thought experiment

[Ben]

Oh, I don't know, Dave,

I'm pretty sure he could have catered to all his dietry and clothing needs by visiting the many shops owned by foreigners. I doubt he'd have been limiting himself at all.

Best wishes,
Ben

[protohistorian]

ok then, was a nice discourse

[c.d.]

Well I am a firm believer in capitalism (well maybe not as much as I did before). If Chapman were the Ripper, you had a buyer (Chapman) and a seller (prostitutes) both eager to consummate (pun intended) the deal. The whole affair could have been done by gestures. No English required. As far as witnesses saying that they heard the Ripper conversing in English we can't be certain they were in fact observing Jack.

c.d.

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Norma,



But Levisshon offered no such caveat when he gave his rather crucial evidence on oath at the trial. If there was any time to specifiy that "while SK could speak English, he didn't personally to me" it was certainly the trial. Instead, her clearly differntiates between the language spoken by SK the 1880s and the languagae spoken by him in 1895. By the latter date, he had clearly divested himself of his almost exclusively foreign friends and clientele, and "now" spoke English.

He might have known the odd word of two in the early days, but I see no eivdence that he could properly converse in English at that time, and indications aplenty that he couldn't.

Best regards,
Ben

Ben,
We dont know either the level of Wolff Levishon"s speaking and listening skills in 1888/89.If he himself was an immigrant Polish speaker,he would simply bave been in no position to judge the English speaking and listening of Severin.It requires between five and seven years of living in England and being educated in English in an English speaking environment to acquire CALP-ie cognitive/academic language proficiency.
As it stands its highly likely that both Wolff and Severin acquired English BICS within the twelve months that those of average ability usually acquire it.As a rule passive[listening] skills are far ahead of speaking skills,but after about twelve months,most people of normal intelligence,living and working in an environment such as a barber"s shop,will be able to converse using basic vocabulary and sentence structuring.There is every reason to believe Severin was of average,if not above average intelligence.
Best
Norma

[Sam Flynn]

Well thanks for not even addressing my point and just repeating your own argument.

Just for clarification, Caz.

Can you not even bring yourself to acknowledge that the serial killers who make the most or biggest mistakes are also the most likely to get caught eventually

"Likely" doesn't mean that they are invariably caught - and neither does making mistakes. I've yet to meet anyone (serial offender or otherwise) who does not make them.

Anyway, it's not just about making mistakes - it's about general behaviour in all circumstances. No reason to suppose that, just because he was caught, the rabbit in my stewpot wasn't copulating yesterday, eating veg or having a crap in a field. It's how the overwhelming majority of them behave.

[Sam Flynn]

There is every reason to believe Severin was of average,if not above average intelligence.

His written English was still rather poor even after he came back from the States, Nats - at least there's little evidence that he'd grasped English syntax if two handwritten notes of his are anything to go by.

These read: "came from America in 1893 independent", and "deposits £100 when from America I had £1000". Whenever these were written - definitely post 1893, quite possibly a bit later - they clearly show a man who hadn't quite mastered his adopted tongue.

[Howard Brown]

A little while back,JMenges made the comment:

"Chapman has been characterized as a man who callously rid himself of the women whom he tired of. Once the female in his life bored him, snap of the fingers and they could be gone."

JM didn't pick that out of the air since its also been parroted on other threads relative to Chapman. There's really no way of determining whether Chapman was EVER fond of or enamored with his subsequent victims...and a theory that the murders were already planned in advance before wedlock is just as likely as the concept he "got tired of them" and then killed them. Its quite possible Chapman looked into the future for his victims and chose the approximate time he would begin to poison them slowly to death. Even if Chapman stated in court or to a confidant that he had once been fond of any of the women...serial killers are all liars,period.

What could this mean in terms of how we look at Chapman? Very simply that the other notion of him having a self-perception of himself being a failure might need a reevaluation or at least, consideration. Anyone committed to a time schedule which allows for a "cooling off" period to avoid as much suspicion as possible as Chapman being the husband surely would have attracted... or premeditated plan of attack as Chapman may have put into action....seems likely to have an over inflated perception of himself and may have had a sense of being "superior" within himself.

Glenn Andersson mentioned:

In all honesty, Klosowski was an idiot for killing victims that could be personally linked to him and for choosing the same modus operandi each time but he was a calculating poisoner where the crimes involved a certain amount of planning, self-control and manipulation.

True, he was the prime suspect to us and probably to the majority of those who investigated the women's deaths....but many poisoners who have been apprehended simply poisoned one too many a victim and their intelligence level or their selection of victims would never have been factored in since they would never have been apprehended....if they had only stopped with the penultimate victim.

Would he have been labeled an idiot had he stopped with two wives? Would he have been arrested, tried and convicted ?

I agree,for what its worth,with the underlined sentence of Glenn's observation. I think he had envisioned his wives as "dead ducks" the minute he first met them and made his first move on them.

My man CD thinks like I do. You don't need no steenkin' English to made a move on a prostitute at midnight in areas where prostitutes habituate. Point to the crotch...show some coin...and you're in....like Sam Flynn.

[Sam Flynn]

but many poisoners who have been apprehended simply poisoned one too many a victim and their intelligence level or their selection of victims would never have been factored in since they would never have been apprehended....if they had only stopped with the penultimate victim.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, though, How. 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.

Now, neither his intelligence nor his behaviour can have altered much since the deaths of Mary Spink and Bessie Taylor - on the contrary, we have the same person involved in all three deaths. Therefore - apropos my "stewed rabbit" metaphor (sorry, Caz!) - it's simply a case of his having been "caught", rather than any intrinsic difference in his psychological makeup at the time of his third murder.

[Ben]

Hi Norma,

If he himself was an immigrant Polish speaker,he would simply bave been in no position to judge the English speaking and listening of Severin.

That would only be true if he didn't know what English sounded like, which clearly wasn't the case since he was able to differentiate a Klosowski who spoke Polish and a bit of Yiddish in 1889 from a Klosowski who could speak English by 1895. If, as Gareth mentioned, his written English was poor even around the latter time frame, then his spoken English six years earlier when he had just arrived in England must have been virtually non-existent, tallying nicely with Levisshon's observations.

All the best,
Ben

[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.

[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.

[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!]

[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.

[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.

[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