Was Jack enraged by watching soliciting

[lynn cates]

yup

Hello Damaso. Thanks. Cannot see how it could be otherwise.

Cheers.
LC

[Damaso Marte]

I think Kate Eddowes has her throat cut while she was still upright.

I don't think that's a mainstream view - my recollection of the last time we discussed this is that even Lynn Cates thinks Eddowes's throat was cut when she was on the ground.

[Cogidubnus]

I also don't think Jtr had any interest in sex with the victims, his sex was his knife... plus, he didn't have the time; it was strictly kill, carve and skedaddle...........

I mostly agree with you Greg...the sex is all in the increasingly sensual movement of the knife and the caressing of the organs...however, I believe there is one more factor which gives a kick...the posing of the body...knees slightly raised, legs slightly apart, abdomen exposed...it's present with Tabram, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly...it may well have been present with Nicholls until Paul disturbed the crime scene by attempting to pull the clothing down...Stride who knows (I'm not going there ok!)...

It's, to my mind at least, another measure of who/what Jack was...

All the best

Dave

[Errata]

Why do many say he cut their throats from behind? Isn't the general consensus that he rendered them helpless, laid them on the ground, and then, perhaps while lifting and turning the head with the left hand, cut the throat from the victims left to right......

If he literally cut their throats from behind while standing - blood would be everywhere, including the victims clothes....

Anyway, that's probably off topic. I also don't think Jtr had any interest in sex with the victims, his sex was his knife... plus, he didn't have the time; it was strictly kill, carve and skedaddle...........


Greg

I think Kate Eddowes has her throat cut while she was still upright. And Liz Stride was upright. Annie Chapman was on her back, Mary Kelly was half reclined, and Polly Nichols I think was on the ground, but I'd have to check her clothes to be sure.

[GregBaron]

Murder in mind...

Why do many say he cut their throats from behind? Isn't the general consensus that he rendered them helpless, laid them on the ground, and then, perhaps while lifting and turning the head with the left hand, cut the throat from the victims left to right......

If he literally cut their throats from behind while standing - blood would be everywhere, including the victims clothes....

Anyway, that's probably off topic. I also don't think Jtr had any interest in sex with the victims, his sex was his knife... plus, he didn't have the time; it was strictly kill, carve and skedaddle...........


Greg

[Errata]

I think any discussion on methods other that soliciting a prostitute to get her alone and kill her has to include possible scenarios. He cut their throats from behind, so nothing about that rules out a stalker, but none of these women apparently put up a fight (scratching, hitting, kicking, etc.). Now I think there is o way a woman hears a guy coming up behind her and doesn't turn around, yet these women weren't blitzed in the classic sense (he didn't run and tackle them for instance). So how do we think he got from stalking her, to watching her, to killing her without her making a sound?

[Beowulf]

"Jack" apparently, never intended to have sex with any of his victims. So, once again why focus on secretions?

Regards, Jon S.

I agree. The way their throats were cut suggests he stood behind them. Strikes me as if he was stalking, pouncing when the moment was right on a lone woman in a dark empty street. MJK might've seemed a great idea, as she was indoors, more time for his favorite sport with no interruptions.

I think his motive was solely the thrill of the rip.

[harry]

Why does every movement after leaving Holland,as far as Nichols is concerned,have to have been soliciting a customer for sex. What was her reason for being on the streets.Her inital intention had been to secure a bed to rest and sleep.This had been offered by Holland.Her refuseal would still have left Nichols in need of rest and sleep.My idea is that in Bucks Row she might have considered the gateway a tempory solution.It was summer time,and the amount of clothing would protect against any early morning chill.

[Wickerman]

Hi Phil,
The Darrell/Long sighting actual fits well, in with a service in the backyard, an exit by her client, and a possible entry by the killer, and a surprised Chapman, and the thud.
I agree that the absence of any ''secretions'' does not mean that none were present.
Regards Richard.

If "we" are guided by the absence of secretions, then these victims never had sex with anyone.
Therefore, if we assume the victims cleaned themselves adequately after each performance, then what evidence are we expecting to see?

"Jack" apparently, never intended to have sex with any of his victims. So, once again why focus on secretions?

Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

Thanks for the reply Errata,

That seminal fluid would be destroyed in the stomach, I'll take your word. However, the time frame doesn't seem to allow sufficient time for the semen to have reached the stomach. Your medical knowledge probably outweighs mine substantially, but I've been led to believe by high-school biology, that there is a period of time after something is swallowed, while it passes through the upper digestive tract, before it reaches the stomach. Am I correct in my thinking, or have I been misled by the Australian education system once more? LOL

The stomach is the first stop of the digestive process. The only thing between it and the mouth is the esophagus, and a sphincter. It may take a second or two to swallow something, but it doesn't just hang out in your esophagus. I count two seconds from swallowing to it hitting my stomach. (I have an ulcer so I tend to know precisely when something hits m stomach. I just took a swallow of vinegar. Do not recommend). But it's not a straight shot. It's sort of a bank shot down the throat.

But it's actually not really a time thing, it's an acidity thing. Seminal fluid is essentially sugar, enzymes and protein very loosely held together. Saliva alone can dissolve almost all of it. Modern swabs can detect it in the mouth, as best I can tell, because the little corpses of sperm don't break down so quickly, so it's essentially just detecting foreign DNA. But saliva breaks it down enough to render it unrecognizable. And kill the sperm. Sperm is actually pretty fragile, which is why it tends to be in the high parts per million.

[Disco Stu]

Thanks for the reply Errata,

That seminal fluid would be destroyed in the stomach, I'll take your word. However, the time frame doesn't seem to allow sufficient time for the semen to have reached the stomach. Your medical knowledge probably outweighs mine substantially, but I've been led to believe by high-school biology, that there is a period of time after something is swallowed, while it passes through the upper digestive tract, before it reaches the stomach. Am I correct in my thinking, or have I been misled by the Australian education system once more? LOL

[Errata]

A couple of quick comments , Errata,-

I would credit poor working class East End women of the era with being very
practical and not at all chi-chi. Given that penetration might easily lead to death in a childbirth for a woman, and another mouth to feed for a man, I would of thought that a married couple would soon have cottoned on to the fact that oral sex was a good solution .. It's not as if there were witnesses waiting to judge them.

I would think so too. The general attitude was that when a couple was done having children, they stopped having sex. The woman was deemed not to miss sex, and the man resorted to services of a prostitute or mistress. But things are always different behind closed doors.

But we know that syphilis was rampant. And we know that women were not showing up at clinics with initial lesions on their face. If nothing else this suggests that oral sex wasn't that common. We also know that erotica of any given era is devoted to the taboo. Victorian erotica is pretty much group sex, debauching rich women, sadomasochism, rape, and oral sex. That implies that oral sex was not common to the subject audience. We know that brothels offered it, we know that it cost more than vaginal intercourse. The higher the price, the less safe or more distasteful the practice. Since oral sex is not dangerous, the logical conclusion was that it was distasteful.

There is also something of a cognitive disconnect between knowing something, and requesting something. A John knowing that oral sex could be had did not mean that A: he wanted it or B: that he would ask for it. And there's a whole crapload of reasons for that, but mostly humans are creatures of habit and stick with what they know. It's not that oral sex was unknown. Flagellation was not unknown. It's that the public hadn't developed such a taste for it or were even willing to admit to having heard of it that it was a staple of streetwalkers.

And there's another attitude that may be at play. A WWI soldier wrote a letter to his brother (clearly that family was a LOT closer than mine), where he discusses visiting prostitutes. He was offered oral sex as an option, but was convinced that it was a "cheat", that it wouldn't be as good or last as long. We don't have the reply, nor do we have a lot of documentation on what male attitudes were towards oral sex from about the 1840s to the 1940s. But evidently a poor uneducated man had this attitude in 1918. It's not out of the question that others had it as well.

The simple truth is, it's a mystery. It was an open secret in France, Germany, Spain, even India and Egypt. The knowledge was out there to be had. And despite the fact that common sense says it had to happen all the time, there's just no evidence of it being prevalent in any way. There is evidence of vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, evidence of sadism, evidence of incest even. There is just nothing on oral sex, despite it's advantages. It doesn't even show up in feminist or contraceptive literature. Though maybe that's not surprising. The truth is, poor women were being taught every day how to avoid pregnancy. It was illegal, but once a woman got the information from a sympathetic doctor, her only payment for the information was to tell any woman who might need it. It wasn't foolproof, but most poor women were capable of limiting birth. The need for oral sex might not be as dire as it had been even 50 years previous.

[Rubyretro]

A couple of quick comments , Errata,-

I would credit poor working class East End women of the era with being very
practical and not at all chi-chi. Given that penetration might easily lead to death in a childbirth for a woman, and another mouth to feed for a man, I would of thought that a married couple would soon have cottoned on to the fact that oral sex was a good solution .. It's not as if there were witnesses waiting to judge them.

not a lot of people know about it.

The Worlds best kept secret ? Hmmm.

every man can immediately see the potential danger of the act

. Lorena Bobbitt ? Bionic teeth ? I'm not a man so I don't really
know .

Lower class men don't know about the practice, and don't ask for it, with the exception of sailors.

Really ? Fascinating.

These women aren't trained pros. They are untrained starving women.

Glad that I'm not a man , I 'm petrified as it is..

So not only does a John have to know to ask for it

Somehow, I trust John...

We do know what was on offer during WWI.

Rationing ?

And while oral sex could be had, generally it wasn't. So even 40 years later, it was not this super popular thing for men.

We'll take your word for that, Errata.

[Fisherman]

Robert:

"Fish, I think we're at Cross purposes there."

I humbly concede defeat, Robert. Brilliant stuff, that ...

Fisherman

[Errata]

Excellent Errata. I must say I often wonder where you acquire your strange, esoteric knowledge. If it was the 17th century I'd accuse you of witchcraft...

With that said, I do wonder the nature of the sexual liaisons indulged in by our victims and their seedy punters...? I know some out here don't believe they participated in oral sex, I suppose due to Victorian prudery, although this may be a naive thought. Also, most people were probably filthy even though I doubt hygiene was a critical factor....And let's face it - their clothing didn't make for easy access....perhaps manual sex was a cheap and relatively less messy option......This is the type of knowledge that is most difficult to obtain because the only ones who knew were the participants(and perhaps voyeurs) and very few of them wrote books.......It's also unlikely this sort of information was passed through the oral tradition (no pun intended). Unfortunately, I do think a bit of knowledge here is relevant to figuring out the particulars of Jack's methods.....



Greg

I'm not a witch. I merely used to be a sex educator. We do know certain things. Certain practices in brothels survive because their patrons wrote about it, and sometimes things would get mentioned in bust reports. The real trick is knowing the slang. Also, Victorian erotica certainly existed. Given that those books were written for the enjoyment of men, it is a reasonable assumption that most of the activities in these books would be exotic, certainly not available in the marriage bed.

Oral sex exists in exactly two kinds of societies. Those in which women are viewed as sexual equals, and those in which women (or certain women) are viewed as mere receptacles. The first did not exist in the Victorian Era, the second did. But it's in transition, where wives are supposed to respected and cherished. So oral sex would not exist in the marriage bed, but would exist with prostitutes. But because it is not a generally accepted practice, not a lot of people know about it. Certainly the upper class does, and those with experience overseas. It was called "frenching" which lends one to assume that's where the English picked up the practice. It was more routinely available from French prostitutes. So we can see where the demand would come from.

The problem is, most people think it's disgusting. Not just hygiene issues, it's whole "but he pees out of that thing" problem. And it wasn't just women who thought it was disgusting. So it's a new thing (it wasn't, it just went away for awhile) and every man can immediately see the potential danger of the act. If a man decides to try this, he wants some guarantees, and that means going to a brothel. The assumption is that not only did women in brothels have a more extensive education, but that there was some surety that the man would leave intact. These women get paid more to do this thing. So the question becomes, how long does it take to filter down to streetwalkers?

Probably a while. Lower class men don't know about the practice, and don't ask for it, with the exception of sailors. Streetwalkers are not generally trusted by their customers anyway. These women aren't trained pros. They are untrained starving women. So not only does a John have to know to ask for it, he has to trust her to perform it. We do know what was on offer during WWI. And while oral sex could be had, generally it wasn't. So even 40 years later, it was not this super popular thing for men. As for the women, they would have to make enough money for doing it that compensates for how disgusting they think it is. Which means for most streetwalkers, their Johns don't have the money it would take to get them to do that. Clearly some would, and did. Perhaps after attaining a certain level of drunkenness. They made more than their peers, but not as much as a woman in a brothel would make for the same act. Nor is it easier than conventional intercourse. Most women could get away with using their clamped together thighs instead of actual insertion. That by far is the easiest way to make money. There is no cheating with oral sex.

What all this means is that some streetwalkers undoubtedly did offer oral sex, but likely only when asked. It would not have occurred to the average streetwalker customer to ask. Those who knew of it and wanted it would go to a brothel. I would be surprised if any streetwalker did it more than once or twice a week. But we do know that women who presented with the initial syphilitic lesions had them on their genitals or thighs. I have never seen a case of a woman with syphilitic sores around the mouth. Since the initial lesions occur at the point of contact, given the rate of syphilis infection we can assume that either a: most women didn't do that with any sort of regularity, or b: the female population of London was astonishingly lucky.

Prostitution may be the worlds oldest profession, but it's also one of the most unchanging ones. Tricks that were used by Victorian prostitutes are still used today. The same hierarchy amongst whores still exists, the same inherent dangers, and the same levels of desperation. The only thing that has changed is priority. In Victorian times, the priority was to suffer the least, today the priority is to get out as fast as possible. Which is why nowadays oral sex costs less than vaginal sex.