Let's narrow down some Ripper 'facts'

[Malcolm X]

why was he targeting the organs, if this is not for his own personal pleasure, or for his own medical reference?... if not, then these were for a paying client, or for the occult, more likely a rich client.

maybe he met someone that gave him a contract at about the same time as the Tabram murder, thus JTR was born !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

make no mistake about this, Tumblety was loaded...... or somebody similar !

[Malcolm X]

there's quite a few Victorian Anatomy photos on Google, but i expect most of these were expensive illustrations/ prints back then and limited to hospitals/ medical colleges etc, with a few prints in the library.

anatomy started earlier on, in the Georgian era, with Surgeon-barbers and then later with BODY SNATCHER etc, but the general public would've been fairly ignorant of this...

porn ? no that's similar to today, just smutty photos, the serious S&M stuff is only in the last 40 years or so, but they did have stuff similar to the Marquis de Sade, but i doubt JOE AVERAGE had access to this kind of stuff.

but JTR would have access to paintings that depicted violence to women and children etc and from the Renaissance era, i.e war paintings/ crusaders/ French Revolution/ torture art/ public executions etc, because prints of this were in history books in the library, or simply under the history of Art

there are also quite a few paintings that depict Hell, devil worship/ witches/ people getting dragged down to hell, from the medieval era, so JTR does have access to loads of gruesome stuff that can fuel his Necrophilia perversions.

it's fairly obvious where your guts are, but not the other organs, but once he's gutted his victims, he can see right inside cant he and have a good groap around..... the trouble is i'm wrong arent i, because where the victims are the lighting is dreadful, almost pitch black...... except A.Chapman.

my guess is therefore that he knows where the organs are, and if he's been a bit clumsy/ careless, it's because he's using a razor sharp knife in the dark, whilst he's continually glancing around to see if he's safe, he's therefore not concentrating hard enough, these organs are very slippery and yucky and they're hard to grab hold of..... i think !

[The Good Michael]

Curious,

I was talking about sexual abuse.

Mike

[curious]

The killer could have learned about anatomy from his mother or a sister or a neighbor girl. It didn't have to be a book. In fact, a willing or forceful family member could have taught him more.

Mike

He could have learned about the innards from a family member? Even the thought of experimentation of a non-deadly sort doesn't make sense to me.

Or at least not in the household and family in which I grew up.

Perhaps his "study" began there.

[The Good Michael]

The killer could have learned about anatomy from his mother or a sister or a neighbor girl. It didn't have to be a book. In fact, a willing or forceful family member could have taught him more.

Mike

[curious]

But that catalyst seemed to accelerate this curiosity/fantasy into a morbid direction. What may be ascertained as anatomical knowledge was probably just because this individual acted out his predilections in his mind over and over.He learned what was necessary. He had visualized what he was going to do many times before he did it and thus, was able to do it.

To me at least, this explains the victims targeted;

Hi, Hunter,
What I understand you're saying here is that the killer researched the female body?

By books, undoubtedly, since that was all that was available at the time. medical? maybe -- or pornographic material -- I have not idea how that would exactly help with murdering someone . . .

Medical books, would they have photos of dissections? autopsies?

So, would the photographs most likely be of older people? could that possibly account for the age of the victims?

Does this conclusion lead to a man who could read and knew where to go to obtain the medical books?

And when you say: "To me at least, this explains the victims targeted" what were you considering here?

Interesting look at the killer.

Could he have been trying to autopsy the victims?

[Hunter]

Hi Hunter,

I missed this one in the whole discussion about anatomical knowledge! But I completely agree with what you’re saying here. He could have been just that.

Might we put it down as ‘fact’ that he took some measures not to get caught? Like killing at a time when there were relatively few people up & about in the streets and seeing to it that he didn’t step into any blood and didn’t get much on his clothes.

Or was he a more calculating murderer?

Thank you for the reply, Frank.

What I submitted was, of course, highly speculative; something I'm usually uncomfortable with if it strays too far from what is known about these murders... the historical facts, if you will... which is my real interest in this series of events. But as Garry Wroe mentioned earlier, there were some clues and there is much more that has been learned in the past century and a quarter that is helpful in analyzing those clues.

For some reason, a series of murders commenced in the East End of London in 1888 that followed in quick succession, were contained in a very constricted area; ended suddenly... or at least tapered off considerably (if you include McKenzie and Coles); targeted a specific genre of women in which the actual female characteristics of these women were targeted in varying degrees in all but two cases... and, of course, not a soul was apprehended for any of them. There were reasons for all of this and legions of people have speculated as to those reasons.

What I suggested stemmed from the discussion about the extent of anatomical knowledge displayed in some of these murders and a suggestion as to how someone who could do what was done here could acquire it. Certainly, this discussion alone, has always been wrought with controversy. And depending on one's bias, the opinions of the contemporary medicos are often configured to fit some conclusion without understanding how it was treated as these events unfolded.

But if we look directly at the evidence alone- what I stated in the second paragraph- there may be some deductions that are more plausible than others. That the uterus was targeted on three occasion is certain; there's no coincidence here. That someone would have a reason for doing so and know where it is specifically located is also reasonable to me. How this knowledge was acquired could have stemmed from the natural adolescent male's curiosity about the female body. As I said, that curiosity will result in a quest for knowledge to some degree and is fueled by fantasizing. I challenge any heterosexual male to claim that they weren't curious about girls, didn't explore their female characteristics and didn't fantasize about it. There would be no human population if they didn't.

Simply, what could have happened here, is that normal phase in a young man's life took a turn somehow and for reasons that are unexplained. No psychological term can explain it because we don't know the catalyst... much less who this person was, and that, in itself has been a problem because so many have focused on trying to put a face to this killer, or even offer up multiple killers and ended up spending their resources trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

But that catalyst seemed to accelerate this curiosity/fantasy into a morbid direction. What may be ascertained as anatomical knowledge was probably just because this individual acted out his predilections in his mind over and over.He learned what was necessary. He had visualized what he was going to do many times before he did it and thus, was able to do it.

To me at least, this explains the victims targeted; the rapid acceleration of the murders; the adding to this fantasy as they progressed with even more aberrant undertakings if the chance was there, culminating in the ultimate satiation in Miller's Court enough to finally stop or taper off his activities to a lesser extent until it all just ended (if McKenzie and Coles were killed by the same hand).

The constricted area and the risks taken just tells me this killer had limited resources to work with and that, whatever the motivation was, the risks were worth taking.

Would it be a 'fact that he took some measures not to get caught? Like killing at a time when there were relatively few people up & about in the streets and seeing to it that he didn’t step into any blood and didn’t get much on his clothes'? Most serial murderers- no matter what their intelligence- take some measure to not get caught. They want to do it again. Spree killers or those who kill of passion often don't care.

As with any theories, mine is worth what it cost to read it. It was actually what I considered a misunderstanding of the medicos' take on these murders that prompted any response in this direction at all.

[FrankO]

He could have been a nobody who's normal adolescent curiousity about the female body morphed with some reason for hatred at the same time and a fantasy for acting it all out that became a reality.

Hi Hunter,

I missed this one in the whole discussion about anatomical knowledge! But I completely agree with what you’re saying here. He could have been just that.

Might we put it down as ‘fact’ that he took some measures not to get caught? Like killing at a time when there were relatively few people up & about in the streets and seeing to it that he didn’t step into any blood and didn’t get much on his clothes.

Or was he a more calculating murderer?

All the best,
Frank

[Errata]

Thankyou Garry, and as we know an hypothesis is something not yet proven to be of value.

I'm not calling into question any academic usage. What I call questionable is the apparent need 'here' to classify an unidentified killer, of an unknown number of women, pursuing an undetermined motive.
And, people not particularly trained in these fields actually arguing whether the definitions are applicable "in their opinion", because when all is said and done, any partial conclusions arrived at lead nowhere.

Regards, Jon S.

A lot of people build theories based on classifications of unknown quantities. In this very thread, I think the only thing everyone agreed on was that Jack The Ripper was a man. You gotta admit, there's only so far you can take that, and only so many conclusion you can draw. Like, he probably had a penis. And facial hair. We can't even agree if he had a dashing hat. You gotta play "what if" at least a little in this game. And everyone uses the tools at their disposal.

Me, I'm a social sciences girl. I have a LOT of psych under my belt, some sociology, a little anthropology. Those are my tools. It's true that if all you have is a hammer than every problem looks like a nail. This looks like a social sciences problem to me. If it doesn't look that way to you, that's fine. But that doesn't mean my tools suck. It means you disagree. It's disingenuous for anyone to say that know for a fact that Jack was... whatever. But speculating about different scenarios does no harm, and might do some good.

But come on. This is a 130 year old mystery. Full, partial, 99.9% of conclusions are gonna lead nowhere.

[Wickerman]

I certainly take your point, Jon, but then you might care to read up on linguistic specificity hypothesis to better appreciate the importance of categorization in cultural and scientific advancement.

Thankyou Garry, and as we know an hypothesis is something not yet proven to be of value.

I'm not calling into question any academic usage. What I call questionable is the apparent need 'here' to classify an unidentified killer, of an unknown number of women, pursuing an undetermined motive.
And, people not particularly trained in these fields actually arguing whether the definitions are applicable "in their opinion", because when all is said and done, any partial conclusions arrived at lead nowhere.

Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

As I said in an earlier post, I don't trust any discipline that continues to take Freudianism seriously, and I certainly wouldn't waste my time in trying to fathom the seemingly contradictory nature of DSM definitions. Life's too short.

What? You're saying rampant cocaine use DOESN'T cure depression?

Psychology is a science, though clearly one that lacks the comforting predictability and exactitude of say, physics. I wouldn't have nearly as much err.. "excitement" in my life if it were. But, it has the advantage of of having a collated and well documented set of observable behaviors that go together. Through Psychology we know that if someone is delusional, and has been for a while, then they also likely have disordered thinking, big mood swings, and the occasional loss of coherence. And if all of those things are true, they are going to get worse. Fast. Now, we tend to call that grouping "Schizophrenia". And we think we know why it happens. But for our purposes here, on this board, it doesn't matter what it's called. What matters is the grouping of behaviors.

To illustrate: If Jack the Ripper exhibited these signs, disappeared, and reappeared 20 years later, we would know we might have a problem. Schizophrenics tend to lose about 20 years of their life by virtue of the disease. Thus the life expectancy is less. Back in the Victorian era, the aging process of a Schizophrenic was faster. At 40 they would have a 60 year old body. The odds of a Schizophrenic Jack being physically able to repeat his earlier crimes are pretty slim. Therefore, a copycat.

The reason I kept arguing about Paraphilias (and will no longer in case you were afraid of that) is that Paraphiliacs have similar symptom groupings that they do not share with non Paraphiliac fetishists. If a guy isn't bothered by his foot fetish, he isn't going to kill over it. Whereas if a guy is in profound psychological torment because of his foot fetish, he very well might. With Paraphiliacs, there tends to be a long(ish) period of self denial, a buildup of tension, they indulge in the behavior, the tension releases, and then there is profound shame and rage. Non Paraphiliacs don't particularly deny their urges, don't experience tension, and don't feel shame. For our purposes, some guy with a foot fetish that he's okay with is not our guy. Someone with a sexual predilection that causes distress (or is patently illegal) is our guy. Whether he's a necro-sadist or a puritanical (and very conflicted) voyeur doesn't matter as much as you think it might (or would in a modern investigation). It is the behavior patterns common to all Paraphiliacs that predicts and explains.

It's kinda not unlike those pamphlets you get when you go camping that tell you how not to get attacked by bears. I mean, you could still get attacked by a bear, but a lot of guys watched a lot of bears so they could tell you to store the food in a tree upwind of camp, thus preventing a majority of people from getting attacked by bears. Just cataloging behavior for (hopefully) some useful purpose. And sometimes, like the banana slug biologists, just for fun party stories.

[Garry Wroe]

Everything has to have a label these days. Effectivity is lost when no-one can agree on what the labels mean, and whether they are correctly applied...

I certainly take your point, Jon, but then you might care to read up on linguistic specificity hypothesis to better appreciate the importance of categorization in cultural and scientific advancement.

As for DSM, it is a reference work compiled mainly for and by the psychiatric community and is thus best left alone by the layman. Psychiatry isn't a science. It is largely interpretative, which explains the frequent disagreements between practitioners regarding diagnoses and treatments. As I said in an earlier post, I don't trust any discipline that continues to take Freudianism seriously, and I certainly wouldn't waste my time in trying to fathom the seemingly contradictory nature of DSM definitions. Life's too short.

[lynn cates]

logician

Hello Jon. My friend, you should have been a logician.

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

Hello Jon.

"Whatever happened to being just plain evil?"

Well, it's been new spoken out of existence. Social science, you know.

Cheers.
LC

Everything has to have a label these days. Effectivity is lost when no-one can agree on what the labels mean, and whether they are correctly applied...

Regards, Jon S.

[Errata]

My point is this. Forget Paraphilias. Forget Schizophrenia, forget antisocial personality disorder, forget all of it.

Psychology is a science. Granted a social science, but still an observation and classification of mental illnesses. And data has been collected on any number of problems the human mind can come up. The data is a valuable tool, whether you agree with science or not.

Try it this way. I am Bipolar. I have been diagnosed, am being treated etc. Being Bipolar is my problem, not anyone else's. I'm the one who suffers from it. As far as any of you are concerned, I might as well not be Bipolar because it doesn't affect you. Now, let's say I have a manic episode that results in a Schizoid break. Which happens. And lets say I go mental on a few of you. And any one of you might understandably say "My god, She's schizophrenic." You could look up the definition of schizophrenia, and it would fit what you observed. And you could easily make the assumption that I am going to get progressively worse, harder to control, harder to understand, that I was dangerous. But a couple of days later, I'm fine and it never happens again. Suddenly the explanation for my behavior no longer makes sense.

This is where diagnostic criteria comes in. Someone familiar with the diagnostic criteria for Schizophrenia would defer judgement. Someone familiar with my status as Bipolar would likely immediately know what was going on. They would know that I would be back to normal in a few days. That I wasn't a threat.

As far as Paraphilias go, you say he is a necro-sadist. Which usually is a Paraphilia. You lump him in with a "harmless foot fetishist". That is incorrect. Can a foot fetishist be a Paraphiliac? Yes. Absolutely. But most aren't. How do we know? Diagnostic criteria. It doesn't matter what the definition of the condition is if you can't get diagnosed with it.

Case in point. Jeffrey Dahmer was a Paraphiliac. And you say "of course he was, he had sex with disembodied heads" oddly enough, not his Paraphilia. His Paraphilia was one that had been taken off the list. Homosexuality. He was so obsessed and disturbed by his homosexuality that he killed men he had sex with, and men who would not have sex with him. The necrophilia and cannibalism came after, and was not his preferred behavior, when he became obsessed with the idea of a zombie lover who would be eternally willing, submissive, and secret. In his case, a normal sexual behavior became abnormal and harmful. Thus a Paraphilia.

So what I'm saying is, it doesn't matter what the Paraphilia was. And to be frank, unless Jack was quite young it is unlikely that it was necro-sadism, because statistically that crops up quite early. I'm saying that that there are behaviors common in all Paraphiliacs who indulge in a behavior after a prolonged period of self denial. If those behaviors are present, then it eliminates other conditions. Like Schizophrenia. If it were just kink, or just "perversion" there would not be a set of observed behaviors common to all Paraphiliacs.