How did he do it?

[Errata]

Hi Errata,

Yeah, but poor people just aren't as smart as the rest of us.

Poor people are way smarter than me. They know how to do things other than channel surf and eat bonbons.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Errata,

Yeah, but poor people just aren't as smart as the rest of us.

because it would be hard to convince anybody that Stride was a Ripper victim, if Eddowes died the next week, for sure !

You would think so, except that Tabram is considered by 50% of the Ripper community to have been a Ripper victim, and her throat wasn't even cut. I honestly think a lot of it is just the need some feel to be 'different'. Had Macnaghten decided Stride wasn't a Ripper victim, many of these people would be arguing she was just to buck authority. Probably a bad example, but I'm sure you're picking up what I'm throwing down.

What, exactly, does a "JTR victim" look like?

Duh...Heather Graham.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Scott Nelson]

What, exactly, does a "JTR victim" look like?

Well, Professor...remember those time-lapsed photos of the spider bite on the finger? I'd say somewhere in the middle of the sequence.

[Wickerman]

Why would a killer write an intelligent verse (GSG) in a round "schoolboy hand" only to follow up 2 weeks later with a semi-literate missive associated with a kidney?

In both cases the writing was associated with 'evidence', yet in one case he appears to be sufficiently educated, in the second case he pretends to be poorly educated.
Given that we have no idea whether the killer wrote either, or (my preference) neither, we cannot assume any particular level of education possessed by this killer.

Likewise with the anatomical question. Was he just a lucky "slash n grab" artists, or did he have sufficient anatomical knowledge, "only less indicated in consequence of haste" (Phillips).

Was he possessed of a polite, charming and apparently disarming disposition, or was he crude, ignorant and forceful in his approach to his intended victims?

Did he have a regular job, or was he unemployed?
Most of the murders took place near a weekend or a holiday suggestive of someone who might be employed, yet we only know of his successes, what about his failures?
This killer may have been out 3 or 5 nights every week but was just never presented with the required opportunity, so he passed on by.

What we end up doing of course is choosing the attributes we prefer to see in "our" own version of the Whitechapel Murderer due to the fact that the evidence is so debatable.

We don't know for sure when he started his murder spree, or how many he killed, nor when he stopped, or even "if" he stopped, by choice, was imprisoned or died.

The more we learn, the less we know.

Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

Education is a result of opportunity. Intelligence is a result of anatomy.

Conversely, all the intelligence (or education for that matter) in the world doesn't mean anything without curiosity and creativity. It doesn't matter how efficiently your brain stores information or how much it stores if there is no impulse to acquire more information, or no talent for generating new thoughts.

An environment like the East End at that time tends to stifle curiosity. It just doesn't pay off in a situation of extreme poverty. There is no hope for advancement, socially or economically. Overcrowding forces people to become intensely private, and rampant crime makes minding one's own business an imperative for survival.

To be anything other than what is expected of you in such an environment (for good or for ill) requires an enormous amount of curiosity, creativity, dedication, and passion. That is true of someone who ends up curing cancer, and someone who kills people and wallpapers the house with their skin. Either way, they had the tools to not become just another poverty stricken drone.

So even if Jack was uneducated, even if he was illiterate, he was more than his peers. I think he would have stood out amongst his peers. Not as a potential killer, but as something of an oddity.

[lynn cates]

If looks could kill.

Hello Malcolm. What, exactly, does a "JTR victim" look like?

Cheers.
LC

[Ben]

Exactly, David.

There's absolutely nothing to prevent an East Ender with little education from having significant intelligence, and equally, there's no aspect of either the Stride murder or the GSG that would argue against a blue-collar worker being responsible.

All the best,
Ben

[DVV]

Hi Malcolm

JEWES is not a word that an illiterate would know, nor would the writing be so neat and clever, it's bang on the mark...... it's JTR playing games with the police instead.

It's JtR playing imo too, but no need to be Thackeray to write the graffito.

[Malcolm X]

Hi Malcolm. Do you suppose that's why so many play with the evidence and try to remove Stride and graffiti from the equation? To keep the Ripper the run-of-the-mill East End illiterate they presuppose him to be?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

HI TOM

no, i think Stride is dismissed by many because she does not look like a JTR victim, until that is, you start wondering what the hell the Eddowes murder is all about/ very close time frame etc.

because it would be hard to convince anybody that Stride was a Ripper victim, if Eddowes died the next week, for sure !

JEWES is not a word that an illiterate would know, nor would the writing be so neat and clever, it's bang on the mark...... it's JTR playing games with the police instead.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Malcolm. Do you suppose that's why so many play with the evidence and try to remove Stride and graffiti from the equation? To keep the Ripper the run-of-the-mill East End illiterate they presuppose him to be?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Malcolm X]

he was deffo above average intelligence for sure..... you can see that via dutfields and the graffiti

[Tom_Wescott]

Good observation, Errata. I agree.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[DVV]

I was about to say LOL then realized I wasn't on Facebouc.

[Stephen Thomas]

Actually I don't think class has anything to do with it. I think he was someone who was highly motivated and very intelligent. Which is not to say he was highly knowledgeable, but I think he absorbed information quickly and made connections between two seemingly disparate pieces of information that most people don't make. I think he was one of those people who just think differently. Perhaps because he had to.

For example, if you ask most people to describe the color green they will explain it in visual terms. It's a mix of blue and yellow, its the color of grass and frogs etc. If you ask a blind person to describe the color green they will explain it in very subjective terms, using all of the senses. It's the feeling of a breeze on a hot day, or it feels like velvet, or tastes bitter. Because they cannot see it, they experience it in ways we do not understand.

People as a vast majority are visual. They learn visually, they compare visually, they think visually. Those of us who are not visual creatures sometimes seem mysterious. I am not a visual person. I am auditory and I am spatial. I experience the world through sound and relationship. Which is probably what made me think that Jack used spatial relationship to find the uterus. My sister is experiential. She can only learn through doing. Some people are tactile, etc.

And all of that informs whether or not a certain course of action would occur to you. My organizational system drove my fiance crazy at first, because it made no sense to him. It didn't occur to him to look for things where I put them, and it didn't occur to me to put things where he would look for them. It wouldn't occur to a lot of people to locate a uterus through the vagina. It occurred to me because a: I've had a pelvic b: my dad is an OB/GYN and c: that's how I would do it. It has nothing to do with education, or class, or wealth. It's all in how you experience the world.

Blimey!

[Errata]

So basically what your saying Errata is that it wasn't your typical East Ender doing this? It was most likely someone of a higher class than your average East Ender? Sounds plausible to me.

Actually I don't think class has anything to do with it. I think he was someone who was highly motivated and very intelligent. Which is not to say he was highly knowledgeable, but I think he absorbed information quickly and made connections between two seemingly disparate pieces of information that most people don't make. I think he was one of those people who just think differently. Perhaps because he had to.

For example, if you ask most people to describe the color green they will explain it in visual terms. It's a mix of blue and yellow, its the color of grass and frogs etc. If you ask a blind person to describe the color green they will explain it in very subjective terms, using all of the senses. It's the feeling of a breeze on a hot day, or it feels like velvet, or tastes bitter. Because they cannot see it, they experience it in ways we do not understand.

People as a vast majority are visual. They learn visually, they compare visually, they think visually. Those of us who are not visual creatures sometimes seem mysterious. I am not a visual person. I am auditory and I am spatial. I experience the world through sound and relationship. Which is probably what made me think that Jack used spatial relationship to find the uterus. My sister is experiential. She can only learn through doing. Some people are tactile, etc.

And all of that informs whether or not a certain course of action would occur to you. My organizational system drove my fiance crazy at first, because it made no sense to him. It didn't occur to him to look for things where I put them, and it didn't occur to me to put things where he would look for them. It wouldn't occur to a lot of people to locate a uterus through the vagina. It occurred to me because a: I've had a pelvic b: my dad is an OB/GYN and c: that's how I would do it. It has nothing to do with education, or class, or wealth. It's all in how you experience the world.