JTR a Pranzini Copycat?

[mklhawley]

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.

I want to study the Torso killer angle more, but this is awesome.

So Fisherman, my publisher is hinting that they will be publishing before my speaking engagement at the Rip conference in April. Now, the wax museum stuff is not part of my presentation, but it is in my book. I have some more info, but I have to be careful before publishing (I think). I have no connection with the Torso murders, so anything you find, I will pass on anything I've found!

Sincerely,

Mike

[Fisherman]

I am sending you a personal message, Mike.

[Howard Brown]

Jeff:
The article you referred to about the General's wife & Pranzini was in the July 19, 1887 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette.

[Rosella]

This is an intriguing subject, and although I wouldn't describe Jack as a copycat killer I'm sure he did take some interest in the Pranzini murders of the year before. (Interesting isn't it that the Paris Morgue always photographed the bodies it received?)

If Jack had visited Kahn's museum prior to its closure in London in 1873 he would have been very young wouldn't he, if he was in his late 20's in 1888, as some descriptions suggest?

With regard to these 'anotomical Venuses' I have read that prior to the closure of these museums (and afterwards) smaller versions of these models were on sale to the general public via market stalls and the like. Perhaps the Ripper availed himself of the opportunity and had a look at female internal organs before proceeding on?

[mklhawley]

Jeff:
The article you referred to about the General's wife & Pranzini was in the July 19, 1887 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette.

I am not surprised at all that you found it, Howard!

Sincerely,

Mike

[mklhawley]

This is an intriguing subject, and although I wouldn't describe Jack as a copycat killer I'm sure he did take some interest in the Pranzini murders of the year before. (Interesting isn't it that the Paris Morgue always photographed the bodies it received?)

If Jack had visited Kahn's museum prior to its closure in London in 1873 he would have been very young wouldn't he, if he was in his late 20's in 1888, as some descriptions suggest?

With regard to these 'anotomical Venuses' I have read that prior to the closure of these museums (and afterwards) smaller versions of these models were on sale to the general public via market stalls and the like. Perhaps the Ripper availed himself of the opportunity and had a look at female internal organs before proceeding on?

Hi Rosella,

Here are some more coincidences... In January 1888, the year of the murders, Comstock and the New York City police raided at least four of the public anatomical museums in the Bowery district. Comstock was said to have ripped apart one of the anatomical Venus models.

Now, across the English Channel. The Musée Dupuytren in Paris, France, had an anatomical Venus in the 1880s.

...and there were anatomical models displaying the female anatomy in London, which will be a later discussion.

In view of this, our serial offender may have easily been inspired to reproduce an anatomical Venus. That said, I'm the last person to accept that Jack the Ripper was in his twenties in 1873.

Sincerely,
Mike

[Mayerling]

Jeff:
The article you referred to about the General's wife & Pranzini was in the July 19, 1887 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette.

Thanks Howard.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

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

I don't know, Mike, but the French newspapers of the week of the murder only talk about throat slashing and defensive wounds on the arms.

EDIT: sorry, I'm trying to post screenshots of actual French articles, but apparently, the sizes are problematic. So let me send you a link instead, if you can read French. All the articles from March and April from Le Petit Parisien.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k473888k

[Shaggyrand]

I don't know, Mike, but the French newspapers of the week of the murder only talk about throat slashing and defensive wounds on the arms.

I have looked a bit for any description of mutilations but haven't found any yet. The only direct reference to mutilations I have seen was the NYT article quoted earlier and a New Zealand paper's account of his execution which has lifted its description of the crime straight from the NYT article. The engravings from the mortuary photos don't show anything other than slit throats. Not that that means anything.

[Fisherman]

This is an intriguing subject, and although I wouldn't describe Jack as a copycat killer I'm sure he did take some interest in the Pranzini murders of the year before. (Interesting isn't it that the Paris Morgue always photographed the bodies it received?)

If Jack had visited Kahn's museum prior to its closure in London in 1873 he would have been very young wouldn't he, if he was in his late 20's in 1888, as some descriptions suggest?

With regard to these 'anotomical Venuses' I have read that prior to the closure of these museums (and afterwards) smaller versions of these models were on sale to the general public via market stalls and the like. Perhaps the Ripper availed himself of the opportunity and had a look at female internal organs before proceeding on?

Others propose that he was 38 in 1888, Rosella... Interesting with the stalls sale of Venuses!

[mklhawley]

Hi SirJohn and Shaggyrand,

The close proximity of the Nichols murder (and date) suggests Jack the Ripper may very well have visited the Chamber of Horrors wax museum with an effigy of Henri Pranzini in his deathstate, his execution. It would not have had a display of the women, probably just a write up of the reason for his execution. My reference to being a copycat was more for a short title than an exact motive.

Sincerely,

Mike

[Pcdunn]

This isn't directly related, except to prove that what one sees can affect a mind in disturbing ways: somewhere I came across a reference to a serial killer who stated his reason for cutting open women's stomachs was because as a child he had seen an exhibit of a model of a pregnant woman with a window in her abdomen showing the fetus inside.
I cannot remember which killer, or where I found it mentioned (maybe in one of Errata's posts at this forum), but it would seem to lend credit to the notion that a killer might want to recreate something he'd seen in a museum.

[mklhawley]

Hi Pat,

The crime historian and author Elisabeth Wetsch commented on Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper:

The roots of Sutcliffe’s homicidal rage are difficult to trace. His family appears to have been torn by dark suspicions, on his father’s part, of infidelity by Peter’s mother, and the boy’s opinion of all women may have suffered in an atmosphere of brooding doubt. As a young man, he found employment with a local mortuary, and was prone to “borrow” jewelry from the corpses; in his comments, easily dismissed as “jokes” by his co-workers at the time, there is a hint of budding necrophilia, more disturbing than the strain of larceny. A favorite outing for the would-be ripper was a local wax museum, where he lingered by the hour over torsos that depicted the results of gross venereal disease.

Sincerely,

Mike

[MysterySinger]

I think a JTR who was 28 in 1888 would have easily been at a very impressionable age before 1873.

[Fisherman]

I think a JTR who was 28 in 1888 would have easily been at a very impressionable age before 1873.

True enough - but if the Ripper and the Torso killer were one and the same, as implied by the similarities involded in the Chapman, Kelly and Jackson cases, then we may need a more mature killer in the first torso murders than a boy of 13-14 years.
Otherwise, I quite agree.