Ripper a social reformer?

[GregBaron]

Hey all,

I just re-watched one of those youtube ripper documentaries. It spoke of how, after the ripper, the gov’t started to clean up the East end. This got me thinking of a ripper social reformer theory. You know, sacrifice a few old and ill unfortunates (using the Utilitarian philosophy) for the sake of the common good.

The eviscerations were too draw attention as common murders would go largely unnoticed. The world would wake up and begin to help these people. It worked apparently. Now I know this isn’t new but I hereby declare Charles Booth as the ripper! As he trolled Whitechapel recording the conditions he murdered a few along the way with a great disguise as a journalist.

He may or may not have had co-conspirators? Hmmm…..All kidding aside, do any of you think it possible that a social reformer or social reformers were at work?

It’s not as crazy as the Royal theory……..

Greg

[ChrisGeorge]

Hey all,

I just re-watched one of those youtube ripper documentaries. It spoke of how, after the ripper, the gov’t started to clean up the East end. This got me thinking of a ripper social reformer theory. You know, sacrifice a few old and ill unfortunates (using the Utilitarian philosophy) for the sake of the common good.

The eviscerations were too draw attention as common murders would go largely unnoticed. The world would wake up and begin to help these people. It worked apparently. Now I know this isn’t new but I hereby declare Charles Booth as the ripper! As he trolled Whitechapel recording the conditions he murdered a few along the way with a great disguise as a journalist.

He may or may not have had co-conspirators? Hmmm…..All kidding aside, do any of you think it possible that a social reformer or social reformers were at work?

It’s not as crazy as the Royal theory……..

Greg

Hi Greg

Yes you are right that this type of theory isn't as wild as the Royal or masonic theory, though it is still what we might call an agenda motive.

The idea of the Fenians wishing to cause a scare in London and to embarrass the London police might be a similar agenda. The revenge motive -- I was robbed by a prostitute or got syphilis from one -- is a variation of the agenda motive.

If we are looking for suspects who might have a social reform agenda, besides Charles Booth or Dr Barnardo, playwright George Bernard Shaw might be another who might be scrutinized. Now if anyone saw a bearded Irish chappie with bloody cuffs at work on a play in some East End pub. . . .

Chris

[K-453]

My two cents:

His main desire was to kill and mutilate. But he could have disguised this to himself with more noble motives. Maybe he would have claimed to be a social reformer if they got him. Think of Anders Breivik and his "political" motives.

In case of the Ripper, the "noble motive" would rather have been "cleaning" the world of unwelcome subjects than drawing attention to the conditions in the East End.

[GregBaron]

Agendas galore...

Yes you are right that this type of theory isn't as wild as the Royal or masonic theory, though it is still what we might call an agenda motive.

The idea of the Fenians wishing to cause a scare in London and to embarrass the London police might be a similar agenda. The revenge motive -- I was robbed by a prostitute or got syphilis from one -- is a variation of the agenda motive.

If we are looking for suspects who might have a social reform agenda, besides Charles Booth or Dr Barnardo, playwright George Bernard Shaw might be another who might be scrutinized. Now if anyone saw a bearded Irish chappie with bloody cuffs at work on a play in some East End pub. . . .

Yes indeed Chris, agenda motive would be the proper term. I've heard of Fenian theories, Russian spy stop the socialist Jews theories, religious zealot theories, social reformers etc..........surely there are others besides the silly Masonic and Royal varieties.....?

His main desire was to kill and mutilate. But he could have disguised this to himself with more noble motives. Maybe he would have claimed to be a social reformer if they got him. Think of Anders Breivik and his "political" motives.

In case of the Ripper, the "noble motive" would rather have been "cleaning" the world of unwelcome subjects than drawing attention to the conditions in the East End.

Hi K-453, welcome to Casebook. Indeed the noble motive perhaps of a religious nut is a good one. The problem is he would need to nail about another 1200 prostitutes to clear the streets............then onto the endless brothels....yeah he had his work cut out...no pun intended...

I do think Chris is right, we need to trace the whereabouts of good old George Bernard Shaw...a shady character indeed...

Greg

[Limehouse]

Social reform may well have been the excuse made by the killer had he been caught. After all - Peter Stucliffe claimed a similar thing when he was trying to convince the doctors that he was mad. However - I believe the real motive was sexual perversion and sadism.

When looked at more closely the idea of social reform by way of killing prostitutes is a non-starter. Firstly - what about the clients? Why not kill them? After all - they are as much to blame as the women. Of course - in those times women WERE held responsible and were subject to forced medical examinations not imposed on their clients.

A real social reformer would not have waited for women's blood and entrails to be spread all over the pavement in order to exercise some influence over the government of the time. There were men and women with influence who did draw attention to the plight of the poor(Barnardo/Mayhew/Booth/Dickens)
and the sexual exploitation of children (Stead) even just before the ripper killings.

Although it is true that there was some social reform following the killings - it was slow and had hardly any effect on the extreme poverty experienced by so many in the east end. Why - Millers Court stood for another forty years following Kelly's death and even just before WW1 is was relatively common for children to be seen with nothing on their feet (or in boots shared by their siblings so that they could attend school only one at a time). Isn't it true that in recruiting men for WW1 - the armed services were shocked by the state of many volunteers and men who were called up? They were often grossy underweight and underfed and many were hardly educated because they had to miss school to contribute whatever they could to the family income.

[K-453]

Hi K-453, welcome to Casebook.

Thanks! I like it.

he would need to nail about another 1200 prostitutes to clear the streets............then onto the endless brothels....

Don't tell me, I'm not Jack ... (At least I'm quite sure.)

The question is: Was he able to apply logic? Did he want to apply logic?

Will Breivik stop globalization by shooting 70 youths? Is this a suitable advertising for an ideology?

I think, Breivik, too, used an excuse to cause suffering, which was his main intention. For what reasons ever. But admitting being driven by pure meanness, or being mentally ill, isn't easy for most of us.

This could have been the case with Jack, too. Anyway, diagnosing himself would have been a problem for him, because forensic science and psychology weren't what they are today. If he was poorly educated, he maybe never even heard the word "psychology".

I think he was, like almost everybody, a firm believer in Free Will. So he believed there must be a reason why he killed prostitutes.

[Heinrich]

The notion of an ulterior motive, especially one of social reform, is not as compelling as seeing the murders of prostitutes as opportunity crimes motivated by a sociopathic psycho-sexual disorder, the very opposite of a do-gooder.

[Jonathan H]

'A Social Experimentalist'?

The young George Bernard Shaw wrote satirically and tastelessly that the Whitechapel fiend must be a deranged social reformer, due to the 180 degree turnaround in West End attitudes towards the wretched.

This is from the Press reports on this site:

"Blood Money To Whitechapel"
George Bernard Shaw
The Star, September 24th 1888.
BLOOD MONEY TO WHITECHAPEL.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE STAR."

'SIR,-- Will you allow me to make a comment on the success of the Whitechapel murderer in calling attention for a moment to the social question? Less than a year ago the West-End press, headed by the St. James's Gazette, the Times, and the Saturday Review, were literally clamering for the blood of the people--hounding on Sir Charles Warren to thrash and muzzle the scum who dared to complain that they were starving--heaping insult and reckless calumny on those who interceded for the victims--applauding to the skies the open class bias of those magistrates and judges who zealously did their very worst in the criminal proceedings which followed--behaving, in short as the proprietary class always does behave when the workers throw it into a frenzy of terror by venturing to show their teeth ...'

'Now all is changed. Private enterprise has succeeded where Socialism failed. Whilst we conventional Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation, and organisation, some independent genius has taken the matter in hand, and by simply murdering and disembowelling four women, converted the proprietary press to an inept sort of communism ...'

'The riots of 1886 brought in Ł78,000 and a People's Palace; it remains to be seen how much these murders may prove worth to the East-end in panem et circenses. Indeed, if the habits of duchesses only admitted of their being decoyed into Whitechapel back-yards, a single experiment in slaughterhouse anatomy on an artistocratic victim might fetch in a round half million and save the necessity of sacrificing four women of the people ...'


But what Shaw did not mean literally the American leftist, Tom Cullen, most certainly did in his brilliant 'Autumn of Terror' (1965).

Having discovered that Sir Melville Macnaghten's chief suspect (the only suspect of his memoirs) was a young, Oxonian Gentleman, Cullen argued that there was a method in Montague's madness.

That is why a 'protean' maniac, who lives at Blackheath, bothers to travel all the way to the wilds of the East End to kill -- and risk exposure and capture.

That the murderer chose the 'evil quarter mile', identified by reformers, for all his crimes, why he left most of the mutilated victims on the street to be found, and why he eviscerated Mary Kelly to coincide with and spoil Lord Mayor's Day.

Cullen quotes from 'the Lancet' on p. 210:

'It is worthy of note that the crimes have been committed in precisely the same district where, as sanitary reformers, we have often demanded the intervention of the authorities'.

Cullen writes on p. 211:

The acid test of the Ripper's intention came with the Kelly murder, for which he shrewdly chose a public holiday, the Lord Mayor's Show. Long before this festive occasion arrived, a Fleet street reporter predicted that if the Ripper intended further crimes, he would choose the morning of 9th November, "A marked day, a day of great excitement, would just suit him if his motive was to show himself the boss criminal of the century", the reporter is quoted by The Spectator as saying.'

If the 1899 Vicar's Ripper is Druitt then this is an echo of some kind of deranged inversion of his originally humanitarian mission to Whitechapel (emphases mine):

'The murderer died, the vicar states, very shortly after committing the last murder. The vicar obtained his information from a brother clergyman, to whom a confession was made - by whom the vicar would not give even the most guarded hint. The only other item which a lengthy chat with the Vicar could elicit was that the murderer was a man who at one time was engaged in rescue work among the depraved woman of the East End - eventually his victims; and that the assassin was at one time a surgeon.'

[Hunter]

Social reform may well have been the excuse made by the killer had he been caught...

When looked at more closely the idea of social reform by way of killing prostitutes is a non-starter. Firstly - what about the clients? Why not kill them? After all - they are as much to blame as the women. Of course - in those times women WERE held responsible and were subject to forced medical examinations not imposed on their clients.

I apologize for condensing the above post, because it is all well constructed. Obviously, in the last paragraph, you, essentially, answered your own question.

A recent political figure was quoted as saying, "Don't let a good crisis go to waste." I think this could be applied to the Whitechapel murders as well. With such publications as Stead's Pall Mall Gazette and then, O'Conner's The Star coming along that very year, the stage was set... whether the actual killer or killers thought as much or not was not important.

[Jonathan H]

To Hunter

But it might be important, as to explain why a murderer who did not live in the area kept targeting such a narrow, dangerous, heavily-policed area.

[Hunter]

You make a good point, Jonathan. We really don't know what the motive for these murders was. All we have are similar case studies that largely suggests what is commonly perceived... the actions of an opportunistic psychopath who's only concern for social conditions would be for the benefit of his own deluded fantasies.

A series of murders perpetrated, in the mind of the killer, for some kind of social reform or 'justice' are usually much less personal in nature than what was experienced here and far less risky to the perpetrator... outside of a targeted assassination or a sense of martyrdom. They plant bombs, try to wreck general havoc with meticulous planning and communicate their desires to justify their cause or kill en mass at one time.

[ChrisGeorge]

You make a good point, Jonathan. We really don't know what the motive for these murders was. All we have are similar case studies that largely suggests what is commonly perceived... the actions of an opportunistic psychopath who's only concern for social conditions would be for the benefit of his own deluded fantasies.

A series of murders perpetrated, in the mind of the killer, for some kind of social reform or 'justice' are usually much less personal in nature than what was experienced here and far less risky to the perpetrator... outside of a targeted assassination or a sense of martyrdom. They plant bombs, try to wreck general havoc with meticulous planning and communicate their desires to justify their cause or kill en mass at one time.

If there was a message in the murders no message was received beyond the graffito that no one can agree was by the murderer and that makes little sense anyway, and the letters that appear to have been probably hoaxes by journalists or opportunistic attention seekers. If the murderer had an agenda it remains to be seen, and it seems to be just another of the ideas people have come up with to try to explain the murders when no explanation is readily available. The murders were probably done for the satisfaction of the unknown killer, or as Hunter put it, they were the actions of an opportunistic psychopath whose only concern for social conditions would have been for the benefit of his own deluded fantasies.

Chris

[Limehouse]

You make a good point, Jonathan. We really don't know what the motive for these murders was. All we have are similar case studies that largely suggests what is commonly perceived... the actions of an opportunistic psychopath who's only concern for social conditions would be for the benefit of his own deluded fantasies.

A series of murders perpetrated, in the mind of the killer, for some kind of social reform or 'justice' are usually much less personal in nature than what was experienced here and far less risky to the perpetrator... outside of a targeted assassination or a sense of martyrdom. They plant bombs, try to wreck general havoc with meticulous planning and communicate their desires to justify their cause or kill en mass at one time.

I totally agree Hunter. These murders were personal and I believe the killer was very much a loner with a need to satisfy sexual and sadistic drives.

A social reformer could have attacked those with much more power than a few sodden and pathetically sad women. As you state - such a person would have made a dramatic statement and communicated their mission.

For a short while - it is true - a spotlight was cast on the social conditions of the east end as a result of the murders. However - progress was very slow and I am sure there are a good few people alive today (I know some of them) who can remember the poverty that prevailed well into the 20th century.

[Jonathan H]

To be fair, Tom Cullen's theory was not a of a sensible -- if homicidal -- social reformer, but of a deranged social reformer.

Of course, Macnaghten ruled out any such motive, or any 'motive' at all beyond a lust for blood and a maniacal hatred of unfortunates. He thought Druitt was crackers, but 'protean' in his ability to conceal his insanity in his everyday life.

[GregBaron]

Motiveless crime...

I agree with you guys as well Hunter and Limehouse. I don’t believe in the social reformer theory. The lone nut job works for me. The documentary mentioned the tearing down of tenement houses so I do think some reform can be argued for and WWI is only a generation removed from the ripper and we all know poverty is not easily eliminated. I imagine if an East end denizen of ripper time was returned to today he or she would be quite amazed at the transformation. Now they probably wouldn’t be pleased with car parks but who is? Jonathan’s mention of derangement is also apt since if he was a social reformer he was certainly a mad one so we can’t constrain him to mentally healthy options. Perhaps it was LeGrand using a patsy for the murders whom he would sell out in return for reward money. Now there’s the greed motive, the one that usually works in human endeavors…………

Greg