The profession of Jack the Ripper.

[Mayerling]

As the great Walter Scott so succinctly put it: "Oh what a tangled web we weave..."

Hi John,

Off the theme of the thread for a moment, I wonder how many people read Sir Walter Scott's "Marmion" or his other poems, "Bonnie Dundee" for instance. Initially he was a poet. Now his novels are what are still read.

But 19th Century Romantic British Poetry was dominated by Shelley, Keats, and Byron, and in Scotland by Burns. Sir Walter was lucky to have the fall back of the novels.

Jeff

[John G]

Hi John,

Off the theme of the thread for a moment, I wonder how many people read Sir Walter Scott's "Marmion" or his other poems, "Bonnie Dundee" for instance. Initially he was a poet. Now his novels are what are still read.

But 19th Century Romantic British Poetry was dominated by Shelley, Keats, and Byron, and in Scotland by Burns. Sir Walter was lucky to have the fall back of the novels.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Happy New Year. Yes I agree, although to the aforementioned we might add Blake, Coleridge and, of course, Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads- a joint collection with Coleridge, which includes the latter's masterpiece, the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner-is often regarded as the start of the Romantic Period.

My personal favourite, though, is Shelley, whose political and social theories had a profound influence on figures as diverse as Marx, Tolstoy and Gandhi. And, of course, his mother-in -law was the early British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women,which included the famous line, " I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves."

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

Happy New Year. Yes I agree, although to the aforementioned we might add Blake, Coleridge and, of course, Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads- a joint collection with Coleridge, which includes the latter's masterpiece, the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner-is often regarded as the start of the Romantic Period.

My personal favourite, though, is Shelley, whose political and social theories had a profound influence on figures as diverse as Marx, Tolstoy and Gandhi.

Hi John,

True, as I was submitting the comment I recalled the "Lake poets" and Blake. But I always think of the three who died too young as a tragic trilogy of poetic greatness - especially poor Keats. And the political sides of Shelley and Byron certainly still attract great attention.

Jeff

[David Orsam]

Hi David,

And to you and everyone reading this Happy New Year 2016!

I'm afraid I am more to blame about the issue of the uniform, because I wanted to get a point across.

Hi Jeff, and happy new year to you too.

There was nothing wrong with your question about the uniform, in fact, it was a very good one.

Pierre, as we know, is a slippery customer and I was wondering if Pierre's thinking is that his senior officer (someone like, say, Monro) wore a "fake" constable's uniform to commit the murders.

Given that Pierre has led us to believe that his suspect was of a high social class I find it difficult to understand how he could have been a uniformed officer in any event, so I feel it's a good idea to get him to confirm exactly what he is telling us.

I see he hasn't done so yet so perhaps I could repeat my call for Pierre to answer to simple questions:

Was his suspect a uniformed officer during 1888?

Was his suspect a Scotland Yard official during 1888?

[John G]

Hi John,

True, as I was submitting the comment I recalled the "Lake poets" and Blake. But I always think of the three who died too young as a tragic trilogy of poetic greatness - especially poor Keats. And the political sides of Shelley and Byron certainly still attract great attention.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Yes, of course, I'd forgotten Keats and Byron. I think without doubt, in terms of greatness the era of the Romantic poets stands next to the Elizabethan period of Sidney, Spencer, Shakespeare et al.

Of course, Wordsworth, who started out with radical ideas["Bliss it was on that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven" -referring to the French Revolution] became very much a figure of the establishment in his later years. In fact, Browning referred to him as the "Lost Leader", in a poem of 1845, because of what he considered to be his abandonment of the liberal cause.

[Pierre]

Hi David,

And to you and everyone reading this Happy New Year 2016!

I'm afraid I am more to blame about the issue of the uniform, because I wanted to get a point across. If the Ripper was a uniformed police officer I was curious about the rules concerning the care of the uniform (i.e. stains, rips, tears), and who was responsible: the police department or the officer.
However 1) I was also mentioning civilian clothes for Detectives, undercover officers, and officials of the police departments; and 2) I was seeking to see how any blood stains on the clothing of these parties would have escaped notice. Rochelle was nice enough to answer the question yesterday - quite fully by the way - about the variety of uniform washing systems used in 1888.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I am glad you brought up this. And there was an interesting answer from Rosella on the subject, and I tried to answer her:

Posted by Rosella:

I've taken a look at the practicalities of a policeman's laundry (with regard to blood stained uniforms etc.) In Monty's invaluable book 'Capturing Jack the Ripper) the issue of uniforms is covered.

Bachelor policemen in section houses had a small sum taken out of their pay for laundry. (I presume this included uniforms and not just personal laundry.) Some larger section houses had female servants like housekeepers, cooks and maids, but probably the laundry was still out-sourced. Stations also included brushing rooms where policemen could brush mud and other materials from their uniforms. There were also cloakrooms in stations for helmets and capes.

Married police living with their families would have used their wives/daughters as launderers, I suppose, or, if they had the money to spare, sent their uniforms to a reliable nearby laundry.

The main objection I have to Jack 'borrowing' a uniform and committing murders in it is the chance of meeting other coppers on the street.

Whitehall/Spitalfields at the height of the terror was swamped with extra police from other divisions. However the vast majority of uniformed police on the streets were on the beat or point duty. Wouldn't any of them notice a uniformed policeman walking or hurrying along on their beat and ask who he was? In a reasonable light a blood-splattered uniform is going to raise questions too, however senior this bloke was.

Posted by Pierre:

Hi Rosella,

and thanks for a good discussion. By looking at the classifications made in this book it is clear that the author is not writing about normal men in a police uniform. He is writing about "bachelor policemen" and "married police".

If you use WeberŽs ideal type as a method for classification in this actual case, the best ideal type for describing him is a "killer in a police uniform". The "killer" in this case is clearly superior to the "police" as an ideal type.

You can also use functional descriptions: The function of this person wearing a police uniform is not to do police work (by first using a negation you can exclude what the funcion is not) but it is to kill.

And if you like to use a sociological theory about having a practical knowledge of what one is doing (Bourdieu), this person has a practical knowledge of policework since he is a police official and his knowledge is used in his practice to murder prostitutes/women (a question mark on Stride being a prostitute perhaps, but he probably thought she was).

So the most certain answer to the question about what he did with the uniform if it had blood on it would be:

His actions concearning the washing of a police uniform must have been determined by the fact that he was a killer. A police official who was a killer must have had the best knowledge of how to solve the problem. He would have avoided other people seeing his uniform. Therefore, if it were to be washed, he must have washed it himself.

Two other comments:

1. The uniform is black, blood is red. Blood on a police uniform would not have been visible on a dark night. A police knows this so who would stop a policeman with no visible blood on him (wearing gloves naturally) also considering that there were extra policemen in the area?

2. He managed to avoid other policemen but could not avoid other witnesses (like Lechmere). So probably he got no questions from other policemen and if he did, he naturally managed to answer them, being a policeman himself.

Regards, Pierre

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, of course, I'd forgotten Keats and Byron. I think without doubt, in terms of greatness the era of the Romantic poets stands next to the Elizabethan period of Sidney, Spencer, Shakespeare et al.

Of course, Wordsworth, who started out with radical ideas["Bliss it was on that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven" -referring to the French Revolution] became very much a figure of the establishment in his later years. In fact, Browning referred to him as the "Lost Leader", in a poem of 1845, because of what he considered to be his abandonment of the liberal cause.

Yes, Wordsworth did become super-establishment, especially after they made him poet laureate. In the anthology of bad verse, "The Stuffed Owl", it was pointed out Wyndham Lewis or his co-editor that Wordsworth (due to some post he held late in life) became the best seller of British postal stamps in England. I'm sure he was proud of that.

That post sometimes affects it's recipient the wrong way, though fortunately not totally. Tennyson had done "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854, which was okay, but a few years later (during a war scare with France) he did some idiotic piece "Form, form, rifleman form, ready be ready to face the storm." Even later, when some officer sent him a nasty note that the Heavy Brigade had successfully stormed a Russian position that October 1854 day, he wrote an abysmal four page "apologetic" poem about the poet telling a little girl about the Heavy Brigade's success, and explaining he's not interested in blood and gore. I have read it. It's as bad as his later play, "Queen Mary".

To be fair, Gerald Manley Hopkins had a similar hang-up. He did a poem "The Wreck of the "Deutschland"", which is considered one of his best, but he also wrote a poem about the sudden and tragic sinking of HMS Eurydice in 1878. People tend to forget that one.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

I am glad you brought up this. And there was an interesting answer from Rosella on the subject, and I tried to answer her:

Posted by Rosella:

I've taken a look at the practicalities of a policeman's laundry (with regard to blood stained uniforms etc.) In Monty's invaluable book 'Capturing Jack the Ripper) the issue of uniforms is covered.

Bachelor policemen in section houses had a small sum taken out of their pay for laundry. (I presume this included uniforms and not just personal laundry.) Some larger section houses had female servants like housekeepers, cooks and maids, but probably the laundry was still out-sourced. Stations also included brushing rooms where policemen could brush mud and other materials from their uniforms. There were also cloakrooms in stations for helmets and capes.

Married police living with their families would have used their wives/daughters as launderers, I suppose, or, if they had the money to spare, sent their uniforms to a reliable nearby laundry.

The main objection I have to Jack 'borrowing' a uniform and committing murders in it is the chance of meeting other coppers on the street.

Whitehall/Spitalfields at the height of the terror was swamped with extra police from other divisions. However the vast majority of uniformed police on the streets were on the beat or point duty. Wouldn't any of them notice a uniformed policeman walking or hurrying along on their beat and ask who he was? In a reasonable light a blood-splattered uniform is going to raise questions too, however senior this bloke was.

Posted by Pierre:

Hi Rosella,

and thanks for a good discussion. By looking at the classifications made in this book it is clear that the author is not writing about normal men in a police uniform. He is writing about "bachelor policemen" and "married police".

If you use WeberŽs ideal type as a method for classification in this actual case, the best ideal type for describing him is a "killer in a police uniform". The "killer" in this case is clearly superior to the "police" as an ideal type.

You can also use functional descriptions: The function of this person wearing a police uniform is not to do police work (by first using a negation you can exclude what the funcion is not) but it is to kill.

And if you like to use a sociological theory about having a practical knowledge of what one is doing (Bourdieu), this person has a practical knowledge of policework since he is a police official and his knowledge is used in his practice to murder prostitutes/women (a question mark on Stride being a prostitute perhaps, but he probably thought she was).

So the most certain answer to the question about what he did with the uniform if it had blood on it would be:

His actions concearning the washing of a police uniform must have been determined by the fact that he was a killer. A police official who was a killer must have had the best knowledge of how to solve the problem. He would have avoided other people seeing his uniform. Therefore, if it were to be washed, he must have washed it himself.

Two other comments:

1. The uniform is black, blood is red. Blood on a police uniform would not have been visible on a dark night. A police knows this so who would stop a policeman with no visible blood on him (wearing gloves naturally) also considering that there were extra policemen in the area?

2. He managed to avoid other policemen but could not avoid other witnesses (like Lechmere). So probably he got no questions from other policemen and if he did, he naturally managed to answer them, being a policeman himself.

Regards, Pierre

Hi Pierre,

Thank you for the explanation. I have to admit I'm not totally convinced that blood on black (red on black) would have gone unnoticed even in that ill-lit area, but that is your opinion and it seems a reasonable one.

Jeff

[Pierre]

Hi Pierre,

Thank you for the explanation. I have to admit I'm not totally convinced that blood on black (red on black) would have gone unnoticed even in that ill-lit area, but that is your opinion and it seems a reasonable one.

Jeff

Well, thank you, Jeff.

And this makes me think of a very relevant research question for discussing the case: Are blood stains on black material visible?

There must be research on it. Is there anyone who could enlighten us?

While we wait and see if anyone could help us we could read this:

"Abstract:  The analysis of bloodstain patterns can assist investigators in understanding the circumstances surrounding a violent crime. Bloodstains are routinely subjected to pattern analysis, which is inherently dependent upon the ability of the examiner to locate and visualize bloodstain patterns on items of evidence. Often, the ability to properly visualize bloodstain patterns is challenging, especially when the stain patterns occur on dark and/or patterned substrates. In this study, preliminary research was performed to better understand how near-infrared reflectance hyperspectral imaging (HSI) could be used to observe bloodstain patterns on commonly encountered black fabrics."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...171.x/abstract

And this:

"Abstract

The detection of latent traces is an important aspect of crime scene investigation. Blood stains on black backgrounds can be visualized using chemiluminescence, which is invasive and requires a darkened room, or near-infrared photography, for which investigators need to change filters manually to optimize contrast. We demonstrated the performance of visible reflectance hyperspectral imaging (400–720 nm) for this purpose."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...029.12591/full

Regards Pierre

[David Orsam]

I have to admit I'm not totally convinced that blood on black (red on black) would have gone unnoticed even in that ill-lit area, but that is your opinion and it seems a reasonable one.

Is it really reasonable, Jeff, bearing in mind that Monty has told us a police uniform was, in fact, blue?

[Monty]

Again, as I said earlier, uniforms were not black, and they were made of...nah, there's no point in continuing this post.

You won't read it Pierre, or you shall ignore it.

So I shall let you wallow in your ignorance, and maybe giggle as I watch you flounder on this topic of police.

If you are not willing to familiarise yourself with the subject on which your suspect theory is built, then your failure is deserved.

Monty

[Pierre]

Again, as I said earlier, uniforms were not black, and they were made of...nah, there's no point in continuing this post.

You won't read it Pierre, or you shall ignore it.

So I shall let you wallow in your ignorance, and maybe giggle as I watch you flounder on this topic of police.

If you are not willing to familiarise yourself with the subject on which your suspect theory is built, then your failure is deserved.

Monty

Hi,

Uniforms were not black: What colour were they according to you, and do you have a source?

Regards Pierre

[David Orsam]

Hilarious.

Well done Pierre, top comedy posting of 2016 so far.

[Elamarna]

He doesn't know who Monty is? Or like normal he doesn't care.

His response when I suggested he read the 2 part paper on police beats by Gavin Bromley was:

"IŽd love to if I would first get to know who this Bromley is. "

why does he need that information, of course he won't read if the writer is not a degree holder.

there is a degree of arrogance, which is back by a lack of knowledge.

[David Orsam]

And yet he is perfect happy to accept without question Bernard Brown's unfounded assertion that the Liverpool letter bore a postmark of 29 September 1888.

If he likes a piece of information, which fits in with his policeman theory, he doesn't need a source because he just knows it's right!