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Very good point. I noticed the mistake, too, and thought it was a bit sensationalized.
Even when the Ripper slit their throats, he used two cuts of the knife.
Even when the Ripper slit their throats, he used two cuts of the knife.
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Pat D. https://forum.casebook.org/core/imag...rt/reading.gif
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Von Konigswald: Jack the Ripper plays shuffleboard. -- Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut, c.1970.
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Hi Michael.Originally posted by Michael W Richards View Post
No. You are right. I should have written, 'removed internal organs on three of the five the prostitutes with only one knife,; Thank you for the correction. I will correct the text in my book as well.
Thank You.Comment
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Good points. I myself have never had any image of this killer at all in my head, since I was never interested in the case. So I am free to analyse the sources and let them kick back.The funny thing is, as much as we try to get past the image of the man in the top hat and gladstone bag, we are a little ruled by that image. I think we all reject things that contradict that image. We may engage intellectually, but our gut says "Nope. Doesn't fit the picture in my head." And I do it too, or I would take my theory more seriously. But still, we stick to single man with a long knife in the fog of the evening. Despite the fact it likely was not that long of a knife.
Regards, PierreComment
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Laughable
A missed technique that resembles the injuries and suspect, whom a good case has been made for, that possessed it. The news of the world sees it, but nobody here. Laughable.Comment
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Massive mutilation and organ removal are rare in the extreme ( and what are the chances there was another 1888 killer who cut a heart out, among other massive and most probably post mortem mutilations, including sexual mutilation of the victim. Plus, draped intestines around the shoulders? Maybe I should put that in the coincidences thread. Who knows anymore. )Originally posted by Richard Patterson View Post
Anyway, any butcher knows how to locate and remove a kidne.Comment
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I can't really make out what you're saying here.Originally posted by Richard Patterson View Post
And while I am addressing you, I'll just take the time to address what you said in a previous post:
This is simply not true. By saying "the medical profession agreed", you are taking them all under the same umbrella, implying consensus. There was no consensus. Dr. Thomas Bond, one of the police medical consultants, categorically denied that anatomical knowledge was required at all. Granted, he was the only doctor to voice such an absolute opinion, but even among the doctors who thought the killer possessed some anatomical knowledge, there was no consensus as to how much anatomical knowledge. They certainly did not all think he had a surgeon's knowledge. That would be a minority opinion.The medical profession agreed that the killer had surgical skill.Comment
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Hi Karl,Originally posted by Karl View Post
I probably disagree with you. I used the past tense 'agreed' because, that the murderer had 'great anatomical knowledge’, was, I think, widely held by members of the medical profession. That is until Bond refuted it. I believe that if were not for old Mr Bond, I could have written 'agrees' instead. Coroner Baxter, said, 'considerable anatomical skill and knowledge'. That this would be used to describe a doctor instead of a surgeon is an opinion, but I would say it would be a minority opinion.
As to what I meant about my comment. I suppose I wrote too briefly. It is that if Ripper had medical skill or not seems to still vex people. The question seems to interest people here. To the discussion, I bring, as an answer, an existing medical technique, The Virchow Method, that may explain the injuries and a reason, that it was so new and revolutionary that Dr. Bond may have missed it and hence lasting the debate. I would have thought that people who seem to have an interested in finding a solution for discussion may have held discourse.
To provide some substance to how such a medical technique may have found its way to Spitalfields, I gave a suspect who was there and knew this technique.
Although he does not seem to interest people on Casebook, that he knew they Virchow method and lived in the Providence Row night refuge, only a few yards from where Mary Kelly was found, interests outsiders, or there would not be articles on him in the UK Express, the Lancashire Evening Post, the Daily Mail, the Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor Magazine, the New York Daily News, the Sun, the Daily Star, the Examiner.com, the Northern Star, the Northern Echo, or Mancunian Matters, and The Durham Advertiser. Neither would there have been television broadcasts on him like on UK North West Tonight News & or radio broadcasts like Sydney’s 2UE.
Apart from outside media interest, that he said he was carrying a dissecting scalpel, and we know he had years of training as a surgeon and that he also wrote, before the murders, about killing prostitutes and disemboweling them, has led Rippologists, outside this thread to find him of interest. This includes Paul Begg, in the February issue of the Ripperologist, that Thompson merits a close re-examination and he deserves to be looked at closely. It is not as if the facts on Thompson are in dispute. They are clearly recorded and verified in several books.
Thompson not only knew a medical technique of organ removal that we find to be similar to the kinds of wounds done to the victims, which should be enough to suffice discussion, let alone that he lived closer to the victims than any other named suspect. Is it that he had a knife, anatomical surgical skills, and was on the streets seeking a prostitute who had fled him irrelevant in this discussion on whether the Ripper possessed anatomical knowledge? It seems to be from the paucity, apart from your interest Karl, of feedback.Comment
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I did not object to the notion that most agreed JtR possessed anatomical knowledge. But you said that the medical profession agreed that he had surgical skill, and that has never been the position of the medical profession as a whole. I, for example, possess every bit of anatomical knowledge - and more - required to do what JtR did, but I have no surgical training whatsoever. Granted, knowledge flows much more freely today and anyone can acquire the necessary anatomical knowledge simply by Googling, and judging by the statements from 19th century medical consultants it would seem that what I would call rudimentary anatomical knowledge was not common at that time.Originally posted by Richard Patterson View Post
However, whereas Jack would have to have some knowledge in order to locate the kidney, for example, we don't know that he set out to get the kidney. He might just have been playing around in there, taking out whatever he thought was interesting enough. And besides, he chose a particularly inefficient way to get at Eddowes's kidney - and he removed only part of her uterus. This was not the work of someone with surgical skill, great or otherwise.
What indication is there that the Virchow method was used? Judging from the autopsy report, there is every indication to believe that such was not the case:As to what I meant about my comment. I suppose I wrote too briefly. It is that if Ripper had medical skill or not seems to still vex people. The question seems to interest people here. To the discussion, I bring, as an answer, an existing medical technique, The Virchow Method, that may explain the injuries and a reason, that it was so new and revolutionary that Dr. Bond may have missed it and hence lasting the debate. I would have thought that people who seem to have an interested in finding a solution for discussion may have held discourse.
"The pericardium was open below and the heart absent."
The Virchow method includes extracting the heart without damaging either the pericardium or the myocardium.
As you can see, the individual cuts are specified. It is not as simple as taking out the heart and leaving the pericardial sac behind, because this is what was always done during autopsies when extracting the heart anyway. It is the precise way of doing it, and this method could not have been applied - or even attempted applied - on MJK. On Mary Jane, the pericardium was opened from below - Virchow's method requires an opening from above (or the front, depending on your perspective). This is so pericardial fluid can be measured. Here's another link describing the procedure:
You will also notice from the above link that the Virchow technique also includes the removal of the lungs, but this had not been done on MJK. Instead, the right lung had been partly ripped from its place, and I cannot imagine this is what Virchow had in mind.
What is meant by Virchow's method is the complete procedure, not just the removal of one specific organ. And even if we focus solely on the heart, there is no match between MJK and Virchow's technique. Until very recently, no one else seemed to think so, either. In fact, besides your good self, I haven't come across anyone else who claims Virchow's method was in any way used.Comment
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I think it is important to keep in mind that you can have considerable anatomical knowledge without being a surgeon, an anatomist, a medico or a butcher.
In my world, the categories mentioned WILL have anatomical insights (of varying quality and extraction) whereas the rest of us MAY have anatomical insights, derived from different sources.
The killer of both the Ripper victims and the torso victims was a man who was a skilled knife worker, but there are numerous examples of how medicos and press have believed to be searching for qualified anatomists and/or surgeons, only to find that once the killer is apprehended, he is somebody with no anatomical training at all.
Danny Rolling is one such example.
It is likely that the man who killed the Thames torso victims was a man with much experience of opening up joints and separating the limbs at that point, but how and where he got that experience is an open question. What this man was probaly NOT was a medico/surgeon/anatomist, since he did not cut the way they do.Comment
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Hi Karl, Coroner Baxter, said, 'considerable anatomical skill and knowledge'. The murderer had skill, Karl, and not just knowledge. Books can gain knowledge. The Internet and the links you kindly supplied can gain knowledge. Baxter said that the murderer possessed considerable skill in anatomy. Skill comes from hands on experience. To make the presumption that Baxter was speaking of anatomy in creatures, other than humans, when he was the coroner of a murder inquest, is unreasonable. Baxter’s conclusions were arrived from his questioning of the medical profession.
That the Ripper emulated the Virchow method in the murders is not a conclusion I arrived at solely, in fact it came from someone else and their name will be listed in the acknowledgements in my book that is now with a publisher. Of course if I had decided this alone, and thought it true, I would not have less faith in it. I am not the type to think something is true or not merely by the amount of people who believe in it. However, when I say the medical profession agreed that the murderer had skill in surgery, I do see strength in numbers. Bear in mind I am not hear to say the murderer had skill in surgery, because, not being from that profession, I do not feel qualified to voice my opinion here.
You have good grounds in describing the many ways the mutilations on Mary Kelly deviate from what the manuals on Virchow, from the links you have given, though I should remind you that Virchow preached that deviation was not only necessary but encouraged in altered conditions, and for certain, a bedroom in Dorset Street is not a surgery. As Virchow said,
‘‘It is scarcely necessary to point out that there are many cases in which deviations from this method are not merely allowable, but also absolutely necessary. The individuality of the case must often determine the plan of the examination.’
As to the links you give, here I can again agree with you that they tell the pathologist to examine the heart without damaging the pericardium. But this was not an instruction to student’s in Virchow’s day, in the 1880’s. May I repay you the favor be providing a link to the textbook that pathologists could access back then
This one is from 1885, though I have somewhere the PDF of the 1880 publication. Page 47, of this manual, instructs students to cut into the pericardium, like the murderer did. To quote,
‘After we have opened the pericardium and determined its condition, and also ascertained the external appearance and the position of the heart, its size, shape, color, consistence, the amount of blood contained in the superficial vessels, the amount of fat in the subpericardial tissue, etc., we have then to open the heart and we should do this in situ.’
You might note that it ends with the words ‘in situ’ meaning that although the heart may be removed later, the pericardium is cut while the heart is still in the chest cavity.
As to the removal of he kidneys, whether it was unplanned or premeditated would make an interesting debate, though I would be interested in your reasons for why you it appears that you believe it was a random act.
You do point out other inconsistencies in mutilations to the victims that we would not normally expect in the performance of an autopsy. How well someone with surgical skills could work to a trained method, in the dark, under time constraint, and in fear of capture, is open to conjecture on my part, though I would expect not as well as they are used to.Comment
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I posted the following on another thread, but this one might be more suitable. Apologies for the duplicate:
Dr. Brown was effectively outnumbered 3 to 1 in his determination that Eddowes' killer had anatomical knowledge; neither Sequeira nor Saunders detected any, and both men examined the body as medical "experts". Phillips also attended the autopsy, and doubtless influenced coroner Baxter's verdict that she was slain by an unskilled imitator. The notion that the medicos angling for "the ripper" having anatomical skill were somehow in the majority is clearly erroneous, although it has persisted for years. In reality, one doctor was impressed in the case of one victim, while another doctor was impressed in the case of another.
Curiously, many people who are quite happy to reject Bond's opinions - as they relate to medical knowledgeable, or lack thereof - in favour of Phillips's, seem to prefer Bond's (now very mainstream) canonically-inclined view on victim linkage. Phillips was famously doubtful that they were committed by the same perpetrator, and there is no evidence that he considered Chapman's mutilator to have been responsible for any other murder. This is glossed over by many, for some reason, and the attitude seems to be one of "yes, well he's obviously wrong about that, but he simply can't be wrong about the surgical skill stuff".Comment
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So why, I wonder does this idea that the Ripper was a medical man persist? Funnily enough, when I type in google 'Was Jack the Ripper a doctor" I am brought back here to be told that he was.
Indeed the first result on a search is a link to a this dissertation, 'Was Jack the Ripper a Medical Man?' by Rabbi Leen, who ends it by stating.
'Therefore the answer to question at the top of the page, was Jack the Ripper a medical man, is yes. But from where did he get his qualification - Oxbridge, army, navy, UK, USA.? And who was he? Well I don't know, but at least the range has been narrowed down a bit.'
I know at least one suspect, Thompson, who made his studies for several years at Owen's medical college in Manchester.Comment
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