Facial Mutilations

[lynn cates]

work

Hello Avvie, Gareth. Thanks.

To work, then.

Cheers.
LC

[Sam Flynn]

Infirmary Records

Hello Avvie. Thanks.

Then perhaps various infirmary lists could be consulted?

Bob Anderson give a talk on syphilis etc at the Salisbury Ripper Conference last year. I regret that I couldn't make it for the occasion, but knowing Bob it would have been brilliant. He may be able to help with any info on that score.

Also, I compiled a detailed spreadsheet of Whitechapel Infirmary Records (in tandem with the late, great Chris Scott), which I shared with Bob Anderson, and which I'll happily consider making more widely available if you'd like.

PM me if so, and I'll see what I can do.

[Errata]

Thankyou!

I've had a bit more of a look and apparently he caught syphilis when he was 15 from a prostitute. So if untreated it would have been advanced. BUT so far there has been nothing about whether he had facial deformities himself.

The facial deformities in syphilis come into play at two points. The first is during tertiary syphilis if you have the kind with gummas. There are places on the body those usually form, and the nose is not one of the usual places. I'm sure that people have lost their nose to a gumma, and I'm sure others had them and were terrified they were going to lose their nose, but it was by no means common. But the nose is mostly soft tissue and in the middle of the face, so it's vulnerable. It got a lot of play for two reasons. Firstly, at various points in history surgeons have developed procedures to rebuild the nose. Also patents were given to people who made nose substitutes. The surgical procedure was the grandfather of plastic surgery, it was difficult, it was generally a rock star doctor thing, and rock star doctors got press back then. There would have been illustrations, those would have gotten readers. The fact that the procedure existed didn't make it common. It didn't even mean it was ever used at all. But it creates the illusion of need. As do 150 patents for stunt noses. It makes it sound like there is a need. There really wasn't one.

Of course losing a nose it turns out is a remarkably good threat for good behavior. If getting syphilis means you get a terrible deformity in the middle of your face, it makes you pause. It was quite possibly the best deterrent to risky sexual behavior they have ever come up with. And in places it still is. There was a general sense that this was a common side effect of syphilis. It was never corrected because of it's deterrent effect. If you think about it, how many photos have you seen where a person lost a nose to syphilis? I think there are two men between the advent of photography and the prevalence of antibiotics who were ever photographed with this deformity. There are reports of others, but not a lot of others. And clearly that was enough to sear the idea into our brains for 150 years. But it's very very rare. Rare enough that those it did happen to are preserved in places like the Mutter Museum.

The other time you get nasal deformities is with congenital syphilis. A saddle nose deformity can be severe enough to mimic the loss of the entire nose. Of course there is no risk behavior associated with congenital syphilis other than having the bad luck of being born to syphilitic parents. Which may actually be more relevant than actually contracting syphilis. Someone who whores around and catches syphilis has some ownership in the problem. Yes they may very well blame a prostitute for giving them the disease, but they also know in their hearts that they could have avoided contracted it by not having sex with a prostitute. It's a specific kind of anger that's wrapped around shame. And it can easily be deadly, but it informs victim selection differently.

Someone with congenital syphilis did nothing wrong. His parents did. Had his mother not contracted syphilis, he wouldn't have these problems. And there are major problems associated with congenital syphilis. But not necessarily anything that would preclude him from being a killer. The blame would be different than that of a pissed of customer, who one would think would be content with more obvious kinds of violence than serial killing.

If we imagine that the facial mutilations have something to do with syphilis, and we imagine that it is because the killer actually was facing this problem, then it is far more likely that deformity was caused by congenital syphilis, not gummas from tertiary syphilis. One is textbook, the other is rare. If we are looking at someone with congenital syphilis, then a sexual motivation becomes less likely. Now if the killer was removing the uterus in order to sterilize the victim, and send a message to others to not reproduce, that might be something that a man with a congenital illness might do. There would be a certain sick poetry in that. Nor would the killer necessarily be the one infected. An older sibling who watched an infected sibling have problems, watched other siblings die in the first month of life because their deformities were so severe, that could create a killer as well. It is not out of line to say that Jack was a mission oriented killer, and this may have been his mission. To prevent women like his mother from giving birth to deformed and doomed children.

-----

And his actions may have changed because of the press. If he had a mission and he thought it was clear what his message was, by reading the news he would have discovered that his message was not getting through. He may have added the facial mutilations to make it more clear. Mission oriented killers are not as locked into a certain pattern as sexual sadists are. MO killers are not recreating a fantasy, they are not engaged in the murder to the same degree, it is more intellectual that emotional, they are more concerned with the result than the method. It means they can change. And they do.

Jack was not a sadist. He had no interest in the death. It wasn't personal. For MO killers who are choosing representatives of a kind of victim, but have no specific victim in mind, that's pretty common, though they are mostly bombers. And that's what you would expect to see in a man punishing a wrong, as opposed to a person. It's why I never thought an avenging clap patient fit. Because that's personal. That's rage. That doesn't translate into relatively painless deaths. If I look at the injuries, it doesn't look like the problem is the person at all. It looks like the uterus and the organs of generation are the problem. That's the target. The woman has to die for him to get to his target, but it's not about her. It's about what she carries. That's not revenge stuff. At all.

Nor is it particularly sexual. Sex comes with guilt and shame and all kinds of negative emotions, especially then. Jack would have to have been a partialist. And partialists kill, I won't lie, but I have never heard of one who managed to dissociate the part from the person to the point that there was no guilt of shame associated with the death. There is no shame. There is no guilt. He did not cover their faces, he did not close their eyes, he did not shield what he was doing from their dead faces (which sounds strange but actually happens a lot). He did not try to cover up what he did. This isn't a sex thing. They didn't matter. If this was revenge, they would matter. They would have been killed painfully, because that's what angry people do. If this had been sexual, then even if the victim didn't matter the judgement of those who found them would have mattered. The sexual sadist still knows that what he wants is wrong. It's why they move bodies. Bundy originally said he did it in order to not get caught, but he eventually confessed that he did it because he could bear the idea of people judging what he did. It's why even to his death he barely confessed to what he did. He knew how bad it was. There are so few sexual sadists who abandon their victims that I can't even think of one off the top of my head, though I'm sure someone else can. But it's not the norm.

[avvie]

Hello Avvie. Thanks.

Then perhaps various infirmary lists could be consulted?

Cheers.
LC

Good idea, will go and have a look now and see what i can find!

Avvie

[lynn cates]

lists

Hello Avvie. Thanks.

Then perhaps various infirmary lists could be consulted?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

good thrashing

Hello John. Thanks.

"Ah, but is the Eddowes murder the black swan?"

Certainly not. It merely--in conjunction with the stark similarities in Polly and Annie (eg, parallel neck cuts)--beats the devil out of it. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[John G]

Until there is 1 iota of proof that these murders represent serial killings then I would think it prudent to look for more than 1 killer, agreed? And its my understanding that when a serial killer kills it is for the same reasons he killed the first victims, even if the tableau changes. Based on my observations earlier it appears that the first 2 Canonical Victims were killed in public because the killer found his victims there, and that he was after post mortem mutilations of his female victims abdomen. Not carving faces, or placing severed breasts under their heads, or making nicks on cheeks, not cutting a 2 foot section of bowel, and not simply slitting throats. The observances of the physician who examined Annie believed that the murder itself and the cuts made after were to facilitate the removal of the organs he took...specifically, at least one of those was the uterus. I believe Liz's wasn't extracted through a throat wound, and the organ removed completely from Kate was a kidney, and that the organ taken from room 13 was a heart, leaving behind an excised uterus under the victims head.

The dissimilarities in these cases are prominent markers of the probability of more than one killer. And the fact that a person was making Torsos at the very same place in time seems to indicate that there were at least 2 people capable and willing to kill and cut up bodies in London in the Fall of 1888.

What killers do isn't the litmus test, its why they do it. I suggest that Polly and Annie were killed for the same reason, by virtue of the incredible similarities in their murders and pm injuries, and that in truth no-one has come anywhere close to solving why Liz, Kate and Mary were killed. The assumption is that since they were killed around the same time in the same crime ridden neighborhood... and with knives, by cutting throats...all 5 are probably connected. Who knows, maybe there were 11 or 13 by one man, since those are unsolved too.

Really poor logic there.

Cheers

Hello Michael,

I agree that Polly and Annie are the two victims that are most likely to be by the same hand. However, that does not mean that we can't infer that the same killer was responsible for more victims. Could you please cite precedent for where a serial killer has behaved in a completely consistent way? For instance, I have given an example where a serial killer evolved from genital mutilations to dismemberment: are you seriously arguing that there are less differences between that evolution and, say, Nichols/ Chapman and Eddowes/Kelly?

[Michael W Richards]

Please give an example were a serial killer has performed unique acts, which are consistent throughout a series. Serial killer signatures evolve or become more elaborate, for example, one killer progressed from genital mutilations to dismemberment. There is therefore nothing unusual in a series of crimes which involves certain dissimilarities, i.e. such as between Chapman and Kelley.

Until there is 1 iota of proof that these murders represent serial killings then I would think it prudent to look for more than 1 killer, agreed? And its my understanding that when a serial killer kills it is for the same reasons he killed the first victims, even if the tableau changes. Based on my observations earlier it appears that the first 2 Canonical Victims were killed in public because the killer found his victims there, and that he was after post mortem mutilations of his female victims abdomen. Not carving faces, or placing severed breasts under their heads, or making nicks on cheeks, not cutting a 2 foot section of bowel, and not simply slitting throats. The observances of the physician who examined Annie believed that the murder itself and the cuts made after were to facilitate the removal of the organs he took...specifically, at least one of those was the uterus. I believe Liz's wasn't extracted through a throat wound, and the organ removed completely from Kate was a kidney, and that the organ taken from room 13 was a heart, leaving behind an excised uterus under the victims head.

The dissimilarities in these cases are prominent markers of the probability of more than one killer. And the fact that a person was making Torsos at the very same place in time seems to indicate that there were at least 2 people capable and willing to kill and cut up bodies in London in the Fall of 1888.

What killers do isn't the litmus test, its why they do it. I suggest that Polly and Annie were killed for the same reason, by virtue of the incredible similarities in their murders and pm injuries, and that in truth no-one has come anywhere close to solving why Liz, Kate and Mary were killed. The assumption is that since they were killed around the same time in the same crime ridden neighborhood... and with knives, by cutting throats...all 5 are probably connected. Who knows, maybe there were 11 or 13 by one man, since those are unsolved too.

Really poor logic there.

Cheers

[avvie]

That seems to be part of the old mindset, that Jack was exacting revenge on whores for landing him with an STD. There might be some merit to that theory, we'll never know, but I've found myself steering away from that way of thinking. In my book, Jack preyed on prostitutes simply because they were easy targets.

Yes, i bet they would have been the easiest targets for dear old Jack.

[avvie]

Hello Avvie. Welcome to the boards.

If one contracts this STD in 1888, would those symptoms manifest so soon?

Cheers.
LC

Thankyou!

I've had a bit more of a look and apparently he caught syphilis when he was 15 from a prostitute. So if untreated it would have been advanced. BUT so far there has been nothing about whether he had facial deformities himself.

[Harry D]

My personal theory for this (mostly in the case of Eddowes) is Syphilis.

I feel that the Ripper had somehow got Syphilis, most likely from a prostitute. He wanted revenge. One symptom of Syphilis is facial deformity, which apparently looks like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/A_young_girl_suffering_from_congenital_Syphilis_to_the_face_Wellcome_L0038265.jpg

In fact, apparently the gentleman i feel was Jack the Ripper contacted Syphilis in 1888. I haven't done much reading though, so don't know how true this is.

That seems to be part of the old mindset, that Jack was exacting revenge on whores for landing him with an STD. There might be some merit to that theory, we'll never know, but I've found myself steering away from that way of thinking. In my book, Jack preyed on prostitutes simply because they were easy targets.

[John G]

Black Swans

Hello John. Not clear that the differences are significant.

WHAT was done? Yes.

HOW it was done? No.

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

Ah, but is the Eddowes murder the black swan? "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white..."

I think, especially where serial murders are concerned, there are just too many unknown factors to allows us to predict the future, with any degree of certainty, based upon what has happened in the past.

[lynn cates]

symptoms

Hello Avvie. Welcome to the boards.

If one contracts this STD in 1888, would those symptoms manifest so soon?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

significant

Hello John. Not clear that the differences are significant.

WHAT was done? Yes.

HOW it was done? No.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

thanks

Hello CD. Thanks.

Cheers.
LC