Patterns formed by murder locations

[c.d.]

Sort of an interesting conundrum with Eddowes. She states that she is going to get a damn fine hiding when she gets home. What better way to appease her companion than to come home and present him with a pocket full of money. But if she came home quite late at night obviously drunk, what would her companion assume was the source of that money? I find it hard to believe that he was unaware of what she was doing. Not too many people come home after a long night of drinking and still have money in their pocket. I know this from personal experience. What a wonderful world it would be if you could come home after a long night of drinking and have more money than when you started.

c.d.

[DVV]

Sort of an interesting conundrum with Eddowes. She states that she is going to get a damn fine hiding when she gets home. What better way to appease her companion than to come home and present him with a pocket full of money.

Indeed. Really don't know where they want to go with these "unfortunate vs prostitute" arguties.

Not too many people come home after a long night of drinking and still have money in their pocket. I know this from personal experience.

Héhé ! so true !

[Michael W Richards]

Hi Mike.
Nice example of hyper-criticism, I must say.

Hi David,

I believe context is the important factor when applying labels to these women, these were circumstances, not character issues.

As to Catharine, the statements made by landlords and her boyfriend indicate that she did not as a habit work the streets, rather she enjoyed some degree of domesticity with Mr Kelly. If the witnesses are to be believed of course.

She had also returned that week from hopping, demonstrating that she would leave town in order to find "honest" work when it was available.

Her stating that she would get a "hiding" is obviously a remark to Hutt that had no meaning, since she went the opposite direction of "home" when she was released.

It appears she was hiding some truth...just like her aliases.

Cheers

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, I've well understood your post. What's the exact value of Kelly's word, in your opinion ?

Not so bad that I automatically assume the exact opposite of anything he says must be true, like in Bizarro world, or something.

Sort of an interesting conundrum with Eddowes. She states that she is going to get a damn fine hiding when she gets home. What better way to appease her companion than to come home and present him with a pocket full of money.

Huh? "Pocket full"? That's a lot of tricks to turn at that time of night, in that state.

Nevermind-- the whole discussion got started because another poster who shall not be named suggested that JTR got somehow, I don't know, excited by the idea of a prostitute, as though they were wearing scarlet Ps you could see from a distance. Which Mary Kelly may have, figuratively, seemingly the one genuine pro among them. She may have done some small thing that hasn't come down in the record, like wearing lipstick, or a certain combination of colors, that signified when she was on the job, or used code words, the way pros now ask if men are looking for a "date," which is an old-fashioned word that people don't use much (in the US) in any other context anymore (I used to live in Manhattan, so yes, I know what I'm talking about, but no, I've never been a sex worker myself).

Nichols and Chapman were soliciting, we know that, but they may not have known whatever the code was, and been less smooth about it. We don't know for sure that MJK is a real JTR victim, and we don't know whether she was actively soliciting. That she was a pro may have been a coincidence.

If JTR were looking for textbook prostitutes, because the idea of the sex profession got him going, somehow, then you'd think he'd be finding his victims in brothels, not among the "I just need my doss money" women.

The prostitute thing really isn't significant as far as who the victims were, in that JTR was actively seeking sex workers. I think he was just seeking women who would go somewhere alone with a man they didn't know. You have to remember how uncommon it was for women to go out alone at night back then. I very much doubt that if JTR had found a woman alone for some other reason besides soliciting, and discovered that she wasn't a prostitute, he would have turned away an easy mark for someone who fit his victim profile better, and that may be what happened to Catherine Eddowes. She was alone, because she'd been alone at a much earlier time, and then had been detained involuntarily.

[RavenDarkendale]

In my mail today were four books on JtR

Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight
Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation by Trevor Marriott
Prince Jack by Frank Spiering
Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals by Ivor Edwards

Saturday I received Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect by Robert House.

This list shows that I am not bound down to any suspect, I like to read about them all.

However, pertinent to this thread, I would like to refer to Ivor Edwards' book.

First: His suspect is Stephenson, Robert Donston ( Roslyn D'Onston).

He uses the victim location to come up with an extremely complex occult design that he calls a Vesica Piscis. I quote, however, from page 149:

"If sites 1 and 2 had not been moved to afford better cover (italics mine), then the distances between sites 1, 2, 4, and 4 (the four sides of the parallelogram) would have been the same, 950 yards. Note the distance of 500 yards from sites 3, 4, and 5 from the center point.Considering that the murders were planned in such a matter (italics mine), the distances that were involved and the built up nature of the area the killer was as accurate as the situation would allow. (italics mine) I tried to improve upon the plan without moving two sites. I could not."

Now I must say this. I do not like to disparage any investigator and JtR writer. Yet something doesn't fit with me. The very complexity of the design of a Vesica Piscis, (look it up!) (On second thought you would need to see the one in Mr Edwards' book, it isn't exactly traditional, since it sports an outer parallelogram, which doesn't show up in Wiki) would make any competent person designing one on a map of Whitechapel to conclude that two of the points lacked cover to commit the crime, and this person would redesign the Vesica Piscis with sites that fit better.

They after all wouldn't go to this trouble without wanting people to know, and they couldn't expect people to say "Oh! I see it now! This point and this one are off because there was insufficient cover for the crime! Brilliant!"

This is real life, not Doctor Who...

Regards

Raven Darkendale

[DVV]

If JTR were looking for textbook prostitutes, because the idea of the sex profession got him going, somehow, then you'd think he'd be finding his victims in brothels, not among the "I just need my doss money" women.

The prostitute thing really isn't significant as far as who the victims were, in that JTR was actively seeking sex workers. I think he was just seeking women who would go somewhere alone with a man they didn't know. You have to remember how uncommon it was for women to go out alone at night back then. I very much doubt that if JTR had found a woman alone for some other reason besides soliciting, and discovered that she wasn't a prostitute, he would have turned away an easy mark for someone who fit his victim profile better, and that may be what happened to Catherine Eddowes. She was alone, because she'd been alone at a much earlier time, and then had been detained involuntarily.

Hi Rivkah
all very reasonable, BUT....on the other hand, although prostitutes are easy preys, there are also many other opportunities in daily life. Fact is that this killer only killed the same type of women in the same area.

[Phil H]

I think helplessness may have been one of the reasons "Jack" chose these specific women.

Polly was inebriated as we know. Annie was desperately sick and weak and probably tired. Eddowes (if we consider her a victim of "Jack") was no doubt still hung-over and not quite herself. They were easy pickings.

One reason I now tend to discount Stride and Kelly as victims of "Jack" is that they were NOT helpless. Stride was not drunk and on a date when attacked. Kelly was drunk but a fit and energetic girl and she had a room - by all accounts she was rowdy and boisterous on the night before she died.

Phil H

[DVV]

Hi Phil

I now tend to discount Kelly
Phil H

And Madame Bovary is Balzac's masterpiece.

[Phil H]

How Delphic.

[RivkahChaya]

Hi Rivkah
all very reasonable, BUT....on the other hand, although prostitutes are easy preys, there are also many other opportunities in daily life. Fact is that this killer only killed the same type of women in the same area.

Because you are defining them that way. The type of woman is "victims of JTR." People just generally assume Eddowes was soliciting because she was a Ripper-type victim. It's question begging: She was a Ripper victim, and the Ripper killed prostitutes, therefore, she must have been soliciting, and that's how the Ripper found her. You've just reasoned around in a full circle.

Also, you define the "area" as "the place where the bodies were found," and then say that she was a Ripper victim, because that's where her body was found. It's not only question begging, it's specifying an event after the fact.

If the FBI is tracking a killer who is active, and notes that the bodies are found withing certain coordinates, then they find another body within those coordinates, that's reason (along with other indicators) that this is a victim of the same person. Or, retrospectively, saying "If there are more victims of the same killer that we haven't found, look in this area, plus two miles around. But just to say "This is the area where we found the victims, therefore, all the victims are in this area," is meaningless.

Hi Phil

And Madame Bovary is Balzac's masterpiece.

Wait-- what?

[DVV]

Hello Rivkahmachinchose

Because you are defining them that way. The type of woman is "victims of JTR." People just generally assume Eddowes was soliciting because she was a Ripper-type victim. It's question begging: She was a Ripper victim, and the Ripper killed prostitutes, therefore, she must have been soliciting, and that's how the Ripper found her. You've just reasoned around in a full circle.

Also, you define the "area" as "the place where the bodies were found," and then say that she was a Ripper victim, because that's where her body was found. It's not only question begging, it's specifying an event after the fact.

If the FBI is tracking a killer who is active, and notes that the bodies are found withing certain coordinates, then they find another body within those coordinates, that's reason (along with other indicators) that this is a victim of the same person. Or, retrospectively, saying "If there are more victims of the same killer that we haven't found, look in this area, plus two miles around. But just to say "This is the area where we found the victims, therefore, all the victims are in this area," is meaningless.

Oh !

Wait-- what?

Ah !

[DVV]

How Delphic.

Agreed all round.

[RivkahChaya]

Hello Rivkahmachinchose

I can't tell whether that's a weak attempt to make fun of my last name, or whether "chaya" means something obscure in French that you are humorously referring to as the "thingy," loosely translated.

And I'm pretty sure Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary. Dorothy Parker once said that "Flaubert spent 5 years on Madame Bovary; how did she stand it?" and it got cribbed into the script for the musical Mame. (Somehow, the number got changed to 13.) It's not like Dorothy Parker to get things like that wrong, although I can't vouch for the authors of the script for Mame. I'm not sure about Patrick Dennis, but at any rate, the line isn't in the book Auntie Mame, which I've read 3 or 4 times, and that's more than I can say for Madame Bovary. Even just skimming through it for the "good" parts, I didn't manage to read it in five years. I gave up after 3. I did watch all of a mini-series version, though, from the 1970s, and then the French movie with Isabelle Huppert, one of my all-time favorite actresses.

I stay away from stuff with "Madame" in the title, anymore. I hate Madame Butterfly. Some people should have low self-esteem.

Oh, wow. It's 11:45.

[DVV]

Hi Rivkah, I simply meant that I was not sure whether the Ripper killed prostitutes because they were easy (or easier) preys... hence my surprise to read that I "had reasoned around a full circle". It was a bit unfair, don't you think ?

Isabelle Huppert, one of my all-time favorite actresses.

...but now I can see you're a man of taste.

[DVV]

Hi Phil

How Delphic.

Not delphic at all, actually. Would a copycat do what has been done in Miller's Court ? Does it seem an ordinary domestic murder ?