The Absence Of Evidence

[Trevor Marriott]

Ok. Until then, I guess we're in agreement that a cut throat could not be described as a "military killing technique" in 1888.
Since you cannot find any military units being trained in that technique, I mean.
Personally, I'd think the SOE might have been the place to look if you want to find a point of origin for such things being taught, but you state for a fact that it's been taught in the military since Roman times. Kinda strange that there's no evidence of it, then. I suppose all the units being taught this over the course of two millennia were very, very secretive

How much training does it take to learn how to attack someome from behind and cut their throat?

Isnt that a better and more efficient way than wrestling someone to the ground and then trying to make a clean cut to the throat while they are on the ground and perhaps still struggling?

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Kattrup]

I will just thumb through my 1883 manual of "Cut Throat Techniques For Assassination & Close Combat Training". I'm sure it is in there somewhere.

Did you not read my example from the American Civil War? Google "fighting knife" or "bowie knife". Both very good candidates for knives and were used to cut throats in the Civil War. As in the example I provided.

I never said anything about British military.

When I provide you that pesky example from the manual I have, then perhaps you might believe me. Then perhaps I can sleep again at night.

Ok. Until then, I guess we're in agreement that a cut throat could not be described as a "military killing technique" in 1888.
Since you cannot find any military units being trained in that technique, I mean.
Personally, I'd think the SOE might have been the place to look if you want to find a point of origin for such things being taught, but you state for a fact that it's been taught in the military since Roman times. Kinda strange that there's no evidence of it, then. I suppose all the units being taught this over the course of two millennia were very, very secretive

[caz]

I think there is validity in that Caz. The actual killing part of what he did was admin. He derived pleasure from the post-mortem activity. I am leaning towards the idea that Stride was not playing ball and may have started to become suspicious of her gentleman stranger friend.

Jack probably sensed this wasn’t going to go the way he wanted, and the fact she could now give quite a good description. The yard was just about good enough to kill her, but he would have known it was extremely risky as well for that. Hence why he didn’t hang around for long for the main event as it was too hot.

Another point to make is that both Nichols and Chapman had given their killer an easy ride. The risks were all about the locations and potential witnesses in those cases, but a compliant victim was essential if he was to fulfil his desires.

I see a man who lumped all such women together, and was taken aback when Stride turned out to have her own mind, not so desperate or sick that she had to do his bidding. Whether her killer was a stranger or not, she had no idea if he might be responsible for the recent murders of women on the streets - three since early August - and she'd have been naturally more wary by the end of September than any of the previous victims. Eddowes had only just returned from the hopping, and was not yet used to weighing up every man she met in case she was about to make the next day's headlines.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Can you provide an example of military personnel "specially trained in the art of close combat" that would entail the kind of technique you're thinking of - in the LVP? Close combat in the LVP would consist of fixing a bayonet to a rifle and stabbing with it.

Can you provide an example of such a unit in the British military in the LVP?

Thank you, I certainly will choose not to believe that Special Forces-training from the latter half of the 20th century existed in the 19th century. Guess I am a stickler for both chronology AND evidence. What a drag

I will just thumb through my 1883 manual of "Cut Throat Techniques For Assassination & Close Combat Training". I'm sure it is in there somewhere.

Did you not read my example from the American Civil War? Google "fighting knife" or "bowie knife". Both very good candidates for knives and were used to cut throats in the Civil War. As in the example I provided.

I never said anything about British military.

When I provide you that pesky example from the manual I have, then perhaps you might believe me. Then perhaps I can sleep again at night.

[Ms Diddles]

It’s refreshing to see a thread where no one is claiming as a fact something that they can’t possibly know to be one.

You've probably jinxed it now, Herlock!!!!!

[Ms Diddles]

Hi Ms D,

You may have misread my post, because while I may be wrong, I do lean quite heavily towards Stride being a ripper victim. I just think that on this occasion, the woman herself, the place and time, and the circumstances, all conspired against him - he wasn't a robot or Superman, after all - and directly resulted in Eddowes being the next victim.

In short, he nearly screwed up, because he was human and not always in perfect control of what was going on around him.

Love,

Caz
X

Ahh!

Apologies Caz!

I had indeed picked you up wrong!

Agreed, the killer was not an automaton.

His actions would have been influenced by what was going on around him (and possibly what was going on inside his own head too).

[erobitha]

Hi erobitha,

This is why I doubt Stride's killer was someone known to her, who had no previous experience of killing anyone with a single cut to the throat. How could he possibly have been certain that this would do the job, and she would be dead before her body was discovered? His failure to make sure of this points away from anyone she could have identified by name, and towards a stranger who knew what he was doing.

Love,

Caz
X

I think there is validity in that Caz. The actual killing part of what he did was admin. He derived pleasure from the post-mortem activity. I am leaning towards the idea that Stride was not playing ball and may have started to become suspicious of her gentleman stranger friend.

Jack probably sensed this wasn’t going to go the way he wanted, and the fact she could now give quite a good description. The yard was just about good enough to kill her, but he would have known it was extremely risky as well for that. Hence why he didn’t hang around for long for the main event as it was too hot.

[caz]

How much "curriculum" kill training do you think there was prior to the 20th century? Yet, every major battle in the last thousand years will have victims of throat cutting. The impression they read instructions in "how to be an army soldier" handbook is somewhat silly. People were trained by people, before textbooks became all the rage.

A quick look at the knives used in battle during the American Civil War will give you a clue that many were not using their knives to cut wood.

"....A private in the white 29th Iowa Infantry, whose regiment supported the 2nd Kansas, wrote his family: "One of our boys seen a little n*gro pounding a wounded reb in the head with the but of his gun and asked him what he was doing. the n*gro replied he is not dead yet!" During a subsequent lull in the fighting, details from the 2nd Kansas ranged the field, cutting the throats of Confederate wounded. "We found that many of our wounded had been mutilated in many ways," reported the surgeon of the 33rd Arkansas Infantry. "Some with ears cut off, throats cut, knife stabs, etc. My brother . . . had his throat cut through the windpipe and lived several days."

Hi erobitha,

This is why I doubt Stride's killer was someone known to her, who had no previous experience of killing anyone with a single cut to the throat. How could he possibly have been certain that this would do the job, and she would be dead before her body was discovered? His failure to make sure of this points away from anyone she could have identified by name, and towards a stranger who knew what he was doing.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

This is a really good point Caz. Maybe stride cottoned on to his intentions, so he cut her throat as she could potentially id him at a later date. Never really thought of that before but could be just a viable as him being interupted.

Cheers Losmandris.

The killer would be interpreting Stride's reactions and behaviour towards him, just as she would be doing the same with his. He only had to suspect that this one was trouble, and he had the means to put a swift end to the possibility.

The police were desperate to find their man, so any report from a woman who had been subjected to abuse by a stranger, or just his unwelcome attentions, would have been potentially significant. How much might Stride have been able to tell the police had he let her live? Was he in her company earlier that evening? Had they chatted or had a drink together? Was there anything distinctive about his speech, behaviour or mannerisms? Was he polite at first, before becoming pushy? Did he come bearing gifts? Did he have a memorable chat-up line? Was there a point when his manner changed abruptly because of something she said or did? Even if he was the man Schwartz and Pipeman saw, they could have told the police nothing about any of these aspects of his character. They saw a brief snapshot of the woman being shoved by a man, who may or may not have been the killer. So we just don't know how important it was to him to make sure she would not live to tell the tale.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi erobitha,

Yes, the descriptions of the way the throats were cut between Stride and Eddowes read almost like carbon copies of each other, with Eddowes's a bit deeper, but even then, the vessels on the right side were still barely touched in her case, and not at all in Stride's. That similarity, in the one action that can be compared between the two victims has always been the link that makes me think Stride cannot be readily dismissed. The thing I don't know, though, is how common is it for that sort of wound to be produced in throat cutting murders? If the position, angles, and so forth, are simply the way such wounds commonly occur, the similarity is less compelling. But, if there is a large variation between how different murderers end up cutting a throat, then the similarity becomes more compelling.

- Jeff

Just one more striking coincidence, Jeff, for Stride excluders to wish away. I would also ask how common were outdoor throat cutting murders of women in the first place. We are told they were commonplace, but the statistics don't back that up, and there were plenty of other ways of doing harm to a woman. If Stride's killer cut her throat to make it look like 'another' throat cutting murder by the same man who had recently killed Nichols and Chapman, he missed a trick by not adding just one or two more features of those murders for good measure - unless of course he was interrupted.

Love,

Caz
X

[Kattrup]

Those specially trained in the art of close combat would do so first-hand by another individual.

Can you provide an example of military personnel "specially trained in the art of close combat" that would entail the kind of technique you're thinking of - in the LVP? Close combat in the LVP would consist of fixing a bayonet to a rifle and stabbing with it.

I will clarify for your benefit, those with the view to assassinate without discrimination, are usually a separate divsion from your usual GI Joe. An elite or cladestine group with no problem using throat slitting as an efficient means for killing.

Can you provide an example of such a unit in the British military in the LVP?

You can choose to wait until someone shows you explicitly in a training manual before you believe it, that is your choice.

Thank you, I certainly will choose not to believe that Special Forces-training from the latter half of the 20th century existed in the 19th century. Guess I am a stickler for both chronology AND evidence. What a drag

[caz]

I agree Caz. It’s easy to make assumptions but we have consider the situation or how the killer perceived the situation to have been at the time. Maybe he just wasn’t comfortable in that spot? Maybe Liz started to get a bit vocal if the killer tried to get her further to the back of the yard so he decided to just silence her and move on? Maybe the killer did occasionally have sex with prostitutes without killing them but on this occasion an argument broke out and he lost his temper? I think that it’s easy to mistakenly close off lines of thought because we assume that we know what the killer was thinking at any given time.

Absolutely, Herlock. There are so many possibilities here, whether or not Stride's killer had killed before.

I do think the ripper probably used prostitutes in that area of town, before he began attacking them, but something or someone set him off to unleash the extreme violence within. It could have started with a woman like Martha Tabram, if there was an argument over money, or she belittled him in some way, or merely refused to engage with him at all. A violent, spur of the moment revenge attack, could have given him a temporary release, but left him to dwell on morbid thoughts and fantasies about what he might do if he went out with purpose next time.

All we know is that we don't know what was in the mind of Stride's killer when he decided to use his knife on her. He was undoubtedly a very nasty piece of work and a dangerous individual, armed with a knife and prepared to murder a defenceless female. But was he a man who did nothing like this before or since - or a man who was becoming accustomed to what damage his knife could do, and when he needed to ease back?

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Well, that's the point, I don't think there was any such training prior to the 20th century. The fact that people have used throat cutting to kill others since the invention of cutting does not seem very relevant - what I questioned was your assertion that it was "military killing technique" particularly for those trained in close combat.


Perhaps it would be best then if you explain what you mean? To me, your statement clearly implies that soldiers were trained in this "technique". But it seems you just meant that soldiers may have used it in combat and have had first- or second-hand experience with it. I interpret that statement to mean: some soldiers may have used it themselves in the military (firsthand, during conflicts in various colonial places, perhaps), or they may have heard their mates tell them about it (second-hand) without actually being trained to do it.

For your information, textbooks on how to be a soldier are not a modern invention, they are in fact an early modern invention and have been around for centuries. The military being highly regulated and bureaucratic, we know a lot about what soldiers were trained to do and what they were supposed to be doing at various times during their training and later during their postings to various duty stations.

By stating that people were trained by people and implying that textbooks are immaterial to our understanding of how soldiers were trained, it seems to me that you believe training was an informal matter left to the discretion of individual drill instructors. That is just completely wrong.


It's no big deal - but the argument has been repeated by various people some times over the years - and 'm certainly no expert on Victorian military training, but in summary: from the wording you used, you've given the impression that some soldiers would have been trained in how to cut throats.

I do not think there's anything to back this up, and so I've asked you to clarify what you mean, exactly.

Do you believe the only training can come from drill sergeants reading a manual to standard recruits? Those specially trained in the art of close combat would do so first-hand by another individual. I will clarify for your benefit, those with the view to assassinate without discrimination, are usually a separate divsion from your usual GI Joe. An elite or cladestine group with no problem using throat slitting as an efficient means for killing. No manuals even today on this. The precise manner in which all victims were murdered by severing the left carotid artery was a technique employed by such people. The technique is often as a stealth move to attack the enemy from behind in order to avoid detection. Hand over mouth, slit the throat. Quiet and efficent. It's a technique taught since at least the Roman Empire.

You can choose to wait until someone shows you explicitly in a training manual before you believe it, that is your choice.

[caz]

It could have started right from the beginning if he realized (and why wouldn't he?) that this simply was not a safe place and there were too many people around. So why kill under those circumstances? Who knows? It could be that he was simply overcome with the desire to do so and danger be damned. Then paranoia kicked in after the kill.

c.d.

I agree that he would have to be a bit thick not to see the location as particularly risky, especially after his experiences with Nichols and Chapman. But it was Stride who dictated that location, which could have frustrated and angered him enough to take his knife to her before going off to greener pastures.

We shouldn't forget that the victims were not obliged to accompany their killer to where he could safely mutilate them. It was their choice to be where they were when their killer turned nasty. If that location was all wrong for what he wanted to do, he could have backed off and let the woman live, but he was not obliged to do so. He was a killer with a knife and no conscience, not a charity worker.

Love,

Caz
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[Herlock Sholmes]

It’s refreshing to see a thread where no one is claiming as a fact something that they can’t possibly know to be one.