The Bloody Piece of Apron Redux

[Errata]

I know that in all my years of working at a renaissance festival i have cut fabric with a knife many times. Mostly using thhe method of holding it taut and stabbing it in the middle and start sawing and pulling. Certainly not as easy or neat as shears, but not overly time consuming.

[curious4]

torn apron

Hello Chava,

Donīt forget that the apron had already been mended once, so must have been fairly well worn. I have cut and torn off pieces of old cotton garments to use as dusters, often using a knife when too lazy to look for the scissors!
A problem would have been the seam, which would be much harder to tear through, and it was cut through or torn, as the seams were compared and they matched. Donīt they say that maniacs have super-strength? And he (JTR )appears to have been in a frenzy.

I believe the policeman stated that she was wearing the apron, so donīt think she would have torn it herself - she did have the twelve pieces of rag, after all.

Best wishes

c4

"Time and trouble will tame a headstrong young woman, but a headstrong old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force" Dorothy Sayers

[Jane Coram]

I think that from what Errata and Curious says above, that it seems a cut, assisted by tearing (well pulling anyway) to hasten the progress of the knife, sounds like a fair bet.
I'd more or less always assumed that was the case, simply because that's what I've always done with material.

Probably worth checking back through the reports to see how they describe it exactly.

Hugs

Janie

xxxxx

[Chava]

I'm sure it was worn and torn but the fabric would remain the fabric, and the kind of fabric used to make aprons was fairly dense and would not be easy to cut. As Jane points out, tearing it would take some time and would not be quiet. And with respect, errata. starting in the middle and sawing away would also have taken some time on cotton or linen. He's probably not working with material on a regular basis so he has no way to know how the material will react and he'd be wasting precious time finding out.

I think he cut it and tore it. But it strikes me that for him to waste time doing it at all there had to have been an overwhelming reason so this is an important discussion. I believe that he either cut himself and needed a fast bandage or he thought he had his little bag for souvenirs and found out he'd forgotten or dropped it. Whatever reason he had, it's not a carefully-thought-out one. He's working on the fly here. That in itself is interesting because on the other murders I think he had it all worked out ahead of time and the events went like clockwork. Something happened on the Eddowes kill that took him by surprise and he acted accordingly.

[Archaic]

Hello Carol and Archaic!
Thank you, Archaic, for making this expression so clear - much better than I could. I liked the comparison with "mon vieux", although as Carol says it was used when speaking to children as well. My french is a little rusty so I am not sure if "mon vieux" is used in this way. C4

Hi Curious, and you're very welcome! I love learning old word & phrase origins.

As for your question about "mon vieux", to my knowledge it's more used by and towards teens & adults. The phrase more often used towards children is "mon petit"/"ma petite", "my little" with the noun casually left off just as in "mon vieux". Its most basic translation would be "my little one", meant very affectionately. A phrase often used towards children is "mon petit chou", "my little cabbage", which is an old French term of endearment!
I've been called "ma petite" as in the shortened form of "ma petite chérie" ("my little darling") - thankfully I have escaped being called my "little cabbage"!
But to be honest, my French is rather rusty from lack of use. Someone like David would know much more.

Chava, if you go back aways in this thread, Jane, Hunter, Errata, myself & others discussed the apron cutting, and how the fact that the apron strings were still tied to Kate's body gave the killer a way to pull it taut and cut it. Sorry I don't know the exact post numbers (maybe someone else does) but it was an interesting discussion.

Best regards,
Archaic

[mariab]

Hi Archaic and all,
“mon vieux“/“ma vieille“ literaly means “my old man“/“my old lady“. It was a very fashionable expression in the 1980s, sorta like the equivalent of “pal“, “buddy“, or “dude“ in American English (which are not exactly recent expressions either). Only people over 40/50 still use “mon vieux“/“ma vieille“ in France nowadays.
"Mon petit chou" (meaning literaly “my little cabbage“ – priceless!) is a term of endearment for couples, but also for the post 60-generation. The onwers of my apartment in Paris, who are over 60, call each other “chaton“ (kitten). It's definitely cooler than "my little cabbage". One can still use “ma petite“ for their BFF today in France, mostly ironically, sorta like “sista“.

[Chava]

archaic, thank you. I did read it. But, respectfully, I don't agree with the conclusion some of you guys came to. My mother had a material store selling offcuts and ends of rolls of cloth of cloth and I had to work there during school holidays when I was a kid. So I've cut a lot of cloth in my time! You'd be surprised how hard cloth is to cut with a knife. With a shears it's a doddle. Here's the thing: you cut towards yourself and the cloth ripples and snags the knife badly because Eddowes' body isn't heavy enough to really anchor it. You put tension on the strings and the body comes up as well. You have to saw and it really does take time. Cut away and you'll still be trying to cut it 100+ years later. I do think he tore it. But either way he's working on the fly and I'd like to know the reason for that.

[Chava]

I'm sorry, I ran out of time before I could edit! So here's what I was going to append to the last post:

I'm going to edit this to say that whichever way he cut it, I doubt he was used to cutting cloth. I don't think that the apron was something he was interested in as a souvenir and I do think he generally came prepared with something to carry away his souvenirs in. There's no blood trail or evidence that the bits of Annie Chapman that were taken did any...er...extra dripping. So he stashed them while he was still more-or-less over the body. He had to have come prepared for that. Now if he comes prepared to kill on the night of the Double Event, he comes out with his little bag for the nasty. We know he took physical souvenirs from Eddowes. If he's performing as he has previously, he's likely got somewhere to put them where they won't drip and cause people to notice. ie I don't think he put stuff in a pocket unless it was specially lined. So why does he take the apron? Did he lose his organ-catcher? Or did he still have that but nick himself and need a bandage? He finds himself in a situation he hasn't been in before. I'd love to know what that situation was! Because it must have cost him some time. And he only had about twenty minutes between policemen. So this speaks to a lightning fast kill, lightning fast-and highly and expertly-focussed attack, and then unexpectedly having to deal with a problem. He needed that cloth and was prepared to take time to get it.

[Errata]

So why does he take the apron? Did he lose his organ-catcher? Or did he still have that but nick himself and need a bandage? He finds himself in a situation he hasn't been in before. I'd love to know what that situation was! Because it must have cost him some time. And he only had about twenty minutes between policemen. So this speaks to a lightning fast kill, lightning fast-and highly and expertly-focussed attack, and then unexpectedly having to deal with a problem. He needed that cloth and was prepared to take time to get it.

Maybe he needed something that could tangibly be tied to the victim to leave at Ghoulston. And anything other than white(ish) wasnt going to be seen by a PC on patrol. So hair won't work, anything blood soaked wont work, her possessions are too ordinary to be definitively tied to her specifically. Her vest had to be soaked through, she could have been wearing a short chemise, which would have been soaked. That pretty much leaves the apron. Cutting or tearing the apron, either jaggedly or on some odd angle would make a puzzle piece the cops could literally join with the victim.

[Chava]

Why would he do that? He didn't leave any evidence lying around in any of the other murders purposefully or not. He may have thought to position the cloth in such a way as to inculpate the Jews, but I think that has to be an afterthought.

[mariab]

Errata,
he most probably used the apron to clean his hands from (unusually more) blood and fecal matter (the latter might have been a first to his experience) as he escaped the crime scene in a hurry, willing to avoid the PC approaching for his round. The fact that he tore the apron vs. the chemise or another piece of cloth might have been a random commodity.
We still don't know (and most probably never will) how the GSG applies in the equation (i.e., we don't know if it was a coincidence or an afterthought. It could have been an afterthought to write the graffito or to “instrumentalize“ an already existing graffito due to the existence of the bloody piece of apron that he used.).

[Archaic]

Sharp Surgical Knife?

Hi Chava.

What if the killer had used a very sharp surgical knife? Surely that would cut through a very worn old apron. After all, the knife was sharp enough to slice up a human body.

And the apron did tear at the point where it had been mended, which would have been where the structural integrity of the fabric was weakest.

But if you don't happen to agree, that's perfectly fine by me...there's plenty of room for all kinds of opinions, my little cabbage.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Phil Carter]

Hello chava,

My own take is that this small piece of material was grabbed between two clenched fists and ripped apart. Sounds like the quickest way..after all, it isn't any exact line he was trying to rip along. Sounds like it came away from the remaining cloth at the weakest point. Just my thruppence thrown in, me ol' china!

best wishes

Phil

[sgh]

The ripped apron

Here'a a close up of the sketch made by Dr. Gordon Brown at the scene of the crime in Mitre Sq.

In the center of the area I've marked on his sketch you can see
what appears as an item of lighter coloured clothing with jagged torn/cut edges.
It might be her undergarments or it could be the remaining part of her apron.

Tantalizing clues! Bit of a tricky one is this.

[Jane Coram]

Going back to the discussion I mentioned before on the other board, it was brought up that if he was going to take a piece of clothing to leave somewhere and implicate the Jews, then the piece of apron was a good choice.

By cutting/tearing through the patch of the apron, Jack made sure that it was readily identifiable by the police. The two pieces of the patch matched perfectly of course, so there was no doubt at all it was Kate's.

I'm just going through the reports to see what terminology the police used for the cut/tear in the apron as it might help to determine one way or the other.

Hugs

Janie

xxx