Was JTR a local?

[mklhawley]

Keep in mind, October to early November saw some serious London smog.

Sincerely,

Mike

[caz]

Hi Caz
But why would someone who had the werewithall to commute into Whitechapel continue to do so if they could just have easily gone to a different area of London once the WC area got too hot?

Hi Abby,

There's an 'if' there that could provide your answer. How can we possibly know if it would have been just as easy for this individual to find victims and get away with killing and mutilating them anywhere else? If his comfort zone was Whitechapel, anywhere else might have been undesirable or simply out of the question.

A local man would really have no choice, especially since hes on foot.

Not sure I follow the logic. If your argument is that any outsider walking into and out of Whitechapel to kill could just as easily have walked into and out of other areas of London, who was nailing your 'local' man's feet to the floor and preventing him from doing exactly the same, while at the same time compelling him to carry on killing on red hot pavements?

He always had the choice to stop if the area got 'too hot' for comfort, no matter if he was living or working right in among his victims or trotted in from a neighbouring area which didn't lend itself so well to the 'job' in hand. The fact is, he continued to do it for a while there regardless of the heat.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

While I'm still here...

Why do these 'local' debates tend to descend into arguments about the ripper's likely wealth, class, education and so on? Can't he have been living or working just outside the area where his victims typically plied their trade, and still have been very much working class and one of the masses? Why go to the other extreme and seek to imply that an 'outsider' would necessarily have been some kind of slumming toff, and therefore a highly unlikely serial killer of lowly prostitutes?

All I'm saying is there is not nearly enough evidence to reach any conclusions about where Jack could have been found for the 99.999% of the time in 1888 when he wasn't actively engaging with his victims.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

While I'm still here...

Why do these 'local' debates tend to descend into arguments about the ripper's likely wealth, class, education and so on? Can't he have been living or working just outside the area where his victims typically plied their trade, and still have been very much working class and one of the masses? Why go to the other extreme and seek to imply that an 'outsider' would necessarily have been some kind of slumming toff, and therefore a highly unlikely serial killer of lowly prostitutes?

All I'm saying is there is not nearly enough evidence to reach any conclusions about where Jack could have been found for the 99.999% of the time in 1888 when he wasn't actively engaging with his victims.

Love,

Caz
X

We all tend to forget that who ever was doing this was quite obviously disturbed and quite a long way away from normal so when we try to apply common sense to our killers action we are doomed to failure.

[MayBea]

I think the debate has actually been raised, caz, by bringing in measurable statistics rather than personal bias.

Geographic profiling, for instance, puts the Ripper residence in the middle of the crimes on Middlesex street. If he's an outsider, he therefore has two residences. He either has the wealth to own two, or the wealth to rent regularly.

[GUT]

While I'm still here...

Why do these 'local' debates tend to descend into arguments about the ripper's likely wealth, class, education and so on? Can't he have been living or working just outside the area where his victims typically plied their trade, and still have been very much working class and one of the masses? Why go to the other extreme and seek to imply that an 'outsider' would necessarily have been some kind of slumming toff, and therefore a highly unlikely serial killer of lowly prostitutes?

All I'm saying is there is not nearly enough evidence to reach any conclusions about where Jack could have been found for the 99.999% of the time in 1888 when he wasn't actively engaging with his victims.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

[QUOTE=MayBea;329299]I think the debate has actually been raised, caz, by bringing in measurable statistics rather than personal bias.

Geographic profiling, for instance, puts the Ripper residence in the middle of the crimes on Middlesex street. If he's an outsider, he therefore has two residences. He either has the wealth to own two, or the wealth to rent regularly.[/QUO
If he was taking the victims organs home with him then surely he must live alone .

[GUT]

[QUOTE=pinkmoon;329324]

I think the debate has actually been raised, caz, by bringing in measurable statistics rather than personal bias.

Geographic profiling, for instance, puts the Ripper residence in the middle of the crimes on Middlesex street. If he's an outsider, he therefore has two residences. He either has the wealth to own two, or the wealth to rent regularly.[/QUO
If he was taking the victims organs home with him then surely he must live alone .

Or he wasn't taking them home, or she was so under the thumb that she didn't question what he was doing out in the back shed.

[MacGuffin]

Speaking of 'obvious progressive changes', you might agree with me, MacGuffin, on the evidence regarding local blue collar vs. white collar, possibly outsider.

Couldn't the incorporated labourer of today be the toff of yesteryear?

Keeping in mind that 1880's Whitechapel was the "ghetto's ghetto", if you will, then I agree anyone who had a reliable job with what would be considered decent wages for the time period would almost certainly be viewed as quite well off, if not outright wealthy by most East end dwellers.

[MayBea]

Exactly, MacGuffin. Everything must be taken relative to the time period.

Then there's the issue of age. If he started a life of crime early, his career path could have been derailed, as in many of the American examples given. If he started crime and murdering late in life (and we have several examples of that), he could be established.

The issue of 'johns' has come up before, with Jack being a likely one and therefore more likely to be 'blue collar', because the working class goes to prostitutes more often. But the entire class of people do not an individual make and therefore individual frequency of availing the services of a prostitute would have to go to the richer person.

I personally think Jack was someone who used prostitutes at least once a week at some point and then switched to using them for violence.

[pinkmoon]

Exactly, MacGuffin. Everything must be taken relative to the time period.

Then there's the issue of age. If he started a life of crime early, his career path could have been derailed, as in many of the American examples given. If he started crime and murdering late in life (and we have several examples of that), he could be established.

The issue of 'johns' has come up before, with Jack being a likely one and therefore more likely to be 'blue collar', because the working class goes to prostitutes more often. But the entire class of people do not an individual make and therefore individual frequency of availing the services of a prostitute would have to go to the richer person.

I personally think Jack was someone who used prostitutes at least once a week at some point and then switched to using them for violence.

These poor women were desperate they would have gone with anyone as long as they had a few pennies to pay for the privelliage.It's quite possible that our killer looked and acted like a normal person thus putting his victims at ease he didn't have to have been a regular user of these poor women's services.

[MacGuffin]

I personally think Jack was someone who used prostitutes at least once a week at some point and then switched to using them for violence.

There is precedence for this in the modern era.
Ridgeway was able to return to the same hunting grounds because the sex workers knew him as a regular customer. He didn't kill every prostitute he picked up, so many of the ladies knew and trusted him by sight.
Most of them rationalized (sadly, incorrectly) that the Green River killer must be a stranger, and therefore they would be safer going with known customers.

I think Jack was known to the local ladies of the evening, whether as a client or as another local in passing.
They would have been on higher alert than even the local police, as they were the ones being targeted, and they would probably have been thinking "stranger danger", more so than a familiar face approaching them in late night/early morning hours.

[Rosella]

If Jack hung around with Whitechapel prostitutes on a regular basis for several years wouldn't he have become known among them? That would have been a risk, surely, when he began killing?

[gnote]

If Jack hung around with Whitechapel prostitutes on a regular basis for several years wouldn't he have become known among them? That would have been a risk, surely, when he began killing?

Most likely, but that would be dependent largely on how frequent a customer he was and how he treated them. They might "know" him in that they've seen him around before, but little more. That would probably describe a number of johns both now and then. If he visited them multiple times a week for several years and on top of that was violent and/or brought about a bad vibe it would be a different story. He would have been brought up like "Leather Apron"

There are accounts from prostitutes that were victims of serial killers who managed to survive the attack. Afterward they said they did not see it coming and had not any reason to feel ill at ease.

Whether or not Jack used prostitutes frequently, infrequently or at all of course we don't know. I personally suspect he did even if it was seldom.

[RockySullivan]

If Jack hung around with Whitechapel prostitutes on a regular basis for several years wouldn't he have become known among them? That would have been a risk, surely, when he began killing?

Not if he seemed like a normal guy. He could have hidden his true personality up until the last split second before he attacks.