Only a 0.000003 chance the Ripper murderer was not a religious fanatic

[Richard Patterson]

I can't help be reminded of religious groups that predict the day the world will end. When it doesn't happen they say we must have miscalculated. Back to the drawing board.

Methinks this is chasing the wild goose.

c.d.

Either the Ripper was insane the whole time, which would lend credence that the killings were completely opportunistic, or not. I don't think a sane man could randomly strike out repeatedly. The ripper eluded police and a general hue and cry, to avoid arrest, on at least five occasions. There is a very low probability of that happening if the killer had no idea what he was doing? If the killer was sane and could reason, it's assured he reasoned how and why he was going to kill. That he escaped, is probably, not a fluke, so he must have planned his entrances and exits. I would say a man endowed with reason, who planned a murder, what have a plan. To do this over the stretch of dozen weeks, would need greater planning.

[Karl]

Deciding, which patron saints the Ripper might find significant, would depend on the type of Ripper suspect, you care to choose. That would be putting the cart before the horse. I simply saw that the types of occupations the police suspected to be the ripper's , soldiers, butchers, doctors and midwives were those occupations, on the dates of the murders, that were protected.

But why would the killer base the saints off of the suspects? Before the first murder, after all, there were no suspects at all. Though a soldier as a suspect would fit more with the non-canonical murder of Martha Tabram, where the killer was suspected to be a soldier, but who was not murdered on the day of a patron saint.

As for doctors, again, "surgeon" would be more appropriate, as that was the sort of doctor they had in mind. At any rate, while Abberline briefly toyed with the idea that the killer might have been a midwife, but this was after MJK. I am not aware of any theorizing, official or otherwise, about Jack the Ripper being a midwife or dressed as one.

I must reiterate my main question, however: why would Jack the Ripper plan his killings on dates that coincide with patron saints of occupations matching Police suspicions? I am unable to make sense of that.

[Pierre]

But why would the killer base the saints off of the suspects? Before the first murder, after all, there were no suspects at all. Though a soldier as a suspect would fit more with the non-canonical murder of Martha Tabram, where the killer was suspected to be a soldier, but who was not murdered on the day of a patron saint.

As for doctors, again, "surgeon" would be more appropriate, as that was the sort of doctor they had in mind. At any rate, while Abberline briefly toyed with the idea that the killer might have been a midwife, but this was after MJK. I am not aware of any theorizing, official or otherwise, about Jack the Ripper being a midwife or dressed as one.

I must reiterate my main question, however: why would Jack the Ripper plan his killings on dates that coincide with patron saints of occupations matching Police suspicions? I am unable to make sense of that.

Hi,

interesting thread since it makes it clear to me how difficult it is to understand the choices of dates without knowing anything about the killers own life.

According to my (probably worthless) theory, the Whitechapel killer started his killing spree because of a major event in his life that occurred about a month before the first murder.

The murders on Stride and Eddowes are performed when another event connected to the first one occurrs. And the murder of Kelly is connected to yet another important personal event connected to the first one.

Finally, the dismemberment murder and the murder on MacKenzie are both connected to another event in his life.

Regards Pierre

[Richard Patterson]

But why would the killer base the saints off of the suspects? Before the first murder, after all, there were no suspects at all. Though a soldier as a suspect would fit more with the non-canonical murder of Martha Tabram, where the killer was suspected to be a soldier, but who was not murdered on the day of a patron saint.

As for doctors, again, "surgeon" would be more appropriate, as that was the sort of doctor they had in mind. At any rate, while Abberline briefly toyed with the idea that the killer might have been a midwife, but this was after MJK. I am not aware of any theorizing, official or otherwise, about Jack the Ripper being a midwife or dressed as one.

I must reiterate my main question, however: why would Jack the Ripper plan his killings on dates that coincide with patron saints of occupations matching Police suspicions? I am unable to make sense of that.

I understood what you were saying when you asked why wouldn’t a religious killer kill on the patron saint day of surgeons, but the surgeon as a separate profession is a modern phenomena. In the gothic medieval age, which was the one cherished by Thompson, there were no surgeons. Doctoring was a role taken on by barbers, since they were adept with a razor. The patron saint of surgeons is a modern invention and would not been proscribed by Thompson. As to the Ripper killing under the patron, saint days of social justice or the sick, this would be possible, if not for the fact that the police were seeking doctors, butchers, and soldiers, because this was what was reflected in the injuries. The killer exhibited signs of being from these professions in the nature of the murders and the police responded to that. My premise, satisfactory or not, is that the killer worked on these saint days under the impression that he would be protected if he worked subscribing to methods of working with flesh allowed to them. The result of this work was the victims and the mutilations and it was from the evidence of this that the police suspected those in the realms of the occupations for those Catholic saint days. That the police would manifest suspicions before and after the five murders as they did with Tabram and the soldier and Abberline did with the midwife, only shows how these occupations foreshadowed and overshadowed all the killings. The same occupations the police did suspect. The same occupations, by the saints, for the days of each murders. So far, for the sake of argument, I have left Thompson out of it. (Also, I confess not to want to give spoilers for my planned book or I would show here how Thompson felt a strong affiliation for the saints of all the days of the murders.) As an example, Saint Jerome, the doctor saint of the double murders, was acknowledged by Thompson to guide him. Thompson wrote about his reading of Jerome’s works and acknowledged,

‘'in the first place its influence was mystical; it revealed to me a whole scheme of existence and lit up life like a lantern.’

The patron saint pattern theory I proscribe to, despite having had a mathematician whose specialty was probability and coincidence saying it is not, is still dismissed as coincidence here. So I know that Thompson quoting a saint for the day of the murders, will accordingly dismissed as coincidence here.

Then with the Ripper murders themselves, (To again give just one example here) Kelly was killed on the saint day of Saint Theodore the patron saint of soldiers, who died before a furnace. Kelly died before a fire that was such a furnace that it melted the tin kettle on the grate and her body was first discovered by a retired soldier. Again, this will be put down to coincidence. I could pile on pile of coincidence and it would mean nothing. It seems that coincidences carry no weight against proper research and connections made for proper suspects. But since I am discussing coincidences. Here are a few more.

Thompson was a big fan of coincidences and how they played significantly in ones destiny. In his murder story - his only story - his murderer discuses coincidence all throughout the murder and afterward. His story, which was coincidently written on the 1st anniversary of the Ripper murders, is coincidently about a poet, like he was. This poet, in the story, coincidently, like the Ripper subdues a woman and makes her unconscious. The poet, coincidently, like the Ripper, then kills the woman with a knife. The poet, coincidently, like Thompson, and coincidently like the Ripper rises to fame during and after the murders. It is coincidences that trigger the downfall of the poet murderer in the story that, coincidently, like the Ripper, escapes capture by the police. Of the influence of coincidences Thompson’s murder says,

Of course it is nothing; a mere coincidence that is all. Yes.; a mere coincidence, perhaps if it had been one coincidence. But when it is seven coincidences! It may be a coincidence; but it is a coincidence at my marrow sets.

All literary coincidences? From the man who in the same year that his murder story came out he published an essay called ‘Literary Coincidence’ on the subject of ‘coincidence’. So, the saint day correlation is just a coincidence? That Thompson could be the Ripper is coincidence? Thompson seems to be wrapped around the word itself. It seems to be his hallmark.

Funny how out of the coincidences that propelled him off from the streets in mid-November 1888, the most remarkable one only got a footnote in Appendix to John Evangelist Walsh’s “Strange Harp, Strange Symphony the Life of Francis Thompson.” In his 1987 book, Walsh’s footnote reads,

‘During the very weeks he was searching for his prostitute friend, London was in an uproar over the ghastly deaths of five such women at the hands of Jack the Ripper…The police threw a wide net over the city, investigating thousands of drifters, and known consorts with the city’s lower elements, and .it is not beyond possibility that Thompson himself may have been questioned. He was, after all, a drug addict, acquainted with prostitutes and, most alarming, a former medical student!'

But this was ignored by Walsh, because, as he saw it as, the most bizarre coincidence in Thompson's life’ and nothing more. Yeah all coincidental?

To finish off this long reply by making it a bit longer here are some more coincidences, that when read together, coincidently make Thompson look like the perfect suspect.

---
Thompson, whose fame grew soon after the murders, lived in Whitechapel. He was there when all the prostitutes were murders. It presents new evidence that, on the night that the 5th victim, Mary Kelly was killed, he could look from the room that had his bed, to the covered passage, that led to the room that had her bed. The manuscript provides latest information on how, supposedly, Mary Kelly and Thompson stayed at the same address and also that a fellow writer and friend of his believed Thompson and Kelly were friends. He kept a dissecting knife under his coat, and he was taught a rare surgical procedure that was found in the mutilations of the victim. Before and after the murders, he wrote about killing female prostitutes with knives. His alibi that he was only in Whitechapel was seeking out a prostitute who had jilted him. Before the murders, he showed signs of religious mania, pyromania and the urge to mutilate females. He had been in trouble with the police from 1885 until 1889. The editor, who rescued Thompson from homelessness in Mid-November 1888, had a keen interested in the Ripper murders. This editor tightly controlled Thompson’s finances and his movements, and friendships. Thompson lived as a virtual reclusive after 1888, and after he died had a small private burial. After Thompson’s death his editor made unauthorized alterations and destroyed much of Thompson’s personal papers

----

Still people here dismiss what everyone thought back in the day. That the killer was a crazed religionist bent on avenging a class of people who had rejected him.

[Karl]

I understood what you were saying when you asked why wouldn’t a religious killer kill on the patron saint day of surgeons, but the surgeon as a separate profession is a modern phenomena. In the gothic medieval age, which was the one cherished by Thompson, there were no surgeons. Doctoring was a role taken on by barbers, since they were adept with a razor. The patron saint of surgeons is a modern invention and would not been proscribed by Thompson.

The Ripper-killings did not take place in medieval times, but the late Victorian age when surgeons were indeed doctors. Saints Cosmas, Damien, Luke, Roch and Foilland are all patron saints of surgery, though admittedly I do not know when they became so.

As to the Ripper killing under the patron, saint days of social justice or the sick, this would be possible, if not for the fact that the police were seeking doctors, butchers, and soldiers, because this was what was reflected in the injuries.

But what does that have to do with anything? They were seeking none of those before the first killing. Look, here's the timeline:

Polly Nichols, 31st August. Day of a patron saint of midwives. The police were NOT seeking midwives when this murder was committed. Not after it, either. I'd like to see you explain this one.

Annie Chapman, 8th September. Day of a patron saint of butchers and soldiers. The police were not seeking soldiers before or after this death. I will grant you butchers.

Elizabeth Stride, 30th September. Day of a patron saint of doctors. Yes, at this point they had started suspecting that the killer had medical knowledge, and people were starting to think that the killer might be a doctor. Specifically a surgeon (surgeons were doctors at that time, same as now). This was not the going theory of the police, however, though they did not rule it out.

Catherine Eddowes, same night, same saint.

Mary Jane Kelly, 9th November. Day of a patron saint of butchers and soldiers. It was after this murder that Abberline started thinking the murderer could have been a midwife. And unless you can bring evidence that Jack the Ripper possessed visionary abilities or a time machine, he could not possibly know that a midwife would be suspected after killing Polly Nichols. This alone makes the whole theory collapse.

The killer exhibited signs of being from these professions in the nature of the murders and the police responded to that. My premise, satisfactory or not, is that the killer worked on these saint days under the impression that he would be protected if he worked subscribing to methods of working with flesh allowed to them.

If that was the case, then why did he kill Nichols on the 31st of August, the day of a completely irrelevant saint? Had he killed her just five days earlier, he would have done so on the day of St. Adrian, patron saint of butchers (and also the victim's birthday, as it happens).

The result of this work was the victims and the mutilations and it was from the evidence of this that the police suspected those in the realms of the occupations for those Catholic saint days.

No, not for Polly Nichols.

That the police would manifest suspicions before and after the five murders as they did with Tabram and the soldier and Abberline did with the midwife, only shows how these occupations foreshadowed and overshadowed all the killings. The same occupations the police did suspect. The same occupations, by the saints, for the days of each murders. So far, for the sake of argument, I have left Thompson out of it. (Also, I confess not to want to give spoilers for my planned book or I would show here how Thompson felt a strong affiliation for the saints of all the days of the murders.)

But it still doesn't stack with Polly Nichols. It was only after Mary Jean Kelly that Abberline started thinking a midwife might have done it. I do not know whether this was even a publicized theory.

As an example, Saint Jerome, the doctor saint of the double murders, was acknowledged by Thompson to guide him. Thompson wrote about his reading of Jerome’s works and acknowledged,

‘'in the first place its influence was mystical; it revealed to me a whole scheme of existence and lit up life like a lantern.’

The patron saint pattern theory I proscribe to, despite having had a mathematician whose specialty was probability and coincidence saying it is not, is still dismissed as coincidence here. So I know that Thompson quoting a saint for the day of the murders, will accordingly dismissed as coincidence here.

This only proves Thomson to be religious - no one else.

Then with the Ripper murders themselves, (To again give just one example here) Kelly was killed on the saint day of Saint Theodore the patron saint of soldiers, who died before a furnace. Kelly died before a fire that was such a furnace that it melted the tin kettle on the grate and her body was first discovered by a retired soldier.

Would the killer have known that a retired soldier would be the first to discover her? It sounds to me like you are starting to argue for the supernatural. Also, I have no idea what furnaces have to do with soldiers. And it wasn't a furnace, but a fireplace. It could only be metaphorically described as a furnace, but if you are going to resort to metaphors as supporting evidence, you might as well use this in favour of the killer being a hot air balloonist.

Again, this will be put down to coincidence.

Thank god.

I could pile on pile of coincidence and it would mean nothing. It seems that coincidences carry no weight against proper research and connections made for proper suspects. But since I am discussing coincidences. Here are a few more.

Thompson was a big fan of coincidences and how they played significantly in ones destiny. In his murder story - his only story - his murderer discuses coincidence all throughout the murder and afterward. His story, which was coincidently written on the 1st anniversary of the Ripper murders, is coincidently about a poet, like he was. This poet, in the story, coincidently, like the Ripper subdues a woman and makes her unconscious. The poet, coincidently, like the Ripper, then kills the woman with a knife. The poet, coincidently, like Thompson, and coincidently like the Ripper rises to fame during and after the murders. It is coincidences that trigger the downfall of the poet murderer in the story that, coincidently, like the Ripper, escapes capture by the police. Of the influence of coincidences Thompson’s murder says,

Of course it is nothing; a mere coincidence that is all. Yes.; a mere coincidence, perhaps if it had been one coincidence. But when it is seven coincidences! It may be a coincidence; but it is a coincidence at my marrow sets.

All literary coincidences? From the man who in the same year that his murder story came out he published an essay called ‘Literary Coincidence’ on the subject of ‘coincidence’. So, the saint day correlation is just a coincidence? That Thompson could be the Ripper is coincidence? Thompson seems to be wrapped around the word itself. It seems to be his hallmark.

Funny how out of the coincidences that propelled him off from the streets in mid-November 1888, the most remarkable one only got a footnote in Appendix to John Evangelist Walsh’s “Strange Harp, Strange Symphony the Life of Francis Thompson.” In his 1987 book, Walsh’s footnote reads,

‘During the very weeks he was searching for his prostitute friend, London was in an uproar over the ghastly deaths of five such women at the hands of Jack the Ripper…The police threw a wide net over the city, investigating thousands of drifters, and known consorts with the city’s lower elements, and .it is not beyond possibility that Thompson himself may have been questioned. He was, after all, a drug addict, acquainted with prostitutes and, most alarming, a former medical student!'

But this was ignored by Walsh, because, as he saw it as, the most bizarre coincidence in Thompson's life’ and nothing more. Yeah all coincidental?

To finish off this long reply by making it a bit longer here are some more coincidences, that when read together, coincidently make Thompson look like the perfect suspect.

---
Thompson, whose fame grew soon after the murders, lived in Whitechapel. He was there when all the prostitutes were murders. It presents new evidence that, on the night that the 5th victim, Mary Kelly was killed, he could look from the room that had his bed, to the covered passage, that led to the room that had her bed. The manuscript provides latest information on how, supposedly, Mary Kelly and Thompson stayed at the same address and also that a fellow writer and friend of his believed Thompson and Kelly were friends. He kept a dissecting knife under his coat, and he was taught a rare surgical procedure that was found in the mutilations of the victim. Before and after the murders, he wrote about killing female prostitutes with knives. His alibi that he was only in Whitechapel was seeking out a prostitute who had jilted him. Before the murders, he showed signs of religious mania, pyromania and the urge to mutilate females. He had been in trouble with the police from 1885 until 1889. The editor, who rescued Thompson from homelessness in Mid-November 1888, had a keen interested in the Ripper murders. This editor tightly controlled Thompson’s finances and his movements, and friendships. Thompson lived as a virtual reclusive after 1888, and after he died had a small private burial. After Thompson’s death his editor made unauthorized alterations and destroyed much of Thompson’s personal papers

----

Still people here dismiss what everyone thought back in the day. That the killer was a crazed religionist bent on avenging a class of people who had rejected him.

There are coincidences all over the place, every day, for everyone. Most of the time we do not notice them, because they are insignificant to us. Consider this: you play the lottery, and you do not win. You aren't surprised. Someone else wins instead. You're still not surprised. But they are. There are incidents of people winning the jackpot in the lottery twice. Amazing coincidence? Sure, but sooner or later it was bound to happen somewhere, to someone.

Or consider this: earlier this year, someone called me on my mobile. It was a contractor, thinking I was the one who had hired him. It was the wrong number. By coincidence, however, the right number was that of my neighbour.

Or how about this: you're playing golf, and the ball lands far away on the green. It lands on a specific blade of grass. What was the odds of hitting that exact blade of grass? Microscopic! The exact same odds, however, as any other blade of grass in that area. And the ball had to land somewhere. The only way this coincidence is at all spectacular, however, is if there was attached significance to it beforehand.

The odds of absolutely everything that could possibly happen are impossibly small, but they happen all the time. It is easy to take these coincidences and retrospectively make a pattern of them. You can support a million theories this way. The archaeologist - and I use the title loosely - Graham Hancock is known for this sort of business. He once claimed that certain Asian pyramids were built in locations which form a certain pattern on the map. And indeed they do, but they are only a handful of pyramids out of thousands. He can only make the pattern by ignoring all the others. Of course, the pyramids he picked out are the ones which are significant to him. Why? Because they support his theory!

So what are we left with in this particular case? You have, at best, four out of five. Even if you had five out of five, I still would not be impressed. The patron saints could be completely random, and you could retroactively explain why those particular saints were relevant. Like you have done here. You still have not explained why Jack the Ripper should choose saints based on Police suspicions. The only reason you do that is same as Graham Hancock: because it suits your theory. Had they been different saints, you would simply have made up a different reason why they have relevance. This way you cannot lose, and the probability becomes practically 1.

Jack the Ripper may very well have been religious, and acted on religious persuasion, but the saint days have nothing to do with it. The connection has not been made, in the slightest.

[Richard Patterson]

Graham Hancock. What a coincidence. I know him. It's was to do, coincidentally, with another discovery I made. In May of 2014 I was asked by Graham Hancock and his wife Santhia to be shown some ancient aboriginal temples I found, not too far from my house, that some are now saying is where writing and science first began.

http://forgottenorigin.com/1-austral...ullumbimby-nsw

[Karl]

I was just too late for the edit, but just as well that it doesn't drown in the rest of my post:

If Jack the Ripper were to kill on saint's days for protection, wouldn't it make more sense that they were the patron saints of what he considered himself to be? If the police sought someone he was not, what was that to him? Why would he seek the protection of midwives, if he was not one? Why would he seek the protection of doctors, if he was not one? It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Now, if the killings all happened on saints days for the same occupation, then you might have an argument. For example, if he was a sailor he'd seek the protection of sailors while doing his work - irrespective of what sort of person people thought would be behind such actions.

Edit: Just read your post above. That coincidence is almost funny.

[Richard Patterson]

I was just too late for the edit, but just as well that it doesn't drown in the rest of my post:

If Jack the Ripper were to kill on saint's days for protection, wouldn't it make more sense that they were the patron saints of what he considered himself to be? If the police sought someone he was not, what was that to him? Why would he seek the protection of midwives, if he was not one? Why would he seek the protection of doctors, if he was not one? It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Now, if the killings all happened on saints days for the same occupation, then you might have an argument. For example, if he was a sailor he'd seek the protection of sailors while doing his work - irrespective of what sort of person people thought would be behind such actions.

Edit: Just read your post above. That coincidence is almost funny.

But, and strange as it might sound, Thompson did consider himself a midwife. I hope you do not mind me quoting a bit from my article 'Francis Thompson 'The Hound of Death'' That came out in the Ripperolgogist magazine yesterday.

Thompson’s story is not, as some have speculated, a take on the Ripper murders or the hallucinations of an opium addict. Long before the murders, Thompson wrote at least a dozen half completed, never published poems of the same gory nature. In his 1988 book, Francis Thompson, Strange Harp, Strange Symphony, John Evangelist Walsh wrote:

The most painful of these poems was The Nightmare of the Witch Babies, never revived in a fair copy. But in the last of the notebook drafts, he added a reminder, rare for him, of the date of its completion: “Finished before October 1886” – that is within a year of his departure from home.

The Nightmare of the Witch-Babies was one of the poems submitted to Meynell’s Merry England magazine on 23 February 1887. In his diary entries for 1888, when he was eight years old, Everard Meynell recorded the reaction of his mother, the poet Alice Meynell, when she read Nightmare on the torn ledger page it was written on:

Told by A.M at 21 Philimore Place, Mother read in bed the dirty ms of Paganism and along with it some witch-opium poems which she detested.
The protagonist of Nightmare is a ‘lusty knight.’

A lusty knight Ha! Ha!
On a swart steed Ho! Ho!
Rode upon the land
Where the silence feels alone

As he rides through a desolate landscape, the knight catches sight of a beautiful woman.

What is it sees he? Ha! Ha!
There in the frightfulness? Ho! Ho!
There he saw a maiden Fairest fair:
Sad were her dusk eyes, Long was her hair;
Sad were her dreaming eyes,
Misty her hair, And strange was her garments’ flow
Soon he begins to stalk her.
Swiftly he followed her Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her. Ho! Ho!

But then he discovers she is unclean.

Lo, she corrupted! Ho! Ho!

The knight decides to kill her by slicing her stomach open in order to find and kill any unborn offspring she may have. The poem ends with his rapture at finding not just a single foetus but two.

And its paunch was rent
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall. O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze - Hell made it so! Two witch-babies, ho! ho! ho!

[Karl]

But, and strange as it might sound, Thompson did consider himself a midwife. I hope you do not mind me quoting a bit from my article 'Francis Thompson 'The Hound of Death'' That came out in the Ripperolgogist magazine yesterday.

Thompson’s story is not, as some have speculated, a take on the Ripper murders or the hallucinations of an opium addict. Long before the murders, Thompson wrote at least a dozen half completed, never published poems of the same gory nature. In his 1988 book, Francis Thompson, Strange Harp, Strange Symphony, John Evangelist Walsh wrote:

The most painful of these poems was The Nightmare of the Witch Babies, never revived in a fair copy. But in the last of the notebook drafts, he added a reminder, rare for him, of the date of its completion: “Finished before October 1886” – that is within a year of his departure from home.

The Nightmare of the Witch-Babies was one of the poems submitted to Meynell’s Merry England magazine on 23 February 1887. In his diary entries for 1888, when he was eight years old, Everard Meynell recorded the reaction of his mother, the poet Alice Meynell, when she read Nightmare on the torn ledger page it was written on:

Told by A.M at 21 Philimore Place, Mother read in bed the dirty ms of Paganism and along with it some witch-opium poems which she detested.
The protagonist of Nightmare is a ‘lusty knight.’

A lusty knight Ha! Ha!
On a swart steed Ho! Ho!
Rode upon the land
Where the silence feels alone

As he rides through a desolate landscape, the knight catches sight of a beautiful woman.

What is it sees he? Ha! Ha!
There in the frightfulness? Ho! Ho!
There he saw a maiden Fairest fair:
Sad were her dusk eyes, Long was her hair;
Sad were her dreaming eyes,
Misty her hair, And strange was her garments’ flow
Soon he begins to stalk her.
Swiftly he followed her Ha! Ha!
Eagerly he followed her. Ho! Ho!

But then he discovers she is unclean.

Lo, she corrupted! Ho! Ho!

The knight decides to kill her by slicing her stomach open in order to find and kill any unborn offspring she may have. The poem ends with his rapture at finding not just a single foetus but two.

And its paunch was rent
Like a brasten [bursting] drum;
And the blubbered fat
From its belly doth come
It was a stream ran bloodily under the wall. O Stream, you cannot run too red!
Under the wall.
With a sickening ooze - Hell made it so! Two witch-babies, ho! ho! ho!

But where is the bit about Thompson considering himself a midwife? Is that not interpretation rather than explicitly stated? Also, did he consider himself a butcher/soldier and a doctor, too?

At any rate, I believe Thompson's handwriting was evaluated by a handwriting expert - I wonder if not at your behest? - and the conclusion was that it did not match that of the Ripper letters, specifically Dear Boss. I am not a handwriting expert myself, but I thought the same: they shared the same writing style undoubtedly taught thousands of school children (just like you see many people have the same style of handwriting today), but individual letters were finished slightly differently.

Of course, he could have had an inconsistent handwriting (I do), but still, it was not a match. But I take it Thompson is still your favourite candidate for the Ripper?

About handwriting... while I do not subscribe to graphology at all, there is undoubtedly something in handwriting which ought to be able to say... something. But I do not think we are anywhere near cracking the code, if it is at all possible. I mentioned I have an inconsistent handwriting. This is true; I was second-guessed by a store clerk once because my signature did not match my own signature on my debet card. This is probably due to my ongoing quest of improving my handwriting, which is quite distinctive but also quite atrocious. What I have noticed, however, is that my capital letters are damned near identical to the way my brother writes them. My brother is 11 years my senior, and has had nothing to do whatsoever with teaching me to read or write. Nor do our scribblings match those of our parents, nor my sister's handwriting. So it is quite remarkable that both my brother and I have very distinctive handwriting, and very similar. Just an apropos.

[c.d.]

Maybe I am missing something here. But it seems to me that even if it could be shown with absolute certainty that Jack killed on the feast days of saints related to a certain profession we still have no way of knowing that that was his motivation. Those days could also correspond to the birthdays of his favorite cricket players and he was killing to honor them. There are a limitless number of patterns but unless we know WHY he chose to go with a particular pattern this is all just a blind guess.

c.d.

[Richard Patterson]

Maybe I am missing something here. But it seems to me that even if it could be shown with absolute certainty that Jack killed on the feast days of saints related to a certain profession we still have no way of knowing that that was his motivation. Those days could also correspond to the birthdays of his favorite cricket players and he was killing to honor them. There are a limitless number of patterns but unless we know WHY he chose to go with a particular pattern this is all just a blind guess.

c.d.

I like your cricket analogy, it's so coincidental, considering that Thompson wrote the most famous cricket poem. Each murder happened on days, once worshiped by Catholics, for saints who were patrons of butchers, soldiers, midwives, and doctors. These were the same occupations the police believed the Ripper held. At least one expert mathematician has stated that this one in 344,86 chance of happening is beyond coincidence. From the limitless number of patterns, if you can find another incredible coincidence concerning the Ripper murders, I would be happy to know about it.

http://mapeel.blogspot.com.au/2009/0...summation.html

[Richard Patterson]

Thompson's Nightmare poem has him describe killing a woman and opening her up so that he could retrieve her unborn. A midwife, of death rather than birth. He said his poems were based on real events in his life. Anyone who thinks that we know poets rely solely on imagination does not know Thompson. To him his poetry were records of real events in his life, clothed in rhyme and symbolism. In a letter to his editor, this is how Thompson explained that his poetry was more fact than fiction,

‘The poems were, in fact, a kind of poetic diary; or rather a poetic substitute for letters.’

Dr. Joseph Rupp, who first proposed Thompson was the Ripper, wrote to me last week. He is now an old man and long since retired and despite one expert saying the writing is different, (who I did hire) Dr. Rupp still believes we should examine the possibility that the 'Dear Boss' letter was written by Thompson. On October 23 Dr. Rupp wrote to me,

'With regard to content, the first thing not to be overlooked is the Dear Boss letter. I have noticed that the letter has the handwriting disguised but the address to which the message was sent is written in a very good hand. It is this address which should be compared with that on Thompson's manuscripts.'

[Karl]

At least one expert mathematician has stated that this one in 344,86 chance of happening is beyond coincidence.

The odds would be similar no matter what saints were venerated on the days of the murders. The odds of winning the jackpot in any given lottery is one in several million. And yet it happens all the time. The odds are unfathomably small, yet it happens - and every time it does happen, it is entirely by coincidence. In other words, no odds are too small for coincidence.

An example more relevant to this case: I just created a random number generator on my calculator, essentially a 100000-sided die. The first number rolled was 93301. The second number rolled was 57101. Now, what were the odds of that? One in ten billion. Amazing, isn't it? No, not really, because I did not predict those numbers beforehand. Those numbers were not significant. Just like the saints: you checked the dates of the murders, checked the saints, and then sought to find a pattern in which they fit. The problem with that is that any combination of saints would fit some pattern. I'm sure if one of the saints had been the patron saint of the internet (and yes, there is such a saint), some sort of significance might have been found for that, too. As it is, saints which happen to match professions suspected by the police - and they do not even properly match - is not interesting, because there is no reason to expect such a pattern to be relevant.

Like I said before, if the killer went by patron saints, the only pattern he would reasonably choose is saints which he'd think would give him protection. In which case, saints matching his perception of himself. Now, he was a failed doctor, so I could easily see him choose such saints. I very much doubt he considered himself a butcher, however, though you might argue he saw himself as a soldier of God. A midwife? You said so before, but I saw no connection with that poem you provided by way of explanation. So no, there is no intentional pattern here that one might discern.

[Richard Patterson]

Now this is just my opinion having studied Thompson for many years and delving into his world-view and mental outlook. Regardless of any subconscious urges to kill. I don't think Thompson, if he was the Ripper, embraced the idea of taking a human life easily. Being Catholic, murder was a sin. The fear would have been eternal damnation for such an act. For him to reconcile his murderous urges with his faith he may have felt it necessary to look to the teachings of the church for allowances. The professions of midwife, doctor, soldier and butcher, because they dealt with substances such as blood and the dead would have under normal circumstances made such people unclean. Purification could have only come through adhering to either prayer or ritual or a priestly rite. The Ripper dealt with blood, corpses, and bodily organs. By killing on the days protected by saints of professions who dealt with flesh and blood, the Ripper (Possibly Thompson) may have felt he could be covered by the same waver of allowance. This plus the fact that the killings occurred on old Catholic grounds and their was no immediate retribution from God may have convinced him of the holiness of his 'mission' to rid the world of such 'whores'. I have plenty of material from my research that shows that Thompson saw the significance of killing on holy ground and its implications. I understand that the pattern and maths can be argued but I still feel that the correlation between professions protected by saints and the type of suspect the police sought is too great to be dismissed as just a goose chase.

[Rosella]

^ Sorry Richard, but apart from Mitre Square, what 'old Catholic grounds were previous victims killed on? I'm not understanding, not unusual for me! Were Bucks Row, Hanbury Street and Dutfield's Yard built on old Catholic ground connected to the White Chapel or something?

To me it just seems strange and possibly points to a Jack who was anti-Semite that several of the victims were killed near a club for Jews, in both the Imperial Club and the Working Men's, and a disused Jewish cemetery adjacent to Bucks Row, as well as the GSG business. Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that Jack wasn't Roman Catholic or following his own agenda with regard to Saints Days. I just think it's of note, that's all.