The Blessings of Tyche +Luck+

[clark2710]

How much of the Ripper's affairs were pure freakin luck and how much was it planned? I mean we don't know 100% of course but it seems to me that he got lucky a few times. There was one where a constable stopped short, had he kept going there's a chance he would've walked up on him, but where the Ripper was or may have been was within the limits of someone else's beat. I recall that from the doc. I recently saw Anyways, how much was pure skill, knowing the constable's goings on and knowing who is where and what not and how much was just plain dumb luck?

[Astatine211]

I'll need to find to the specific details but for one of the C5 murders the police investigators attached importance to the fact it occurred at the exact time as the rotation of police on duty.

[NotBlamedForNothing]

C2 & 3

Lamb: I am not on the Berner-street beat, but I passed the end of the street in Commercial-road six or seven minutes before.

Baxter: When you were found what direction were you going in?

Lamb: I was coming towards Berner-street. A constable named Smith was on the Berner-street beat. He did not accompany me, but the constable who was on fixed-point duty between Grove-street and Christian-street in Commercial-road. Constables at fixed-points leave duty at one in the morning. I believe that is the practice nearly all over London.

Baxter: I think this is important. The Hanbury-street murder was discovered just as the night police were going off duty.

[Damaso Marte]

At the Nichols murder site, there were people living in the buildings above the murder site. They heard at most some faint moaning.

At the Chapman murder site, there were a ton of people living within earshot of the murder scene. With the exception of one person, they heard nothing.

At the Stride murder site, there was a club full of people nearby.

At the Eddowes murder site, there were multiple police constables on patrol in the area, a night watchman nearby, and families living in the buildings above the square. Nobody heard anything.

At the Kelly murder site, somebody possibly heard the victim screaming, but it was also the most secure and private site.

From this, and the absence of anything like a bloody trail or the killer's personal belongings at the murder site, I am ready to conclude that while the Ripper surely benefitted from good luck, the Ripper was also taking steps to conceal himself and minimize the noise and evidence generated by his Ripping activities. To me, this suggests that the Ripper was sane enough to understand that society saw what he was doing as wrong.

[clark2710]

At the Nichols murder site, there were people living in the buildings above the murder site. They heard at most some faint moaning.

At the Chapman murder site, there were a ton of people living within earshot of the murder scene. With the exception of one person, they heard nothing.

At the Stride murder site, there was a club full of people nearby.

At the Eddowes murder site, there were multiple police constables on patrol in the area, a night watchman nearby, and families living in the buildings above the square. Nobody heard anything.

At the Kelly murder site, somebody possibly heard the victim screaming, but it was also the most secure and private site.

From this, and the absence of anything like a bloody trail or the killer's personal belongings at the murder site, I am ready to conclude that while the Ripper surely benefitted from good luck, the Ripper was also taking steps to conceal himself and minimize the noise and evidence generated by his Ripping activities. To me, this suggests that the Ripper was sane enough to understand that society saw what he was doing as wrong.

that would rule out the modern definitions of insanity in court...The Ripper knew what he was doing but the question begs what drove him? That's the part where true insanity may lay. Did he hear voices compelling him to do this and that, did he have some kind of uncontrollable urge, what was the driving force? Now, if the Ripper were Kosminski for instance, that man did hear voices and had compulsions of insanity guiding him. Some of the other suspects just plain hated women and it's that simple. But yeah it seems like pure luck and a sign of the times. People probably heard things but didn't chalk them up to killing; maybe? People may have heard things but wrote it off as, ok that's a prostitute with her customer, maybe even looked outside and saw something but just never brought it up.