Did Jack had some sorta horrible experience in his life?

[Lika]

What I'd love to know is what could drive a person to perform such murders.
If someone would have behaved awkward or aggressive before these murders happened then people (maybe prostitutes as well) would have stayed away from them or maybe reported the police in the worst case.
So what Im thinkin is that the person behind Jack could probably had experienced something in his life which caused him to do such horrorfying things shortly before the murders started.

[Scotland Yard]

Well, they do say the abused tend to become the abusers. I think its almost certain Jack had experienced serious neglect or abuse, probably as a child.

[Limehouse]

It is certainly possible that the killer experienced some sort of trauma or abuse that contributed to his actions. However, many thousands of people suffer terrible experiences and do not behave in such a way. Traumatised adults and children would not have bee particularly rare in those days and on those streets. I suspect the killer had a personality disorder which was the underlying cause of his behaviour.

[Eastender]

Its a theory of mine that Jack may have been in the Anglo Zulu wars of 1877-79. The British were horrified to find the Zulu disembowed the British dead. Its just a theory, still thinking it out.

[DVV]

Hi Eastender,

How many serial killers in Congo - thanks to this excellent Leopold ?
How many serial killers in Ethiopia - thanks to good old Sir Robert Napier ?
How many serial killers in Madagascar - thanks to those admirable French free-thinkers ?
...
This said, that's an interesting and original thought.

Amitiés,
David

[kensei]

Ted Bundy became a serial killer after suffering no abuse or neglect as a child, but there were certain peculiarities in his family situation that he perceived as being painful to him (finding out he was illegitamite, etc). It could be looked at as the biggest overreaction in history, but still counts as a trauma he suffered. Things can snowball in people's heads in all kinds of ways. In my opinion, it is not possible for a serial killer to just suddenly blossom out of someone who has led a perfectly happy and satisfied life, but the trauma that acts as a trigger need not be some horrible abuse or neglect. It could be almost anything.

[DarkPassenger]

I think I'd like to add something to this, based on the fact that people tend to be a little...rigid and deterministic when discussing what "causes" such people to commit crimes. I love it; "his mother was a hooker, and he transformed into a serial killer," or, "he was rejected by women," my favourite one!

Rejection by women, that old chestnut, does not mean he asked a bunch of girls out and they said no. It's a feeling of deep-seated inadequacy, resentment and a nice dollop of psychopathic tendencies which are either inherited or the result of the person's life experience. They see a girl they find sexually attractive laughing in the presence of another guy and they want to tear the bitch a new arsehole in a form of "revenge." It's twisted logic and the cause can be narrowed down to...pretty much the entirety of the person's subjective experience of life.

Power and sex play into each other so much because the inadequate man needs, more than anyone else, to employ power, in their minds, in the form of violence and force, to achieve sexual pleasure. And let's not forget that a number of serial killers appear to have rather powerful sex drives.

[halomanuk]

Possibly any of the above,or,he could have just been born evil..it does happen.
He ended up with a fixation of some kind in his mind and that was that.

If people are like this then they would want to prove themselves,eg take on the police and test themselves.
The murders of Chapman and Eddowes shows the thrill -ride or risk prepared to be taken (time in the morning of Chapman's murder and the limited time with Eddowes).

[Christine]

I think Jack had some sort of biological brain dysfunction, and that this was the ultimate cause of his actions. That said, there had to be a reason why his destructive impulses settled on the disemboweling of homeless women. It might have been something that seems rational (if not wholly reasonable) to us, like being abandoned by a mother who was a prostitute, or it might be something more or less random, a sort of miswiring in the brain that connected up internal organs, women, and violent impulses in a way that made very little sense.

[DarkPassenger]

a sort of miswiring in the brain that connected up internal organs, women, and violent impulses in a way that made very little sense.

I'm sorry, Christine but I have to object to that statement!

That truly is a biologically-deterministic statement if ever I saw one. Putting not only the motive but the specific MO and resultant signature down to a biological cause ignores entirely the influence of experience and development. People are complex, multi-faceted individuals and Jack was no better. Imagine Jack sulking in bed, sick with a cold, and annoyed because he couldn't go out if he wanted to, or changing his mind about killing someone because he promised a mate he'd meet him in the pub for an all-nighter. Silly? I think not.

His methods suggest a comfort with gore, and a deep inadequacy he feels. Why else destroy, even disfigure a woman, and making a show of it? It's a form of resentment, revenge and assertion of power brewed deep in his mind, and the reasons for that, if Jack explained them, we'd probably dismiss as too trivial to be reasonable. It's about meaning, and how people use and create it in their own lives.

It bugs me that serial killers are often dubbed "pathological liars" because the researchers refuse to accept some of the explanations they offer about their motivation. As a result, researchers try to "interpret," or "read between the lines," or search for secondary sources to confirm their theories. I imagine a lot of so-called abuse which is attributed to serial killers may be invented by the researcher, and evidenced with a good dose of confirmation bias.

[Malcolm X]

it would be well hidden too, he would probably be a quiet person, shy and deep, but definitely not a sad recluse......... more like stand offish if the conversation got too personal, or other people started joking around in a party mood, you'd notice him walk off, it's not his scene at all; he's too evil to be that friendly/warm.

but women are far more astute/aware than men, especially girlfriends/lovers, she'd probably detect something seriously wrong with him, especially if let his guard down and said something disturbing.........e.g like Chapman saying, ``i'd have cut your head off and buried you over there``.....now that is something a normal person would never ever say,..........he's more likely to say ``why dont you f*** off back to your mothers, i'm sick of the sight of you``..... Chapman is therefore an excellent example, i.e ``you dont know him like i do, that man is capable of anything``........yes women detect evil!

but a man that knew JTR might think, ``he's ok, but a bit odd, not that sociable``.. because a man wont know anything anyway, men never get close to other men, all conversation is either about football, work, politics, drink and sex!

[halomanuk]

Blimey do i feel indequate to be a male now after that post Malcolm.

I know your user-name says Malcolm but are you a male ?

[perrymason]

If the question is really must Jack have had a ruined childhood to become the degenerate he was...then that answer would be no. Did something happen to him that helped create the monster?,....without knowing "why"...thats an impossible question.

If you discover who he killed and mutilated for certain, and why he killed and mutilated...then we might have something if we also had his background.

Meaning....there is no way that we will ever be able to know whether his past had a part in creating his adult life's misadventures.

But it wouldnt be surprising, if it did.

Best regards all.

[Crystal]

Hmm. Do you think 'ruined childhood' was a term that had any relevance at the time? Or do you think perhaps that it is a rather more modern concept

For Jack, whoever he may have been (now then, don't all shout at once - Ben, I'm talking to you....) the terms in which he viewed his own childhood would have depended to some extent on which part of the contemporary social hierarchy he came from.

If he was a lowly, working class type, then I doubt he'd have been crying into his red hanky. There were no children as we would recognise them in that sector of society. He'd have been set to work pretty much as soon as he could manage.

If, on the other hand, he was your Maybrick sort, or had even reached the type of dizzy heights from which he might have looked down on the Maybricks of that world, he may well have conceptualised his own childhood.

And I wouldn't be surprised at all, since contemporary popular visions of childhood among the better classes were generally at odds with the reality. The idea of childhood was one thing - the reality very often another.

So yes, maybe that's it. But who knows? Some people just take to killing without any apparent reason at all.

[Malcolm X]

Blimey do i feel indequate to be a male now after that post Malcolm.

I know your user-name says Malcolm but are you a male ?

definitely i'm a palace supporter and i'm upset that Pompey might be staying up and that Saints are going down