Political Motive?

[Michael W Richards]

Ok so Ive always been interested in the Jack the Ripper story, and often read the boards, and the only reason I have requested membership, is to put forward an idea that came to me since the "Shawl" became hot news with Mr Edwards book.

What IF the motive was political? what IF whoever perpetrated the murders did so to ensure the East End and its deprivation and squalor firmly hit the front pages of the news. The murders occurred during a time of great political upheaval in that area. The trade unions were being born at this time, Annie Besant had instigated the Match Girls Strike, forcing better working circumstances. This at a time when the East End was truly suffering. Women who didnt work as prostitutes would starve or be on the streets homeless, husband or not. Is it possible that the real cuplrit could lie in some unknown activist trying to improve the lot of the poor, and that they felt a few murders were worth "the cause"? and that once they had got the attention of the country, and things were being addressed, they simply stopped?
Its also possible that the murderer was being coerced or driven by someone in that area who didnt want to get their hands dirty.
I just wanted to put this forward as an idea.....

I would say Panderoona that there are more possibilities than just to reform a district when it comes to "political motives"...its oft forgot, though it should be not, there was a hugely political extravaganza going on simultaneously with the "Ripper" murders called the Parnell Commission. Anyone familiar with the back story of the senior policeman assigned to the Ripper case, and the foundations of the commission itself, can easily see that the real high drama story that Fall was the one that had murder, assassination plots, spies and double agents, the HO and CID, anarchy and terrorism on the menu.

One wonders if Irish Self Rule affiliations and the heightened and very dangerous times might have factored into these cases.

Consider that a double agent asked to be paid 10,000 L to testify at that hearing, he believed his information was that shocking. Now consider that 20L in 1888 was roughly the equivalent of 1500 L Sterling today.

Gee...is it possible someone got killed because of money? Or to keep a secret, secret? For me, the fact that someone felt they could ask for what in todays money would be about $750,000 L Sterling tells me that some really important information was being supressed.

Do people ever kill over stuff like money, or power, or to keep dangerous secrets? Hmm...

It appears that at least 2 Canonical had Irish roots or connections, Kate Conway and Mary.

Cheers

[No Luck Yet]

All your questions are answered here:

... Now all is changed. Private enterprise has succeeded where Socialism failed. Whilst we conventional Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation, and organisation, some independent genius has taken the matter in hand, and by simply murdering and disembowelling four women, converted the proprietary press to an inept sort of communism. ...

Thank you, sir! I'm tempted to say, "Good," but... not for Jack, or for people learning that the knife is the most effective communication device, or anything like that. But I'm sincerely glad to hear that the philosophy I described was less prevalent than I thought it might be. Thanks again!

[Jonathan H]

All your questions are answered here:

"Blood Money To Whitechapel"
George Bernard Shaw
The Star, September 24th 1888.
BLOOD MONEY TO WHITECHAPEL.
O
TO THE EDITOR OF "THE STAR."

SIR,-- Will you allow me to make a comment on the success of the Whitechapel murderer in calling attention for a moment to the social question? Less than a year ago the West-end press, headed by the St. James's Gazette, the Times, and the Saturday Review, were literally clamering for the blood of the people--hounding on Sir Charles Warren to thrash and muzzle the scum who dared to complain that they were starving--heaping insult and reckless calumny on those who interceded for the victims--applauding to the skies the open class bias of those magistrates and judges who zealously did their very worst in the criminal proceedings which followed--behaving, in short as the proprietary class always does behave when the workers throw it into a frenzy of terror by venturing to show their teeth. Quite lost on these journals and their patrons were indignant remonstrances, argument, speeches, and sacrifices, appeals to history, philosophy, biology, economics, and statistics; references to the reports of inspectors, registrar generals, city missionaries, Parliamentary commissions, and newspapers; collections of evidence by the five senses at every turn; and house-to-house investigations into the condition of the unemployed, all unanswered and unanswerable, and all pointing the same way. The Saturday Review was still frankly for hanging the appellants; and the Times denounced them as "pests of society." This was still the tone of the class Press as lately as the strike of the Bryant and May girls. Now all is changed. Private enterprise has succeeded where Socialism failed. Whilst we conventional Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation, and organisation, some independent genius has taken the matter in hand, and by simply murdering and disembowelling four women, converted the proprietary press to an inept sort of communism. The moral is a pretty one, and the Insurrectionists, the Dynamitards, the Invincibles, and the extreme left of the Anarchist party will not be slow to draw it. "Humanity, political science, economics, and religion," they will say, "are all rot; the one argument that touches your lady and gentleman is the knife." That is so pleasant for the party of Hope and Perseverance in their toughening struggle with the party of Desperation and Death!

However, these things have to be faced. If the line to be taken is that suggested by the converted West-end papers--if the people are still to yield up their wealth to the Clanricarde class, and get what they can back as charity through Lady Bountiful, then the policy for the people is plainly a policy of terror. Every gaol blown up, every window broken, every shop looted, every corpse found disembowelled, means another ten pound note for "ransom." The riots of 1886 brought in £78,000 and a People's Palace; it remains to be seen how much these murders may prove worth to the East-end in panem et circenses. Indeed, if the habits of duchesses only admitted of their being decoyed into Whitechapel back-yards, a single experiment in slaughterhouse anatomy on an artistocratic victim might fetch in a round half million and save the necessity of sacrificing four women of the people. Such is the stark-naked reality of these abominable bastard Utopias of genteel charity, in which the poor are first to be robbed and then pauperised by way of compensation, in order that the rich man may combine the idle luxury of the protected thief with the unctuous self-satisfaction of the pious philanthropist.

The proper way to recover the rents of London for the people of London is not by charity, which is one of the worst curses of poverty, but by the municipal rate collector, who will no doubt make it sufficiently clear to the monopolists of ground value that he is not merely taking round the hat, and that the State is ready to enforce his demand, if need be. And the money thus obtained must be used by the municipality as the capital of productive industries for the better employment of the poor. I submit that this is at least a less disgusting and immoral method of relieving the East-end than the gust of bazaars and blood money which has suggested itself from the West-end point of view.--Yours, &c.,

G. BERNARD SHAW.

[No Luck Yet]

May I ask about that petition to the queen? If I remember right (and of course it's quite possible that I don't) didn't the Queen ultimately do precious little? I know there was some motion made to get better lighting in Whitechapel...

But now I'm trying to recall... I can't even think of where I read it now, but was something said about the general attitude of the police being, "Well, you really should be off the streets, and we can't be expected to protect you if you insist on putting yourself in danger."

I think, generally, that's true, though. In the sense that society at large (I speak as an American. Perhaps it's better elsewhere.) thinks that way. They talk about rape victims as if they "had it coming" for dressing or behaving a certain way. And as a reformed slasher movie addict, I would have told you that the first rule of slasher films is that any character who's a loose kind of girl will die, that it's inevitable, and that she probably deserved it. Pardon me for repeating it, but that's the message of such movies.

Which I bring up only because, does it kind of affects Jack the Ripper's choice of victims?

Because if he is politically motivated, a social reformer trying to expose conditions in Whitechapel, his success would be based on pity. Or, to a large extent, I think it would be.

And if people feel about prostitutes the way I've described, then that would undermine any pity they felt. Certainly the idea that the victims' being who they were affected response was floating around. There's the line about how, if a duchess had been murdered, it would be a whole different story.

Or not?

Because, first, there were obviously some better hearts out there who were moved to pity, like the women who signed the petition.

And, also, there's this book I've been reading, The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders, which talks a lot about the popular reaction to Victorian era crimes, and there've been at least one or two who've had, say, multiple illegitimate children by different men, who, when they were found dead, immediately became, as far as the public was concerned, innocent young ladies seduced and murdered by evil men. I think a lot of murdered girl songs have the same thing going on...

Would we make it a rule, then, that a sufficiently awful death erases a morally questionable life from memory?

You all know better than I do. Do you think that, if Jack wanted to inspire social reform, he was taking kind of a gamble targeting prostitutes? Do you think that makes that motive less likely?

I'm inclined to lean against it, but more because of the mutiliations. If he wanted to inspire pity-driven reform, I think he would not have done anything to dehumanize his victims, but he did.

[Rosella]

I believe Queen Victoria took an interest in the murders and the investigation of them and a couple of times contacted the Home Secretary (the unpopular Henry Matthews) and the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, on the subject.

In a telegram and a letter she made suggestions about better lighting in alleys and courts and investigating single men occupying rooms to themselves etc. She had received a petition from the women of Whitechapel begging her to assist them.

[Gman992]

I don't think that the murders were political, but the newspapers certainly turned into somewhat of a political hot potato, so much so to have the Queen herself call the Home Office to have someone do something about them, and have her write letters calling for more police and better lighting. Wasn't there an election coming up too?

[gnote]

These are serial murders. Would we really expect any sort of political hit to involve the sexual element we see in them? The morbid anatomical curiosity?

I very much doubt it. Even the Gullistas in their heyday had to propose that Gull went off his rocker prior to commencing his spree in order to account for it; the Good Doctor 'creatively interpreting' his orders to get rid of the coaterie of Whitechapel women had to be tacked on.

If this had been a political job, these women simply would have disappeared, like that Australian Prime Minister who went swimming one afternoon and never came back ashore. History would never have recorded the names of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, or Mary Kelly.

Now, I do say it could have been a gangland spree, with the bodies being left about as a message for other prostitutes - but even there I doubt it, as impoverished East End gangers would have doubtless been tempted by the Lord Mayor's reward to turn informant on one of their fellows had such been the case.

The farthest I'm willing to go in the direction of Jack-as-conspiracy is to say I think it plausible that it may have been an Otis Toole/Henry Lucas situation. If two individuals are murdering together "just for jolly", there's much less incentive for treachery than there is among a conspiracy of otherwise relatively rational men.

Another example would be Buono/Bianchi. Although there was a "dominant" one they both enjoyed what they were doing. There was no time for "trading off" with the Ripper murders. One of the two (or more) possibly could have played the lookout role but that's a major stretch given the type of attacks. Was somebody holding watch while the other hacked and slashed away until they were satisfied or until the lookout said "hey people are about, lets go"

This was also repeated multiple times and kept secret?

[Jonathan H]

To Jeff

Yes, I find it fascinating. It is one of the most interesting/tantalzing aspects of the whole saga--at least for me.

Cullen's leftist riff on Shaw's satirical j'accuse against the rich forms the last chapter of my forthcoming book.

I provide only two additons to Cullen's theory.

1. It was the Smith and Tabram murders that first showed the media making their about-turn; from puritanical condemnation to sympathetic outrage. That is quite a coincidence that suddnely a completely unnconected serial killer began offing dregs at the very moment the story was about to expire, and of course kept doing it.

2. the "North Country Vicar" article of 1899-- if it is about Druitt-- explains that the epileptic maniac went to the East End to help fallen women, who then became his victims.

[Mayerling]

The 'some' is really just me, at least here.

Tom Cullen, an American Marxist exiled in London due to the McCarthyist witch-hunts, wrote his brilliant 'Autumn of Terror' (1965) arguing that if Druitt was the killer then his motive, at least partly, was to bring sympathetic attention to the plight of the East End. That 'Jack' was a deranged social reformer.

A Leftist take on the Whitechapel murders by a Leftist.

Cullen's evidence for this was that the murders were committed practically in full view, exclusively in the "evil quarter mile" identified by reformers as the worst of the worst, that Mary Kelly was killed spoiling Lord Mayor's Day, and that graduates from Oxford (Druitt was an Oxonian) were flocking to Toynbee Hall to help the poor. Certainly people at the time, such as George Bernard Shaw, were struck by how much sympathy a fiend-murderer was able to generate for the underclass compared to their own ineffectual marches, speeches and pamphlets.

I would add to Cullen that the 1899 "North Country Vicar" speaks of his Ripper being a man of good position and reputation, who went to the East End to help fallen women "who then became his victims" (due to his allegedly suffering from "epiletic mania").

I would also add a point that Cullen does not emphasize. There were two 'rip' murders before Nichols, e.g. before Druitt began his reign of terror. They also engendered sympathetic press. Surely, if the barrister was acting as a ruthless reformer, these murders are what gave him the idea.

Two murders comparable (except that they are committed by more than perpetrator) to the Ripepr slayings happening just after--is that really just a random coincidence? The press spoke of Nichols as the fiend's third atrocity.

Consequently, some people today are convinced that Martha Tabram was also a 'Jack' crime.

Hi Jonathan,

I did not know Cullen's Marxist background, nor his having to abandon the U.S. due to McCarthyism (why didn't he return after 1954 or 1961?). I was aware of his books on "The Empress Brown", Maundy Gregory, and Dr. Crippen.

In "Autumn of Terror" Cullen mentions another person, leftist but also sardonic, who made a similar back-handed claim: George Bernard Shaw. Shaw, if you recall, called the Ripper an "independent genius" who had briefly turned the "respectable" newspapers into a set of propagandists for reforming the East End poverty cauldron. Interestingly, Shaw did write another piece - a more typical letter to the editor - signed "Jesus Christ" as the author, angrily denouncing the idea that he had been responsible for the Whitechapel murders.

If you read Michael Holroyd's four volume biography on Shaw, there is evidence that Shaw was a close student of the violence of the day - sometimes parts of it crop up in his plays.* In 1893 he was interested in the arrest, trial, and execution of Constable George Cooke for the murder of his ex-lover, a prostitute Cooke tried to save who lapsed due to drink and then made his life a living hell. At the time Shaw was having problems with a girlfriend, so he noted the case. Holroyd (by the way) does not name the unfortunate Constable).

* An example was in "Mrs. Warren's Profession", written in the early 1890s.
A particularly annoying character has just informed Winnie Warren (the heroine) that the man she has been dating and is in love with her is actually her half-brother. The lover is listening while holding a rifle. He picks up the rifle while the annoying character rapidly flees through doors leading into a garden. "You'll say it was an accident Winnie?", her lover says while he raises the rifle to fire. Winnie stops him though. The play was written at the time of the trial of Alfred Monson for the shooting death (accidental?) of Cecil Hambrough at Ardlamont, Scotland in 1893. Monson was found "not proven".

Jeff

[Michael W Richards]

Ok so Ive always been interested in the Jack the Ripper story, and often read the boards, and the only reason I have requested membership, is to put forward an idea that came to me since the "Shawl" became hot news with Mr Edwards book.

What IF the motive was political? what IF whoever perpetrated the murders did so to ensure the East End and its deprivation and squalor firmly hit the front pages of the news. The murders occurred during a time of great political upheaval in that area. The trade unions were being born at this time, Annie Besant had instigated the Match Girls Strike, forcing better working circumstances. This at a time when the East End was truly suffering. Women who didnt work as prostitutes would starve or be on the streets homeless, husband or not. Is it possible that the real cuplrit could lie in some unknown activist trying to improve the lot of the poor, and that they felt a few murders were worth "the cause"? and that once they had got the attention of the country, and things were being addressed, they simply stopped?
Its also possible that the murderer was being coerced or driven by someone in that area who didnt want to get their hands dirty.
I just wanted to put this forward as an idea.....

Panderoona,

By far, THE most dangerous element in the East End at the time of the murders were the revolutionary Irish Self Rule groups. And by far the most gripping, far reaching and volatile news story coming from that Ripper period was the Parnell Commission, not the murders.

You have accusations that an M of P condoned or arranged political murders, You have witnesses being paid exorbitant amounts of money to rat on others, you have government officials who covertly were working with people intent on blowing up the government or HRH, you have people committed to killing strangers as acts of terrorism to further attention to their cause...perhaps the first true terrorists...and you have ample evidence that the area was populated by disenfranchised and forgotten immigrants who were increasingly unhappy with their treatment and opportunities....and you have a large number of local residents still smarting from what amounted to police brutality in Trafalgar Square less than a year earlier.

To say their may be a political motive somewhere in one or more of these acts is pragmatic and open minded....so you better watch that, youll never be a true Ripperologist at this rate.

Nice start though. Cheers

[Jonathan H]

To be explicit about such terroristic blackmail would have turned off the 'better classes' in an instant.

[Rosella]

Why would Jack leave locals and the authorities guessing as to his motivations? If he was a killer filled with the zeal of a reformer, surely at least a couple of letters in the national Press explaining the reasoning behind the murders would be in order?

Otherwise, people might, God forbid, get the idea that the killer was a maniac who actually enjoyed slitting his victims' throats and then mutilating them.

[Defective Detective]

These are serial murders. Would we really expect any sort of political hit to involve the sexual element we see in them? The morbid anatomical curiosity?

I very much doubt it. Even the Gullistas in their heyday had to propose that Gull went off his rocker prior to commencing his spree in order to account for it; the Good Doctor 'creatively interpreting' his orders to get rid of the coaterie of Whitechapel women had to be tacked on.

If this had been a political job, these women simply would have disappeared, like that Australian Prime Minister who went swimming one afternoon and never came back ashore. History would never have recorded the names of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, or Mary Kelly.

Now, I do say it could have been a gangland spree, with the bodies being left about as a message for other prostitutes - but even there I doubt it, as impoverished East End gangers would have doubtless been tempted by the Lord Mayor's reward to turn informant on one of their fellows had such been the case.

The farthest I'm willing to go in the direction of Jack-as-conspiracy is to say I think it plausible that it may have been an Otis Toole/Henry Lucas situation. If two individuals are murdering together "just for jolly", there's much less incentive for treachery than there is among a conspiracy of otherwise relatively rational men.

[Jonathan H]

There's a lot going for the deranged social reformer theory.

For one thing it would explian why Druitt, who could kill anywhere in London, focussed exclusively on the "evil quarter mile", as reformers called it.

On the other hand, it is not a motive put forward by anybody in on the Dorset secret of the time.

[Bridewell]

Cheers, thanks for the welcome.

You're welcome. Keep posting please!