What was the IQ of Jack?!

[Natalie Severn]

Well thankyou Limehouse and Rain....I really appreciate your words too!
Cheers
Norma

[Mitch Rowe]

That was a truly brilliant post...

It almost makes one wonder if he was not just committing blatant murders, but playing a 'game' against the police.

Yes...Thats the problem. If JTR were just killing and mutilating at random he is disorganized and of below average IQ.
But...If he were doing most anything else then he is organized and of higher than average IQ.
As it stands there is not much evidence left to say JTR was actually planning anything except that he took a sharp knife with him. Unless he always carried the sharp knife.

Perpetrators who select and kill Prostitutes usually dont expect anyone to make a big deal about it so I wouldnt think JTR was attempting to make any sort of social statement.

If we only knew just a little more about JTR we could probably figure out what his IQ was.

[Natalie Severn]

Well it depends on what you call "evidence" Mitch.There is the evidence that he got away with murder something like 6 times if not more in a densely populated area !
Sometimes this was when the area was well covered by patrolling police eg Mitre Square and Buck"s Row.To me that shows confidence and either rapid and accurate on the spot judgement and control - or pre-planning-of who where and when.

[Sam Flynn]

Sorry to sound like a killjoy, Nats, but to me the victims ended up looking pretty much like how a supine woman with her throat cut, her uterus excavated and her guts flung out of the way would look. I'd suggest there's no more resemblance to pavement art in Jack's al fresco murders than what one sees in a bin-bag split open by foxes.

[Natalie Severn]

Well I tend to stick as close to what I read in Dr Phillips and Dr Brown's medical reports Sam----and they didnt report it as such though certainly the sight was horrible and gruesome.

[joelhall]

Hi Limehouse,

I'd have to ask when and where this was determined. In the UK today, for instance, it could be argued that it's intelligence that dictates whether we stuff our faces with crisps and doughnuts or spend the same money or less on a mountain of fresh veg. So I'm not sure how one would go about proving the reverse effect, ie that the crisps and doughnuts can adversely affect intelligence.

Love,

Caz

X

simply that less efficient energy turnover affects cognitive function. iq is also related to speed of cognitive processes, so fatigue is also a large factor among others (such as alcohol consumption, hydration, drug use, etc.)

seeking out sugary/fatty/salty foods is to do with our body chemistry too. our bodies still view these as 'rare & precious' macro-nutrients for want of a better expression. this is why junk food tastes so appealing.

anyway... as regards the ripper, i think psychological make up and personality type are far more important than iq, same as for all killers. indeed despite the crimes committed and testing on criminals, it does not take a genius, especially in 1888 with lack of forensic science, decent street lighting and cctv to kill someone and run. in fact there are a great number of crimes which are undetected.

really the iq of the killer is subjective. what people forget is he may have been a quick thinker, under the influence of adrenalin, (which is of course extremely probable), yet in all other aspects been slow. other killers who have had their iq measured were caught - with varying results!

this would also increase his physical prowess, and other senses, including his thought processes, and of course his reaction speed. given the more obvious facts - that the killings were quick, they were done with a high level of force,that there was little fighting back, and so on, there is little doubt that this was a major factor in the actual process of killing.

even the coolest customer will have an adrenal rush when it is needed, whether it be due to stress, fatigue, worry or on a battle-field.

therefore i suggest that hormonal changes were a larger factor in his 'success' than intelligence.

one last note - we know of victorian society, shame/honour, protecting people and of course attitudes to police and social ideas of justice and decency.... i know, im rambling, but the point is we dont know if he was caught or known, just that it wasnt by the police

[CraigInTwinCities]

The next time, he decided to try something slightly more difficult and got Kelly indoors. Wouldn't a person who plans things out have been killing indoors from the beginning?

I tend to think that Jack was an opportunity killer, which fits with the FBI terminology of disorganized.

In other words, he killed when time, surrounds and circumstances just "felt right" to him, it seems.

That's why four of the MacNaghton Five were killed outdoors... because that's how and where they typically serviced customers.

That's also why Jack killed MJK indoors... not because he planned anything, but simply by chance that she was the victim he'd selected that night and she happened to have a flat (the others didn't) to invite her customer back to.

With MJK, tradition holds that she was out that night because she was so in arrears on her rent, and she was trying to get at least enough to hold off her landlord for another few days, at least.

That being the case, I would suspect Jack got the "come back to my flat for an "overnighter" invitation" because he promised to pay her enough to make a difference on the amount she was in arrears.

But that's just a STRAY THOUGHT... not even a theory at this point.

And a surprising number of suspect theories do have Jack getting caught, at least to the extent that his family figures it out and puts him in a hospital, or he commits suicide, or the police have figured it out but haven't proven it and he lands in a hospital or dead, or he flees the country. I believe that some variation of being caught or knowing he was about to be caught is the most likely reason the murders stopped.

The piece I am working on next for print publication might be of interest to you, Christine, when it comes out. It may be an eye-opener for folks who, like you, assume capture was a reason for the crimes seeming to cease...

[Natalie Severn]

It might serve to enhance the " mystery" of who Jack the Ripper was to have him "caught" and within an ensuing "conspiracy of silence".However, the fact is that so many of the police involved either cited their own,different prime suspect as in the case of the Police Chiefs, Anderson - he was a low class, Polish Jew, or Macnaghten it was more likely "Druitt" that it seems more than likely they had no idea who he was,as the Commissioner of the City of London Police, Henry Smith said in his autobiography.Moreover Detective"s Abberline ,Walter Dew and others involved in the case, agreed with Smith.Had they "known" we too would know,since there would have been no need to be secretive about it-in fact there was more likely a need to be able to announce to the public,that the killer had been caught "and the police had known all along who it was "etc etc---which in a way was what Robert Anderson did.
The only possible motive for keeping the name of such a universally known killer "under wraps" would have been if he had come from a hugely important family,was an eminent politician or police chief.The suspect Thomas Cutbush,suggested by The Sun newspaper as the killer in 1894,was believed to have been related to a Chief of Police Supt Charles Cutbush,and his suspect status was roundly denied by Macnaghten in his memorandum, who put forward three other names as "more likely".
Cutbush becomes for me a "possibility",partly because this Chief of Police ,Macnaghten was at such pains to deny it! But I think even Cutbush was probably not quite important enough to have stopped Macnaghten "leaking" it in his 1915 autobiography,21 years later,if there had been much substance to it.After all Supt Charles Cutbush had topped himself ,nearly 20 years before ,and Thomas Cutbush had died in Broadmoor in 1903, so what had Macnaghten to lose?or Major Smith or Robert Anderson by say 1910 when they too published their autobiographies?
On balance,it would seem to me they had little idea who the Ripper was,just a few "likely" chaps-in their view-such as Druitt and Kosminski-1894,Tumblety-cited by Little child in 1913,and Abberline thought it possible George Chapman was the Ripper,when he learned more abouthim [aka Severin Klosowski - hung in 1903 for poisoning three women ].

[Ben]

I also dont agree with the notion that the murder of Mary Kelly was something he had as an "afterthought"-and would have performed more indoors if he could.No the Ripper much preferred his pavements and squares.

I don't see any evidence for this at all, Norma.

The outdoor murders could have been the result of the neither the killer nor the victim having the relative luxury of private accomodation. Kelly might well have provided the first opportunity to commit murder and mutilation in a MORE desirable location.

Best regards,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

I don't see any evidence for this at all, Norma.

The outdoor murders could have been the result of the neither the killer nor the victim having the relative luxury of private accomodation. Kelly might well have provided the first opportunity to commit murder and mutilation in a MORE desirable location.

Best regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,
They could have been Ben but by November 9th there were vigilante patrols,extra police and Whitechapel was on high alert so it isnt surprising that a]there was this gap of nearly six weeks before he struck again,and b] that when he did strike it was not "on the streets" but indoors,suggesting that he had weighed up the odds and decided it wasnt worth risking it until,that is,Mary Kelly and her room became available,following Joe"s exit a week earlier.
Best

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Good points. OK, it's believed that everyone has a potential IQ (even if you don't believe in IQ as such, any educational psychologist will do a test and give you a score so we'll go with that definition). Now, in terms of how you perform in applying your IQ, a poor diet will make you perform less well (or act less intelligently) than a diet rich in fruit, veg, fish, grains and so on.

Sorry, Limehouse. I know what a "healthy" diet is supposed to consist of. What I wanted to know was how the experts determined that it was the poor diet causing the poor performances and not the other way round, ie the poor performers tending to have poorer diets (perhaps because they lacked the earning capacity to afford sufficient nutritious food, or they may not have known or cared enough about eating sensibly).

Presumably any such study would need to have been carried out over time, giving guinea pigs of all intelligence levels a poor diet followed by a good one (or vice versa) and carefully monitoring any changes in individual performance to see how closely the changes coincided with the changes in diet. Any other factors that could have affected performance would need to have been taken into account or eliminated.

I am always deeply suspicious where conclusions are reached about cause and effect unless I know what measures were taken to avoid any misreading of the signs. It would be less than useless, for example, to ask ten million people what they eat, test their IQ and then conclude that it’s the former that is determining the latter. By that token one could conclude that if we ate pig swill for long enough our intelligence would eventually reach the level of a pig (and mine will never reach those dizzy heights ).

Similarly, with Jack, it’s less than useless to look at other serial killers and try to assess his IQ from theirs, if we can find examples covering a broad range from below rocket scientist to above bumbling idiot. We may as well stick him with the average IQ of men between the ages of 16 and 60. But I’m sure most of us tend to plump for the level that best represents our own subjective view of how smart or dim he was to do what he did. I very much doubt that a sporadic diet of bread and dripping and beer, or a solid one of quails’ eggs, lobster and brandy (or anything in between) would have produced any significant differences in terms of brain function. Each diet would have had its good and bad points, and too much of anything - as we can see all around us today - is as damaging to health as too little.

Suffice to say that Jack was eating enough to give him all the calories that were required, and being stimulated, naturally or artificially, as Joel points out, by adrenaline and/or drugs or alcohol. I imagine his mental capacity for violence against strangers would have been in his genes when he took his first slurp of mummy’s milk.

He would have been equally fortunate, whether he lived or worked right alongside his victims, or his circumstances allowed him to dip in and out of a victim-rich area with which he had some familiarity, because he had safety in numbers there. So many people coming and going at all hours, moving from one temporary shelter to another, or just passing through the area, gave him plenty of cover. As long as nobody recognised him as someone they knew and could identify, while he was actually engaging with a victim or leaving the scene afterwards, he was pretty much home dry, wherever home was. That would arguably have been the case whether he had the brains to appreciate it or just went with the flow.

My own view is that he would have had a slight advantage if his non-murderous life was allowing him to disappear from the area entirely after each attack, leaving the police with no possible clue to his whereabouts and relying on him returning to offend once too often and making a silly mistake or being caught in the act. The fact that he wasn’t caught could suggest that he wasn’t even there for most of the time, to say or do anything that might otherwise have aroused someone's suspicions. After his last murder he had only to keep his mouth firmly shut and destroy any remaining trophies and the result would be what we have today - no more clue than they did then. Not too taxing on any killer's brain, but arrogance could have been another matter.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

My own view is that he would have had a slight advantage if his non-murderous life was allowing him to disappear from the area entirely after each attack, leaving the police with no possible clue to his whereabouts and relying on him returning to offend once too often and making a silly mistake or being caught in the act.

He did leave a clue as to his whereabouts, albeit a vague one. The location of the apron portion in Goulston Street tells us that he headed towards the heart of the murder district after the Mitre Square as opposed to, say, West towards relative affluence in time for Pimm's o'clock. The fact that he wasn't caught speaks more favourably for the premise that Jack was a "blend into the crowd" type living in the general vicinity of his crimes. So does history and experience.

Oops, bit of a tangent there, sorry!

Best regards,
Ben

[Billy Bulger]

Reflecting on his actions

It remains heated debate to this day but I think if the Ripper was indeed surgically skilled then certainly his IQ was of a high standard lending to a lengthy education and challenging field. But again, the Ripper's anatomical talent is arguable.
Whatever about his natural brain power, the sheer boldness of his actions suggest he was very daring and trusting in his own ability; both charactaristics could imply he was either a fool or of above intelligence.

In the preface of Igor Edwards book on the Ripper (2003) was a line that for me perfectly encapsulates Jack the Ripper: the smartest men are not always the wisest


PS Someone mentioned how this thread and discussing whether we would have liked Mary Jane Kelly was a little silly; I think both make for great talk! lol

[Limehouse]

Natalie wrote: Sorry, Limehouse. I know what a "healthy" diet is supposed to consist of. What I wanted to know was how the experts determined that it was the poor diet causing the poor performances and not the other way round, ie the poor performers tending to have poorer diets (perhaps because they lacked the earning capacity to afford sufficient nutritious food, or they may not have known or cared enough about eating sensibly).


Hi Natalie,

There has been quite a lot of research done in this field recently. When a child in school is performing poorly and behaving badly enough to be examined by an educational psychologist, an IQ test often reveals a higher than average IQ that is not being nurtured either intellectually or nutritionally. A change in diet from sugar-rich foods to protein-rich foods seemed to imrpove concentration and performance. Of course, their are other factors that must be taken into account such as whether improved performance is related to the child being given more attention or more challenging work to do. I think there is convincing evidence to suggest that not everyone performs to the level of their measured IQ due to a variety of factors, including poor diet.

For more information, this website id very helpful:

http://www.aboutintelligence.co.uk/does-diet-play-role-intelligence.html

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Limehouse!

I wonder, what kind of a diet Frank Lee Morris (a high IQer from Alcatraz ) had in his school-days...

All the best
Jukka