The profession of Jack the Ripper.

[Fisherman]

I'm totally confused, Fish. Were you arguing with yourself in the immediately-preceding post?

With the likes of you around, why would I need to...?

[Mayerling]

Background points.

Hi Pierre,

I'm referring to your message # 65 on this thread from 25 December 2015.

You were responding to a comment by GUT.

"You are almost spot on. I have read almost nothing within ripperology. Why should I when nothing of everything that has been written has solved the case?"

Then I looked at a comment of yours on another thread [GogMagog] # 57. Here you were responding to David's comment.

David: "The first thing to note about the letter, even by Pierre's reading, it is not written in any form of "metaphorical language". There are no metaphors in there.

Your response (and please excuse but I am adding a word in brackets that you did not include, but that I believe in your haste you just typed without realizing it - it does not change the spirit and meaning of your reply to David):

"My simple answer is that [it] is that you can't know that David. Have you been reading the Greek Church fathers? Are you familiar with gnostic texts, or even the Dead Sea Scrolls? I am. Have you been reading modern greek language, even political texts? They are full of metaphors. Are you familiar with the use of metaphors from other serial killers? I think you would enjoy reading them."

Of course I am not going to comment on that last sentence, which sounds a trifle barbed toward David and his tastes, except I assume you realize that it means you seem to have read the letters of serial killers yourself. If so you do share some similar tastes to David.

However, I am more concerned about your relative laxity about reading up on the Whitechapel murders. A fairly decent size library of books on the events discussed on this website have been written since 1888. You seem to dismiss them because they are all contradicting each other when they produce some suspect the author pushes (i.e. Patricia Cornwall pushing Walter Sickert). But some of them did not push any particular suspect. Donald Rumbelow's account (which he subsequently up-dated) did not do so, but actually debunked several candidates.

So I am curious what books you actually did read (if any) on this case?

I say this knowing that I may frequently disagree with the resulting "pick the Ripper" habit of authors, but that does not dismiss the total value of their work in filling in social history of the classes of people in Great Britain (if not the world) in 1888. Even a silly book like Frank Spiering's "Prince Jack" about the Duke of Clarence and James Kenneth Stephen had some value (it had the advantage of a bibliography, which many books don't.

But that other quote I put down regarding "metaphorical" language. I am getting the impression that you are deeply read in religious texts concerning the early days of Christianity, as you site the Greek Church Fathers, and the Gnostic texts, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Due to my own overly huge personal library I have kept putting off a Harper Torchbook (probably long out of date) of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I may never have a chance to read the book (and it does bother me). But the Gnostic texts? Did you study for the priesthood, or was this just an interest? And you are aware one of the suspects that was pushed for awhile (few do so now) made a translation of those texts? But you would not know that unless you actually read more deeply into the Whitechapel Murders than you appear to claim.

Also you are into modern Greek literature, including political works. At least that is how I read this. Yes, I am sure figures of speech like metaphors pop up in modern Greek books. But why are you reading modern Greek political works? By any chance are you Greek? To me the last time any Greek political work was worth studying was when Aristotle did a volume on the Constitution of Athens, about 340 B.C. (around the time of Alexander the Great and his father Philip of Macedonia). What major Greek political scientist popped up in the last three hundred years? Count Capo d'Istrias, the founder of the modern Greek state in the 1820s and 1830s?* Venezelos, the Prime Minister during the Great War and early 1920s?

I don't know if you are going to pay attention to this or shrug it off or what, but all this really puzzles me.

Jeff

*The only interesting point ever brought out about Count Capo d'Istrias was in Henry Kissinger's history of the Congress of Vienna and it's aftermath, "A World Restored", where he made what I considered a fairly ridiculous claim about the Count. The Count had been a leading advisor to Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and had persuaded that monarch to back Greek Independence at the expense of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1820s. Kissinger, who as a modern student of "realpolitik" had long admired Metternich and Castlereagh for clamping down on liberation movements throughout Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and restoring peace to the continent at the expense of personal freedoms that threatened the peace between nations, considered Count Capo d'Istrias one of the major villains of the post Napoleonic world order Metternich set up. I read that book in the 1990s, and still feel a cold chill thinking of that idiotic viewpoint of Kissinger's.

[GUT]

Well put Jeff.

[John G]

It is beginning to remind me of 1984 or Catch-22, in which discussions are hampered by the language and thought processes of surreal institutions. If we say he denied it was a policeman, he says, "yes, I did, but I didn't mean to mislead, just keep quiet."

So, as in Catch-22, "if you're crazy, you can get out of the service-- but if you SAY you're crazy, then you're not, and we're keeping you in the service."

To say nothing of 1984's Thought Police and Double Speak...

Well put, he might not have considered any Jack the Ripper books but Catch 22 may well have formed an important part of his "research".

Personally, I'm still not convinced that he has a suspect in any "real" sense, especially as he still continues to equivocate. Thus, when I enquired as to what differentiates a "police officer" from a "police official" he, surprisingly, declined to answer!

[GUT]

Well put, he might not have considered any Jack the Ripper books but Catch 22 may well have formed an important part of his "research".

Personally, I'm still not convinced that he has a suspect in any "real" sense, especially as he still continues to equivocate. Thus, when I enquired as to what differentiates a "police officer" from a "police official" he, surprisingly, declined to answer!

Agreed

I thnk he's making t up as he goes, that's why nothing positive and the goal posts seem to keep changing.

[Pierre]

Partyspoiler!

Hi Fisherman,

The chevrons were stated by Dr Frederick Gordon Brown to be "triangular cuts".

http://www.casebook.org/dissertation...or-design.html

They have also been discussed for a long time among researchers and ripperologists. In these discussions the cuts have been called V-shaped. Some have thought that the cuts were made intentionally and some not.

Whatever the truth might bee, it was in the hand and mind of the killer.

That is something you may want to consider when you come on and say "partyspoiler" and give your own journalistic opinion on the cuts as not being triangular cuts but U-shaped cuts and not meaning anything.

Another thing you might want to consider is how serial killers communicate with the police. There is research on this and if you have an account at any university you can use it to read this research.

I have chosen to postulate that the triangular cuts were chevrons, since the killer according to what I have found was a police official and since I have found other data sources that clearly show he did communicate with the police. So I postulate this and have it as a working hypothesis based on a coherent theory built on several data sources showing him to have been communicating with the police in order to let them look as fools in his own eyes.

Speaking about eyes, there is an idea within ripperology that the cuts on Eddowe´s eyes also "meant something". Ideas of this kind always tend to be speculative. It is easier to interpret known symbols like "triangels" and "chevrons" than to interpret things that are not known symbols. Therefore a "triangle" and a "chevron" has a stronger meaning, distinguishing it from nonsymbolic artefacts (often nonfigurative) which give way to far more interpretation.

And in the case of the eyes, the eyes themselves should therefore be more symbolically interpretable than the nonfigurative or nonsymbolic cuts on them.

Historically "eyes" have always had a lot of heavy symbolic value. We see it in the Ripper case where some believe that what the victim saw at the moment of death could be captured with a camera (Walter Dew wrote about that in the Kelly case).

And we see if often in religious metaphorical and allegorical language. An example is the blind man that Jesus "heals". When the man can see, he starts to believe in Christ. And the allegory is naturally that the man was blind to "true knowledge about the son of god". You have the same in the story of Paul seeing a light and then becoming temporarily blind. It is an old idea so you also have it in Homer where Teiresias the blind seer (yes, the greeks loved contradictions like that one!) sees better than anyone although he was blind, and, in Plato´s sense, even better than everybody else just because he was blind.

And these allegories are and were (in the 19th century and earlier) popularized through the spreading of the new testament. People often talk about the jews in Spitalfields but let´s not forget that the Salvation Army started off there and there were both catholics and others living in the area, confessing to different types of christianity. So the knowledge about the meaning of "seeing" and "eyes" in a symbolic way has been known and recognized for a long time in Europe and England.

Well, could we then interpret the cuts in the eyes as having any meaning - if they were intentional (which is just a simple yes/no question that anyone could guess since we have no statement from Dr Brown that the triangular cuts had anything to do with the cut in the nose)?

If you were the killer, Fisherman, and you were a police official with knowledge of symbolical meaning of "eyes" and you knew your chevrons - what would you want to say with making cuts in the eyelids of the victim?

Perhaps you would say: "Open your eyes and see who you are dealing with , you fools!".

I don´t know.

But I know one thing, Fisherman. Dr Brown is the primary source. And the primary source states that the two cuts on Eddowes´cheeks are triangular cuts. Not "u´s". And you are no source at all for this issue.

Partyspoiler.

Regards Pierre

[Fisherman]

Hi Fisherman,

The chevrons were stated by Dr Frederick Gordon Brown to be "triangular cuts".

http://www.casebook.org/dissertation...or-design.html

They have also been discussed for a long time among researchers and ripperologists. In these discussions the cuts have been called V-shaped. Some have thought that the cuts were made intentionally and some not.

Whatever the truth might bee, it was in the hand and mind of the killer.

That is something you may want to consider when you come on and say "partyspoiler" and give your own journalistic opinion on the cuts as not being triangular cuts but U-shaped cuts and not meaning anything.

Another thing you might want to consider is how serial killers communicate with the police. There is research on this and if you have an account at any university you can use it to read this research.

I have chosen to postulate that the triangular cuts were chevrons, since the killer according to what I have found was a police official and since I have found other data sources that clearly show he did communicate with the police. So I postulate this and have it as a working hypothesis based on a coherent theory built on several data sources showing him to have been communicating with the police in order to let them look as fools in his own eyes.

Speaking about eyes, there is an idea within ripperology that the cuts on Eddowe´s eyes also "meant something". Ideas of this kind always tend to be speculative. It is easier to interpret known symbols like "triangels" and "chevrons" than to interpret things that are not known symbols. Therefore a "triangle" and a "chevron" has a stronger meaning, distinguishing it from nonsymbolic artefacts (often nonfigurative) which give way to far more interpretation.

And in the case of the eyes, the eyes themselves should therefore be more symbolically interpretable than the nonfigurative or nonsymbolic cuts on them.

Historically "eyes" have always had a lot of heavy symbolic value. We see it in the Ripper case where some believe that what the victim saw at the moment of death could be captured with a camera (Walter Dew wrote about that in the Kelly case).

And we see if often in religious metaphorical and allegorical language. An example is the blind man that Jesus "heals". When the man can see, he starts to believe in Christ. And the allegory is naturally that the man was blind to "true knowledge about the son of god". You have the same in the story of Paul seeing a light and then becoming temporarily blind. It is an old idea so you also have it in Homer where Teiresias the blind seer (yes, the greeks loved contradictions like that one!) sees better than anyone although he was blind, and, in Plato´s sense, even better than everybody else just because he was blind.

And these allegories are and were (in the 19th century and earlier) popularized through the spreading of the new testament. People often talk about the jews in Spitalfields but let´s not forget that the Salvation Army started off there and there were both catholics and others living in the area, confessing to different types of christianity. So the knowledge about the meaning of "seeing" and "eyes" in a symbolic way has been known and recognized for a long time in Europe and England.

Well, could we then interpret the cuts in the eyes as having any meaning - if they were intentional (which is just a simple yes/no question that anyone could guess since we have no statement from Dr Brown that the triangular cuts had anything to do with the cut in the nose)?

If you were the killer, Fisherman, and you were a police official with knowledge of symbolical meaning of "eyes" and you knew your chevrons - what would you want to say with making cuts in the eyelids of the victim?

Perhaps you would say: "Open your eyes and see who you are dealing with , you fools!".

I don´t know.

But I know one thing, Fisherman. Dr Brown is the primary source. And the primary source states that the two cuts on Eddowes´cheeks are triangular cuts. Not "u´s". And you are no source at all for this issue.

Partyspoiler.

Regards Pierre

A triangle has three sides, and three defined angles. The flaps on Eddowes had two sides and no angles.

The killer COULD have made a V if he wanted to. He did not.

Eddowes´ eyes were not cut. Her eyelids were. And THOSE cuts could not be collateral damage, as the flaps certainly could - and probably are.

Your reliance on Brown and his being a primary source is touching. It can never turn the flaps into triangles anyway. The had a vague resemblance of triangles, that´s all. And they would have, owing to the underlying structure they were cut into. Eddowes had protruding cheekbones and was slim. If the killer had cut flaps into Chapmans face, they would still be distantly reminiscent of a trianle shape, but less so than on Eddowes. It´s no rocket science.

Take a knife and cut shallowly into an apple, peeling up flaps and you will get what was on Eddowes face.

It won´t turn that apple into a chevroned general, though.

[Wickerman]

It is easier to interpret known symbols like "triangels" and "chevrons" than to interpret things that are not known symbols. Therefore a "triangle" and a "chevron" has a stronger meaning, distinguishing it from nonsymbolic artefacts (often nonfigurative) which give way to far more interpretation.

If you intended to draw a chevron on someone face, wouldn't you use the tip of the knife?
The killer didn't.

You haven't explained why these 'chevrons' on Eddowes face are drawn upside down, IF, they are supposed to suggest police.



The marks on her face are just slices into her cheeks, regardless of how anyone describes the shape of the cuts, the photograph of her face does not lie.

[Fisherman]

If you intended to draw a chevron on someone face, wouldn't you use the tip of the knife?
The killer didn't.

You haven't explained why these 'chevrons' on Eddowes face are drawn upside down, IF, they are supposed to suggest police.



The marks on her face are just slices into her cheeks, regardless of how anyone describes the shape of the cuts, the photograph of her face does not lie.

Didn´t the PC:s normally carry their chevrons on the cheeks...? Upside down, sort of??

[Wickerman]

Didn´t the PC:s normally carry their chevrons on the cheeks...? Upside down, sort of??

Silly me yes I forgot, wasn't it a warning to prostitutes.
Like, er, "these eyes are watching you", sorta thing.

[Bridewell]

I dunno, GUT, I am rather looking forward to see Pierre and Fisherman (or poster-Lechmere) take on each other's theories in what could be highly entertaining for the rest of us. Shall we set up a betting pool on who wins?

Fisherman. No contest.

[Michael W Richards]

The intentional vs collateral argument aside for the moment, surely its clear to all that the cutting of the nose was a superfluous action. It was intentionally cut. As was the section of colon, which like the nose, served no greater purpose. It was said that the cuts made on Annie Chapman were primarily made so as to facilitate the actions that the killer sought to eventually accomplish...which in that case was to obtain a complete uterus.

Its one of the reasons that I believe Annies killer proceeded expeditiously and with some discipline, whereas Kates killer severed a colon, traced a cut line around her navel, cut a nose, and ripped and cut some apron from her. I would imagine most of these actions added time to what is imagined by most as a very short time span within to work. And they served no greater purpose other than one imagined by the killer.

IF Lawende didn't see Kate these time issues disappear...but not the apparent objectives.

[Bridewell]

The testimony of Lechmere has had nothing to do with that during the time of my research. I found Lechmere´s testimony late in the research process and the theory was finished.

You assume that it was Lechmere who was lying. Far more likely to have been Mizen who needed to justify a slow response and a possible charge of neglect of duty. Lechmere, in his inquest testimony, doesn't mention a policeman being at the scene (nor does Paul) because there wasn't one.

[Bridewell]

IF Lawende didn't see Kate these time issues disappear...but not the apparent objectives.

I share the view that Lawende didn't see Kate Eddowes.

[Bridewell]

Hi,

I think it is best if people don´t assume anything about his rank and where he worked. It may not be fruitful for the discussion, since it will lead to the wrong conclusions.

But if one could find some general facts about any police officials to discuss it could be meaningful and lead forward.

Regards Pierre

Wickerman dealt with this chevron nonsense in his first post on this thread, Pierre. If you are the serious historical researcher you claim to be, why don't you take notice of people who have greater knowledge of the subject than you
?