How many victims?

[Gordon]

this wild belief stems from the misguided belief that the killer took away the organs of chapman and eddowes.

Oh, now I’m really confused! I always thought it was well-established fact that the killer took away the organs of poor Annie and Kate. It was exposed at their inquests. It was blazoned all over the newspapers. People speculated about it. When half a kidney was sent to George Lusk, everyone is still arguing today whether or not it belonged to Kate. This removal of organs was the very basis of theories (however misguided) like Leonard Matters’s, whose “satanic Doctor Stanley” supposedly needed these organs for his collection of medical specimens. I realize this theory, however classic, is almost certainly rubbish, but the facts on which it’s based--the killer’s removal of certain organs-- have still stood unchallenged as far as I know.

So if the Ripper didn’t take away Annie Chapman’s uterus, and Kate Eddowes’’s uterus and kidney, as the typical trophies of a serial killer, where did they go? Did a hungry stray dog come across them and gobble up these tasty morsels just minutes before these poor women’s bodies were discovered? Or did Constable Eddie Watkins, who stumbled across Kate’s body in Mitre Square, grab her discarded kidney and take it home to his wife to cook it for a nice bit of “Kate and Sidney pie”? I do hope you can enlighten me on these puzzling questions.

[Trevor Marriott]

Oh, now I’m really confused! I always thought it was well-established fact that the killer took away the organs of poor Annie and Kate. It was exposed at their inquests. It was blazoned all over the newspapers. People speculated about it. When half a kidney was sent to George Lusk, everyone is still arguing today whether or not it belonged to Kate. This removal of organs was the very basis of theories (however misguided) like Leonard Matters’s, whose “satanic Doctor Stanley” supposedly needed these organs for his collection of medical specimens. I realize this theory, however classic, is almost certainly rubbish, but the facts on which it’s based--the killer’s removal of certain organs-- have still stood unchallenged as far as I know.

So if the Ripper didn’t take away Annie Chapman’s uterus, and Kate Eddowes’’s uterus and kidney, as the typical trophies of a serial killer, where did they go? Did a hungry stray dog come across them and gobble up these tasty morsels just minutes before these poor women’s bodies were discovered? Or did Constable Eddie Watkins, who stumbled across Kate’s body in Mitre Square, grab her discarded kidney and take it home to his wife to cook it for a nice bit of “Kate and Sidney pie”? I do hope you can enlighten me on these puzzling questions.

They were removed at the mortuaries and acquired for medical research before the post mortems were carried out something that was rife in mortuaries in Victorian times.
the bodies of chapman and eddowes were left for up to 8 hours before the post mortems were carried out at which time the organs were found missing and presume removed by the killer

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Kattrup]

[FONT=Courier New][FONT=Arial]Oh, now I’m really confused! I always thought it was well-established fact that the killer took away the organs of poor Annie and Kate. It was exposed at their inquests. ]

Please don't let Trevor's "theory" confuse you.

you're absolutely right, it is well established fact.

[JeffHamm]

They were removed at the mortuaries and acquired for medical research before the post mortems were carried out something that was rife in mortuaries in Victorian times.
the bodies of chapman and eddowes were left for up to 8 hours before the post mortems were carried out at which time the organs were found missing and presume removed by the killer

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

And something that was expressly forbidden by law at the time. It was possible to obtain bodies for disection, but these were applied for, and required a location be registered as the disecting location (i.e. for teaching and research purposes). What was not allowed was the taking of anything prior to an autopsy. There's no evidence to support the idea of mortuary thievery, it's just a hypothesis Trevor has put forth because he does not believe JtR had enough time to remove organs in the Eddowes' case. But if Chapman's organs were taken, that would suggest his time estimate is incorrect, so he argues that Chapman's organs were also stolen. For some reason, he doesn't argue that Kelly's heart was stolen, but rather that it was not missing, despite the fact it is not in the body and by all accounts not in the room and there are press reports indicating something was missing (one even specifies the heart was missing). He also puts a lot of stock in Insp. Reid's statement, made many years after the fact, that nothing was missing from Kelly.

It's not an idea that has gained a lot of traction here, but Trevor has spent a lot of time working on the idea, so has more lines of reasoning and there are those who do agree with him. While I disagree with his interpretation, that's doesn't mean anything, he disagrees with mine after all, so disagreement doesn't mean much other than we draw different conclusions.

In the end, take your time to look at the evidence people put forth, and do your best to separate "strength of conviction" and "strength of evidence". Then, draw your own conclusions based upon your own reading. It's not a competition, rather, it's about sharing of ideas. Ideas can be agreed with or not, but it doesn't mean they haven't been considered.

- Jeff

[Trevor Marriott]

Please don't let Trevor's "theory" confuse you.

you're absolutely right, it is well established fact.

Its a well established misleading fact !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I fail to understand is why some are reluctant to consider the fact that the killer didnt take away the organs when out of all the victims we only have two, Eddowes and Chapman who were found to be missing organs when the post mortems were carried out, and their bodies had been left for hours before the post mortems were carried out

There no evidence that any attempts were made to remove organs from any of the other victims

And a wealth of evidence in the public domain to show that organs and body parts were acquired and sold from mortuaries in the LVP

Prof Elizabeth Hurren at Leiceester University has written several books on the topic of how body parts and organs were acquired and sold on the black market in the LVP and show the working of "Body dealers" here is an extract from one of her books.

Despite the anatomy act 1832 being in place in 1888, there was still a demand that exceeded the availability of bodies and body parts. This gave rise to a network of body dealers across London who was tasked with supplying medical schools to obtain bodies and body parts. They targeted areas of destitution where the poorest resided. As a result, The East-End became the centre of many-body dealing businesses that could supply bodies and body parts. For, whilst it was legal to supply a body for anatomy it was illegal to profit personally from a body transaction, but that was no deterrent to these unscrupulous people who traded in the dead.

As well as claiming dead bodies from the streets, body dealers would also purchase dead bodies from the back doors of doss houses, brothels and lodging houses, night refuges, and convents making a quick profit for the owners of these premises with Dorset Street in Whitechapel being regarded as the epicentre for the body dealing business.

Female body parts were highly prized and fetched a high price on the black market. This led to a rise in female body dealers.

The dealing in bodies and body parts involved a complex supply chain starting with undertakers, mortuary attendants, infirmary porters, and nurses who would all alert a body dealer of a death, and then they would be paid by the body dealer for that information, or in the case of a mortuary attendant allowing access to a mortuary to simply remove body parts from a dead body, as body parts were more lucrative acquisitions than a whole body.

The hospitals where the bodies and body parts were subsequently sold to were required to keep records of the transactions for the benefit of the authorities, but very few transactions were recorded.

A documented case from 1887 where a body dealer who was simply referred to as ‘Ward’ who was masquerading as an ‘undertaker’ acquired the corpse of “Patrick O’Brian, a male, aged 66, who died in St. Giles and Bloomsbury Workhouse on 27th October 1887” the deal to acquire the body was made with a nod and handshake at “7pm on the 29th of October” in person with mortuary staff. At the time the body was intact. On arrival at the back of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital later that night, the body was found to be missing a limb.

Two other cases of similar note relate to the deaths of two separate females Mary Beckett and Elizabeth Murphy both died at the Mile End Infirmary on the 13th and 14th March 1888 respectively, a body dealer named ‘Slade’ arranged to discretely collect their bodies for sale on “16th March 1888 at 6.15pm” from the mortuary attendant who was paid a supply fee.

Can we confidenlty say that the killer removed thse organs fron Chapman and Eddowes given what we now know?

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Trevor Marriott]

And something that was expressly forbidden by law at the time. It was possible to obtain bodies for disection, but these were applied for, and required a location be registered as the disecting location (i.e. for teaching and research purposes). What was not allowed was the taking of anything prior to an autopsy. There's no evidence to support the idea of mortuary thievery, it's just a hypothesis Trevor has put forth because he does not believe JtR had enough time to remove organs in the Eddowes' case. But if Chapman's organs were taken, that would suggest his time estimate is incorrect, so he argues that Chapman's organs were also stolen. For some reason, he doesn't argue that Kelly's heart was stolen, but rather that it was not missing, despite the fact it is not in the body and by all accounts not in the room and there are press reports indicating something was missing (one even specifies the heart was missing). He also puts a lot of stock in Insp. Reid's statement, made many years after the fact, that nothing was missing from Kelly.

It's not an idea that has gained a lot of traction here, but Trevor has spent a lot of time working on the idea, so has more lines of reasoning and there are those who do agree with him. While I disagree with his interpretation, that's doesn't mean anything, he disagrees with mine after all, so disagreement doesn't mean much other than we draw different conclusions.

In the end, take your time to look at the evidence people put forth, and do your best to separate "strength of conviction" and "strength of evidence". Then, draw your own conclusions based upon your own reading. It's not a competition, rather, it's about sharing of ideas. Ideas can be agreed with or not, but it doesn't mean they haven't been considered.

- Jeff

Hi Jeff

See post #65

[JeffHamm]

Hi Jeff

See post #65

Thanks Trevor.

- Jeff

[MrBarnett]

If you want to read more of Dr Hurren’s work on the subject, have a gander at this:

https://journals.openedition.org/chs/1667

She posits the theory that Mary Ann [sic] Kelly may have been a body dealer, tells us that 4 of the C5 murders took place in Dorset Street and confuses a photo of Northeast Passage with Dorset Street. Have a spin through it, you’ll find lots more of the same. Perhaps she should have asked Drew Gray to peer review her work. (Perhaps she did.)

[Trevor Marriott]

If you want to read more of Dr Hurren’s work on the subject, have a gander at this:

https://journals.openedition.org/chs/1667

She posits the theory that Mary Ann [sic] Kelly may have been a body dealer, tells us that 4 of the C5 murders took place in Dorset Street and confuses a photo of Northeast Passage with Dorset Street. Have a spin through it, you’ll find more of the same. Perhaps she should have asked Drew Gray to peer review her work. (Perhaps she did.)

It doesnt alter the content of what I posted !!!!!!!!

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh, now I’m really confused! I always thought it was well-established fact that the killer took away the organs of poor Annie and Kate. It was exposed at their inquests. It was blazoned all over the newspapers. People speculated about it. When half a kidney was sent to George Lusk, everyone is still arguing today whether or not it belonged to Kate. This removal of organs was the very basis of theories (however misguided) like Leonard Matters’s, whose “satanic Doctor Stanley” supposedly needed these organs for his collection of medical specimens. I realize this theory, however classic, is almost certainly rubbish, but the facts on which it’s based--the killer’s removal of certain organs-- have still stood unchallenged as far as I know.

So if the Ripper didn’t take away Annie Chapman’s uterus, and Kate Eddowes’’s uterus and kidney, as the typical trophies of a serial killer, where did they go? Did a hungry stray dog come across them and gobble up these tasty morsels just minutes before these poor women’s bodies were discovered? Or did Constable Eddie Watkins, who stumbled across Kate’s body in Mitre Square, grab her discarded kidney and take it home to his wife to cook it for a nice bit of “Kate and Sidney pie”? I do hope you can enlighten me on these puzzling questions.

Trevor has a theory which only he appears to accept.

Bond said that Kelly’s heart was missing from the pericardium which Trevor had leapt on to say “well that only means that it wasn’t in the body and not that it was taken away.” The fact that the heart wasn’t found anywhere in the room (and body parts were logged) doesn’t deter Trevor though because unfortunately Inspector Reid later mistakenly said that all the body parts were accounted for. He was wrong, as is Trevor.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Its a well established misleading fact !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What I fail to understand is why some are reluctant to consider the fact that the killer didnt take away the organs when out of all the victims we only have two, Eddowes and Chapman who were found to be missing organs when the post mortems were carried out, and their bodies had been left for hours before the post mortems were carried out

There no evidence that any attempts were made to remove organs from any of the other victims

And a wealth of evidence in the public domain to show that organs and body parts were acquired and sold from mortuaries in the LVP

Prof Elizabeth Hurren at Leiceester University has written several books on the topic of how body parts and organs were acquired and sold on the black market in the LVP and show the working of "Body dealers" here is an extract from one of her books.

Despite the anatomy act 1832 being in place in 1888, there was still a demand that exceeded the availability of bodies and body parts. This gave rise to a network of body dealers across London who was tasked with supplying medical schools to obtain bodies and body parts. They targeted areas of destitution where the poorest resided. As a result, The East-End became the centre of many-body dealing businesses that could supply bodies and body parts. For, whilst it was legal to supply a body for anatomy it was illegal to profit personally from a body transaction, but that was no deterrent to these unscrupulous people who traded in the dead.

As well as claiming dead bodies from the streets, body dealers would also purchase dead bodies from the back doors of doss houses, brothels and lodging houses, night refuges, and convents making a quick profit for the owners of these premises with Dorset Street in Whitechapel being regarded as the epicentre for the body dealing business.

Female body parts were highly prized and fetched a high price on the black market. This led to a rise in female body dealers.

The dealing in bodies and body parts involved a complex supply chain starting with undertakers, mortuary attendants, infirmary porters, and nurses who would all alert a body dealer of a death, and then they would be paid by the body dealer for that information, or in the case of a mortuary attendant allowing access to a mortuary to simply remove body parts from a dead body, as body parts were more lucrative acquisitions than a whole body.

The hospitals where the bodies and body parts were subsequently sold to were required to keep records of the transactions for the benefit of the authorities, but very few transactions were recorded.

A documented case from 1887 where a body dealer who was simply referred to as ‘Ward’ who was masquerading as an ‘undertaker’ acquired the corpse of “Patrick O’Brian, a male, aged 66, who died in St. Giles and Bloomsbury Workhouse on 27th October 1887” the deal to acquire the body was made with a nod and handshake at “7pm on the 29th of October” in person with mortuary staff. At the time the body was intact. On arrival at the back of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital later that night, the body was found to be missing a limb.

Two other cases of similar note relate to the deaths of two separate females Mary Beckett and Elizabeth Murphy both died at the Mile End Infirmary on the 13th and 14th March 1888 respectively, a body dealer named ‘Slade’ arranged to discretely collect their bodies for sale on “16th March 1888 at 6.15pm” from the mortuary attendant who was paid a supply fee.

]Can we confidenlty say that the killer removed thse organs fron Chapman and Eddowes given what we now know?[/B]

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Yes.

[Herlock Sholmes]

If these body dealers were doing this for cash (which they obviously were) they were obviously paid x for a kidney, y for a liver, z for a heart etc. So why did they only pick individual organs in the case of ripper victims? Why not plunder the body of all sellable organs for the maximum cash haul?

Why not?

Because in the case of the ripper victims it very obviously didn’t happen.

[MrBarnett]

It doesnt alter the content of what I posted !!!!!!!!

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

How could it alter the content????

You appeared to be putting Dr Hurren forward as an academic authority on the subject in true ‘My dad’s a policeman’ style.

People now have the opportunity to assess the Dr’s research abilities and consider how much weight to give her highly imaginative theories.

[MrBarnett]

For our purposes, this statement by Dr Hurren is of most interest:

Dorset Street in Whitechapel being regarded as the epicentre for the body dealing business.


I imagine Trevor has an extensive knowledge of the Dr’s work (otherwise he wouldn’t present her to us as an authority). So perhaps he can provide us with the evidence for Dr Hurren’s conclusion about Dorset Street.

[Trevor Marriott]

For our purposes, this statement by Dr Hurren is of most interest:

Dorset Street in Whitechapel being regarded as the epicentre for the body dealing business.

I imagine Trevor has an extensive knowledge of the Dr’s work (otherwise he wouldn’t present her to us as an authority). So perhaps he can provide us with the evidence for Dr Hurren’s conclusion about Dorset Street.

I am only concerned into her research into the illict and unlawful aquisition of body parts and bodies and the work of body dealers and corrupt mortuary attendants. If you or anyone else can disprove her research into this topic then feel free to post it because it adds even more weight to what happened to the organs of Eddowes and Chapman and if i am right adds more weight to show the killer did not take away the heart of Kelly.

Yet again I see desperation setting in with some who want to protect the old accpted theories by trying to destroy an academics research.The same desparation that set in with regards to Insp Reids interview whereby certain reserchers who did not accept the accuracy of that interview suggested he had misremebered the facts surrounding the Kelly murder, its really pathetic, when Reid had more involvement in the case than Bond

www.trevormarriott.co.uk