Did he have anatomical knowledge?

[RockySullivan]

Do butchers cut from rectum up to breastplate and disembowel? The rippings look more like an expert with a knife and extensive experience disemboweling.

[Outlaw]

Hi Prosector,

Thank you for your informative and eminently sensible post. Nocturnal kerbside surgery sure ain't easy.

However, I regret to tell you that your apparent knowledge in these matters will not shine a light in the dark corridors of Ripperology, for you may have noticed that all arguments regarding the Whitechapel murders inevitably return to the mystery's default settings, which over the years have almost become an article of faith: namely that a person known as Jack the Ripper [variously and authoritatively identified as a suicidal schoolteacher, an insane Polish Jew, a quack doctor and a hanged poisoner] actually possessed the dazzling kerbside surgical skills which contradict your post.

Faith is resistant to logic and reason. Which is why the mystery persists. For some bizarre reason, people insist on believing in Jack.

Regards,

Simon

I can find nothing in that to disagree with at all

Pardon the pun, but some 'new blood' is desperately needed if anything regarding JTR can progress from the situation it stubbornly refuses to move on from.

[Wickerman]

The most likely solution is not new ideas, but new information.

Arguments have been going round in circles for over a decade. New ideas are not the answer because they can only come from speculation, and we have enough of that already.
What is needed is more accurate information to complement what we already possess.

[The Good Michael]

The most likely solution is not new ideas, but new information.

Absolutely agree. Without much new information, people have been deconstructing old arguments until they fit their theories. It may be time to synthesize things again.

Mike

[RockySullivan]

Absolutely agree. Without much new information, people have been deconstructing old arguments until they fit their theories. It may be time to synthesize things again.

Mike

Perhaps but I noticed something when reading the rumbelows ripper book. When the author describes Hutchs account of the Mary Kelly sighting...it was so shocking to me how the author didn't remark on Hutchs account as suspicious. He's said to have stood outside for nearly an hour...and how anyone would not comment on how suspect this is is beyond me. Yet for a long time...Hutch was not viewed as suspicious...similar to cross...from what I can tell. It seems they are both more recent suspects. So I think the more we learn about serial killer behaviours in the past decades since many of this canonical ripper books have been published....the better profile we get...and we also know to look for the ripper as a "sociopath" rather than a psycho nut fresh from the asylum.

[RockySullivan]

I know it's a played out theory but since Elizabeth Jackson was said to be killed during an abortion and a fetus was in a pickle jar those two thing point to an abortion doctor. A abortion dr is one person who would be familiar with territory . Could the ripper have been one? Not that the c5 where getting abortions but perhaps a doctor who was also serial killer?

[GUT]

I know it's a played out theory but since Elizabeth Jackson was said to be killed during an abortion and a fetus was in a pickle jar those two thing point to an abortion doctor. A abortion dr is one person who would be familiar with territory . Could the ripper have been one? Not that the c5 where getting abortions but perhaps a doctor who was also serial killer?

It's possible, but so are many things, it would need to be fleshed out a long way to actually persuade me though.

[Errata]

I know it's a played out theory but since Elizabeth Jackson was said to be killed during an abortion and a fetus was in a pickle jar those two thing point to an abortion doctor. A abortion dr is one person who would be familiar with territory . Could the ripper have been one? Not that the c5 where getting abortions but perhaps a doctor who was also serial killer?

An abortionist had medical knowledge but no skill. A surgeon could perform an abortion in a hospital setting, but remember that people performing abortion in the streets where using knitting needles. Thus the high mortality rate. They wouldn't recognize a uterus if it slapped them in the face. And they certainly did not use any cutting skills in their profession, unless the mother was dead.

[Amanda]

But...

An abortionist had medical knowledge but no skill. A surgeon could perform an abortion in a hospital setting, but remember that people performing abortion in the streets where using knitting needles. Thus the high mortality rate. They wouldn't recognize a uterus if it slapped them in the face. And they certainly did not use any cutting skills in their profession, unless the mother was dead.

I think it would be presumptuous to group abortionists in a separate category to surgeons. Take Cream, just as an example, he was a qualified surgeon but practised as an abortionist through choice because it was a lucrative business.

We're talking 19th century here and people, doctors included, were always on the lookout for a way to earn some extra cash. That's why Burke & Hare were digging up bodies.
Amanda

[Rosella]

Burke and Hare though were operating sixty years before the Ripper and were paid for fresh corpses because surgeons needed bodies to teach anatomy. The medical profession was a great deal more regulated in the 1880's than it had been in the 1820's. I think the police did investigate people with a medical background, like the medical students who had gone insane, in their hunt for the Ripper, as well as dodgy doctors.

[Trevor Marriott]

An abortionist had medical knowledge but no skill. A surgeon could perform an abortion in a hospital setting, but remember that people performing abortion in the streets where using knitting needles. Thus the high mortality rate. They wouldn't recognize a uterus if it slapped them in the face. And they certainly did not use any cutting skills in their profession, unless the mother was dead.

Then they cut the bodies up into pieces wrapped the pieces up in parcels and disposed of them either in the Thames or in other likely spots.

Fooling people 126 years later to suspect they had been victims of a serial killer

[Errata]

I think it would be presumptuous to group abortionists in a separate category to surgeons. Take Cream, just as an example, he was a qualified surgeon but practised as an abortionist through choice because it was a lucrative business.

We're talking 19th century here and people, doctors included, were always on the lookout for a way to earn some extra cash. That's why Burke & Hare were digging up bodies.
Amanda

But if Cream cut up a prostitute, it was his background as a surgeon that was helping him, not his background as an abortionist. Abortionists do not require surgical skills. They may have had them, but not because they studied up to be an abortionist. And the lion's share of doctors performing abortion services were not servicing the destitute. They were not operating in Whitechapel really at all. Whitechapel had older women who were midwives performing abortions with drugs and needles. Doctors weren't going to make enough money off of the women in Whitechapel to risk murder charges.

[RockySullivan]

But if Cream cut up a prostitute, it was his background as a surgeon that was helping him, not his background as an abortionist. Abortionists do not require surgical skills. They may have had them, but not because they studied up to be an abortionist. And the lion's share of doctors performing abortion services were not servicing the destitute. They were not operating in Whitechapel really at all. Whitechapel had older women who were midwives performing abortions with drugs and needles. Doctors weren't going to make enough money off of the women in Whitechapel to risk murder charges.

Interesting...so do you think Liz Jackson was not killed during an abortion and this could have been a misunderstanding by the coroner that a killer was dismembering /eviscerating women

[Trevor Marriott]

Interesting...so do you think Liz Jackson was not killed during an abortion and this could have been a misunderstanding by the coroner that a killer was dismembering /eviscerating women

When you look at it, if a woman died whilst in the hands of a back street abortionist. The were hardly likely to report the death to the police would they. They would need to get rid of the body. A female abortionist could hardly wrap the body up and drag it to some secluded spot and dump it.

Needs must when the devil calls !

[Amanda]

But if Cream cut up a prostitute, it was his background as a surgeon that was helping him, not his background as an abortionist. Abortionists do not require surgical skills. They may have had them, but not because they studied up to be an abortionist. And the lion's share of doctors performing abortion services were not servicing the destitute. They were not operating in Whitechapel really at all. Whitechapel had older women who were midwives performing abortions with drugs and needles. Doctors weren't going to make enough money off of the women in Whitechapel to risk murder charges.

Hi Errata,
Think you misunderstood me. The point I was making was that surgeons did make money doing abortions, occasionally. As in America in the 1880's, there were doctors and surgeons who practised 'under the cloak' so to speak & would be called in by the midwives/local abortionist women when a patient showed signs of complications.
I did not suggest that abortionists had surgical knowledge.
Amanda