The Diary

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Hi Tempus.

Not to speak for Phil, but you asked questions about the chemise earlier on this thread. I attempted to answer them in post #210 on pg 21.

Just curious whether you read it, and if you have any response?

Thank you,
Archaic

Hi Archaic! I haven't, sorry. I have lost track of a lot of this thread, to be honest. I will have a look at your post now.


Kind regards,


Tempus

[DVV]

then I remembered it was about 2 feet long, so if it was placed like the drawing showed but was a little longer, you could imagine that with the left arm and body line it could look like an M. The right leg from the knee to the foot looks like a J hence JM. Its is very lame but then Maybrick was a gamester.

Now you've broken all the records...

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Hi Tempus. I'll try to answer your questions.

Yes, the chemise was there the whole time. A flimsy little cotton chemise probably was not going to slow the killer down at all.

Why do you say the chemise has "no sign of cut marks or any disturbance"? If you look at the crime scene photograph, you'll see it's possible that the killer removed Mary's breasts right through her chemise. Or he may have pushed it up to make those cuts and pulled it down again later. We simply don't know.

As for not being disturbed, the chemise is clearly bunched up above the area of her pelvic mutilations.

It's very difficult for normal people to try to think like a perverted serial killer, but we have to try to look at the crime from the killer's point of view if we want to better understand what the killer was doing and why. You seem to want pat answers that are 'logical' when regarded from the viewpoint of your Maybrick theory, but where's the logic in slaughtering a young woman and taking her body apart with a knife? We are obviously dealing with Abnormal Psychology here- behaviors that are about as far as you can get from the norm. It's really very difficult to try to get inside the head of a brutal killer. It's uncomfortable, unpleasant, and often sickening. It involves stepping out of your comfort zone.

Maybe the killer was actually titillated by the poor little chemise. Maybe leaving it in place added an extra fillip of pleasure for him.
Yeah, it's not a black lace bustier and a g-string, but this was 1888, when just seeing a lady's fully clothed ankle was considered sexy! A chemise was an intimate piece of a woman's apparel. Bras didn't come in until the 1920's, and prostitutes like Mary seldom wore a corset or underwear.. frankly, they just got in the way of business.

Here's another possibility- the killer might actually have asked Mary to leave her chemise on because he liked it! God only knows what turned him on and why.

Either way, once he had slit her throat, do you really expect him to stop what he's doing, put down his knife, and attempt to remove a sleeved garment from a bloody corpse lying on a bed? At that point I don't think "interruptus" would have appealed to him.

I think he also probably used the chemise to help mop up the excess blood, so he could get a better view of his "work" as he went along.



Why on earth do you say that? If his "sole purpose" was "to kill her and then escape", why didn't he just slit her throat and leave? Why bother to inflict all the grotesque mutilations??

In fact, that odd statement of yours would seem to negate your own theory- that the killer chose to hang around carving the alphabet into Mary's corpse.

Not trying to be argumentative, but you asked for answers and I've merely attempted to supply them.

Best regards,
Archaic

Hi Archaic! Great response, but I totally disagree. There is no way this chemise could have remained in that position in such a frenzied attack - especially if the body under the chemise has been mutilated. The chemise is quite clearly equidistant between the left arm and the the left thigh. This is a purposely placed piece of material (very much like the left arm). The whole shape of it betrays the fact that it has been positioned there on purpose.

The chemise is bunched up above the pelvic area because the murderer has deliberately compressed the material with his hands, Archaic. The finger marks are clearly visible. The large semi-circle to the right (looking from the reverse angle) was made when the four fingers of the right hand pushed into the side of the material as the murderer moulded into the shape he required. The large indentation in this large semi circle is made by the forefinger of the right hand. On the oposite side you can see a smaller and shallower indentation which matches perfectly with the left thumb.

If this piece of her clothing were there during the mutilations, Archaic, the whole thing would be ripped to shreads, be saturated in blood and be dispersed randomly over the body. It is not. It is clearly compressed an sittingly neatly on top of the body.There is absolutely no point in any murderer leaving, or replacing, this piece of material unless he had a specific reason to do so, Archaic.

At the end of the day, Archaic, that is a deliberate cut on her left arm in the shape of an F. Next to this there is a piece of chemise that has been very thoughtfully placed back on top of the body - or, by your reasoning, remained there all the time during the attack - by someone, let's say, who wasn't Maybrick, and that just so happens to form something in the shape Of an M. So that our would-be forger can come along - God Knows how many years later - and be lucky enough to find something (that, remember, no one has ever mentioned before) that happens to look like the exact initials he requires. How fortunate.


Kind regards,


Tempus

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Tempus -

Many capital letters in the latin alphabet are composed of straight lines. Natural processes will often form letter shapes, accordingly (because natural processes can form straight lines)

There are many issues with your theory (using the term loosely)

One of them is that your 'F' is upside down. Why? One of them is that it is not the only possible 'letter' on the arm - so what are we to make of the potential 'C' or 'G' a bit further up. One of them is that you could be looking at blood run off. Gravity will do that.

Look at the behaviour of rain on a window, and you'll see what I mean.

Sally, I have already explained why the F is upside down. If you read the diary correctly, you can find out too. The point is that it is upside down, so regardless of explanations, whoever was in the room did it. Can you not see the left arm is bent?

Sally, I cannot understand why you cannot grasp the the difference between random smudges on the body (or wherever they are) and a large, deep, delibertaely made cut with clear right angles. Do you not understand that to make such a cut the murderer (Maybrick or not) would have had to have made the decision to do it. That means there was a reason behind it.

It could have been gravity that made blood role into this shape(?)! Which way might the blood have been running, Sally. How fortunate of it to flow and then congeal just in time to make perfect right angles an near perfect straight lines. And also how good of this blood to form the exact shape that our forger needs. Nice idea, Sally, but I think not.




Kind regards,


Tempus

[Tempus omnia revelat]

True, there is no reference to "FM" or "F" or "M". But the diarist
does say he's left his mark.

But how coincidental is it that of all the letter
combinations possible in a 26 character alphabet, 1,352
to be exact (if my math is correct), that those two
particular letters were chosen? And if they are some
sort of photographic artifact, why does nothing of
the sort appear in the photo of the table with the
viscera piled on it? Presumably both pictures were
taken with the same camera at the same time, by
the same photographer.

And then there's this:

New York Times November 10, 1888
LONDON'S SMALL POLICE FORCE.


Anothor murder by the Whitechapel assassin is reported, and unless he
becomes alarmed and abandons his project, as announced in writing near
the body of one of his victims, of making the number of his atrocious
crimes an even score, and then giving himself up to the police, many
more will apparently follow, as the London police seem absolutely
powerless to put an end to these mysterious crimes....


Brooklyn Eagle Tuesday December 28, 1897

Circumstantial Evidence
An interesting story of the "Jack the Ripper" Murder


A chat about circumstantial testimony in murder cases,
apropos of the Luetgert case, brings to mind a remarkable
instance of the fallibility of human testimony as regards
the identification of the human body, of more recent date
than any instance quoted yesterday. It is part of the history
of that remarkable series of atrocious muders committed in the
Whitechapel district of London, in the autumn of 1888, by a man
who is known indefinitely in criminal annals as "Jack the Ripper".
His fourth victim was a widow named Mary Ann Chapman. Her mutiliated
body was found at daylight in the yard of a house in Hanbury
Street. On the shutter of the adjoining dwelling there was found
scribbled with challk the following message from the mysterious
assassin: "I have murdered four, and will murder sixteen more before
I surrender myself to the police." Sir Charles Warren, who was in
charge of the Scotland Yard detective force, caused this prophecy
to be erased and was subsequently severely criticised for having done
so without securing a photographic reproduction of the murderer's
handwriting..."



Shirley Harrison The American connection p. 168

Quoted from the New York World November 10, 1888

"...Profiting from the previous blunders the police called
a photographer to take pictures of the room before the body
was removed. This gives rise to a report that there was
more handwriting on the wall, though three or four people
who were allowed to enter the room say they did not observe
it. But possibly they were too excited to notice such details..."


So apparently there were contemporaneous reports that
someone was writing on walls at the crime scenes during
the autumn of 1888.

FWIW

Liv

Great post, Livia. I knew about the last report, but I wasn't aware of the others.

The writing on the wall is Definitely there. It starts from the top left hand corner of the top panel, runs through that upper panel, then continues across the top of the lower panel and then continues inside the lower panel diagonally and horizontally.


Kind regards,


Tempus

[m rowley]

Hi Iain, No as far as I am aware there is no photo, however I read the description in one of my books and it said the colon looked as if it had been "placed" there, sort of deliberately, so I looked at the drawing in the photo archive here and wondered why the piece of gut was put there like that, then I remembered it was about 2 feet long, so if it was placed like the drawing showed but was a little longer, you could imagine that with the left arm and body line it could look like an M. The right leg from the knee to the foot looks like a J hence JM. Its is very lame but then Maybrick was a gamester.

I'm a casual observer and far from having the knowledge of you guys...but it was very dark in a poorly lit square and he knew the Police were already on the look out from the previous murder he had just committed not long before (if indeed Stride was a Ripper victim), so how would he be able to perform this little game of arranging body limbs and parts into letters?

Also (and again remember my knowledge on the subject is basic) if he did claim in the dairy that he committed both murders then wasn't both the murders on the double event acted out with different murder weapons? Wasn't the knife that killed Stride different to the one that killed Eddowes? I apologise deeply if I am wrong but wasn't one blunt and the murder weapon for Eddowes sharp? Surely if that is the case wouldn't the dairy have mentioned different weapons?

Anyway back to my dark corner trying not to make an ass out of myself again

[m rowley]

Great post, Livia. I knew about the last report, but I wasn't aware of the others.

The writing on the wall is Definitely there. It starts from the top left hand corner of the top panel, runs through that upper panel, then continues across the top of the lower panel and then continues inside the lower panel diagonally and horizontally.


Kind regards,


Tempus

I got the impression that the article had GSG confused with one of the other murders. When i did read the Dairy when it was first released i did notice F and M on the wall next to Kelly. However in some prints of the body i can also make out a P to the left of the F. I first noticed it in the 94 edition of the A-Z, anybody else noticed it?

[Livia]

Great post, Livia. I knew about the last report, but I wasn't aware of the others.

The writing on the wall is Definitely there. It starts from the top left hand corner of the top panel, runs through that upper panel, then continues across the top of the lower panel and then continues inside the lower panel diagonally and horizontally.


Kind regards,


Tempus

The only letters that I can clearly see in the reproductions
I have access to, is the FM just above MJK's wrist. And it
occurred to me that there is another FM involved in the
Ripper murders, Fanny Mortimer. I don't doubt that if
Stephen Knight had been more observant, or at least
as observant as Simon Wood, we would have been
told that the FM stood for Free Mason(s).

There does appear to be an F on the left fore arm,
but whether or not that is a series of incisions or
an artifact it's difficult to say. I also get your point
about the bunched up fabric having been placed
across the body post mutilations, but if his purpose
was to create another set of "FM" initials, why not
just carve an M next to or below the F on the arm?
Why create such a subtle and subjective "clue" which
runs the risk of not being recognized as such,
when the intials are written on the wall?

Liv

[Livia]

Thanks as always for another insightful post, Livia. And as I haven't thanked you on Casebook, let me again say that without your help I'd have had a far inferior presentation to make at York. I'm going to be putting up our notes at the Forums and then the Casebook Wiki at some point.

I am packing to go up to a grad school reunion (30th.....sigh.....) and don't have time to fact check but wasn't the coroner's jury brought to Miller's Court to see the room for themselves? That might bolster the argument that there was something worth seeing there.

But I do think it important to make clear what the Diarist does and doesn't claim. There's enough force field distortion around this thing as it is.

You're welcome and I look forward to reading the finished
product.

It doesn't appear as though the jurors ever visited Miller's
Court. From what the Coroner said, their only job was
to determine the cause of death, whether or not they
agreed with the doctor who said death was caused by
severance of the carotid artery. They were already
arguing over jurisdiction, so it's unlikely they would
have agreed to any sort of crime scene field trip,
although I'm not sure that they would have had a
choice, had it been ordered.

Enjoy your reunion.

Liv

[Steven Russell]

I take your point here, Caz.

Here are my views on the "initials" for what they are worth:
1) The chemise business - too daft to laugh at.
2) The upside down F on the arm - this could have been made by a sort of sawing motion travelling along the arm from the wrist side to the elbow side, a bit like how the kebab man cuts off strips of doner meat. The upright is made as the killer pushes the knife away from his body (twice) and the cross bars are made as he draws the knife back towards him. It's all part of a disgusting, frenzied attack and there need not be a conscious attempt at an upside down F.
3) The F on the wall - this is faint even on the most persuasive versions of the photo and I have serious doubts about its actually being there.
4) The M on the wall. I find this the most persuasive of the four. However, if its there and if it's a deliberately formed M, surely it's more likely to stand for Mary than anything else. A bit of drunken doodling done who knows when by the lady herself perhaps.

As usual, pure conjecture. Any thoughts?

Best wishes,
Steve.

Tempus,
I would be very interested to hear your views on my interpretation of the supposed letters.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[Phil Carter]

I got the impression that the article had GSG confused with one of the other murders. When i did read the Dairy when it was first released i did notice F and M on the wall next to Kelly. However in some prints of the body i can also make out a P to the left of the F. I first noticed it in the 94 edition of the A-Z, anybody else noticed it?

Hello m,

This is an interesting observation. So, may I conclude that you believe the print is determining the revelation? That throws an emphatical spotlight onto the print used in the Diary, vis a vis other known prints of the photograph in other books, magazines etc, does it not? Thanks for sharing your observation.

best wishes

Phil

[m rowley]

Hello m,

This is an interesting observation. So, may I conclude that you believe the print is determining the revelation? That throws an emphatical spotlight onto the print used in the Diary, vis a vis other known prints of the photograph in other books, magazines etc, does it not? Thanks for sharing your observation.

best wishes

Phil

To be honest I am open minded so take all theories with a pinch of salt, but do i think the 'F' and 'M' were deliberately written by the murderer? No because in some pictures you can see the forming of a letter 'P' as well and in some copies you can clearly see details but no letters on the wall.

Just my observation but i was hoping I wasn't the only one to have noticed that.

[miakaal4]

Not sure if there is any point saying this, but, look if you assume it was Maybrick that killed Eddows and the colon was "placed" then Maybrick did that for a reason. Nothing to do with satanic rituals or the Masons, just him playing games. He wouldn't "place" it for no reason. However, I say again my idea is a bit lame.

[Tempus omnia revelat]

The only letters that I can clearly see in the reproductions
I have access to, is the FM just above MJK's wrist. And it
occurred to me that there is another FM involved in the
Ripper murders, Fanny Mortimer. I don't doubt that if
Stephen Knight had been more observant, or at least
as observant as Simon Wood, we would have been
told that the FM stood for Free Mason(s).

There does appear to be an F on the left fore arm,
but whether or not that is a series of incisions or
an artifact it's difficult to say. I also get your point
about the bunched up fabric having been placed
across the body post mutilations, but if his purpose
was to create another set of "FM" initials, why not
just carve an M next to or below the F on the arm?
Why create such a subtle and subjective "clue" which
runs the risk of not being recognized as such,
when the intials are written on the wall?

Liv

Hi Livia!

I can assure you that, that F is not manufactured, it is a deliberate cut. The condition of the skin around the area of the wrist proves this. If this was in the shape of anything other than an F, Livia, we would not be having this conversation. But because it relates to the diary, we all seem to be making excuses for something that is clearly there. Are the two cuts on the upper left arm tricks of a camera angle or just artifacts (as you put it)? Of course they are not! We know that. So why is this any different?

With regards the reason behind the initial itself. The whole thing is to do with the diarist saying that he has been clever with them. For starters, there is no real room to carve both F and M on the same arm and have them along side one another. Secondly, even if there was room, carving two initials on the arm would not be clever; they would be far too easy to spot. This defeats the whole point of why Maybrick left them there in the first place: namely, to test the officials ability to find them. It is a game to him, Livia. Throughtout the diary he mocks there inability to catch him. If they find the initials, he may be a bit dissapointed, but no real harm as come from it. If they do not notice them, he can have a good laugh at the fact that he has left something for them to find - right in front of them - and they have still failed to notice it.

If something is there for all eyes to see, Livia, and yet - as the diarist says - they will not find it, it must mean that he has deliberately disguised the initial in some way. It cannot mean it has been hidden; otherwise, it would not be there 'for all eyes to see', would it?

The only way you could leave a set of initials right in front of someone (in that room), so that they were virtually on top of them, Livia, and still be sure that they would have trouble spotting it, is if you constructed the FM in an unusual way: i.e., carving the first initial (the F) on the arm and then creating the second (the M) out of the outer forearm, bringing the chemise across to create the central part, and then using the inner left thigh as the right side of the M. And, low and behold, when we look there, Livia, we find something akin to an FM, exactly where he said there would be and created exactly in the way he said it would be.

The point remains, Livia, that - regardless of whether this is a forgery or not -these items need to be explained; they are actually in the picture. At some point someone made an incision on her arm that ended up looking like an F. Why? At some point someone pulled that piece of chemise back across her body and placed it on top. Why? These things need answers! All I am doing is relating to you what the writer of the diary states, and, so far, he has been correct on every point.


Kind regards,


Tempus

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Not sure if there is any point saying this, but, look if you assume it was Maybrick that killed Eddows and the colon was "placed" then Maybrick did that for a reason. Nothing to do with satanic rituals or the Masons, just him playing games. He wouldn't "place" it for no reason. However, I say again my idea is a bit lame.

I'm going to have a look at this, miakaal4. Sounds interesting.


Kind regards,


Tempus