Final killing -planned ?

[Varqm]

How do you know Mary Kelly was the last victim?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

You seem to be making a mystery out of nothing here.

You're right; all I need do is read The Scriptures, and all my questions will be answered.

If we were to adhere precisely to Blackwell's TOD estimate, then Stride died at 12.46 at the earliest - half an hour before he saw her on his arrival at 1.16 - but more likely no earlier than 12.56 - twenty minutes before his arrival. But TOD is a notoriously inexact science even today, and back then largely depended on having a reliable 'last sighting alive' and 'first sighting dead' to pinpoint it with reasonable accuracy. The clocks and watches of the day didn't always help a great deal.

It was you who first mentioned ToD estimates. My point in reply was that if Arbeter Fraint had used Blackwell's estimate when stating the murder time, they didn't read what he said very carefully. On the other hand, the ~12:45 matches within a minute or two, the time stated by the actor. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

But it doesn't really matter in this case who was believed to be the last person(s) to see Stride alive. Whether it was PC Smith, between 12.30 and 12.40, or Schwartz and Pipeman, seeing her being manhandled around 12.45, it's not rocket science to work out roughly when her killer struck.

Especially so, if one reads Der Arbeter Fraint, Oct 5 1888 edition, to get the inside story.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

It was purported that the conversation was with the superintendent of the Shoe Lane casual ward.

Shoe Lane was an area Nichols grew up in ..... Eddowes first overnight stop back in London.

Nichols moved next door to Eddowes just before she went hopping,from Thrawl Street where Kate was caring for her own sister.

Both were likely together in the London Hospital with Rheumatic fever from December 1867 under later expert pathologist and kidney expert Henry Gawen Sutton.

The same Henry Sutton who knew his way around the abdomen "by feel"?

[DJA]

I very much doubt Eddowes ever said anything of the sort. It would have been different if someone had reported the conversation before she met her killer.

It was purported that the conversation was with the superintendent of the Shoe Lane casual ward.

Shoe Lane was an area Nichols grew up in ..... Eddowes first overnight stop back in London.

Nichols moved next door to Eddowes just before she went hopping,from Thrawl Street where Kate was caring for her own sister.

Both were likely together in the London Hospital with Rheumatic fever from December 1867 under later expert pathologist and kidney expert Henry Gawen Sutton.

[caz]

Arbeter Fraint makes no reference to time of death estimates, and Blackwell's estimate is expressed as a time range, not an approximate time...

I consulted my watch on my arrival, and it was just 1.16.
I do not think the deceased could have been dead more than twenty minutes, or at the most half an hour when I saw her.

So as you say, ~12:45 is only roughly inline with this estimate.
On the other hand, it just happens to be the same time as Schwartz gave, for when he was rudely interrupted on his way to checking if his wife had managed to complete their expected move of address, after his epic day out.

This is AF, from the point Eagle, Kozebrodski and others are aware the woman is dead:

In the meantime, there was quite a to-do going on inside the club, and everyone ran out into the yard. Dimshits, Eygel and Gilyarovsky ran to look for a policeman; ten minutes later they had found a pair of peace-keepers.• One of the policemen ran for a doctor, and Morris Eygel ran to the police station on Leman Street to report the murder. In the meantime, the commotion about the murder drew people, and the street that had been asleep began to become lively.
The doctor arrived ten minutes later along with a lot of policemen. The doctor began to examine the body, which was still warm. He lifted the head, which a policeman illuminated with his night lantern, and a horrific picture appeared before his eyes. The pale face was green, the eyes tightly closed, the back hair disheveled, the neck sliced wide-open [and] bathed in blood. In one hand, the murdered woman held a bunch of grapes and in the other a box of candies. She was dressed in black: poor but clean. She wore a red flower on her breast. The doctor continued to examine her and found no other wounds other than the broad gash on her neck.

By doctor (at the scene), they probably mean Ed Johnston, and it would seem that it is around this point that the grapes go missing. Officially of course, they never existed.

If Johnston is assumed to have arrived at 1:12, then consider the time estimates AF gives...

EJ arrives 10 minutes after the peace-keepers, who are found 10 minutes after Eagle sees the body - and then keep going back to the point Diemschitz arrives at the gates. What is the approximate time at that point?

If by last witness, you mean Schwartz, the issue is that Arbeter Fraint makes no reference to the Schwartz incident, or anything resembling it.
If you mean Smith, the issue is that this is the Oct 5 edition, and Smith's testimony appeared in the Oct 6 papers.

You seem to be making a mystery out of nothing here.

If we were to adhere precisely to Blackwell's TOD estimate, then Stride died at 12.46 at the earliest - half an hour before he saw her on his arrival at 1.16 - but more likely no earlier than 12.56 - twenty minutes before his arrival. But TOD is a notoriously inexact science even today, and back then largely depended on having a reliable 'last sighting alive' and 'first sighting dead' to pinpoint it with reasonable accuracy. The clocks and watches of the day didn't always help a great deal.

But it doesn't really matter in this case who was believed to be the last person(s) to see Stride alive. Whether it was PC Smith, between 12.30 and 12.40, or Schwartz and Pipeman, seeing her being manhandled around 12.45, it's not rocket science to work out roughly when her killer struck.

[caz]

Women are certainly drawn to bad boys. At least, that's been my experience

I did say 'some' women. My boy just made me a nice cup of tea, even though he's the one working from home. And he does much of the cooking too. I'm blessed.

[caz]

Ill respond by only this Caz, since I can be long winded....we dont know that any of them, save the first 2 Canonicals, lacked motives beyond killing. In those 2 cases the motive is revealed. He killed so he could cut more. He coveted. In contrast, Liz Strides killer killed her. Killings are not similar, all are unique in some way or another, but the core element, the motive for doing the act, is why the killer kills. Until you can figure out why any of these women were killed you wont know what motivations were there.

I can see man killing to obtain female internal organs, ill tempered man in a violent encounter with a woman, someone being silenced, and someone close to the victim either seeking revenge or punishing in some way. The basics seem plausible to me, because evidence that might support those ideas actually exists.

Motivation is the very last thing that can ever be ascertained while a murder remains unsolved and the evidence shows up nothing obvious, such as robbery, rape, revenge or domestic abuse. Sometimes even the killer himself, when finally identified and questioned, can't supply a logical explanation for what made him do it, so what hope do we have of joining the dots, when nobody is firmly in the frame for a single one of the Whitechapel series?

You say that the killer of Nichols and Chapman 'killed so he could cut more' and 'coveted' their internal organs, but that is still only your interpretation, because you can't ask him. For all you know, he may have tossed Chapman's body parts to a passing dog before reaching his lodgings, or extracted her uterus merely because it was there and because he could. Stride's killer may have hoped for the opportunity to 'cut more', but if she refused to budge from the 'safety' of the club's premises until the pony and cart was fast approaching, his only consolation would have been to take his frustration out on her before fleeing. The same could so easily have happened in Buck's Row or Hanbury Street if someone had come along at the wrong time. The killer of Eddowes and Kelly also killed so he could 'cut more', and he too removed internal organs, even when he left them at the scene.

There is no evidence that any of these women were killed for some other reason, so trying to 'figure out' why else they might have become someone's murder victim seems to me to be counter-intuitive and unproductive, leading nowhere but down the garden path, looking for fairies. How are you ever going to take it beyond a fringe theory?

[NotBlamedForNothing]

I think many people must be strangely drawn to 'dangerous' personalities, purely because they are dangerous, in the same way that some women are strangely attracted to men who will do them more harm than good. I don't pretend to understand why, unless it has something to do with sadists acting as magnets for masochists.

Women are certainly drawn to bad boys. At least, that's been my experience

[NotBlamedForNothing]

What 'gross anomaly'?

If 'about' 12.45 was even roughly in line with Dr Blackwell's estimated time of death, then a discovery at 'about' 1am would be perfectly in line with that, would it not?

Arbeter Fraint makes no reference to time of death estimates, and Blackwell's estimate is expressed as a time range, not an approximate time...

I consulted my watch on my arrival, and it was just 1.16.
I do not think the deceased could have been dead more than twenty minutes, or at the most half an hour when I saw her.

So as you say, ~12:45 is only roughly inline with this estimate.
On the other hand, it just happens to be the same time as Schwartz gave, for when he was rudely interrupted on his way to checking if his wife had managed to complete their expected move of address, after his epic day out.

This is AF, from the point Eagle, Kozebrodski and others are aware the woman is dead:

In the meantime, there was quite a to-do going on inside the club, and everyone ran out into the yard. Dimshits, Eygel and Gilyarovsky ran to look for a policeman; ten minutes later they had found a pair of peace-keepers.• One of the policemen ran for a doctor, and Morris Eygel ran to the police station on Leman Street to report the murder. In the meantime, the commotion about the murder drew people, and the street that had been asleep began to become lively.
The doctor arrived ten minutes later along with a lot of policemen. The doctor began to examine the body, which was still warm. He lifted the head, which a policeman illuminated with his night lantern, and a horrific picture appeared before his eyes. The pale face was green, the eyes tightly closed, the back hair disheveled, the neck sliced wide-open [and] bathed in blood. In one hand, the murdered woman held a bunch of grapes and in the other a box of candies. She was dressed in black: poor but clean. She wore a red flower on her breast. The doctor continued to examine her and found no other wounds other than the broad gash on her neck.

By doctor (at the scene), they probably mean Ed Johnston, and it would seem that it is around this point that the grapes go missing. Officially of course, they never existed.

If Johnston is assumed to have arrived at 1:12, then consider the time estimates AF gives...

EJ arrives 10 minutes after the peace-keepers, who are found 10 minutes after Eagle sees the body - and then keep going back to the point Diemschitz arrives at the gates. What is the approximate time at that point?

As nobody witnessed the murder itself, or the killer fleeing the scene afterwards, the actual time he struck, prior to the body being found, had to be an educated guess, based on the estimated timings given by the last witness to see the victim alive.

What's so difficult to grasp about this?

If by last witness, you mean Schwartz, the issue is that Arbeter Fraint makes no reference to the Schwartz incident, or anything resembling it.
If you mean Smith, the issue is that this is the Oct 5 edition, and Smith's testimony appeared in the Oct 6 papers.

[caz]

Catherine Eddowes supposedly said: I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer. I think I know him.

This is not corroborated and is only one anecdote, but on the other hand, do you have any evidence that people nowadays are more likely to be aware of something odd or unusual about people who turn out to be serial killers?

As you suggest, there are many false positives, and being wise in hindsight is not evidence for being more 'switched-on', but it is evidence for people rationalising away their ignorance, after the fact.

I very much doubt Eddowes ever said anything of the sort. It would have been different if someone had reported the conversation before she met her killer.

I also doubt that people today would be any more likely to detect a serial killer in their midst, just from that person's known behaviour and personality. As I said, they don't tend to advertise.

[caz]

I will diplomatically decline to answer.

But I suspect that many of us who are living through these strange times are wondering if there might be a sort of 'color blindness' when it comes to a certain type of dangerous personality.

The urge to flock to the largest primate pounding wildly on his chest might have served an evolutionary purpose, and now its poisonous downside is still in our DNA.

I think many people must be strangely drawn to 'dangerous' personalities, purely because they are dangerous, in the same way that some women are strangely attracted to men who will do them more harm than good. I don't pretend to understand why, unless it has something to do with sadists acting as magnets for masochists.

[Michael W Richards]

But what has any of this to do with the apparently motiveless, unsolved murders of several women, regardless of how many were separate crimes, and how many - or how few - could have been the work of a single repeat offender?

In every decade since then, we Londoners have witnessed or experienced the same or similar social and political elements you mention, and we have also seen a rise in the numbers of serial killers, active alongside all other unconnected murders at any one time. So I simply don't accept your logic that because there were other murders committed besides the C5, that is a good enough reason not to consider more than two at most as the work of the same cut throat. The fact that you concede that one man was almost certainly responsible for the two murders you personally consider to have the most similarities - those of Nichols and Chapman - shows up the fragility of your argument against a repeat offender, who would have been seeking more opportunities as the circumstances allowed.

Robberies have always been far more commonplace than murder, but if five branches of Barclays Bank were targeted, one after another in the same area of a large city, by someone with a gun demanding cash, it would be common sense to consider the crimes could well be linked, either to one robber or the same gang. If two branches were targeted on the same day, where the gunman fled empty-handed from the first, for no clear reason, but a killing [sorry] was made from the second, it would be ridiculous for the police to conclude that because most robberies are individual, unlinked crimes, these bank jobs were probably no exception.

Ill respond by only this Caz, since I can be long winded....we dont know that any of them, save the first 2 Canonicals, lacked motives beyond killing. In those 2 cases the motive is revealed. He killed so he could cut more. He coveted. In contrast, Liz Strides killer killed her. Killings are not similar, all are unique in some way or another, but the core element, the motive for doing the act, is why the killer kills. Until you can figure out why any of these women were killed you wont know what motivations were there.

I can see man killing to obtain female internal organs, ill tempered man in a violent encounter with a woman, someone being silenced, and someone close to the victim either seeking revenge or punishing in some way. The basics seem plausible to me, because evidence that might support those ideas actually exists.

[DJA]

Serial killers had been around well before Jack the Ripper, the term being coined mid 20th century.

List of serial killers before 1900 - Wikipedia

[NotBlamedForNothing]

Dew's observations were made in an era before much was known about the ability of many serial killers to operate under the noses of everyone, including close family members, friends and work colleagues, without giving anyone the least cause for suspicion. Often, after capture, people will comment that he was a "loner" or an "oddball", or was just not particularly sociable or likeable, but rarely does anyone say: "I always suspected him of those murders". It's far more common for people to suspect relatives, neighbours or other associates, who turn out to be completely innocent.

Catherine Eddowes supposedly said: I have come back to earn the reward offered for the apprehension of the Whitechapel murderer. I think I know him.

This is not corroborated and is only one anecdote, but on the other hand, do you have any evidence that people nowadays are more likely to be aware of something odd or unusual about people who turn out to be serial killers?

As you suggest, there are many false positives, and being wise in hindsight is not evidence for being more 'switched-on', but it is evidence for people rationalising away their ignorance, after the fact.

[rjpalmer]

Surely, millions of your own countrymen couldn't have been that dim-witted - could they?

I will diplomatically decline to answer.

But I suspect that many of us who are living through these strange times are wondering if there might be a sort of 'color blindness' when it comes to a certain type of dangerous personality.

The urge to flock to the largest primate pounding wildly on his chest might have served an evolutionary purpose, and now its poisonous downside is still in our DNA.