Would a Doctor or a Policeman participate in major crimes such as these?

[Malcolm X]

a policeman yes, but not so much a doctor, he's more likely to poison instead, especially when he has easy access to drugs.

doctors/ surgeons view the human body like a machine, they're desensitised to human emotions involved with surgery... JTR isn't, it fixates him like a kid with a toy, because he's inexperienced and also semi-insane.

this is the not the same mindset as a medical professional person, so this weighs very heavily against G. Chapman, because he's far more likely to cut throats only and to do a Torso Job rather than a savage mutilator..... for sure !

because his major requirement is to kill and to go undetected, because this is what he actuallly said, but whether he was like this as a younger man i dont know...

G.Chapman is the number one guy that i suspect is the torso mutilator and a few others too, but i cant quite see him as JTR, unless of course GH is telling the truth.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Phil,

I would have thought it extremely rare that a doctor or policeman goes out and does this sort of thing.

Ex-policemen at a push.

I see no reason to think it was anybody outside of your average fella who's mind has unravelled, and I feel any police cover up would have been no more than self-preservation.

[Mayerling]

The question seems (I'm sorry to put it this way) irrelevant, because we don't really know the motive of the killer or killers involved. In fact too many of the theories are based on taking an assumption for the identity of the killer, and then buiding up a theory of the motive. A West End or Harley Street specialist did it: if Dr. Gull, he (in his insanity is trying to protect some state secret; if Dr. "Stanley" he seeks Mary Kelly who gave his beloved, promising son syphilis and killed him. A diary of odd provenance is found - and the Victim in a celebrated case of the following year supposed to be the author. The Maybrick of the diary is a terrifying sex maniac, but the man whose wife Florence was tried and imprisoned was a lover of dosing himself with arsenic for self-medication (and distinctly odd in that sense). A promising solicitor and teacher is named because he killed himself a month after the last "official" murder. Suddenly, because Druitt seemed to mouth liberal opinions (such as anti-Bismarck) he runs amuck to bring the social evil of the state to the public's notice in the most shocking manner.

I thought of the cases I could recall of deadly doctors and policemen. Not too many cops.

1) Frederick Manning (executed in 1849) - he was fired from a job as a railroad guard in 1846 due to a series of thefts. The killing of Patrick O'Connor was not somethng he appears to have done on someone else earlier.

2) James Mullins (executed in 1860). He had been a constable but was fired for several reasons, and wanted to return to the force. Indeed, his attempt to "prove" that Walter Elmsley was the murderer of Mrs. Emms of Stepney was in the hope of getting the reward and to try to return to the police. It backfired when Detective Tanner noticed the same tying material in Mullins possession and around the items that were stolen (that he knew the perfectly hidden location of).

3) George Cooke (executed in 1893). Beat to death his ex-girlfriend, a prostitute he could not save (who was insisting he continue caring for her, and made his life a living hell as a result.

Those are the only three English cops (in Manning's case I'm stretching the term) I could find. There was also Superintendent Thomas Montgomery of the Irish Constabulary (executed after three trials in 1876), the Omagh murderer. He killed a bank clerk in a robbery to cover financial debts he owed due to bad investments.

You can see that financial matters are involved in Montgomery and Manning's crimes, and have a possible element in Mullins. Cooke's tragedy was that of a good man and cop brought low by love of the wrong woman.

None of them (not even Cooke) killed women for the fun of it.

[End of part 1]

[Mayerling]

Part II:

The notorious doctors of the Victorian age are pretty well known - far better than the smaller of police officers:

1) Dr.William Smith (Scotland, acquitted in 1853).
2) Dr. William Palmer of Rugeley (hanged in 1856).
3) Dr. Simon Bernard (involved in the conspiracy of Felice Orsini, 1858 - acquitted).
4) Dr Thomas Smethurst (sentenced to death in 1859, but sentence dismissed - spent a year in jail for bigamy).
5) Dr. A. W. Warder (killed self in a hansom cab in Brighton, 1865)
6) Dr. Edward William Pritchard (hanged in Glasgow in July 1865).
7) Dr. Arthur Beard (seemingly innocent acqaintance of Christina Edmunds, whose attempt to get rid of Mrs. Beard led to mass poisonings in Brighton, and the death of a young boy from poisoned candy.
8) Dr. George Henry Lamson (executed at Wandsworth Prison in April 1882, for the poison murder of his brother - in -law, Herbert Johns.
9) Dr. Philip Cross (hanged in Ireland for the Coachford Poisoning Murder fo his wife, to marry a younger woman - Effie Skinner - in January 1888).
10) Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (executed at Newgate in November 1892 for the murder of four prostitutes, and (lesser charges) attempts to extort money from Dr. Sir William Broadbent and others).

I'm sure I missed several. I added Dr. Beard (actually an innocent man) because his too friendly treatment of the insame Ms Edmunds led to her crazy scheme and it's conclusion. Warder, an expert on poisons who was used in some trials (ironically he was one of the experts for Dr. Palmer) may have killed three wives with poison. We do not know - his suicide prevented any trial from settling the matter. Dr. Smith's murder (if it was murder) resembles that of the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, in that he had insurance on the life of his victim in a hunting "accident". William Roughead wrote of that case, and noted the resemblence. But while critical of Smith for using a gun, he failed to notice that (unlike Palmer, Pritchard, Lamson, Cross. and Cream who used poisons) he was found "not proven" and walked out of court a notorious but safe person. None of these people apparently enjoyed killing (in Warder's case we don't know if he even killed.

Dr. Simon Bernard might have enjoyed it. He was the go-between between Felice Orsini and the weapon dealers in England, who got the bombs and guns for Orsini and his two compatriots to carry out the 1858 attack on Emperor Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) and Empress Eugenie, outside the Paris Opera House, that left fourteen people dead (but not the Emperor or Empress). Orsini and one of his associates in France were guilloutined, and the third sent to penal colony, but the latter escaped and ended up in the U.S., joining the 7th Cavalry, and being in the "lucky detail" that was not in the Battle at the Little Big Horn, but had to tend the remains of the people who lost their lives.

Bernard was arrested when Lord Palmerston (for a change at a loss for words) had to cave into demands from a furious Napoleon III for Bernard's trial and punishment. The Brtish public did not care for this, and it led to the temporary fall of Palmerston's Whig government. Bernard was acquitted at his trial. He apparently never regretted the collateral damage in human lives his help caused. I discovered (and hope it is true) that a French spy was able to get information out of Bernard leading to arrests of his allies in France - and this led to his mental collapse. Given his self-righteousness regarding the innocents killed outside the opera house, I really hope he did eventually go mad from guilt.

Smethurst may have poisoned a wealthy woman, Isabella Banks, after a bigamous marriage, for her fortune. We don't really know. The arsenic test in this case was badly botched, so his sentence was dismissed. But the motive is not enjoyment of the murder but (if it was murder) enjoyment of the dead woman's money. Smethurst did eventually get some in a law suit.

Palmer and Lamson (like - maybe - Dr. William Smith or Smethurst) poisoned for financial gain. Palmer discovered the wonderful world of life insurance in the age before one needed the right to insure only those you have a right to insure. Lamson's brother-in-law Herbert was the impediment between Mrs Lamson and another sister getting his estate. So in both those cases there was no issue of motive outside of gain.

Cream is a problem here (one I have written on). In Canada and the U.S. he did kill woment he was doing abortions on, and he poisoned a wealthy farmer whose wife probably was in cahoots with Cream. His use of strychnine (a poison that quickly, hideously prevents breathing by attacking chest muscles) is a rather sadistic method of killing. But there is a strong possibility that Cream was politically motivated regarding the four prostitutes he kille in the fall of 1891 and spring of 1892. He included attempts at blackmail on the son of one of the Tory Party leaders (who died the same day as Charles Parnell did. He also was to blackmail Sir William Broadbent when the latter was taking care of the dying Duke of Clarence. As you can see the possibility there for Cream to have been hitting at the British establishment and the goverment, while demanding Blackmail. Hard to call on him.

As for Cross, he may have been tired of his wife, but the murder was to enable him to marry Ms. Skinner. Hardly a desire for any type of sadism.


Aside from Cream there is some chance that Pritchard was sadistic. But he may have killed his wife to avoid exposure of an affair with a maid, and he may have killed his mother-in-law to also stop exposure. An ealier murder of a previous maid could also have been to silence her threats (especially if she was pregnant).

One, maybe two sadists out of all the doctors involved. It just does not seem to be likely for the average Doctor criminal, like the average police officer criminal, to have the same degree of sadistic brutality associated with Jack.

Jeff

[PaulWilliams]

On the subject of policemen I came across a report in Lloyds Weekly, 8 January 1899, p.1, to the effect that a woman had reported being stabbed by a policeman in Commerical Road. Later reports suggest that the Police did not believe her story but it is interesting nonetheless.

[Cogidubnus]

A quick google search reveals three very recent UK examples of ex-coppers in murder cases, so perhaps it's not that uncommon!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...um-of-two.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-own-life.html

http://news.sky.com/story/13949/ex-d...dresser-murder

Dave

[Phil Carter]

Hello Mayerling, PaulW, Dave, all,

Thank you all for the examples given.

Mayerling, that list of doctors is most interesting indeed, as is the reported purported attack in the Commercial Road in January 1889. Are there any more reports of this incident?

Best wishes

Phil

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

A doctor might have committed the crimes, but could not possibly have written the Goulston St message or any of the major letters, since the handwriting was legible.

A policeman might have committed the crimes, but would have cried "Allo, allo, allo, what's all this then?" while removing the organs.

A doctor couldn't have written the message in Goulston Street because he would have known how to spell.

[DJA]

A doctor couldn't have written the message in Goulston Street because he would have known how to spell.

What was misspelt ?

[Herlock Sholmes]

A doctor couldn't have written the message in Goulston Street because he would have known how to spell.

Couldn’t the killer have been trying to disguise his level of education?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Couldn’t the killer have been trying to disguise his level of education?

He could - and I did consider that possibility - but I don't think so.

The problem with that kind of argument is that every piece of evidence can then be turned into its opposite.

I did read of a serial number killer who changed his murder weapon in order to mislead police, but I think that it is quite plausible that a (probably-foreign) sailor would make spelling mistakes like that.

[Herlock Sholmes]

He could - and I did consider that possibility - but I don't think so.

The problem with that kind of argument is that every piece of evidence can then be turned into its opposite.

But we can’t dismiss something that could possibly be true simply because there’s an alternative explanation.

I did read of a serial number killer who changed his murder weapon in order to mislead police, but I think that it is quite plausible that a (probably-foreign) sailor would make spelling mistakes like that.

What if the writer of the graffito (if he was indeed the killer) was of a much higher level of education than the average Whitechapel inhabitant. Wouldn’t it have made sense for him to have disguised this?

[c.d.]

Clark Kent couldn't be Superman. He's a mild mannered reporter!

c.d.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

What if the writer of the graffito (if he was indeed the killer) was of a much higher level of education than the average Whitechapel inhabitant. Wouldn’t it have made sense for him to have disguised this?

In that case, I suggest that the writer would have made spelling mistakes in the other words in his message, for example by mis-spelling 'blamed' or 'nothing', but the only word he mis-spelled was one whose spelling in English is rather unexpected, since in European languages, when it is spelled with an initial 'J', the letter that follows is a 'u'.

[Herlock Sholmes]

In that case, I suggest that the writer would have made spelling mistakes in the other words in his message, for example by mis-spelling 'blamed' or 'nothing', but the only word he mis-spelled was one whose spelling in English is rather unexpected, since in European languages, when it is spelled with an initial 'J', the letter that follows is a 'u'.

So we have a writer who correctly spells ‘blamed’ and ‘nothing’ which are words that a person of poor levels of literacy might easily get wrong but he mis-spells ‘Jews’ incorrectly. He also adds a double negative. The writing was also described as being in a neat schoolboy hand.

Certainly nothing concrete but neat handwriting and two tricky words spelt correctly but with one word spelt wrong and a double negative added might (and I certainly only say ‘might’) indicate a writer deliberately trying to show himself as a person of poor literacy.

Either way, we have no way of getting anything concrete from the graffiti and we can’t even be certain that it was written by the killer. I recall that you claimed that most felt that it was but I showed you a poll which showed that most think that it wasn’t. I reckon that if you asked most ripperologists it might be fairly close but my guess is that most would say that it wasn’t written by the ripper.

I’m unsure but I tend slightly toward it being written by the killer. I certainly wouldn’t bet on it though.