarding Dr Bond:

A reading through of Anderson"s dealings with Dr Bond makes it quite clear that Dr Bond was Anderson"s "yes man".He was called in by Anderson when he needed him to overrule other medical opinion as in the case of Mary Kelly and spectacularly so in the case of Rose Mylett ----where he contradicted FIVE other police surgeons, including A.O.MacKellar,the Surgeon in Chief of the Metropolitan Police in order to do Anderson"s bidding and claim she had choked to death in the road rather than been murdered-subdued and suffocated -in December 1888.
Best
Natalie

[Sam Flynn]

No, you are being subjective Sam.Dr Phillips findings simply dont concur with what you want to believe------or who you want to believe the Ripper was.

Not true, Nats. On all counts.

If anyone wasn't being subjective, it was Dr Phillips himself - how he could ignore crudely cut lumps of abdominal flesh, the stump of a bladder and a sliced colon and then go on to attribute "expertise" to the killer boggles the mind. The fact that Wynne Baxter, on the basis of Phillips' evidence, could then go on to say that there were "no meaningless cuts" shows what we're up against in terms of collaborative myth-making.

As to Phillips himself - he may have been 54, but he was described as being somewhat old-fashioned even by those who respected him.

[Natalie Severn]

Well, that's pretty much how Phillips viewed the wounds on Catherine Eddowes.

The point is that Phillips did detect skill in Chapman but not on Eddowes, which at first made him believe it was not the same killer.
Most likely Phillips found himself bound to revise his earlier opinion of the Ripper as a man with surgical knowledge.

His views on Chapman is also full of ridiculous exaggerations, with statements like 'one sweep with the knife' which hardly could have been the case and which does not qualify as a scientifically valid expression.

All the best

Hi Glenn,
Actually he appears not to have revised his earlier opinions.He is quoted as having said the murderer "must have been a man who had studied the theory of strangulation" -see The Star of 24 December 1888-"Why the murdered women never cried out".
I dont think either that "one sweep of the knife" is unacceptable language.It illustrates an ability to work "with confidence".
Its worth remembering that Annie Chapman may have been murdered in daylight whereas Kate was not only murdered in darkness but in the darkest part of Mitre Square--so darkness /time restriction etc might have caused a clumsier looking series of mutilations altogether .

Best

Natalie

[Natalie Severn]

Not true, Nats. On all counts.

If anyone wasn't being subjective, it was Dr Phillips himself - how he could ignore crudely cut lumps of abdominal flesh, the stump of a bladder and a sliced colon and then go on to attribute "expertise" to the killer boggles the mind. The fact that Wynne Baxter, on the basis of Phillips' evidence, could then go on to say that there were "no meaningless cuts" shows what we're up against in terms of collaborative myth-making.

As to Phillips himself - he may have been 54, but he was described as being somewhat old-fashioned even by those who respected him.

Sam,
I believe the Ripper may have wanted to present the corpses in a certain way,which may have caused each victim,while bearing his signature throat cut/method of subdue,to look different and be approached slightly differently.So the doctor saw more apparent "skill"in one than another.I think that he may even have given someone like Anderson prior "notification" of his murders,that we as yet know nothing of,and that in such prior warnings he may have gone some way to describing how each victim would be displayed.
So the way he "decorated " the crime scene may have depended on how he needed to" display" the corpses---- not the bladder but the intestines----curl them round the right shoulder in this one/get the kidney in the Mitre Square one ---to post off etc -possibly all done to accord with prior warnings.
Best
Natalie

[Doctor X]

Any evidence for these prior warnings?

--J.D.

[Natalie Severn]

Any evidence for these prior warnings?

--J.D.

Robert Anderson and James Monro kept things very close to their chest.The murder of Polly Nichols took place on the first day of Robert Anderson"s appointment as Head of the Criminal Inv Dept at Scotland Yard.We simply dont know whether he ever received prior warning but from at least September 17th and throughout October and beyond, there were letters sent warning of attacks-again almost all dismissed as hoaxes----but were they ALL hoaxes?
Lots of stuff is missing.Important information given by Littlechild found its way into Robert Anderson"s files that we now KNOW for certain existed but still know little of the information found within eg Callan the dynamiter"s confession to Littlechild in Chatham Jail in March 1889. Also the Tumblety file Littlechild referred to in his letter of 1913 has disappeared etc
So,no,no direct evidence as such,but lots of lost letters and files we now know existed.
Natalie

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Natalie!

Since there are still loads of hoaxes with cases similar to this even today, I think they cannot be blaimed for possibly not noticing needles in a haystack!

All the best
Jukka

[Natalie Severn]

Hello Natalie!

Since there are still loads of hoaxes with cases similar to this even today, I think they cannot be blaimed for possibly not noticing needles in a haystack!

All the best
Jukka

...and this is the problem as it must have been in 1888-separating the wheat from the chaff or is it "not seeing the wood for the trees" in this case?
I think it did confuse Scotland Yard.They like us hadnt really any idea who the killer was though "he was right there under their noses"!!!

[Doctor X]

Indeed, Natalie and j.r-ahde. That is the frustrating thing, trying to recreate history without evidence.

--J.D.

[perrymason]

Hi all,

Its interesting to read some of the ideas concerning the varied opinion on Catherine's eligibility into the Canon, based on at least a butchers knowledge of Jack the Ripper.

I wonder more about the partial uterus actually than the kidney when it comes to Kate, because if Jack excised Annie's uterus, it can be said that he did so with some care...maybe not the "single swoop of the knife", or however that quote goes exactly...but it seems he wanted it intact. Is a partial uterus conceivably as great a prize...if indeed he coveted or wanted that organ? Is there any reason we can see that he could'nt have taken it out intact even if his main objective was now the left kidney?

But what Kates killer did do is cut free much of her pubic area, and some of that plus the partial uterus and kidney were gone. It does reveal that even with the gender generic kidney taken, 2/3's of what he takes from Kate is exclusively female.

If Kate was killed by Jack, at least there is continuity with Polly, Annie and Kate, in that the main component of the attack seems to have been centered on their reproductive organs, or vaginal area. With Polly all thats missing is the actual cutting out and taking of one or two bits....considering the venue, on a sidewalk in a street, not surprising.

I think even if Jack had some skills with a knife and rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, it would not be shocking to find he also stabs, and nicks, and carves in the process...making his possible skill harder to see clearly.

Best regards all.

[Dan Norder]

So Phillips at least isn't infallible. He thought Chapman herself had been dead for at least two hours, and he thought Stride's killer had siezed her by the shoulders and placed her on the ground.

And we don't know that those opinions were actually wrong, so they really can't be used as evidence that he didn't know what he was talking about.

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Nats,

So the way he "decorated " the crime scene may have depended on how he needed to" display" the corpses

It strikes me that a large part of what the Ripper did to the body parts was purely incidental - in that sense, he no more "decorated" his crime scenes than a toddler decorates the carpet when emptying its toy-box. That might not apply to everything the Ripper apparently "posed", but I'd argue strongly that the disposition of the victims' heads, arms, legs and small intestines can be explained quite naturally in the main.