Did JTR live in a lodging house?

[Ben]

Hi Janie,

Thoroughly bloody good post there! Agreed wholeheartedly.

Hi Mike,

You said earlier that poor people schedule their days activities, and I knew at once youve never known someone in those conditions.

No, I didn't say they "schedule their days activities". It depends upon the extent of poverty. I said they were likely to be working hard over long hours to feed themselves and their families. The very poor would often work at arduous tasks in poor conditions for even poorer pay, and it is invariably this group who benefitted most from weekends and holidays. I don't think it's very fair to assume that people undertaking such task wil invariably develop a propensity towards laziness or that they will "get drunk and sleep away the rest of the day".

Their "immediate need" is to earn their daily bread, and to do that, it would often be necessary to conform to a schedule or pattern. You need only consider the carmen and the Charles Crosses and Robert Pauls of this world to appreciate this. They were poor, but they relied on hard graft to earn their bread and bed at the end of the day. I don't know what you mean by "desperately poor" but I never insisted that the killer belonged to that catergory, nor were lodging houses resorted to by this group alone.

Fundamentally, there's nothing in the killer's pattern that would justify elevating his social status beyond that of the average Spitalfields denizen (who needn't have been "desperately poor"). There's even less reason to surmise that he must have gone elsewhere in the interim. Even if he did elect to kill only weekends or bank holidays on account of his work shedule, it would take us right back to the people who would benefit most from them; local men taking advantage of some respite from their arduous routine.

Your explanation is founded on a killer's profile, one that is not a matter of record by any stretch, and its skewed some perceptions I believe

Nope, it's simply based on crime scene evidence and the area in which they were committed.

I know youve studied these types of men, but as a layman I would be shocked to hear that their mania and impulses didnt place them in situations logic and commonsense dictates were "against their best interests", which were primarily staying free and getting to do more of what hes doing.

You don't know what his "best interests" were, though, or even what "interests" were available to him. Hiding within plain sight, and blending into a crowd that was practically guaranteed not to single him out doesn't strike me as "acting against his best interests" at all. Again, there's a huge difference between one's "bests interests" and what was actually obtainable. It cannot always be assumed that he had a choice in the matter.

Yes, serial killers often get caught because they slip up or become overconfident and/or sloppy, but this rarely has anything to do with "mania", and it doesn't mean that they weren't equally careless and sloppy on previous occasions that didn't result in them being caught.

Best regards,
Ben

[perrymason]

Hi again Ben,

I think we can say with some confidence what was a priority to him, remaining at large, because he leaves no clues as to his identity and did not, to our knowldege, give himself up.

I just think that building each case from the ground up, meaning starting from the crime scene and victim data, doesnt reveal anything about his financial means, if any, nor does it suggest most strongly that he must have been a fulltime local resident. In fact, Weekends and Holidays are specifically when the number of visitors to the London Area would spike.

There is no evidence that suggests he remained in the East End in the days following kills or even lives there at all, other than an apron section found heading NorthEast from Mitre Square. He could be a man who comes into town for 7-10 days, takes a few different rooms, and then leaves town by the 10th of each month. He could leave his Ripper take in a room that only he rents for roughly 20 days at a time, but not one that is occupied by many men in his absence.

Since at this time there is no way to be sure what his means were, where he lived, why he only kills weekends or holidays and where he is for 20 out of every 31 days not killing....perhaps better to address the question when and if more evidence is found.

Best regards Ben, and Happy New Year!!

[Jane Coram]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for pointing out that the grounds of Christchurch were locked at night, it had quite slipped my mind - although you are probably also right in that people found a way in if they were desperate enough.

If anyone hasn't read Jack London's 'People of the Abyss' there is a section in it on Itchy Park, which gives a good picture of how it got its name and it really is very moving. Here is the link:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/chapter6.html

There is also a good description of what life in lodging houses was like and it paints quite an accurate, if grim picture.

For anyone that is interested, another good place to go for information is
www.victorianlondon.org - which has a huge amount on life in the East End for all levels of society in the LVP, although some of it is a bit tedious to wade through and the search facility is pretty useless.

Hugs

Jane

xxxx

[Sam Flynn]

Search tip

For anyone that is interested, another good place to go for information is
www.victorianlondon.org - which has a huge amount on life in the East End for all levels of society in the LVP, although ... the search facility is pretty useless.

I use Google, and its "site:" and "inurl:" search strings. For example, if you copy and paste the entire string shown in the box below into a Google search box, whether at Google.com/co.uk or into your browser's "Google Bar"...

[HTML]site:www.victorianlondon.org "common lodging houses" inurl:victorianlondon.org[/HTML]

... you'll end up with a welter of "hits" about common lodging houses at that site.

The general format to use, on any relevant site, is:

[HTML]site:www.website.blah "KEY WORD(S) IN QUOTES" inurl:website.blah
[/HTML]
(Where ".blah" could be .com, .org, .co.uk, .tv or whatever; and "website" could be casebook, jtrforums, victorianlondon etc etc)

[Jane Coram]

Oh Excellent, thanks Gareth.

I've torn my hair out in the past using their internal search engine, as it seems to have a logic all of its own. It is a great site, with a wealth of information though, so I suppose I shouldn't moan.

Jane

xxxx

[Ben]

Hi Mike,

I just think that building each case from the ground up, meaning starting from the crime scene and victim data, doesnt reveal anything about his financial means, if any, nor does it suggest most strongly that he must have been a fulltime local resident.

I'm afraid I very strongly disagree. The location, the "victim data", crime scene evidence, historical precedent and expert opinion all suggest the probability of a local offender, and it's simply a fact that the vast majority of local men in that area would have been working class and relatively poor. Weekends and holidays provided some respite for the poor workers in the district who were accustomed to a thankless routine of hard slog for little pay.

As Gareth pointed out, it isn't even the case that the killer only selected weekends and holidays.

There is no evidence that suggests he remained in the East End in the days following kills or even lives there at all, other than an apron section found heading NorthEast from Mitre Square.

Well, there's nothing to conclusively prove that he stayed in the East End for the duration, but when it comes to actual evidence - or even the vaguest indication - that he kept coming and going from the East End, we're really onto a losing wicket, m'afraid.

He could be a man who comes into town for 7-10 days, takes a few different rooms, and then leaves town by the 10th of each month.

The majority of serial killer whose crimes are as closely clustered as JTR's have been resident in that district, and I don't see any reason to consider this killer any different. There's simply no reason to envisage him commuting in and booking rooms, regardless of the "could have" factor, an axiom that you often highlight yourself when others suggest that Kelly "could have" ventured out again after 1.00am, for example.

Happy new year to you too!

Best regards,
Ben

[perrymason]

Hey Ben,

I can say that If he is a man like you describe, a local nobody poor man scraping out a living somehow, and a man who has human remains on him while in the company of others sometimes, then your lodging house argument is a good one.

Ive a different read on the facts as they are, so I will stick with a man who knows the streets and wears things that fit in....who doesnt have to be a phenomenon from within the herd, but could be a poacher from just outside it.

Im not talking to you again until 2009 Ben. ...thats how distraught I am over this whole thing.

Again, all the best to you and yours Ben and everyone,

HAPPY NEW YEARS ALL...Best wishes for the coming year...

[caz]

You need that "survival instinct" to kick in when times are tough, not when you're ready made and comfy. Ask Ray Mears.

Hi Ben,

To be fair, anyone who keeps venturing out onto the streets of an overcrowded town, with a very sharp knife on his person, and keeps murdering and mutilating women who are unlucky enough to find themselves alone with him, will need that "survival instinct" to kick in for the duration, regardless of his domestic or financial circumstances. Ask any serial offender who got buckled.

None of this is particularly relevant to the discussion of whether Jack lived in a doss-house anyway, Mike. He'd still have had to have done something with the organs he'd removed, whether he killed outdoors or not.

Hi Sam,

Of course, it was entirely his choice whether or not to take organs away from the scene, and I don't think you believe he did that just for shock value. So presumably he had some purpose in mind for them other than chucking them away at the first opportunity. We don't know what purpose they were meant to serve, or whether any actually served that purpose before going the way of all flesh. But it's entirely possible that he took them because he had no intention of taking the bodies anywhere and bodily parts were the next best thing.

The drawbacks of sleeping rough might have been that the policeman on his beat would routinely check doorways and a lot of the places used, but there were so many sleeping rough, he would be hard pressed to put them all on the suspect list.

Hi Jane,

If the ripper slept rough after each kill to avoid returning to a lodging house, at times that would have ranged from 2.30 to sunrise, he'd be one of the few in possession of a recently used knife, squelchy, offal-filled pockets, the odd bloodstain or ten, plus any other murder requisites or trophies (rings for instance) that happened to be among his limited personal effects. So I'm not sure that too many would need to be put on the beat copper's suspect list.

You don't know what his "best interests" were, though, or even what "interests" were available to him. Hiding within plain sight, and blending into a crowd that was practically guaranteed not to single him out doesn't strike me as "acting against his best interests" at all. Again, there's a huge difference between one's "bests interests" and what was actually obtainable. It cannot always be assumed that he had a choice in the matter.

I know exactly what his "best interests" were, regardless of what "interests" were or were not available to him: his very best interests were to leave the unfortunates alone and not keep taking his bloody knife to them.

He was acting against his best interests, whether he only had to hide within plain sight and blend into the crowd for just the time it took to do the deed and scarper, or whether he was your lodging house/street dweller with no option, if he wanted to kill and not get caught, but to keep on hiding and blending 24/7. And if his only safe alternative to chucking his precious body parts away unused was to cook them at the earliest opportunity over a crowded lodging house kitchen stove and consume them before trying to catch some much-needed shut-eye, he was very lucky if eating the organs for breakfast also happened to be his sole purpose for harvesting them in the first place.

There are several reasons why a killer in 1888 Whitechapel may not even have contemplated taking his victims back to his place, wherever that may have been and regardless of any privacy issues. Killers who choose to hide or dispose of body after body in their own homes tend to give themselves away in the end (even if it's only when they have moved away or died and the bodies start making their presence felt to new occupiers), while those who merely have to cut and go without being observed have no disposal problems or guilty baggage to hide apart from the odd trophy.

Any man who wasn't a homeowner, and therefore had to rent the roof over his head, by the night, week or month, would have needed to think long and hard before using someone else's premises for doing what Jack accomplished while out and about, even if the landlord/lady could be depended upon to stay well away and there were no fellow lodgers to worry about.

So this lodging house/street dweller of yours, who would have had 'no choice in the matter' but to kill outdoors (but who had the choice not to kill at all if he considered it too risky), was arguably no different in that respect from anyone else who was frequenting the same streets and didn't happen to be one of the extremely tiny minority of property owners at the time.

Take away any of the local slum landlords and so on with wives, kids, full social lives or nosey neighbours (and forget the unfeasibly wealthy stranger to the district, unfeasibly lacking in the familiarity with local life and geography that has to form the basis of his comfort zone - because nobody here is considering anyone like that so the arguments don't even need to go there) and I can't think offhand of who could have afforded to let dead bodies pile up where they were living at the time, even if they would have preferred it to working outdoors and having to leave the finished product there when the whistle blew for home time.

So your lodging house/street dweller is in good company when it comes to limited location options. The downside for him would be having to keep all his possessions on him at all times, if he cut out and took trophies away with him because he had to leave the bodies behind, and would have preferred to keep his options open instead of having to scoff the lot as soon as possible.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ben]

Hi Caz,

I know exactly what his "best interests"

"Best interests" in terms of what was desirable for someone who wanted to murder and mutilate prostitutes, obviously.

And if his only safe alternative to chucking his precious body parts away unused was to cook them at the earliest opportunity over a crowded lodging house kitchen stove and consume them before trying to catch some much-needed shut-eye

But for all you know, his "safe alternative" may in fact have been what he always wanted to do with the organs, i.e. cannibalize them before they started to smell funky. Not only is there no evidence that he wanted to store the organs for several days, there's no evidence that he could either.

Killers who choose to hide or dispose of body after body in their own homes tend to give themselves away in the end (even if it's only when they have moved away or died and the bodies start making their presence felt to new occupiers),

All serial killers who end up caught "give themselves away in the end", and it rarely has anything to do with a particular failing in their part (just as the fact that some serial killer often escape uncaught needn't have anything to do with any superior abilities over their captured counterparts). Certainly, none of the known serial killers were showing any imprudence ny taking the decision to dispose of their victims at home and not on the streets. Jeffrey Dahmer could easily have contined butchering and liquidizing his hapless victims were it not for the fact that one of his victims escaped. That could have happened to any one of the serial killers who didn't/couldn't dispose at home, so the fact that Dahmer didn't kill his victims where he found them was most assuredly not a factor in his capture.

Nor was it a factor in the majority of serial killers who disposed of their victims at home, and most of them were at the "organized" end of the criminal spectrum, so it would hopelessly wrong to argue that they were any less prudent than Jack for that reason.

Any man who wasn't a homeowner, and therefore had to rent the roof over his head, by the night, week or month

Although one severely negative consequence of being a lodger who rented one room in a "Batty Street Lodger" style set-up, for example, was the increased likelihood of prying eyes singling out one individual for particular scrutiny. The smaller the numbers, the greater the chances of any dodgy behaviour being picked up upon, whereas in the larger doss houses, sheer numbers effectively prevented this from being a problem.

and I can't think offhand of who could have afforded to let dead bodies pile up where they were living at the time

Exactly.

Thanks for reinforcing my observation that the killer was more than likely making the most of less-than-ideal options by killing on the streets.

The downside for him would be having to keep all his possessions on him at all times

Well, no, that's not a downside for him at all, since he could easily have been in the habit of keeping his most valuable posessions with him at all times.

Best regards,
Ben

[The Rookie Detective]

15 year late bump up for this interesting thread


RD

[Herlock Sholmes]

15 year late bump up for this interesting thread


RD

16 years later 6 of those involved still post on here. 2 of them not very often and 2 currently sitting out a ban.

[Tel]

!5 years? That's about when I signed on. Not that I have posted very much in that time - took an extended break for a while and just in the process of catching up.