Punishment

[wigngown]

Hi Errata,
By Professional I mean people (Clients) who are on the face of it of a respectable social standing & have responsible occupations who use Prostitues from the Lower end of their trade. I'm not in any way judging these women.
Best Regards.

[wigngown]

Thank you David. I'll read your article, best regards.

[David Orsam]

Hi David,
Have you read Bruce Robinsons book 'They all love Jack'? Robinson covers the Masonic aspects of the Murders in quite some detail.
Best regards.

I've not only read it, I've written an article about it which can be found here:

http://www.orsam.co.uk/theyalllovebruce.htm

As for the Masonic aspects, I don't really feel he added much from what was in Stephen Knight's 1976 book, 'Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution', which had a more enjoyable, if equally implausible, conspiracy theory.

[Errata]

Hi David,
Good point. Even today, Prostitues from, let's say the very lower end of Society are visited by clients from the upper end of society. Any suggestion that professionals don't like a bit of rough is as wrong today as I suspect it was in 1888.
Best regards.

Is it about what professionals like? They aren't in it for themselves after all. One would more accurately state that they would be willing if the price covered the resultant loss of business..

[wigngown]

Hi David,
Good point. Even today, Prostitues from, let's say the very lower end of Society are visited by clients from the upper end of society. Any suggestion that professionals don't like a bit of rough is as wrong today as I suspect it was in 1888.
Best regards.

[wigngown]

Hi David,
Have you read Bruce Robinsons book 'They all love Jack'? Robinson covers the Masonic aspects of the Murders in quite some detail.
Best regards.

[David Orsam]

Destitutes with teeth missing in their mouths, walking around drunk in the streets of Spitalfields? Posing a threat to the big institution? Really.

I should have responded directly to this.

Clearly Pierre you haven't read your Ultimate Sourcebook properly. Look at the inquest evidence of Joseph Barnett about Mary Kelly. I'll underline a couple of bits to assist you.

"When she left Cardiff she said she came to London. In London she was first in a gay house in the West End of the Town. A gentleman there asked her to go to France. She described to me she went to France."

This was only four years before her death. Destitutes with teeth missing in their mouths did not normally get invited to France by gentlemen.

[GUT]

Come on mow, GUT. We'll always have... Uh... Waitaminnute... I just had it... Um... Lewis Carroll's ink, perhaps? Paris, maybe? Arguing established minutia or whatever. Like the actual temperature of the fire in Kelly's grate.

I meant who jack was.

But even those things such as temp etc will be could haves

Let's be honest after 127+ years and all the lost material, plus the sheer number of suspects that are still a leat arguable, you're not even going too get a majority verdict.

[Shaggyrand]

With all the objections to speculation that seem to be arising we might as well shut down Casebook now, because I'm afraid that I for one doubt we will ever have anything else.

Come on mow, GUT. We'll always have... Uh... Waitaminnute... I just had it... Um... Lewis Carroll's ink, perhaps? Paris, maybe? Arguing established minutia or whatever. Like the actual temperature of the fire in Kelly's grate.

[GUT]

Relax, GUT. Better times must come. Let´s not give up! Have some tea!

Kind regards, Pierre

I don't drink tea somill pass thanks as I try to do on most of what you post.

[David Orsam]

"Could have"? Gee! There we have the old ghost of Potentiality again: Boo!

Who´s opinion? Mr Couldhavedoneit´s? Did he have opinions? Oh. Do you have any data source for that?

I must say, putting opinion´s into dead people´s heads is a mighty difficult task. I do not want to sound "arrogant", but please David, I do expect more from you.

"Cough, cough! Sorry! Trying to drink my tea. Had Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and poor Kelly "betrayed the freemasons"?

I think I´ll need a rest now.

"in some way". I see. So that is the level on which you are arguing for an hypothesis now.

"Posed a threat"? Destitutes with teeth missing in their mouths, walking around drunk in the streets of Spitalfields? Posing a threat to the big institution? Really.

Have a nice evening, David. Perhaps you need a rest too.

I don't know why you are asking me for a data source Pierre. Especially when you haven't provided any in support of your hanging, drawing and quartering theory. I'm not advocating anything. What I'm doing is pointing out that the notion that the murders were carried out as masonic punishments has as much, if not more, and probably much more, validity that the theory you have been offering the forum in this thread.

A prostitute is often in a unique position to know secrets about someone. Do you think wealthy and important men did not use prostitutes? I'm afraid there are no "data sources" about the clients of any of the murdered prostitutes but they only needed to be in possession of a secret about an important man (who was a freemason) which they could have acquired themselves or been told by a friend and then attempted to blackmail that man to have posed a threat.

I appreciate that you don't like this theory because the masonic punishments are closer to the way the Ripper murders were carried out than the way men convicted of treason were punished prior to the nineteenth century and perhaps that's why you feel you need a rest to recover from the shock.

[Pierre]

With all the objections to speculation that seem to be arising we might as well shut down Casebook now, because I'm afraid that I for one doubt we will ever have anything else.

Relax, GUT. Better times must come. Let´s not give up! Have some tea!

Kind regards, Pierre

[GUT]

With all the objections to speculation that seem to be arising we might as well shut down Casebook now, because I'm afraid that I for one doubt we will ever have anything else.

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=David Orsam;374010]They are certainly not identical Pierre but similar. In the same way that the JTR victims were not hung, drawn and quartered.

The fact that the story of the execution of the three Jubes (sorry, couldn't resist) was almost certainly fiction is to miss the point that

a real life Mason could have taken these punishments literally, or at least close to literally

"Could have"? Gee! There we have the old ghost of Potentiality again: Boo!

in order to murder women who had, in his opinion,

Who´s opinion? Mr Couldhavedoneit´s? Did he have opinions? Oh. Do you have any data source for that?

I must say, putting opinion´s into dead people´s heads is a mighty difficult task. I do not want to sound "arrogant", but please David, I do expect more from you.

betrayed the freemasons

"Cough, cough! Sorry! Trying to drink my tea. Had Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes and poor Kelly "betrayed the freemasons"?

I think I´ll need a rest now.

in some way

"in some way". I see. So that is the level on which you are arguing for an hypothesis now.

or posed a threat to them.

"Posed a threat"? Destitutes with teeth missing in their mouths, walking around drunk in the streets of Spitalfields? Posing a threat to the big institution? Really.

Have a nice evening, David. Perhaps you need a rest too.

Kind regards, Pierre

[John G]

[QUOTE=Pierre;373993]

Hi John,

I think it is easy to accept an hypothesis which postulates that since Jack the Ripper was an extremely rare serial killer, and since he put the victims on display, and since he was NOT a sadistic killer who tortured his victims, his motive was not directly connected to his own sexuality but to the act of social degradation through sexual degradation.

I gave an example for this type of murder in this post, here it is again:

In the second example disembowelling is also a type of punishment. In December 1877, two naked dead bodies were found outdoors, under a tree in Lucknow, India. (Morning Post, Tuesday 25 December, 1877). Both of the victims were headless, disembowelled and mutilated. They were the dead bodies of a young man and a young woman and the crime was understood to be an honour crime.

The social punishment is an act of honour, where the victims have broken social honour rules, thereby damaging someone´s honour, and therefore getting a socially degrading punishment.

This hypothesis would explain the lack of evidence for rape, the displaying of the bodies and sometimes cutting their faces. Nose-cutting also has a long history and has been used as a social punishment strongly connected to honour.

If someone has broken a social rule which is considered important for the family for example, that person could get punished by being killed, mutilated and put on display. This type of behaviour is considered the "right" thing to do if someone has been shamed by the breaking of a rule, and this type of murder is aimed at putting the social order back in place again. It is also a type of revenge.

"Bodily mutilations, such as nose-cutting, are recorded worldwide from different cultural settings...
The underlying notion is that cultural categories, such as “honour” and “shame”, are encoded in body morphology and affect behaviour."

(Honour, Shame, and Bodily Mutilation. Cutting off the Nose among Tribal Societies in Pakistan. Jürgen Wasim Frembgen. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Nov., 2006), pp. 243-260)

Regards, Pierre

Hi Pierre,

Okay. Well, I don't say you're necessarily wrong, and the examples you give from the Indian subcontinent are certainly interesting, although their societies are, of course, very different to Britain, both socially and culturally. And referring back to the first post of this thread, I certainly see no evidence he was attempting to hang draw or quarter anyone.

However, if JtR was motivated in such a way, I don't see how this is consistent with a sexually motivated killer, which I personally believe the evidence points towards, even if we accept that his intention was to degrade the victims.

In fact, I think that would suggest that he was more likely a mission killer, with a warped sense of morality, i.e. right and wrong and, if that was the case, probably suffering from mental illness, such as schizophrenia. But if he were, say, schizophrenic, I would also expect to see less evidence of planning and organization.

Nonetheless, I accept these things are not clear cut. Thus, I consider Sutcliffe to be a sexually motivated serial killer and the jury agreed. But, the psychiatrists disagreed, concluding that he was schizophrenic and, thereby, accepting his assertion that he was killing prostitutes because of a divine mission.