Did he have anatomical knowledge?

[Wickerman]

Anatomical skill and knowledge. Not surgical skill and knowedge. There is a difference there.

Surgery is more of an activity, certainly it requires knowledge & skill, but anatomy is knowledge of the body. So generally it is more correct to speak of "surgical skill" and "anatomical knowledge".

[Wickerman]

I cannot agree with you there, Jon. Bond was present at the Kelly autopsy, and he would have been aquainted with each and every cut on the body, including how the organs were removed. If his conclusion that the killer did not even possess the skill of a butcher or a hunter did not reflect the truth, then we are looking at other grounds of persuasion behind that call.

Aside from that, Dr. Bond only read the autopsy notes from the previous murders, and his opinion of Kelly's condition offers no explanation as to why.

He nevertheless concluded that the killer was not a surgeon, an anatomist, a butcher or a hunter, but instead a cruder creature. That tells me that the heart was not neatly removed ā la Virchow and that the organs were not extracted in a manner only known by surgeons. Or Bond was intentionally misleading and lying, a view that has itīs followers just as any view has these days, regardless of the quality of these views.

It always concern's me that Dr. Bond appears to adopt contrary views to those of his peers. Take for instance the death of Rose Mylett, he saw the same evidence as five other experienced doctors, even his superior, yet he arrived at a contradictory conclusion.
A fact which does not instill confidence in how he draws his conclusions.

[Fisherman]

Correct Christer, all this conjecture being the result of no obvious motive.



Now who's resorting to logic..




Yes, there is no need to assume weird personal traits exists in isolation. A person can be an exhibitionist, be subject to fetishism, display bravado, and be a retired, dismissed or failed medical student or surgeon. There's no need to believe it has to be one or the other.
Possibly even a cart driver.....




Is it necessary to make a text-book case out of every killing? Time, location , circumstances, all of which are out of your control may play a part in whether he decides to 'operate' on one victim or 'mutilate' another, or perhaps a mixture of both.

As for the Kelly murder, when we look at the body the slicing off of her flesh seems incomplete to me. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was interrupted in Millers Court too, the body was left in an unfinished state of defleshing in my opinion.
Maybe someone began moving about upstairs or in the hallway and he decided to drop everything and get out?

We apparently agree on many things here, Jon, which is nice. As for the defleshing that seems incomplete to you, I believe that it may well have filled the killers intentions. I am suggesting that he wanted to have skin, sinew, muscles, flesh and bone visible, like a cross-section (excuse the pun) of how a leg is built.

[Fisherman]

It always concern's me that Dr. Bond appears to adopt contrary views to those of his peers. Take for instance the death of Rose Mylett, he saw the same evidence as five other experienced doctors, even his superior, yet he arrived at a contradictory conclusion.
A fact which does not instill confidence in how he draws his conclusions.

I donīt think we may extract any certainty that Bond will generally have been wrong from the Mylett case - where the possibility actually must remain that Bond was the one medico who got it right.

Not saying that I think he did, but nevertheless.

[Karl]

Surgery is more of an activity, certainly it requires knowledge & skill, but anatomy is knowledge of the body. So generally it is more correct to speak of "surgical skill" and "anatomical knowledge".

There's surgical knowledge as well. You may be very knowledgeable on all matters anatomical, but that does not mean you know what should need cutting, when or why. And just as importantly, how. What incisions to make, in what shape and what size, and what depth. This is surgical knowledge, not anatomical knowledge.

A tree...?

Just kidding!

Well, I do confess that pun was intentional

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Fisherman;385070]

Okay, letīs see here ... hmmm ... no .... no .... not very likely ... and no.

Finished. The same garble as always from you, Pierre.

So no, there will be no answer from my side.

That, by the way, could serve to show you how I define care: Care is what you take not to respond to posts that do not offer any prospect of moving the discussion forward.

There, I answered one of your questions anyway!

Hi Fisherman,

I am sorry to see that you can not even operationalize your own core concepts and explain them to others when kindly asked to do so.

Regards, Pierre

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Fisherman;385079]But you restrict the possible reasons for extracting the kidney to the realm of logical and rational reasons, Jon. What if he extracted it for another reason altogether? What if we are looking at a ritualistic element?

Besides, if he wanted to show off, then why would he take the kidney along with himself as he left? It would form a serious risk as long as he had it on his person. If showing off was his only intent, leaving the kidney on top of the corpse would have made the point admirably. And we know that he was not opposed to leaving organs with a corpse, as per Kelly.

The very fact that he brought it along when he left seems to me to speak of an attachment that goes beyond showing off.

Prosector made the point you make too, more or less - the killer wanted to connect the deeds by way of performing surgically qualified work on them all.

But if he wanted to make the connection, then why not perform the same operation on all victims? Why did not all the victims have their left kidney skilfully removed? He could do it in minutes, and it would cement the view that it was the same killer overall and that he had skill.

1. He did not "perform operations".
2. He did not perform "surgically qualified work".

3. He destroyed womenīs bodies.
4. He wanted to destroy womenīs bodies.
5. He destroyed the organs for reproduction.
6. He wanted to destroy the organs for reproduction.
7. He destroyed womenīs faces.
8. He wanted to destroy womenīs faces.
9. He degraded women.
10. He wanted to degrade women.
11. He did not hide the bodies but put the bodies on display for everyone to see all of the above (from point 3).
12. He did not want to hide the bodies but he wanted to put the bodies on display for everyone to see the above.

This is exactly what happened.

These are the core elements of the signature.

Regards, Pierre

[CommercialRoadWanderer]

If the ripper was a doctor/surgeon and his purpose was to show off as such, i think he would have known how to make his "work" instantly recognizable by whoever expert was going to examine the body, and i'll say that it's likely that he would have planned his murders in a different way too, trying to get the most possible safety, proper conditions, and time. I really don't think that the ripper ever tried to do that, and even in Miller's Court there's really no certainty about what the he was trying to do, or show, or whatever.

I think it's possible, too, to have surgical skills, or even the appearence of such, without deep anatomical knowledge. A butcher will know what to do when it comes to separate an organ from a body without make an utter mess of it and the sourrounding area, even when working on an anatomy different by those he knows better.

I'm not sure that the ripper really wanted to degrade women, rather than consider them mere tools in the way of his fantasy. Well, it's high likely the he did, that he wanted to vent his rage on women for whatever reason and possibly even spread terror in the streets. But something in Miller's Court is not completely right about that.

[Craig H]

Basic or even thorough anatomical insights - agreed.

Surgical skills - disagreed. Not impossible, though.

Hi Fisherman

You're right. Re-reading it, Prosector did not say JTR was a surgeon.

Maybe we should say was he "medical or surgical trained" ?

A number of people on this Forum with obvious medical experience have suggested there was some degree of surgical skill involved, but also identify some errors or actions which an experienced surgeon would not make.

Maybe that means the killer had some medical and surgical skills, but was not a fully qualified, experienced surgeon ?

This would suggest someone who was a medical student, morgue assistant, (other jobs ??) .

I don't like the phrase "had anatomical knowledge" - not only is it hard to pronounce, I find it hard to believe someone could have read about these skills or watched it, then be able to replicate it.

Craig

[Pierre]

Craig H: Hi Fisherman,

You may be right that the victims didn't have to be prostitutes. It was just that they were easier to find.

However, I can't see how he could have done what he did without some form of surgical experience. Simply reading books about the anatomy, I don't think, would be sufficient. He did this in bad light, under pressure, in short time frame.

He need not have been a qualified surgeon, but could have studied medicine or surgery.

... or he could have had previous experience of cutting up dead women. Like - say - in 1873, 1874 and 1887, to begin with.

As Prosector outlined at the beginning of the thread, there was a level of skill and experience in the cuttings

Dr Galloway, who examined the 1873 torso agreed very much. And from the outset, he said that the killer was no doubt surgically experienced. But when he looked further at the damage and thought things over, he realized that he had been persuaded to suggest a surgeon by the sheer quality of the cutting work - but overall, the cutting was not the kind of cutting a surgeon would have done. It was extremely skilful, and it bore witness of lots of cutting experience - but it was not a surgeons work.

Prosector brings up interesting issues, but he never saw the victims. He read about the damage, and he concluded that it was not brought about by a surgeon but instead by somebody who had some anatomical insight. Or something such, I donīt remember the exact wording, but he took care not to say that it was a surgeons work.

The skill was certainly there, and that kind of skill could only have come from experience. But the question is: experience of what?

Cat's meat making.

[Wickerman]

Maybe we should say was he "medical or surgical trained" ?

A number of people on this Forum with obvious medical experience have suggested there was some degree of surgical skill involved, but also identify some errors or actions which an experienced surgeon would not make.

Maybe that means the killer had some medical and surgical skills, but was not a fully qualified, experienced surgeon ?

This would suggest someone who was a medical student, morgue assistant, (other jobs ??) .

You have it in a nutshell Craig.
There is certainly nothing to indicate he was a fully trained surgeon, but quite possibly someone of lesser medical skills.

[Karl]

A number of people on this Forum with obvious medical experience have suggested there was some degree of surgical skill involved, but also identify some errors or actions which an experienced surgeon would not make.

I have not seen this. Would this be in this thread, or elsewhere?

[Craig H]

Hi Karl

I'm not at my laptop now so can't provide links.

There is some good discussion in this thread with some detailed information from people with surgical experience. There are also other threads on this site - and the JTRforums site, which go into detail on this matter

All the best

Craig

[Fisherman]

If the ripper was a doctor/surgeon and his purpose was to show off as such, i think he would have known how to make his "work" instantly recognizable by whoever expert was going to examine the body, and i'll say that it's likely that he would have planned his murders in a different way too, trying to get the most possible safety, proper conditions, and time. I really don't think that the ripper ever tried to do that, and even in Miller's Court there's really no certainty about what the he was trying to do, or show, or whatever.

I think it's possible, too, to have surgical skills, or even the appearence of such, without deep anatomical knowledge. A butcher will know what to do when it comes to separate an organ from a body without make an utter mess of it and the sourrounding area, even when working on an anatomy different by those he knows better.

I'm not sure that the ripper really wanted to degrade women, rather than consider them mere tools in the way of his fantasy. Well, it's high likely the he did, that he wanted to vent his rage on women for whatever reason and possibly even spread terror in the streets. But something in Miller's Court is not completely right about that.

You are spot on all the way here, CRW. And I will tell you what I believe is what makes you think that there is something wrong in Millers Court in the context you are discussing:
Millers Court was never meant as a message to anyone. It had a meaning to the killer, and the elements we are seeing in that room were all part and parcel of a ritualistic deed, carried out to satisfy the killer only. When he left, the show was over, and Kelly was meaningless waste.

The reoccurring speculations that the scene was staged and the body posed in an attempt of communication with society is wrong. It was all done for his own sake, and once he left, the ones who saw the body failed to see the true implications of it.

Does it sound weird? It IS weird! But it all works to a strictly shaped formula nevertheless.

[Trevor Marriott]

You are spot on all the way here, CRW. And I will tell you what I believe is what makes you think that there is something wrong in Millers Court in the context you are discussing:
Millers Court was never meant as a message to anyone. It had a meaning to the killer, and the elements we are seeing in that room were all part and parcel of a ritualistic deed, carried out to satisfy the killer only. When he left, the show was over, and Kelly was meaningless waste.

The reoccurring speculations that the scene was staged and the body posed in an attempt of communication with society is wrong. It was all done for his own sake, and once he left, the ones who saw the body failed to see the true implications of it.

Does it sound weird? It IS weird! But it all works to a strictly shaped formula nevertheless.

It only works to the formula created by you, of which there is no corroboration.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk