chance for Sickert having seen MJK crime scene ?

[RavenDarkendale]

It is certainly significant that for 70 years he was not a suspect. Had he been "hanging around the crime scenes, showing a morbid interest" I think the police would have had him in for some close questioning! They weren't all incompetent blowhards!

[RivkahChaya]

Some people are artists.

Some people (actually, quite a lot) find unsolved crime (not just murder-- I'd love to know who was responsible for the Piltdown hoax) and deviant behavior interesting.

There will be intersection between these two groups; it would be remarkable if there weren't.

It's statistically normal for there to be intersection between any two groups of people that are not mutually exclusive, like people in comas, and college students, so that you can't make inferences without knowing a lot about the groups involved, and general tendencies of intersection, and soforth. If it were highly unusual to be interested in historical mysteries, and serial killers, then finding someone interested might be meaningful-- and it wouldn't matter what other groups he belonged to-- but we all know it isn't unusual.

Limehouse makes a really excellent that Patricia Cornwell apparently thinks writing about serial murder is just fine, but painting about it is an indication of pathology. Does she not realize that painters who wanted to make a living had to try at least in part to give the public what it wanted? I'm sure Sickert wanted to paint the paintings he did, but he must have thought there would be some reception for them, or he would have spent more time on more commercial projects.

[Gene Lewis]

It is certainly significant that for 70 years he was not a suspect. Had he been "hanging around the crime scenes, showing a morbid interest" I think the police would have had him in for some close questioning! They weren't all incompetent blowhards!

Hello RavenDarkendale,
is it more significant that for more 120 years we have no real name to put beside the Holly & Grotesque nickname of "Jack The Ripper" ?

Regards
Gene Lewis

[RivkahChaya]

It is certainly significant that for 70 years he was not a suspect. Had he been "hanging around the crime scenes, showing a morbid interest" I think the police would have had him in for some close questioning! They weren't all incompetent blowhards!

is it more significant that for more 120 years we have no real name to put beside the Holly & Grotesque nickname of "Jack The Ripper" ?

What does that even mean, "120 ... no real name..."? It sounds like you mean "Any name is better than no name," or more conservatively, "Any moderately plausible name is better than no name."

If I am misconstruing your meaning please tell me, but for the time being, I'm going to say that I think "Any name is better than no name" is horribly misguided. Pressure to close cases is how the police in several different states let Henry Lee Lucas live in relative comfort, dodging a death sentence, while he confessed to about 300 murders, Scheherazade-like, that he almost certainly didn't do, just so the cases could be closed.

"Any name" is why there are so many awful documentaries, because producers assume viewers will feel short-changed if the show doesn't end with a name, and a narrator who pronounces it with conviction, rather than the truth, which is that we just don't know.

[Gene Lewis]

What does that even mean, "120 ... no real name..."? It sounds like you mean "Any name is better than no name," or more conservatively, "Any moderately plausible name is better than no name."

Please read : "a real name" is what I said. Not "any name". I think that hammering "any name" on the silhouette of the guy we call Jack the Ripper would be the worse thing we could do. We all, I suppose, are looking for what REALLY happened in those days...
So please hear the real sound, and not "it sounds like you mean"... I mean that - as miss Cornwell did, perhaps, on focusing on Sickert "as the Ripper"- and as many do as well with names we all know, like Gull, or Macnaghten, etc..., it is not a good way shouting out "any name" for having one, neither standing like old keepers of the Temple on old certitudes half wrong, or not firmly established...
My thread on Sickert's sketches were not for pointing a finger at the guilty man, but for, in my intention, following a track... that I suppose not so bad, indeed.
Again, forgive my syntax and mistakes, for english is not my first language, as you see...
Regards

[RivkahChaya]

Please read : "a real name" is what I said. Not "any name". I think that hammering "any name" on the silhouette of the guy we call Jack the Ripper would be the worse thing we could do. We all, I suppose, are looking for what REALLY happened in those days...

I still do not follow you, then. Of course, the real name would be better than no name, but not a real name. I speak American English, mostly New Yorkese, but I've been in the Midwest for a while, and to me, "a real name," as opposed to "the real name" is the same thing as saying "any name," with the provision that it isn't a fictional person, but I understood that as a given.

Just because it would be great to solve the case, and know the real name of the killer called Jack the Ripper doesn't mean we pick someone plausible, and shoehorn him in, with wild speculations about penile fistulas, just because we know he did have some kind or surgery as a child, and postulate a hatred of women based on some faceless subjects in paintings, even though we could come to the same conclusions about other artists of the time, AND there are other possible interpretations for the faceless subjects.

To me, it is not more satisfying to put some real name in for "Jack the Ripper," when the evidence is so thin. To me the honesty of saying "We still don't know the name, even with as much as we do know," is more satisfying.

[Gene Lewis]

and postulate a hatred of women based on some faceless subjects in paintings

Hum, I actually postulate a hatred of women - at least, of a woman - on a different basis, which includes a real slashed face from a corpse lying on a wooden bed, in some Miller's Court miserable room...
And, again, what I meant was the possibility of the painter who did such approaching sketches years later, was –may be – at a time or another, in that room, or (and it was also the question in my thread) saw the police picture(s) taken there...

[Gene Lewis]

PS : RivkahChaya, in my use of English, saying "a real name" meant, indeed, THE real name, of course, not simply, a name that would fit. Don't understand your "nuance"...

[Bridewell]

I think allowances should be made for the fact that English is not Gene's first language.
Having said that, I don't think that Walter Sickert will ever have "seen the MJK crime scene", except perhaps in his own mind's eye.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Gene Lewis]

Hi Bridewell,
hello all,
I am deeply touched by the fact that you put on the account of my bad english any misconception or misunderstanding, but alas, I can't drop the idea that Sickert (not only in Miss Cornwell's mind) had a special interest on Jack the Ripper, and (not only in his painting JTR's bedroom) obsessionally returned (maybe only in his "own mind's eye") to Miller's Court...
I could say it in French, or in romantic victorian verses as well, that's what I mean.
Regards
Gene

[RivkahChaya]

I think allowances should be made for the fact that English is not Gene's first language.

"Making allowances" is one thing, but I genuinely did not understand what he meant. I hope you didn't think I was trolling.

FWIW, his English is generally so good, that the fact that he wouldn't get the nuance between "a real name," and "the real name," did not occur to me at first. Maybe it's a sort of compliment.

I can't drop the idea that Sickert (not only in Miss Cornwell's mind) had a special interest on Jack the Ripper, and (not only in his painting JTR's bedroom) obsessionally returned (maybe only in his "own mind's eye") to Miller's Court...

Once more: special interest in JTR doesn't make him a suspect.

I could say it in French, or in romantic victorian verses as well, that's what I mean.

How about Latin?: "petitio principii." You cannot use evidence from the paintings to prove that Sickert was familiar with the crime scene, at the same time you are insisting that Sickert had an interest in the crimes, as evidenced by the same paintings. when you are putting these two claims together, and announcing a "preponderance of evidence," that isn't allowed, not when they are conclusions based on the same previous evidence. You must prove one thing independently. You must find some evidence outside the subject matter of the paintings that Sickert visited the crimes scenes, or at least used them as models (like a copy of that book someone mentioned upthread among his things), or prove an interest in the crimes beyond what pretty much every Victorian must have had, such as saving newspaper articles, and still having them when he died, or pursuing what Ms. Cornwell may have discovered, which is that Sickert may have been one of the many letter hoaxers.

[RavenDarkendale]

For the sake of argument, let's say Sickert DID have the opportunity to view the MJK crime scene. There are always morbid people who haunt crime scenes and even take souvenirs. Morbid curiosity is not in and of itself a reason for suspicion of the person's involvement in the crime. Do some of his paintings bear this supposition out? Frankly, it would depend on what one sees in the art and interprets as proof. Certainly none that I have seen come close to the absolute horror that was the MJK death bed.

[Limehouse]

I think a great many people alive at the time of the murders 'had a special interest' in them and the fact that 124 years later they are still being discussed is testiment to their 'popularity' - that's not quite the correct word, although I would say that, regretfully, JtR HAS passed into the realms of popular culture.

If, as you claim Gene, Sickert did have a deep interest in MJK's murder scene and reproduced it in several of his paintings, I would say that this was because he had an interest in interiors and the lives (and deaths) that occurred in them. For example, What Shall We Do For The Rent is sometimes referred to as The Camden Town Murder. There is a series of these paintings and the woman is variously shown in bed (but although this woman's throat was cut, no multilations are shown in the painting(s). The events are shown through a range of perspectives as if Sickert is exploring the life lived and its tragic ending, including the reaction of a loved one. Likewise, in Jack The Ripper's Bedroom we have an interior, and an invitation to speculate on the private space lived in by such a man.

If Sickert was really obsessed with the murders and the murder scenes, I feel we would have seen more paintings of the outdoor crime scenes.

Thank you for starting this thread Gene. I am finding it most interesting.

Julie

[Gene Lewis]

Thank you Julie for that interesting comment, which proves your knowledge of Sickert's work, and gives us food for thinking not only on the topic I opened, but also on our collective (or common) interest on that case. Maybe Sickert was just somebody deeply fascinated by the crimes, who wanted to know and understand more on these "scenic" murders, and used his art to highlight the story... (in a pedantic tone, I would say, to exorcise it)...
Your note about the lack of outdoor crime scene is really thrilling: this should build another path of inquiry.
And for the last time, Sickert IS NOT in the short list of my favorite suspects, and I don't want to hammer his name on the shady silhouette in top hat and red velvet cape we 've seen here and there. I simply just can't see him "totally off the screen" of what happened in 1888.
Best regards, anyway.

[Gene Lewis]

For the sake of argument, let's say Sickert DID have the opportunity to view the MJK crime scene. There are always morbid people who haunt crime scenes and even take souvenirs. Morbid curiosity is not in and of itself a reason for suspicion of the person's involvement in the crime. Do some of his paintings bear this supposition out? Frankly, it would depend on what one sees in the art and interprets as proof. Certainly none that I have seen come close to the absolute horror that was the MJK death bed.

Thank you, RavenDarkendale, I agree with that, completely. And of course, I share your sentiment about the tremendous difference between any of Sickert's painting and the horror of the Mary Jane Kelly's body and bed.
Regards
Gene