Did Jack the Ripper even exist?

[Howard Brown]

I realize that was a reach Howard. Had a few things been handled differently I know of at least 1 Canonical who may not have been....had the City been handling D & D cases the same way as Metro, Kate would have been in for the night.

Thats true.

Who knows what subtle changes might have been made to help the situation. My contention is that they should have had checkpoints at all major intersections that all foot and cart traffic had to pass through...plus more fixed position police at checkpoints throughout the area. Like a Marshall Law clampdown. They were granted the right to enter peoples dwellings and inspect their premises...if they could infringe upon the entire neighborhood in the own homes, locking down East End city streets after midnight should have been easy to grant as well.

Martial law might and might not have worked Mike. How to maintain it might be a problem too. It wouldn't have been implemented,in my view,until after September 8th, if at all. Even if they ( Met Police) did implement martial law after Chapman's murder...there was the 3 week passage of time between Annie's murder and the Double Event...where it would be natural for police and the people to lower their guard...just for the one night: Sept.29th...a rainy night too.. The first murder that night occurred on the other side of Commercial Road and of course, the 2nd in City police territory. We also might want to remember the story of Philadelphia journalist R.Harding Davis being told an interesting story by Inspector Moore where Moore had his men cordon off a section in the East End ( around an unspecified murder site) and that within a few minutes 50 people were found inside the "no go "zone. We also know that efforts to stifle prostitution today in 2009 is like eating soup with a fork even if a serial killer is at work in urban areas where one is at large.

Remember how Kidney claims that he could have caught the guy with a bunch of policeman at his disposal to place at locations he felt were germaine...he may have been a kook but I wonder if something like that might have worked.

He was probably less kook and more inebriated than anything else,Mike. I can understand how he could come up a proposal such as that. The police knew what they were dealing with,with Kidney,I think. A very upset individual who felt completely helpless in the face of the loss of his significant other.

One wonders if the slip that "only the PC near Mitre Square" saw the killer....and the story that goes with it of a stake out at a certain location....or the supposed stakeout on Batty Street were hints that they made attempts using that kind of pursuit.

...When Harry Cox and his City police comrades stalked the character in November after Kelly's murder, they should have also had the mystery witness along with them to verify if the stalked "suspect" was the man this mystery witness saw in the company with one of the victims. That little cat and mouse game could have been promising in terms of apprehension had the City police had access to and used the witness. It remains a tantalizing mystery within the mystery in any event.

Later Mike

HB

[Supe]

It should be pointed out that the house-to-house searches were only undertaken with the explicit permission of each individual tenant. To do have done otherwise would have been quite illegal. That is something that Warren made clear to the Home Secretary when Matthews forwarded an MP's suggestion for just such an extra-legal endeavor to Warren.

As it is, a very good argument can be made that the ever-increasing police presence as well as the growing number of Vigilance Committee patrols may well have been the reason there were no Ripper murders in October and why he was driven inside in November.

Don.

I forget...was it Anderson who suggests locking up all the prostitutes at a certain hour for their own protection? I had a good chuckle at that one. Lock up the victims so the streets can be clear for the killer to roam and find some new victim category to abuse.-Perry Mason

Mike...that of course is presuming the Whitechapel Murderer would focus on any other "category" of women other than prosses or could find a number of women available at those times of night...I know you know that....but what we might want to consider is that there would be virtually no women on the streets during those hours, but prostitutes. Even though the list of victims were all prostitutes ( a benefit we have of knowing after the fact) at the time, all women would have been cognizant of the potential danger of walking unaccompanied then. And as it goes, the smart ones stayed indoors or those who continued to strut their stuff and didn't get murdered were the fortunate unfortunates.

I realize that was a reach Howard. Had a few things been handled differently I know of at least 1 Canonical who may not have been....had the City been handling D & D cases the same way as Metro, Kate would have been in for the night.

Who knows what subtle changes might have been made to help the situation. My contention is that they should have had checkpoints at all major intersections that all foot and cart traffic had to pass through...plus more fixed position police at checkpoints throughout the area. Like a Marshall Law clampdown. They were granted the right to enter peoples dwellings and inspect their premises...if they could infringe upon the entire neighborhood in the own homes, locking down East End city streets after midnight should have been easy to grant as well.

Remember how Kidney claims that he could have caught the guy with a bunch of policeman at his disposal to place at locations he felt were germaine...he may have been a kook but I wonder if something like that might have worked.

One wonders if the slip that "only the PC near Mitre Square" saw the killer....and the story that goes with it of a stake out at a certain location....or the supposed stakeout on Batty Street were hints that they made attempts using that kind of pursuit.

All the best Howard.

[Howard Brown]

I forget...was it Anderson who suggests locking up all the prostitutes at a certain hour for their own protection? I had a good chuckle at that one. Lock up the victims so the streets can be clear for the killer to roam and find some new victim category to abuse.-Perry Mason

Mike...that of course is presuming the Whitechapel Murderer would focus on any other "category" of women other than prosses or could find a number of women available at those times of night...I know you know that....but what we might want to consider is that there would be virtually no women on the streets during those hours, but prostitutes. Even though the list of victims were all prostitutes ( a benefit we have of knowing after the fact) at the time, all women would have been cognizant of the potential danger of walking unaccompanied then. And as it goes, the smart ones stayed indoors or those who continued to strut their stuff and didn't get murdered were the fortunate unfortunates.

but other women were found murdered near Berner Street Lydia Heart,Francis Cole

Im not so sure about your theorizing the killer had medical training or a paternal link to medicine Amber,...but on the above, I believe its best to remember that not even the police thought all the murdered women in the East End were Jacks doing. That other attacks occurred simultaneously with the Ripper killings, or before or after the Ripper slayings, is a fact.

That Jack killed Liz Stride for example, is supposition.

Best regards

[Amber]

but other women were found murdered near Berner Street Lydia Heart,Francis Cole

[Amber]

I am interested to any brutal murders of women that took place in 1890 because on reading about several years i can not find any.
Please advise.

[Amber]

I agree desparately and dying women who knew their killer because he did work in a hospital and had a very influential father in medicine,maybe pathology.
He appears to of been experimenting on the murdered women.
The actual killings were quite swift and clean.
The letter sent by the killer to the pathologist Openshaw letter sounds like a young man seeking approvel by his elders.I think JTR had narsistic tendencies and the poor women were used as a means to an end.

'Wouldn't you say that the greatly increased police presence in the area for 4 months of 88 means you would expect to see a FALL in the numbers?'

Well CB, the police officer in charge of the Suffolk prostitute murders has just admitted that by increasing police numbers on the streets of Ipswich during the spree killings he actually encouraged more prostitutes to walk the streets as they felt safer with the increased police numbers... three more were to die after that.

I think also relevant AP, unrelated to the increased police numbers was the fact that social reformers like Charrington had seen to the closing of some 200 brothels during 87 and 88..more women were on the streets than in previous years by essentially their eviction from safe houses.

I forget...was it Anderson who suggests locking up all the prostitutes at a certain hour for their own protection? I had a good chuckle at that one. Lock up the victims so the streets can be clear for the killer to roam and find some new victim category to abuse.

Best regards AP

[Cap'n Jack]

'Wouldn't you say that the greatly increased police presence in the area for 4 months of 88 means you would expect to see a FALL in the numbers?'

Well CB, the police officer in charge of the Suffolk prostitute murders has just admitted that by increasing police numbers on the streets of Ipswich during the spree killings he actually encouraged more prostitutes to walk the streets as they felt safer with the increased police numbers... three more were to die after that.

Michael,

What evidence did Bond and Macnaghten use to conclude that Polly, Chapman, and Eddowes were slayed by the same hand? I'm you would agree this is just as important and vexing a question, if not moreso, since at least one of Bond's colleagues (Phillips) saw good reason to believe that Eddowes was slain by an impostor.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Thomas,

Its a vexing question is right, and by your phrasing its clear that you cannot see physical evidence within those 5 murders that would lead to such a conclusion either.

We have a type...an Unfortunate. Now that we've narrowed down the potential targets to around 35,000, how do we know which Unfortunates Jack actually kills? Or does he kill them all? Well...no...not unless the killer who killed and chopped up a woman in August of 1888 was also him. And hes not 3 or 4 men, so that rules him out for Emma,....he cuts women open in their midsections once they are lying down and mortally wounded by severe throat cuts,...doesnt sound like Marthas killer to me....and the same Canonical co-conspirator Bond thinks Alice should be excluded because her killer didnt show anatomical knowledge or knife skills.....

That 2 Unfortunate murders happened that night is rare, they didnt have 730 Unfortunate murders happening annually there...but there were also non-Unfortunate related knife attacks that same night.

So other killers are attacking/killing Unfortunates with a knife staring as early as the Spring of 88 and may have continued doing so right up until Polly is murdered. That changed the killers profile, thats a new entity.... and if you remove Liz Stride from a Canon she cannot be proven to be a part of anyway, you have three, consecutive, increasingly invasive and abdominally focussed attacks.

Since there is no evidence that links all 5 to a single killer, shouldnt the ones that most obviously share motivations and methods be linked before even considering which of the murders missing those elements still may have been him anyway?

And for the record, Im not 100% myself on Kate either. Way too many cops in that story.

Best regards Tom

[Mitch Rowe]

I think AP:s point is quite clear, although your rather limited analysing skills seem incapable of grasping it. Namely that coincidences do happen.
And believe you me - since I started researching murder cases I have come across much stranger coincidences than the ridiculous "45 minutes" you seem so eager to put forward as proof.

Fact remains, as Michael says: Stride "only" had her throat cut and in a less severe manner, and regardless of any explanations you try to create for it, she lacks the other hallmarks of the Ripper. The only reason to include her in the canon is that she was an unfortunate (one of a thousands) and murdered the same night as a Ripper murder took place. If the Eddowes murder hadn't happened, sahe wouldn't have been considered a Ripper victim more than Sarah Browne was.

I am prepared to give Stride a benefit of a doubt and I admit I go back and forth in deciding to include or not including her, but I find your rather arrogant, ascertained approach - stating her inclusion in the canon as a fact - rather questionable and hard to take seriously.

All the best

Ok then.. Find out why JTR switched gears. My "arrogance" is precisely so because the facts support them. By not including Stride as a JTR victim one is ignoring the facts and continuing on a hunch. Thats all it ever will be. Whats so arrogant about that?

[Glenn Lauritz Andersson]

And the point? Are you saying this man Johnson killed Stride or Eddowes? Or that johnson was only guilty of one of the murders he was accused of?

I think AP:s point is quite clear, although your rather limited analysing skills seem incapable of grasping it. Namely that coincidences do happen.
And believe you me - since I started researching murder cases I have come across much stranger coincidences than the ridiculous "45 minutes" you seem so eager to put forward as proof.

Fact remains, as Michael says: Stride "only" had her throat cut and in a less severe manner, and regardless of any explanations you try to create for it, she lacks the other hallmarks of the Ripper. The only reason to include her in the canon is that she was an unfortunate (one of a thousands) and murdered the same night as a Ripper murder took place. If the Eddowes murder hadn't happened, sahe wouldn't have been considered a Ripper victim more than Sarah Browne was.

I am prepared to give Stride a benefit of a doubt and I admit I go back and forth in deciding to include or not including her, but I find your rather arrogant, ascertained approach - stating her inclusion in the canon as a fact - rather questionable and hard to take seriously.

All the best

[Mitch Rowe]

I hear ya Sam!
There are more similarities that can also be plugged into the formula if one wishes to argue the matter. Anyone has any right to challenge anything in these cases. The "evidence" is so scant and unreliable I fear almost anything could have happened.

If indeed Stride was not JTRs victim then Eddowes is probably the key. If JTR is showing us who these women are to him then he is showing something different with Eddowes. My reasoning is that JTR was interrupted and that Eddowes was just a stand in for Stride. Simple enough. But not so simple when Stride is eliminated. Something is wrong with Eddowes situation.

Since Polly is probably JTRs first victim I dont give much credit when establishing a pattern for JTRs behavior. On the other hand when I look at Annies and Mary Janes murders I see clear patterns emerging.

If Phillips says something is different when compared to AC or even MJK or even some points about Pollys death then Im inclined to agree.

[Sam Flynn]

She was killed 45 minutes before Kate. Soo.. regardless of ANY physical evidence the chances that she was killed by someone other than the same person who killed Eddowes is VERY VERY slim indeed.

I once worked out the odds to be of the order of tens of thousands to one. Sounds scary, but you'll find scarier odds in a poker game, or at a lottery draw - yet people still win.

The average human brain is too-readily thrown by large numbers. The mind is optimised for handling ordinary, day-to-day information, so something "extraordinary" can distort our perception and make that something appear to be significant. It might not necessarily be the case, however.

For example, interplanetary distances seem absolutely huge to us, but they are mere baby-steps compared to the distances of interstellar space. Even these are dwarfed by the distances between galaxies, and these appear minute when one considers the distances between clusters of galaxies.

It's precisely the same issues with "bigness" that cloud our judgment of the likelihood of events - double, or otherwise - and it is because of this that we are too easily swayed by the "Coincidence Imp" (to borrow Bob Hinton's nice image from another thread).