thought experiment

[Natalie Severn]

I am not quite getting the language argument here. Were these ladies that had to be wooed by sonnets and rhyming couplets or was it simply a matter of holding out some money?

c.d.

Good point c.d.

[c.d.]

I am not quite getting the language argument here. Were these ladies that had to be wooed by sonnets and rhyming couplets or was it simply a matter of holding out some money?

c.d.

[Natalie Severn]

But Levisshon didn't say that Klosowski could speak English "much more confidently by 1895", Norma.

He said that Klosowski spoke English in 1895, which contrasts markedly with his observations about Klosowski's spoken languages in 1889.

It has nothing to do with proficiency. It has to do with speaking a language versus not speaking a language. Levisshon lists the languages that Klosowski spoke in the early days, and they didn not include English. This, again, would be a pointless and irrelevant topic to breech at Klosowski's trail if the gist of the observation was simply that they spoke Polish and Yiddish to eachother. But no such caveat was mentioned, which meant the observation was not pointless at all.

Ben,
Whatever Levishon"s observations were about Severin"s English Language skills in 1888/9 they would not be a fair or comprehensive assessment.Nor was he qualified to do so.

Levishon was a fellow Pole,whose first language was Polish.He would not have been competent to assess Severin"s English language skills.All Levishon would have been qualified to do, would have been able to discuss his command of Polish and Yiddish in which Levishon himself was a native speaker and that is all.
I can speak French,but if a fellow Londoner met me in France,I would not speak in French with him or her,I would speak in English .Also .if that person decided to carry out a linguistic "assessment" of my speaking and listening skills in French on the basis of a few "overheard" snippets and feel themselves qualified to report on them some 15 years later as a sort of qualified expert,I would find it extremely presumptive of him or her to say the very least.

[Ben]

But OFCOURSE Ben, he would have spoken English so much more confidently by 1895.There is no argument over that.

But Levisshon didn't say that Klosowski could speak English "much more confidently by 1895", Norma.

He said that Klosowski spoke English in 1895, which contrasts markedly with his observations about Klosowski's spoken languages in 1889.

It has nothing to do with proficiency. It has to do with speaking a language versus not speaking a language. Levisshon lists the languages that Klosowski spoke in the early days, and they didn not include English. This, again, would be a pointless and irrelevant topic to breech at Klosowski's trail if the gist of the observation was simply that they spoke Polish and Yiddish to eachother. But no such caveat was mentioned, which meant the observation was not pointless at all.

[Malcolm X]

you see, what has always bothered me about Chapman is that, the only way to kill live in lovers that others know that you're having relationships with, and to escape detection is to poison them..... to use a knife is way too risky.

but what sways it for me; is that during this period of time, there are no more ripper style murders out on the streets, this tells me he's a poisoner only.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,



Of course he would have.

He knew him and was in a position to know, and yet he makes the clear and important distinction between a Klosowski in the 1880s who spoke Polish and Yiddish, and a Klosowski who was speaking English by 1895. Surely the commonsense deduction is that he'd learned the language in the interim, most probably when he escaped the confines of his Polish community and was forced to mingle with the English. It's not a question of the level of skill involved - Levisshon knew him and observed that he was speaking English by 1895, an irrelevent and meaningless observation if Klosowski could also speak English in the 1880s.

I've never been more confident as to the simplest explanation with this one, m'afraid.

Best regards,
Ben

But OFCOURSE Ben, he would have spoken English so much more confidently by 1895.There is no argument over that.
The argument is over whether Levishon,as a NON NATIVE speaker of English could have "assessed" another Poles proficiency in English within that specific period,1888/89.My own belief is that Levishon was talking nonsense since the two men would not,at that stage,have been talking in English to each other.Why would they when they were both Polish speakers?What are you saying anyway---that he couldnt speak a word of English in 1888?

[Malcolm X]

I agree with you to a great extent Malcolm.However despite what it looks like, Chapman appears, on the face of it, to have only become a murderer in his late thirties.
The question therefore remains.Why did he start at such a late age?
What was he up to before that?

yes what was he up to......

you see, he didn't kill them for money; as you've said

what was he up to before then?.........i shouldn't say this and i dont want to, but i think he had killed a few times before this.

i would say in this earlier years, that he was out on the street late at night searching for women ( sex ), evidence seems to point towards this; but was he the Ripper, switching his MO in later life; to hide the murders of women that other people knew he was having relationships with..

NO, because he was not killing as the Ripper out on the streets during this later period of time..

this poisoner, is a vastly different type of killer, it's softly softly hands off; it's a coward at work....not a street luking monster!

but....yes the doubts still remain, because this monster was still evil enough to be the ripper

[Ben]

Hi Norma,

Levishon would have had no knowledge of Severin"s passive understanding of English in 1888.

Of course he would have.

He knew him and was in a position to know, and yet he makes the clear and important distinction between a Klosowski in the 1880s who spoke Polish and Yiddish, and a Klosowski who was speaking English by 1895. Surely the commonsense deduction is that he'd learned the language in the interim, most probably when he escaped the confines of his Polish community and was forced to mingle with the English. It's not a question of the level of skill involved - Levisshon knew him and observed that he was speaking English by 1895, an irrelevent and meaningless observation if Klosowski could also speak English in the 1880s.

I've never been more confident as to the simplest explanation with this one, m'afraid.

Best regards,
Ben

[Natalie Severn]

quite period = not Jack the Ripper...
yes serial killers can go years without killing, but they dont usually start killing at 40; normally much younger..

and not such a huge switch in MO either, a violent mutilator is unlikely to totally quit the violence; in favour of poisoning only, it's too much of a switch...

expect the Ripper to switch to normal style of stabbings only, or to use another weapon...but not poisoning..

the ZODIAC KILLER switched his MO as much as this, but for Chapman i think not.

I agree with you to a great extent Malcolm.However despite what it looks like, Chapman appears, on the face of it, to have only become a murderer in his late thirties.
The question therefore remains.Why did he start at such a late age?
What was he up to before that?

Mary Spink was the only wife he was able to gain from financially.The last wife ,eighteen year old Maud Marsh,was the daughter of a labourer and he had nothing to inherit whatsoever----except the noose!His previous wife to her Bessie Taylor was also without money of her own.

[Malcolm X]

Hi Malcolm X,
You make a mistake here.Chapman was not poisoning his wives in 1888 or 1889 or 1890 or 1891/2/3/4/5----that we know of anyway.
We only know he started his series of wife killings,by poison,in the latter part of the last decade of the nineteenth century.Up until then there is only Lucy Baderski saying he was violent to her and threatened to cut off her head one night in 1890,after which she fled back to England on her own in a state of extreme fear.

yes i know that sorry, i used to be seriously into Chapman, but not nowadays; i still have my doubts..... but i'm not the die hard believer i was.

there is something truly evil about him, that could mean that he was the Ripper, but i cant describe it...i only sense it.

i sense he was the Ripper, but i dismiss it from my mind.... because it doesn't make sense for a poisoner like him to be the Ripper, it goes against all teachings; everything you read here and on the web...... yes its all very much a mystery

i've always been either a Chapman or Hutchinson.... but nowadays my suspicion is much more on Hutch

[Malcolm X]

By the way------what do people make of Severin"s "quiet period"-----ie between his arrival here in the uk some time in 1887 and 1896 when he started killing his wives ----ie a period of some 8 years when he wasnt murdering anyone we know about?Is that how serial killers always behave---- murder being a kind of a mid life crisis sort of thing? By the look of things he wasnt a murderer until he was moving towards 40 years of age![ pull the other one!]

quite period = not Jack the Ripper...
yes serial killers can go years without killing, but they dont usually start killing at 40; normally much younger..

and not such a huge switch in MO either, a violent mutilator is unlikely to totally quit the violence; in favour of poisoning only, it's too much of a switch...

expect the Ripper to switch to normal style of stabbings only, or to use another weapon...but not poisoning..

the ZODIAC KILLER switched his MO as much as this, but for Chapman i think not.

[Natalie Severn]

Chapman was evil enough to be the Ripper...easily....but no, not the right personality....

Chapman can only be the ripper, if he was a ``true`` Jeckyl and Hyde type personality..a Ripper out on the street, but a smooth poisoner at home..

but this theory falls flat on its face because, there are no more ripper style murders after Kelly.

Hi Malcolm X,
You make a mistake here.Chapman was not poisoning his wives in 1888 or 1889 or 1890 or 1891/2/3/4/5----that we know of anyway.
We only know he started his series of wife killings,by poison,in the latter part of the last decade of the nineteenth century.Up until then there is only Lucy Baderski saying he was violent to her and threatened to cut off her head one night in 1890,after which she fled back to England on her own in a state of extreme fear.

[Natalie Severn]

Sam and Ben,
This is a subject I actually did post grad research in----Bilingual learners and rates of learning another language.
Levishon would have had no knowledge of Severin"s passive understanding of English in 1888.It would have required an expertise in linguistic development to tap and is difficult for teachers even these days to determine without both a native speakers knowledge of English and an understanding,by the assessor ,of the person"s mother tongue.This could have been either through an interpreter--in this case a Polish interpreter would have been needed alongside a fluent speaker of English.-Levishon would not have been likely to have been able to play this role because,as an immigrant and a native Polish and Yiddish speaker and second [or third] language user himself , although he himself may have acquired conversational skills in English, he would not have been likely to have been able to accurately assess Severin"s conversational skills----or his listening and understanding skills in English ---few people are able to assess language acquisition accurately in the early stages,it is actually a very complex process since many people will only use a second language when they feel fully competent to do so, whereas others will pitch in regardless and be quite happy to use a form of "pidgin English" forever,believing themselves to be fully competent English speakers at a very early stage .It is often astonishing to find that such speakers as these dont have the listening skills or grasp of nuance and subtlety of understanding English , that someone else has who "appears" on the surface to have "no English" but in fact simply doesnt feel confident to speak English at that point in time.

Why Levishon believed himself to be competent to assess the linguistic skills in English of a fellow Pole I dont know, but I am confident that he was extremely unlikely to have been.

Sam,
Regarding those brief notes Severin made,his use of vocabulary here is actually quite impressive.Ok- the syntax is slightly awkward just as one would expect since it takes between five and seven years to acquire cognitive academic linguistic proficiency-----but it denotes his growing understanding of financial matters in English.
Cognitive/academic competence is best acquired during exposure to the host language in an academic institution such as a school or a college,ie in the service of other learning-----viz in academic subjects such as English Literature,Maths ,Science.Severin was actually managing well given the circumstances of his acquiring English.


Best
Natalie

By the way------what do people make of Severin"s "quiet period"-----ie between his arrival here in the uk some time in 1887 and 1896 when he started killing his wives ----ie a period of some 8 years when he wasnt murdering anyone we know about?Is that how serial killers always behave---- murder being a kind of a mid life crisis sort of thing? By the look of things he wasnt a murderer until he was moving towards 40 years of age![ pull the other one!]

[Malcolm X]

Chapman was evil enough to be the Ripper...easily....but no, not the right personality....

Chapman can only be the ripper, if he was a ``true`` Jeckyl and Hyde type personality..a Ripper out on the street, but a smooth poisoner at home..

but this theory falls flat on its face because, there are no more ripper style murders after Kelly.

[Howard Brown]

Isn't it true in Chapman's case that his downfall didn't come about through his own stupidity, nor even (in an odd sense) because of what he did - more that it came about through what his "in-laws" did? Had Mr and Mrs Marsh not taken the initiative to get Dr Grapel to check out Maud's condition, Klosowski might well have gone on to kill more and more women. Sam Flynn

Indeed,Sam. Chapman could well have continued until he was apprehended post-Maud Marsh...or died...or been incarcerated for some other unrelated offense. I don't think that he displays stupidity,but a sense of purpose...and come to think of it, had he been of the mindset that some people attempt to see him in ( as knife wielder-cum-poisoner), I for one would think he'd have used a knife ( even if only a threatening gesture) in a controlled environment on one of his wives rather than the street in an uncontrolled environment. He poisoned them in a controlled environment,obviously. Its a lot safer for someone in a scenario such as that being a coward as he was,I'd think.....

I think the line that delineates the Whitechapel Murderer from Chapman is that to kill on the streets takes some balls and courage in a weird way....and poisoning someone is a coward's way of killing or a sadist's who likes to see 'em suffer for a long time as opposed to the speedy dispatching of an anonymous victim.