JTR a Pranzini Copycat?

[mklhawley]

Hi all,

If you've joined the boards in the last few years... Henri Pranzini murdered three women in Paris in 1887 Ripper-style; deep throat cut and mutilation. On the one year anniversary of his execution (August 31, 1887), the first of the canonical five was murdered. Interestingly, just one hundred yards away from the Nichols murder site was a wax display of Pranzini's execution in a popular Whitechapel Chamber of Horrors wax museum. How coincidental!

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

The execution was August 31, 1887, not the one year anneversary!

[SirJohnFalstaff]

Interesting. There are similarities, but also major differences.


- Throat slashing. One of the victim was also almost decapitated.

- One of the victim was a courtisane, and Pranzini made money pimping.

but the motive seems to be theft. Also, I don't know where you got the mutilation part, but it's pretty much absent from the French wiki entry, apart from a few lacerations on one of the victim's wrist.

[mklhawley]

Interesting. There are similarities, but also major differences.


- Throat slashing. One of the victim was also almost decapitated.

- One of the victim was a courtisane, and Pranzini made money pimping.

but the motive seems to be theft. Also, I don't know where you got the mutilation part, but it's pretty much absent from the French wiki entry, apart from a few lacerations on one of the victim's wrist.

Hi SirJohn,

Search deeper than wiki and you'll find it. I have a few contemporary articles if you want to see them.

Also, I'm not saying the Pranzini's motive was the same as JTR, at all. You misundestand. On the streets of Whitechapel Road, across the street from the London Hospital was a Chamber of Horrors wax museum, and on display was the execution of Henri Pranzini. If our killer was across the street from the London Hospital killing Nichols, he clearly knew of this museum and the pictures they had on the streets in order to entice patrons.

Also, in the basement of this very museum, sometimes within hours of the Ripper murders, was a display of JTR's victims. By February, there were six victims displayed and the proprietor even had a wax display of Jack the Ripper.

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

Here's the Chamber of Horrors wax museum article (in Rip 130): http://www.searchingfortruthwithabro.../130Wax_v2.pdf

[mklhawley]

New York Times of 31 August 1887 reported:

The triple murder in the Rue Montaigne, for the commission of which Henri Pranzini has just surrendered his head to the guillotine, was one of the most sensational tragedies which even Paris has furnished to the criminal records of the world… Marie Regnault, who was also known as Madame de Montille, was found on the floor of her chamber dead, her throat cut and her body terribly mutilated. Lying near the door leading from the chamber to the drawing room was the dead body of Annette, whose throat had also been cut, and in her bed in another apartment was little Marie Gremeret, her head almost severed from her body by the murderer’s knife. [Author emphasis added].

Sincerely,

Mike

[Mayerling]

Here's the Chamber of Horrors wax museum article (in Rip 130): http://www.searchingfortruthwithabro.../130Wax_v2.pdf

Thanks for sharing the article Mike. I don't currently get the Ripperologist so I missed it.

Interestingly I actually found (and have somewhere) a copy of a page from W. T. Stead's "Pall Mall Gazette" referring to the suspicion of Prazini in the murder of that General's mother. I have to search for it, but it was like one of Stead's news tidbits, of only two or three lines length.

Jeff

[mklhawley]

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm also intrigued at how similar the Anatomical (Florentine) Venus display with the female lying on her back on a bed with her breasts off and her abdominal area exposed looks so much like how they found the body of Mary Kelly.

Even though the Anatomical Venus was no longer in the wax museums in London, they certainly were in the museums across the Atlantic in 1888.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Fisherman]

Wow, Mike - so many threads with so little to say, and then suddenly - WHAM! - out of the blue, you present something like this!

First of all, congratulations on a very well done job on the wax cabinets of bygone London - extremely interesting reading.

Now, if I may, I would like to present an alternative explanation to how a possible link between Jack and the waxworks may have looked! I think you may find it intriguing.

Over the past month or so, a discussion on the JTR boards has dealt with a very compelling likeness inbetween the murders of Mary Kelly, Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Jackson. The latter was of course a victim (in 1889) of the so called Thames Torso killer.
What links Jackson together with the two Ripper victims is the fact that all three had their abdominal walls removed in large skin flaps, three of them in the cases of Chapman and Kelly, and two in the Jackson case.

To me, that settles the question whether the two men were one and the same: yes, they in all probability were. To imagine two serialists in the same town, at overlapping times, targetting the same kind of victims, engaging in mutilations AND cutting away the abdominal walls in large flaps, is just too much.

So where does that put us? It puts us with a man who set out killing from as early as 1873 and up til at least 1889. And what is the significance of this time space in relation to the waxworks? Well, it lies in how the more scientific type of wax cabinets, the ones displaying anatomical figures, were closed down in - yes, 1873!

Now, take a look at the picture you used in your Ripperologist article, the so called Florentine Anatomical Venus. She provided any onlooker with a comprehensive guide where to find the various innards. Which would potentially explain quite a lot.
But the more interesting thing is HOW this was done!
How can we see the innards? Because, of course, the abdominal wall is taken away.
The Florentine Anatiomical Venus also displays the inside of the thorax, meaning that the breasts are not present.
Now, you have already pointed out what happened to Kelly:
The abdominal wall was cut away, all the way down to the genitals, leaving the outer genitals attaching to the flaps of skin, allowing the killer to look into the abdominal cavity all the way down.
That is exactly what we have with the Florentine Venus.
Kellys breasts were cut away with circular incisions, leaving the inside open to the killers eyes.
Basically, the killer turned her into a copy of the Florentine Venus...!

Chapmans and Jacksons skin flaps were of the same type as Kellys, with the outer genitals attaching to them.

Look at Nichols, how the killer made a number of cuts in the abdominal wall. Look at how he made a half circle along the outer abdominal wall in Eddowes´ case, instead of letting the cut travel straight down - was he aiming to cut the abdominal wall away in these cases too? But was hindered by a shortage of time?

There can of course be no certainty about these matters, but I find the suggestion totally tantalizing - the killer created something that was a copy of the anatomical wax figure that was on display on the corner of Thomas Street up until 1873 - when the Torso murders began.

We are in all probability looking for a man who was of a mature age in 1888, therefore. Guess who fits that bill...?

Thanks for a very interesting thread, Mike. Please let me know what you think of my suggestion!

[GUT]

Thanks Mike, at leat something serious to consider.

[mklhawley]

Hi Fisherman,

Another connection with 1873! I do like your suggestions. Now, time to ponder them. The lion's share of Kahn's Venuses went to his museums in the US, but Tussauds was also the recipient of many specimens. Of course, the Whitechapel wax museum was shielding themselves from the 1857 Obscene Act by claiming to be another Tussauds.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman,

Another connection with 1873! I do like your suggestions. Now, time to ponder them. The lion's share of Kahn's Venuses went to his museums in the US, but Tussauds was also the recipient of many specimens. Of course, the Whitechapel wax museum was shielding themselves from the 1857 Obscene Act by claiming to be another Tussauds.

Sincerely,

Mike

So there is every chance that there was a Venus in Thomas Street! Not that it is a deciding factor, but it is nevertheless interesting!

I found this in "The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine":

The surviving accounts of visits to anatomy museums, written by relatively well-educated middle class Victorian men, portray them as a harmless day out. Most of the visitors to Kahn's museum were working class and we can only guess at their range of experiences: exhibits that provoked laughter among men about town may have brought a blush to the cheeks of the less worldly. Some young people probably learned the facts of life there and many more would have obtained a better understanding of matters sexual.

Mostly working class, thus - providing a very comprehensive explanation to how just about any Eastender could have gotten a little bit of anatomical insights. Carmen in their early twenties, for example...

How do you look on the proposition that the Ripper and the Torso killer would have been one and the same? Such a suggestion has been forbidden territory for the longest, but I think that the find of the abdominal flap thing (dug up by Debra Arif) means that it must be the by far better suggestion.

[Mayerling]

Hi Fisherman,

Another connection with 1873! I do like your suggestions. Now, time to ponder them. The lion's share of Kahn's Venuses went to his museums in the US, but Tussauds was also the recipient of many specimens. Of course, the Whitechapel wax museum was shielding themselves from the 1857 Obscene Act by claiming to be another Tussauds.

Sincerely,

Mike

A few points from reading your article earlier.

1) Anthony Comstock - you probably heard of this "Crusader against Vice". Comstock actually was an early anti-abortionist and planned parenthood advocate. His targets ran from the notorious New York City based "Madame Restell" (whom he drove into suicide in 1878 - making his reputation black for a number of years, though he later felt that his actions doing that to a number of abortionists were badges of honor) to Margaret Sanger. He attacked artwork he felt offended public morals, once making an assault on a respect N.Y.C. art group for showing a picture where there was the figure of a naked man that was less than three inches tall at the end of a pier about to jump into a river on a summer day. There were plenty of other figures that were larger and closer up but Comstock jumped on that. He annoyed the theater community attacking those pornographic filth mongers from Europe Ibsen and Shaw (Bernard Shaw was bemused by Comstock's dislike for "Mrs. Warren's Profession, about the economic side of being a bordello owner, and created the term "Comstockery" to belittle the man and his followers - and Americans in general for not putting the fellow in his place). He remained fairly active until his death in 1915. There was a biography I read about him that was co-authored by Heywood Hale Sr. in the 1920s.

2) Fate of the Prazzini wax statue of Tussaud's: I went to the London Tussaud's in 1992, and saw the "Chambre of Horrors". Interestingly they had Crippen, Christie, and one of the Ripper victims there, but no Prazzini. A family friend who was at an earlier exhibition building in London in 1965 brought back a pamphlet that listed a statue for Prazzini as extant then. Tussaud's has a storage facility when they "retire" old statues from the museum. I'm not sure where it is, but perhaps you can locate it and you can see the statue.

Jeff

[Fisherman]

Moving on, here ´s a snippet or two from a (rather odd and richly illustrated and by an insane author, no less...!) website about anatomical venuses:

https://wereallmadinhere.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/memento-mori-monday-the-anatomical-venus/

Nevertheless, the models usually had very beautiful features, and sometimes they were placed in oddly sensual positions. The contrast between esthetic attraction and repulsion is quite strange… and to me, quite enticing also.

...and...

There just is something about seeing a beautiful woman with her skin peeled back and her organs spread out on the table that sends a tingle of delight over my skin…


So, sensually posed, and with the pedagogic dimension of offering a possibility to take all the organs out (they were loose and meant to be picked out and put back in again) and strew them around the emptied wax body, like for example on a table...

Can this be a mere coincidence? I´m flabbergasted!

[mklhawley]

A few points from reading your article earlier.

1) Anthony Comstock - you probably heard of this "Crusader against Vice". Comstock actually was an early anti-abortionist and planned parenthood advocate. His targets ran from the notorious New York City based "Madame Restell" (whom he drove into suicide in 1878 - making his reputation black for a number of years, though he later felt that his actions doing that to a number of abortionists were badges of honor) to Margaret Sanger. He attacked artwork he felt offended public morals, once making an assault on a respect N.Y.C. art group for showing a picture where there was the figure of a naked man that was less than three inches tall at the end of a pier about to jump into a river on a summer day. There were plenty of other figures that were larger and closer up but Comstock jumped on that. He annoyed the theater community attacking those pornographic filth mongers from Europe Ibsen and Shaw (Bernard Shaw was bemused by Comstock's dislike for "Mrs. Warren's Profession, about the economic side of being a bordello owner, and created the term "Comstockery" to belittle the man and his followers - and Americans in general for not putting the fellow in his place). He remained fairly active until his death in 1915. There was a biography I read about him that was co-authored by Heywood Hale Sr. in the 1920s.

2) Fate of the Prazzini wax statue of Tussaud's: I went to the London Tussaud's in 1992, and saw the "Chambre of Horrors". Interestingly they had Crippen, Christie, and one of the Ripper victims there, but no Prazzini. A family friend who was at an earlier exhibition building in London in 1965 brought back a pamphlet that listed a statue for Prazzini as extant then. Tussaud's has a storage facility when they "retire" old statues from the museum. I'm not sure where it is, but perhaps you can locate it and you can see the statue.

Jeff

There's research angles here, Jeff. Thank you!

Mike