where do you stand?

[Dave O]

I don't have a Kindle, but you are not the first person who has directed me toward a Kindle version of something, and I sense we have reached some moment of tipped equilibrium where people now assume that everyone has, or has access to a means of reading text on some kind of device.

You don't need a Kindle.

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

I realize that you can read it on a PC, or, probably a Mac. We only have desktops, except for the boychik's tablet, which has a tiny memory, and has to stream everything, and is wireless only (well, it has a USB port, so I could probably hook it up, but I have other things to do).

I don't relish reading something on the desktop, and I don't relish trying to bypass what I'm sure is anti-printing software with screencapture and paint.

I also really like being able to flip back and forth through a book. I have a very good memory for where something was in a book, how many pages thickness back, top or bottom of page, which leaf, and electronic media fails me. Or, I fail it. When I try to "page back" with a mouse, or a touch-screen, I don't know where I'm going. It's frustrating.

I'm 46. I can probably hold out for books until I die.

[lynn cates]

my pleasure

Hello Lucky. Thanks.

Glad that worked.

Cheers.
LC

[Wickerman]

I also really like being able to flip back and forth through a book. I have a very good memory for where something was in a book, how many pages thickness back, top or bottom of page, which leaf, and electronic media fails me. Or, I fail it. When I try to "page back" with a mouse, or a touch-screen, I don't know where I'm going. It's frustrating.

With my hand on my heart I can truthfully swear I will never buy a Kindle, or any other foreseeable electronic reading device. Just reading a pdf on screen is painful, I much prefer to print them out and sit in comfort to read.
There is something distant, unnatural and remote about this media that seems so temporary, whereas a book will last me a lifetime. I can underline, circle, make marginal notes, bookmark pages with sticky's, photocopy anything for future reference, I hope they never replace the 'book'.

I'm 46. I can probably hold out for books until I die.

Being nearer the finish line than yourself, I take it I have no worries either.

Anyway, back to the topic...

[Ben]

Can I presume you have nothing against the basic idea of a higher class killer, and can acknowledge that it must be equally possible, physically and biologically, on a one-to-one basis, but you just think it is statistically far less likely because higher class men make up a far tinier proportion of the population as a whole? You don't think there is anything about a working class man that makes him more likely to offend repeatedly than a higher class man - do you?

Not at all, Caz.

Without wishing to get too profiley about it, the propensity of men (from any class) to commit violent crime later in life is often connected to experiences in childhood, and it's no coincidence that many known serial offenders came from broken homes, with alcohol and physical abuse often being present during those impressionable, formative years, as well as petty crime. I would suggest a greater likelihood of encountering such a domestic predicament in the slums of the East End than in the drawing room of Lord Snooty's mansion.

It's certainly not a case of working class men being inherently more inclined towards violence than anyone else. Rather, it may have considerably more to do with negative experiences in childhood that are often encountered where poverty is a central theme.

In the ripper case in particular, we're dealing with a series of crimes committed in an area of London in which the vast majority population was comprised of the working class poor. What rational objection could there be to accepting that the killer was likely to have been one of these, especially when we know that marauder killers are considerably more common than "commuters"?

All the best,
Ben

[Ben]

Hi Jon,

Apparently, when the 'shoe is on the other foot' you advise against rejoicing over a singular contrary news article, how opinions change.

The Lloyds article would only be "contrary" if it appeared concurrently with the articles suggesting that Isaacs was walking about in his room on the night of the Kelly murder. As it happened, however, the article appeared on the 23rd December, considerably later than the earlier articles. In other words, the errors of earlier reporting were cleared up as a result of later investigation. This doesn't compare in the slightest to your Daily News extract which ran concurrently with all other press reports of the same event (Sarah Lewis' experience), and which was proven false by Lewis's actual police statement.

It also provides the perfect explanation to the hitherto unexplained "mystery" of the police's evidently discontinued interest in Isaacs as a suspect. Something must have put them off the scent, and now we have a reason for it. Realistically speaking, it can't have been anything other than an alibi that prompted police to ditch him as a suspect.

Of course, that applies to everyone, but it does not require him to have been locked up - he could have been at a Jewish meeting, among his friends, any number of reasons could have got him off the hook.

But the article tells us he was locked up for stealing a coat.

The Lloyds Weekly Newspaper had no reason in the world to invent such a story, and it is perfectly consistent with Isaacs' known thieving ways. Incidentally, I have no problem with "unverified newspaper stories" provided they were not contradicted by more reliable evidence, and were not discredited by the police.

The important point is, she claims Isaacs was pacing his room on the night of the murder, unless you are gunning for that old "mistaking the day" argument

The important point is that she was wrong, as we now learn from the Lloyds piece. It matters not is she was lying, mistaken, or an unreliable gossip who had it in for Jews. He clearly wasn't pacing about his room on the night of the murder.

Isaac's disappeared for 3 weeks, after the murder, only showing up at his room on Dec. 5th. Why run IF the police were his alibi for the night of the murder?

He didn't run.

That's the whole point. He was thought to have been on the run following the murder, whereas actually he was under lock and key until, presumably, early December for the offence of stealing a coat. In light of Lloyds' revelation, it was evidently the case that his absence was especially noted after the murder. He'd clearly been nicked before then. In fact, it's tempting to speculate that if Isaacs' return to Little Paternoster Row on the 5th December coincided with his release date from prison, he might have sentenced to a month in the clink, in which case he would have "disappeared" on 5th November, shortly before the Kelly murder.

All the best,
Ben

[Fisherman]

Not at all, Caz.

Without wishing to get too profiley about it, the propensity of men (from any class) to commit violent crime later in life is often connected to experiences in childhood, and it's no coincidence that many known serial offenders came from broken homes, with alcohol and physical abuse often being present during those impressionable, formative years, as well as petty crime. I would suggest a greater likelihood of encountering such a domestic predicament in the slums of the East End than in the drawing room of Lord Snooty's mansion.

It's certainly not a case of working class men being inherently more inclined towards violence than anyone else. Rather, it may have considerably more to do with negative experiences in childhood that are often encountered where poverty is a central theme.

In the ripper case in particular, we're dealing with a series of crimes committed in an area of London in which the vast majority population was comprised of the working class poor. What rational objection could there be to accepting that the killer was likely to have been one of these, especially when we know that marauder killers are considerably more common than "commuters"?

All the best,
Ben

All useful points, Ben! Letīs just add that there ARE serial killers who had good childhoods too, like for instance Dahmer and, I believe, Bundy. That does not, however, detract from the value of your reasoning.
I would just like to add that the lack of a father figure during the formative years is also something that carries a lot of weight on these particular scales.

All the best,
Fisherman

[RivkahChaya]

Without wishing to get too profiley about it, the propensity of men (from any class) to commit violent crime later in life is often connected to experiences in childhood ... with alcohol and physical abuse often being present during those impressionable, formative years

I read a terrific article by a psychologist, who had once been in clinical practice, and worked with lots of people who had been abused as children, and grown up not to be abusive, and then had done research among violent felons, who found a common thread was not childhood abuse, per se, but head injuries. In particular, closed head injuries where the person lost consciousness.

Children with very violently abusive parents are at high risk for a closed head injury, so abused children ended up over-represented in the group of people with head-injuries, but there were also people who had committed violent felonies, and had a record of being "difficult," in school, having minor brushes with the law, having substance abuse problems, who came from non-abusive families, where none of the other children had problems, and the very interesting thing was that in case after case, the researcher found that the person had, in childhood, fallen out of a tree, been in a car accident, been hit in the head with a baseball while not wearing a helmet, and soforth.

All useful points, Ben! Letīs just add that there ARE serial killers who had good childhoods too, like for instance Dahmer and, I believe, Bundy. That does not, however, detract from the value of your reasoning.

I believe Dahmer did have some kind of head injury, or was in some sort of accident. Also, while his early childhood was normal, his parents separated when he was in high school, and somehow in the shuffle, he had a couple of weeks where "I thought he was with you," and "I thought he was with you,"-- he actually had been with his grandmother prior to that, but she couldn't keep him or didn't want him anymore, and somehow his parents lost track of where he was. He was 16 or 17, and that was the week of his first drinking binge.

Bundy had a fake normal childhood. His birth mother got pregnant when she was a teenager, and her parents (his grandparents) covered it up by pretending he was their child. He found out about it when he was a teen himself, if I recall the story correctly. He reacted rather badly, and wrote his family off after the incident.

I'm not really sure how "normal" his family really was, and how much it was a facade, and they may have been emotionally distant (not that that gives a person free reign to murder women), but his was not the only family that did this: it was one of a handful of "normal" solutions to the pregnant teenaged daughter "problem" up until about 1960. (The other two most often used were "private [read: shotgun]" wedding, and "premature" baby, and "visiting an aunt" for the summer, and then putting the baby up for adoption. There was also "coathanger," but that wasn't usually used by teenagers, who often didn't admit they were pregnant until it was too late. If you had a doctor in the family, there was also "appendectomy.")

[RivkahChaya]

There is something distant, unnatural and remote about this media [kindle, et al.] that seems so temporary, whereas a book will last me a lifetime. I can underline, circle, make marginal notes, bookmark pages with sticky's, photocopy anything for future reference,

I actually don't like to write in books, because it feels like desecration, but I do love finding a book in a used bookstore that has someone else's notes, from a long time ago. I have a copy of Pride and Prejudice, printed some time around 1890, and once owned by a woman, young by her handwriting, named Margaret March, who wrote "this dear book" on the title page, and several notes throughout, mostly about the parts she liked best.

I also got to see a friend's great-aunt's copy of Testament of Youth (just about my favorite book) that had belonged to her great aunt, who had also been a nurse in WWI, and had written "yes! just like that!" and such in the margins.

I have also seen and held the copy of Limehouse Nights that DW Griffith and Lillian Gish both made notes in when they were filming Broken Blossoms, a movie based on one of the stories in the book.

I hope they never replace the 'book'.

I am no technophobe, and am perfectly willing to admit that my enjoyment of a "real," if you will, book, is the result of conditioning, but there you are. Also, people over a certain age are going to associate certain kinds of technology with work, more than younger people are. Then there is the fact that I refuse to be "on-call" all the time. I turn phones off (I have a feature on my phone where I can set only one ring-tone to come through, so my son's school can call, but, he still has another parent), and turn monitors off, so I don't know whether email is coming in. I can even ignore knocks on the door (which during the day are almost always JWs ignoring my "I don't want to convert to your religion" sign).

But, I love using the computer to write. Anyone who have ever had to use a manual typewriters knows that whoever invented word processing should get a Nobel prize.

[Wickerman]

Yes indeed, after the murder, as soon as they interviewed Mrs Cusins during the House-to-house (which we have no date for), likely over the weekend - but who knows.

And here we have a reference to when this house-to-house took place:

"During the whole of yesterday Sergeant Thicke, with other officers, was busily engaged in writing down the names, statements, and full particulars of persons staying at the various lodging-houses in Dorset-street. That this was no easy task will be imagined when it is known that in one house alone there are upwards of 260 persons, and that several houses accommodate over 200."
Times, 12 Nov.

So Isaac's (Astrachan?) disappeared only hours after the murder, the house-to-house was conducted over the weekend, and he had already gone (confirming Cusins).
So why did he go?