change in modus operandi

[Natalie Severn]

Who says?

Chapman as a serious Ripper suspect is stupid rarely do serial killers change there m.o. unless the changing of the m.o. is there m.o. for example the Zodiac Killer.

The thinking on this matter is changing all the time.The suggestion-for that is ALL it is ,is based on FBI "profiling" and their late twentieth century statistics which are neither infallible nor scientifically proven.

[John Wheat]

Chapman as a serious Ripper suspect is stupid rarely do serial killers change there m.o. unless the changing of the m.o. is there m.o. for example the Zodiac Killer.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Caz and babybird---enjoyed these thoughtful posts.Chapman has to be ruled out before you can seriously consider others in my opinion.The pity is that though some police and ex police-especially Abberline- suspected him of being the Ripper,no search of his previous pubs or barber shops is recorded in the trial papers or the press of the day.This is frustrating since such searches could have yielded crucial evidence-but maybe it wasnt considered viable to conduct such searches after 15 years had elapsed since the autumn of terror.
Best
Norma

[babybird67]

excellent post Caz

Klosowski was adept at objectifying, controlling, using and murdering women. there is nothing theoretically, including change of modus operandi, which would rule him out of the running as a possible Ripper for me. A man capable of such cold-blooded murder of the very women who were closest to him, and in such a cruel and inhuman manner, would be capable theoretically of anything, including donning la di da clothes as deliberate disguise whilst appearing as plain old George to others.

In relation to the rippings, although you argue this method of murder was less refined than his poisonings, i see the rippings as much less cruel, since the victims by all acounts were dead pretty swiftly...they did not have the drawn out agonising deaths of Klosowski's wives.

[caz]

In the East End - Levisohn meets Klosowski (by his own estimation in 1888), keeping his acquaintance until 1890.

In Tottenham in 1894 - Levisohn meets Klosowski again, and notes his change of image, and the absence of his Polish wife and his children.

In court in 1903 - Levisohn identifies Klosowski, giving a history of their acquaintance to substantiate his identification, and noting that Klosowski still presents with the same affectations he had adopted in the "missing years" between 1890 and 1894.

Simple. The inevitable corollary is that Chapman's "la de da" image was not the one he presented in the East End in (c.)1888-1890.

Regards,

Mark

Hi Mark,

Many thanks for making the context clearer. I can see now how “la de da then” can be interpreted as “in 1894 but certainly not back in 1890” and not “la de da then as now, not changed a bit”.

What I can’t quite see - and this is addressed to all - is what real difference it makes in terms of this thread. Whatever Klosowski’s circumstances were like in 1888, he would presumably have had aspirations to better himself and he had to clothe himself somehow or frighten the horses. The old clothes markets brimmed over with opportunities for a man on the tightest budget to kit himself out in threadbare versions of garments that were once bought new by the smart and stylish.

Also, while I don’t know how true it is, I have seen it suggested that serial killers can stop if they have a strong enough reason to do so, such as a distinct improvement in their personal circumstances, which could be social, material or marital. Assuming Klosowski did indeed undergo a complete change of ‘image’ between 1890 and 1894, some would argue that he could have cast off a need to overpower and cut up poor street women, along with his cheap second-hand clothes, once he had achieved the la de da status that made him feel good about himself.

But sooner or later his new status in life evidently proved no match for his underlying compulsion to have women totally under his power and control, and those he had succeeded in attracting into his life by conventional means were to pay the price.

Would it be so strange for a man destined to become a serial murderer, who was capable of refining himself, in the way it's claimed that Klosowski had by 1894, to have refined the way he exercised power over women too, as part of the same refinement process? A very brief episode of crude and opportunistic field surgery during his early unrefined period, but when the newly refined man emerges, all la de da and smart, the butcher in him will have departed for good with his bloody apron to fit the new improved image, leaving the chemist in him free to experiment in his clean white coat.

Not the most likely solution, I’d say, but by no means out of the question. The basic capacity for getting women on their own and destroying them is at least a definitely ascertained fact in this case. Many on the suspect list are not even known to have harmed a single hair on a female head.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Ever heard the expression "all fur coat and no knickers?"---- it certainly fits Chapman who seems to have spent spent spent on boats,bicycles,guns and cool clothes!

... in the mid/late 1890s, Nats. I just can't see a newly-arrived Eastern European immigrant barber getting similarly kitted-out during his first year in London.

[Natalie Severn]

Now now Sam---you do some great big grasshopping here.Nobody said anything about him making "huge sums" of money.I know you are referring again to the astrakhan fur collar on the coat of Mr Spats in Commercial Street.
Ever heard the expression "all fur coat and no knickers?"---- it certainly fits Chapman who seems to have spent spent spent on boats,bicycles,guns and cool clothes!

[Sam Flynn]

but it often seems that the whole of Whitechapel and Spitalfields seems to be tarred with the same 'slum' brush.

Agreed, John, but yours (and Nats') cogent observations relate to an entirely different point to the one I'm making. That there were the odd pockets of (comparative) wealth in the East End is quite true - even so, as a whole, it was a desperately poor area.

My point is that it's absurd to believe that Klosowski would have been raking in vast sums of money as an immigrant Polish barber in the basement of a Whitechapel pub, a stone's throw away from some of the most squalid slums in the history of Britain, and surrounded on all sides by impoverished immigrants (stick-makers, boot repairers and sweated tailors) who almost certainly comprised the bulk of his clientele.

[Natalie Severn]

true!
Must get your book when I get back to London [from Wales]---really looking forward to it!
x

[John Bennett]

That's London for ya!

(and probably most cities, actually...)

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks John,
and regarding living in areas where rich rub shoulders with poor-nowhere could be more illustrative than Notting Hill next to Ladbroke Grove;Holland Park next to Shepherds Bush and in today"s Spitalfields places like Fournier Street next to the bits of Brick Lane where just a bit East you come across real hardship and over crowding still.
Cheers
Norma

[John Bennett]

I have to agree with Nats on this point.

I think a lot of work has gone into telling us how awful the conditions were in the East End in the LVP and I do not doubt for a second that certain areas (Flower & Dean St, Dorset St , Great Pearl St , Thrawl St and Bell Lane to name but a few) were pretty awful, but it often seems that the whole of Whitechapel and Spitalfields seems to be tarred with the same 'slum' brush.

TV documentaries in particular only seem to concentrate on these conditions to the point where one is forgiven for believing that the whole district east of Aldgate was a feral nightmare were 'life was cheap'.

The Booth maps and reports (for example) indicate 'comfortably-off' folk (coloured red) on the main thoroughfares, but this would be because they ran shops. The local businessmen, if you like. That would include Commercial Street and Whitechapel High Street. And yet I thoroughly understand that terrible conditions prevailed mere yards from these roads. Such differences of living exist today - how many of us here live in what is considered a 'nice' part of town with a 'dodgy' district over the road. I know I have.

[Natalie Severn]

Where were the "non-slum" areas, Nats? Was there an invisible force-field around the White Hart and Toynbee Hall that shielded them from the filth, poverty and degradation in the adjoining streets? Apart from which, I doubt that Revd Barnett ever had to work in the basement of a poky pub.

Just out of curiosity,have you ever visited the Toynbee Hall Complex and taken a look at the lovely quadrangle modelled on Oxbridge Colleges[built in 1884]? I also called your attention to the great "myth debunker" George Sims,who rich as he was loved nothing more than to get to Whitechapel High Street in the 1880"s and enjoy its vibrancy,colourful shops and cosmopolitan atmosphere.He lived in Regents Park in an elegant town house but he dismissed the idea that Whitechapel was just one great dreary grey slum,particularly around the area of which we speak,where Chapman worked in 1888.
I admit Sims was one of several high placed journalists who spoke -and wrote moving poems about -about the dreadful poverty and conditions that existed in parts of Whitechapel[ one third of Whitechapel lived below the poverty level at the time].But he made every effort to be precise about where people were worst hit and enthused about Whitechapel High Street being as enjoyable for him as a trip to the continent in terms of its atmosphere, the richly ornamented young jewesses who paraded there at the weekend----in several journals.

[Sam Flynn]

The section of Whitechapel High Street ,where Rev Barnett lived in the Toynbee Hall complex and where the White Hart Public House-and its basement barber shop was situated, was not a Slum area of Whitechapel in 1888.

Where were the "non-slum" areas, Nats? Was there an invisible force-field around the White Hart and Toynbee Hall that shielded them from the filth, poverty and degradation in the adjoining streets? Apart from which, I doubt that Revd Barnett ever had to work in the basement of a poky pub.

[Natalie Severn]

...at different times, and both were located in desperately poor areas of London. Also, we don't know that he owned the Cable Street shop - he could have been managing it, and he was almost certainly renting it. Whatever, his next move up the entrepreneurial ladder was to be an assistant at, before running, a barber shop in the cellar of a slum-district pub!

In the light of the above, any illusions that he was well-off in the 1880s, to the extent of being a "la de da", should be tempered with more than a grain of salt. Or tartar-emetic, as the case may be.

Correction:Whitechapel High Street,according to chronicler of the time and Macnaghten"s friend George Sims,was NOT "Desperately poor".Sims rubbishes such claims and says the Jewish women dressed very finely indeed in this street where they paraded!---there are other accounts apart from his too.
Cable Street,like Berner Street,was not "desperately poor" .It consisted for the most part of a strip of shops facing a stretch of railway arches.

FACT: The section of Whitechapel High Street ,where Rev Barnett lived in the Toynbee Hall complex and where the White Hart Public House-and its basement barber shop was situated, was not a Slum area of Whitechapel in 1888.