Was the Artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Implicated in the Killings?

[Bridewell]

You assert "It is known that in the months before her death Kelly spent some time in Paris probably working in a brothel". No it isn't known. We don't even know who the heck the girl was. If you have evidence that she worked in Paris brothels in the months before her death please do share it.

This is demonstrably wrong. Barnett quite clearly says, in his evidence, that he and MJK had been living together for the previous 18 months, and he worked as a market porter - in London:

Galexander, as you persist in your failure to provide evidence that MJK was in Paris, I'll help by providing some that she wasn't:

"I am a porter on Billingsgate Market, but have been out of employment for the past 3 or 4 months. I have been living with Marie Jeanette Kelly who occupied No 13 Room Millers Court. I have lived with her altogether about 18 months, for the last 8 months in Millers Court, until last Tuesday week (30 ulto)..."

Mary Kelly was not in Paris in the months before her death. The above is from Barnett's witness statement. It's evidence - the sort of stuff which Henry Flower keeps asking for, and which you constantly side-step with references to Lautrec's artwork.

Habeas Corpus. Put up or shut up, please.

Regards, Bridewell.

[Cogidubnus]

You must be joking....................

I think your quoting of Nietzsche rather typifies your approach on this forum.

On the contrary, I feel that your failure to detect the obvious sarcasm , says all there is to say about your approach to this forum...

It would appear that you've made up your mind about...er something (you're unable to specify just what because you admit Toulouse-L'Autrec didn't do it, and Bourget wasn't in the country), on minimal or no evidence, and nothing is going to budge you from your blinkered course.

This forum is all about evidence (as far as is possible at this distance in time) and reasoning...and I'm afraid you simply haven't presented anything fresh in either direction...sorry!

Dave

[galexander]

Nietzsche didn't. In fact he disagreed with Darwin on the basis that Darwinism was about survival, whereas Nietzsche saw the defining trait of all life as the desire for power.

But yes, off-topic so let's not get bogged down

I think your quoting of Nietzsche rather typifies your approach on this forum.

[galexander]

Hello galexander; because this thread has grown so undeservedly long I thought I might benefit from a quick recap, so here goes:

(a) You assert "It is known that in the months before her death Kelly spent some time in Paris probably working in a brothel". No it isn't known. We don't even know who the heck the girl was. If you have evidence that she worked in Paris brothels in the months before her death please do share it.

(b) You suggest that Lautrec had 'subconsciously' picked up on the fact that something untoward had happened. A convenient way of avoiding the fact that had he known what had happened he would've been appalled and possibly even reported Bourges to the authorities - but certainly he would've told someone or mentioned it however obliquely in a letter or something. So, his knowledge is subconscious. Handy - because then you can still tie your book to a famous name and use his paintings as evidence without directly implicating him!

(c) You nicely manage to include no fewer than THREE popular best-selling Ripperology tropes: firstly the famous artist angle, secondly the old syphilitic doctor revenge story, and thirdly the masonic ritual stuff. Nice going! Shame you couldn't also crow-bar the Royal Family angle in, but Lautrec's nobility is an adequate substitute. The one angle you fail to utilise properly is that awkward old motiveless opportunistic sexual sadist sicko stuff. Always an awkward one, that...

(d) You assert that the throwing of intestines over the shoulder was part of masonic ritual - but to your credit you quietly drop the subject when asked to list the other punishments prescribed by French Grand Orient Freemasonry so that we can assess the likelihood of Masonic ritual playing a part - because you either cannot list them or realise that they play no part in the killings, just as the placing thus of intestines was not even present in the majority of the Ripper killings. So much for ritual.

(e) You ask why the painter of Parisian dancehalls would be inspired to depict a dental procedure. Are you really telling us that the only answer you can think of is that he depicted a dental procedure because subconsciously he suspected that a friend who was not a dentist had slaughtered 5 women in London in the most sensational criminal event of the century?

(f) You find it improbable that the Ripper got away with what he did in Mitre Square, and in this connection raise again the tale of Eddowes having just been released from police custody where she gave the name of 'Mary Ann Kelly'. You find this highly suspicious. Galexander, which of the following scenarios do you imagine took place:

* Seeking out in London the Marie Jeanette Kelly who infected his friend with that extremely rare Victorian disease, syphilis, Dr Bourges sees a random prostitute leaving Bishopsgate police station. He enters and asks the name of the woman who had just left. For some reason they are happy to tell him, 'Mary Ann Kelly'. He thanks the officer and leaves quickly. The following day, when her gruesome murder is the biggest news story in London, the officer neglects to remember the foreign gentleman asking for her particulars moments before her murder.

or

* City Police were in cahoots with Dr Bourges, and had agreed in advance to telephone his hotel with details of any prostitutes they picked up using the extremely rare names 'Mary' or 'Kelly' - because they knew he wanted to murder them in the hope of avenging the dishonour of a foreign artist.

(g) When compelled by the basic research of other posters to address the question directly, you admit that Bourges was in a TB clinic at Monte Dore then an asylum at Bicetre during the period of the murders. Evidently this is a major problem for your theory, a problem you address by asking, "Was Bourges just giving an excuse here, or was he really at these locations?" Evidently, you mean 'alibi' rather than 'excuse', but the fact remains that unless you have any evidence placing him elsewhere at the time, your theory is dead in the water. You have presented no such evidence. Do you have any?

(h) You make the charming but nevertheless damaging admission that you always felt there was something Rippery about Toulouse-Lautrec, ever since you saw a film about him. And moreover, that you had what can only be described as an auditory hallucination shortly before seeing the painting of Carmen Gaudin. I'm not mocking you Galexander, but these tales reveal an imaginative predisposition towards linking TL and JtR, which has evidently coloured your research and blinded you towards its serious flaws.

(i) Skipping lightly away from Bourges's absence from London during the murders, you then show us more paintings. These paintings you think constitute some kind of evidence, because in them Toulouse-Lautrec, who according to your theory may not have known anything about the murders on a conscious level, paints prostitutes and music-halls, and frequently enjoys painting red-haired females. In one painting there is a gendarme, and another person who you claim resembles a detective - presumably in that he is a male and is wearing Victorian clothes.

(j) People who fail to see in these Parisian scenes clues to the Whitechapel Murders are then routinely accused by you of denying that artists have ever used 'symbolism', or of being 'reactionary' and insufficiently 'radical'. You also bizarrely attempt to equate our understanding of Lautrec's work with scholarly uncertainty concerning a ring of huge stones erected four and a half thousand years ago... insisting that if there is mystery about one, then there must necessarily be mystery about the other.

SO to sum up: You accuse Bourges of being the Ripper, because Lautrec contracted syphilis and Lautrec's family were odd. You know Bourges was apparently elsewhere at the time, but he might have been lying. You have provided no evidence that he was, but he might've been. You have shared no evidence of any other criminal proclivities he is known to have had. You've shown us the hitherto little-known fact that Lautrec painted brothels and prostitutes, and liked red-heads; and you once had a weird experience in front of Carmen Gaudin's portrait.

And.... that's it? That's your case?

Good luck with the book Galex.

Your point a) reveals an almost a complete ignorance of the Ripper case. It is well established that Kelly 'rode in carriages' and travelled to Paris sometime after 1884. This issue has already been previously covered on this forum:


http://forum.casebook.org/archive/index.php/t-1714.html


Even Wikipedia tells us she went to France though the exact year isn't given because I don't think anyone is absolutely certain of this. But it appears it was sometime after 1884.

You have already answered b) yourself.

As for c) I would argue that sometimes there isn't smoke without fire regarding suggestions of syphilis, the doctor theory etc, etc. The masonic conspiracy theme is not a central issue in my book at all, far from it. I only discuss the theme is passing. As for the psychosexual sadist theory, can I ask how many serial murders there were fitting this category prior to JtR?

I have already answered d).

e). What was depicted in the painting in question was pioneering surgery and not your run of the mill dentistry. I have already answered this point previously. Just another cheap gibe..........

f). All I was saying here is that the timing of the murder in Mitre Square was rather precarious to say the least. I did not and have never offered an explanation of the exact course of events that evening. Again just another gibe.......

g). Of course I would love to produce the relevant documentary evidence but documents from that precise period of time are often few and far between as I am sure you probably know.

h). But you ignore the fact that I even went to the extent of researching this 'hunch' in quite some detail and have produced some quite compelling circumstantial evidence as a result. Just a pure fluke presumably?

i) does not raise any specific question.

j) No, what I object to is the narrow mindedness of some of the participants on this forum. It appears not a single original idea is permissible on this forum......... I can only liken it to George Orwell's 1984!

And your summing up:

You've shown us the hitherto little-known fact that Lautrec painted brothels and prostitutes, and liked red-heads;

Little known that Lautrec painted brothels and prostitutes............?

You must be joking....................

My own summary of your approach is as follows: I would seriously have to ask whether you are truly an impartial, fully open minded observer in the JtR case and not simply some parrot of officialdom.............

[Henry Flower]

presenting Darwin's Theory of Evolution as a scientific postulate is one thing but attempting to present it as an ethic as well is quite another.........

Nietzsche didn't. In fact he disagreed with Darwin on the basis that Darwinism was about survival, whereas Nietzsche saw the defining trait of all life as the desire for power.

But yes, off-topic so let's not get bogged down

[Henry Flower]

Hi galex,

It seems that what you are actually asking for is a painting of a bloodstained knife.......

No, on the contrary - clues hidden in paintings are the last thing I want! I don't know why you keep showing us paintings, considering you don't accuse HTL of the crimes. Stop concentrating on him and start telling us more about Dr Bourges.

You know - Dr Bourges - the man you propose as a likely Ripper suspect?

So far you've told us only that he was a specialist in syphilis, and that his reported whereabouts during the murders were somewhere far from Whitechapel. All the circumstantial Lautrec-related evidence in the world - be it rumours about assumed names, or women in paintings - is not going to turn that into a decent case.

So I don't want a painting of a knife galex, or any more background about Lautrec; I want some evidence that Dr Bourges was in Whitechapel (or even in England) during the autumn of 1888.

You either have it or you don't. It really isn't a lot to ask. If you want a book published that really is the sort of thing you'll need to have covered, surely?

Leopold.

[galexander]

PS - you're now the second poster with a world-famous-artist angle to their preferred suspect who has chosen to take a cheap shot at Nietzsche.

Please, keep it coming - it can only bolster your intellectual credibility! Though it must be said, yours at least gave me a good smile

I don't wish to go too off-topic here but presenting Darwin's Theory of Evolution as a scientific postulate is one thing but attempting to present it as an ethic as well is quite another.........

And why the odd 'sayings' like Confucious which can be found in most of his works?

[galexander]

And you are once again telling me lots of stuff about art that I already know, and offering absolutely NOTHING in the way of evidence concerning the Whitechapel murders of 1888.

Your standard modus operandi, it seems.

Oh no - my mistake - you also falsely attributed to me the assertion that all artists painted prostitutes, so that you can cleverly contradict my error. But even that straw-man argument has absolutely nothing to do with the murders. If Lautrec were the ONLY painter to have painted prostitutes it still wouldn't count as evidence that a former friend of his had therefore been Jack the Ripper, just as a female figure with a greenish pallor does not constitute evidence of the same.

How about some evidence placing the doctor in Whitechapel on the dates of the murders? That might get us somewhere. But already I feel a sense of fatigue, we've been here so many times, asking for evidence instead of intuitions based on paintings, from people who feel ghostly presences in art galleries and find something vaguely 'Ripperish' in paintings of a certain artist, be it Lautrec, Sickert, or most bizarrely Vincent. It just doesn't wash, galexander, and no amount of remedial-class art-historical context is going to make it wash.

Sorry to be so tiresome Henry Flower.

But don't you think it just a little peculiar for an aristocrat to hang around in brothels to such an extent that he actually lived in them for periods of time which was completely against the regulations at time by the way.

It seems that what you are actually asking for is a painting of a bloodstained knife.......but even this probably wouldn't actually prove anything as it could be argued that the subject matter was a complete work of fiction!

[HollyDolly]

Was the artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec Implicated in the killings

It's an interesting theory,but one hard to prove. Of course do we know the where abouts of Lautrec's companion the good doctor? It might be he took a vacation or had family issues he needed to take care of.

Never heard of Mary Kelly going to Paris. As far as the Marie business goes, Many french men and women have Marie in their name, in honor of the Virgin Mary.Maybe if Toulouse-Lautrec gave it to her (If she was in Paris)
maybe he uncounsiously wished these women were like his mother, or maybe he was trying to elevate or redeem them in some way.

Yes, in Jay Robert Nash's book on unsolved crimes, his theory is it was a doctor. Maybe someone whose wife deserted him for another man,and wound up a prostitute. Probably someone like the BTK Killer here in the US,who was a serial killer, but the neighbors never knew. Or look at john List.killed his family,then disappeared and started a new life, but was finally caught.
Whoever it was, probably a butcher or medical intern, doctor or even mortician who had the skill and the knowledge to do the deed.
Though an undertaker or someone in that field would have constant access to dead women to "rip" up.
Also,has anyone really ever thought of the Mary kelly murder? Maybe it wasn't even done by Jack at all.The whole viciousness of the crime almost sounds personal. Though I suppose it was just Jack's luck to have a good place to work for awhile.We just won't know.May never find out who the real killer was.

[Henry Flower]

A little recap.

Hello galexander; because this thread has grown so undeservedly long I thought I might benefit from a quick recap, so here goes:

(a) You assert "It is known that in the months before her death Kelly spent some time in Paris probably working in a brothel". No it isn't known. We don't even know who the heck the girl was. If you have evidence that she worked in Paris brothels in the months before her death please do share it.

(b) You suggest that Lautrec had 'subconsciously' picked up on the fact that something untoward had happened. A convenient way of avoiding the fact that had he known what had happened he would've been appalled and possibly even reported Bourges to the authorities - but certainly he would've told someone or mentioned it however obliquely in a letter or something. So, his knowledge is subconscious. Handy - because then you can still tie your book to a famous name and use his paintings as evidence without directly implicating him!

(c) You nicely manage to include no fewer than THREE popular best-selling Ripperology tropes: firstly the famous artist angle, secondly the old syphilitic doctor revenge story, and thirdly the masonic ritual stuff. Nice going! Shame you couldn't also crow-bar the Royal Family angle in, but Lautrec's nobility is an adequate substitute. The one angle you fail to utilise properly is that awkward old motiveless opportunistic sexual sadist sicko stuff. Always an awkward one, that...

(d) You assert that the throwing of intestines over the shoulder was part of masonic ritual - but to your credit you quietly drop the subject when asked to list the other punishments prescribed by French Grand Orient Freemasonry so that we can assess the likelihood of Masonic ritual playing a part - because you either cannot list them or realise that they play no part in the killings, just as the placing thus of intestines was not even present in the majority of the Ripper killings. So much for ritual.

(e) You ask why the painter of Parisian dancehalls would be inspired to depict a dental procedure. Are you really telling us that the only answer you can think of is that he depicted a dental procedure because subconsciously he suspected that a friend who was not a dentist had slaughtered 5 women in London in the most sensational criminal event of the century?

(f) You find it improbable that the Ripper got away with what he did in Mitre Square, and in this connection raise again the tale of Eddowes having just been released from police custody where she gave the name of 'Mary Ann Kelly'. You find this highly suspicious. Galexander, which of the following scenarios do you imagine took place:

* Seeking out in London the Marie Jeanette Kelly who infected his friend with that extremely rare Victorian disease, syphilis, Dr Bourges sees a random prostitute leaving Bishopsgate police station. He enters and asks the name of the woman who had just left. For some reason they are happy to tell him, 'Mary Ann Kelly'. He thanks the officer and leaves quickly. The following day, when her gruesome murder is the biggest news story in London, the officer neglects to remember the foreign gentleman asking for her particulars moments before her murder.

or

* City Police were in cahoots with Dr Bourges, and had agreed in advance to telephone his hotel with details of any prostitutes they picked up using the extremely rare names 'Mary' or 'Kelly' - because they knew he wanted to murder them in the hope of avenging the dishonour of a foreign artist.

(g) When compelled by the basic research of other posters to address the question directly, you admit that Bourges was in a TB clinic at Monte Dore then an asylum at Bicetre during the period of the murders. Evidently this is a major problem for your theory, a problem you address by asking, "Was Bourges just giving an excuse here, or was he really at these locations?" Evidently, you mean 'alibi' rather than 'excuse', but the fact remains that unless you have any evidence placing him elsewhere at the time, your theory is dead in the water. You have presented no such evidence. Do you have any?

(h) You make the charming but nevertheless damaging admission that you always felt there was something Rippery about Toulouse-Lautrec, ever since you saw a film about him. And moreover, that you had what can only be described as an auditory hallucination shortly before seeing the painting of Carmen Gaudin. I'm not mocking you Galexander, but these tales reveal an imaginative predisposition towards linking TL and JtR, which has evidently coloured your research and blinded you towards its serious flaws.

(i) Skipping lightly away from Bourges's absence from London during the murders, you then show us more paintings. These paintings you think constitute some kind of evidence, because in them Toulouse-Lautrec, who according to your theory may not have known anything about the murders on a conscious level, paints prostitutes and music-halls, and frequently enjoys painting red-haired females. In one painting there is a gendarme, and another person who you claim resembles a detective - presumably in that he is a male and is wearing Victorian clothes.

(j) People who fail to see in these Parisian scenes clues to the Whitechapel Murders are then routinely accused by you of denying that artists have ever used 'symbolism', or of being 'reactionary' and insufficiently 'radical'. You also bizarrely attempt to equate our understanding of Lautrec's work with scholarly uncertainty concerning a ring of huge stones erected four and a half thousand years ago... insisting that if there is mystery about one, then there must necessarily be mystery about the other.

SO to sum up: You accuse Bourges of being the Ripper, because Lautrec contracted syphilis and Lautrec's family were odd. You know Bourges was apparently elsewhere at the time, but he might have been lying. You have provided no evidence that he was, but he might've been. You have shared no evidence of any other criminal proclivities he is known to have had. You've shown us the hitherto little-known fact that Lautrec painted brothels and prostitutes, and liked red-heads; and you once had a weird experience in front of Carmen Gaudin's portrait.

And.... that's it? That's your case?

Good luck with the book Galex.

[Henry Flower]

PS - you're now the second poster with a world-famous-artist angle to their preferred suspect who has chosen to take a cheap shot at Nietzsche.

Please, keep it coming - it can only bolster your intellectual credibility! Though it must be said, yours at least gave me a good smile

[Henry Flower]

And you are once again telling me lots of stuff about art that I already know, and offering absolutely NOTHING in the way of evidence concerning the Whitechapel murders of 1888.

Your standard modus operandi, it seems.

Oh no - my mistake - you also falsely attributed to me the assertion that all artists painted prostitutes, so that you can cleverly contradict my error. But even that straw-man argument has absolutely nothing to do with the murders. If Lautrec were the ONLY painter to have painted prostitutes it still wouldn't count as evidence that a former friend of his had therefore been Jack the Ripper, just as a female figure with a greenish pallor does not constitute evidence of the same.

How about some evidence placing the doctor in Whitechapel on the dates of the murders? That might get us somewhere. But already I feel a sense of fatigue, we've been here so many times, asking for evidence instead of intuitions based on paintings, from people who feel ghostly presences in art galleries and find something vaguely 'Ripperish' in paintings of a certain artist, be it Lautrec, Sickert, or most bizarrely Vincent. It just doesn't wash, galexander, and no amount of remedial-class art-historical context is going to make it wash.

[galexander]

Yes, prostitutes in paintings. Big shock!! Lautrec painted prostitutes. Gauguin painted prostitutes. Vincent painted prostitutes - I already knew that, thanks Gale. Many artists of the period did. Likewise many writers focused on prostitutes. Prostitution was a big issue, and many artists and writers saw them as emblematic figures. Vincent, for example, described them as angels of mercy, and figures emblematic of his own outsider status. Hey, perhaps every artist who painted the dull sad lives of prostitutes must have had insider knowledge of the Whitechapel murders! #yawn#

Sorry Henry Flower, I hate to contradict but not all artists painted prostitutes. Only some of them.

In their day the Impressionists (and modern artists in general) were complete outsiders. The leading galleries refused to display their art and the average Impressionist found it hard to even earn a living. Respectable artists did not paint pictures of prostitutes nor did they visit brothels. Call me a snob if you like, that's your business.

Can you imagine the reaction today if some contemporary artist painted pictures of the goings on in a brothel? The reaction would be somewhat mixed to say the least! But can you imagine the reaction to such a subject matter in the nineteenth century........?

The problem is that you are repeating clichés built upon misconceptions built upon further clichés, etc, etc.





Charles Darwin + Billy Graham = Friedrich Nietzsche

[Limehouse]

Hello Julie,

Have you canvassed this idea?

lol

best wishes

Phil

Hi Phil,

No, to be honest, my 'art wouldn't be in it! (spoken like a true Londoner!)

Lovely to hear from you.

Julie

[Phil Carter]

Hi Gale,

Did Lautrec ever meet Sickert?

All things considered, they would have had much to discuss.

Regards,

Simon

Hello Simon,

"Yes, Sure!" in Norwegian is "Ja, Sikkert!"

"Totally sure is "helt Sikkert".. and "hero" in Norwegian is "helt"

best wishes

Phil