Eddowes Mortuary Photo - Graphic

[Supe]

AP, meet Anthony Comstock, who like John Thompson (inventor of the "Tommy gun") hailed from my home town. I've often pondered whether Comstock or Thompson did more for the common weal. In any case, Winston Churchill enjoyed posing with a Tommy gun, but I can't ever remember his doing that with a litho of "September Morn." Food for thought there.

Don.

[Natalie Severn]

Well the central point is about the human right every human being has to be afforded dignity in death,whenever possible.There is no dignity in the victims of Jack the Ripper being paraded naked and brutalised in death .In their coffins each of the victims would have been wrapped in a shroud which covered their nakedness ,even for burial.These are traditional ceremonies for the dead in the uk and are there to ensure the dead person dignity.
We can argue all we like but the truth is that Catherine Eddowes has been stripped of all dignity in these pictures.And Catherine was no fictional character or mere statistic - but a living breathing human being who was murdered in horrible circumstances and is degraded all over again each time these images of her in the mortuary are shown in public.Likewise the Mary Kelly photos of her on the bed.

[Cap'n Jack]

When words are censored and images not we face extinction.
Just you try saying **** and **** as many times as you like, and then just go ahead and post an image of a naked woman split in half with a knife.
I think it is a ******* **** of a ******* **** world and no wonder Thomas thought his ******* head was ******* well screwed on the wrong ******* way on... ****'s sake!
Anyway here is an image of a naked ******* woman, ******* dead, ******* stitched up, ******* blood all over the place, you can see her ******* privates... enjoy your ******* self.

[John Bennett]

When words are censored and images not we face extinction.
Just you try saying **** and **** as many times as you like, and then just go ahead and post an image of a naked woman split in half with a knife.
I think it is a ******* **** of a ******* **** world and no wonder Thomas thought his ******* head was ******* well screwed on the wrong ******* way on... ****'s sake!
Anyway here is an image of a naked ******* woman, ******* dead, ******* stitched up, ******* blood all over the place, you can see her ******* privates... enjoy your ******* self.

Cripes. I think I got the gist of that...

[Natalie Severn]

Good point AP.

[Sam Flynn]

I think it is a ******* **** of a ******* **** world and no wonder

Typo! That should have read "*******"

[Stephen Thomas]

Typo! That should have read "*******"

Sam, do you do them crosswords wiv no clues?

[Natalie Severn]

Sam, do you do them crosswords wiv no clues?

Pricks is a word you can use ---got it?

[Blues]

Oh man...

I wrote one long post and then timed out...making it go bye bye.

I will try to recreate it...

~ the U.S. as a country is quickly losing it's history because we are only printing and airing images and textbooks that are politically correct. This is a travesty and it is forcing us to relive even recent history because the last generation or 2 is ignorant of it's past.

~ Students can no longer read Huck Finn and the like (in schools) because the use of the "n" word and similar euphamisms. Well, this may make some people sleep better because the world was saved today...but it dooms the tomorrows of these kids. That word is part of our history. It sucks, but it is. We need to show these issues in our past to prevent or at least understand them in our future. Now, if you challenge the use of a book like Huck Finn etc. you are labelled a racist. "How dare you want to use a book like that that uses such filthy and racist language?" Well, we want to use it because it is a snapshot in time. It is a representation of what happened in our past. We have to learn from it. Hiding it doesn't prevent it from existing. Rather than learning from others mistakes in history - future generations will have to learn from it first hand through their actions. It's not necessary. God and the Devil are in the details. To say that Hitler killed some Jews but not go into the extent to which he attempted to wipe them out diminishes the whole subject! The images of the gas chambers, the bones etc. must be shown otherwise there is no IMPACT. Print and tv media in the U.S. will no longer show the images of 9/11. Why? Because they are too "emotionally charged". Damn right they are. They will always be so. Now - to keep them back does several things. First it disallows all who haven't seen them to witness the brutality and commitment that our enemies have both inside and outside our borders. Second - it diminishes Islamic Fascism to an ideology that some people have but rarely act on and even when they do it's only for religious reasons against the people directly responsible for oppressing them. The Zapruder film is another example. Without that film (which I'm sure many in the Gov't/military complex would have liked to have seen disappear) the details of that event are reduced to people's memories - which are always highly subjective. With the film - and now with the JTR victim photos - we can see for ourselves and make up our own opinions.

~ I must be honest: before I became more aware of the details of the JTR case, I was under the romantic spell that is conjured when details are unknown. Victorian London, handsome psychopath, girls lured with flowers and diamonds to a gentle death by a philanthropic gentleman who was simply doing them and the world a favor. Okay, I wasn't that deluded but without the details that I learned, I like many others had it all wrong. Jack was a monster of a human being. The details that are in those photos taught me that. In fact, it became about the victims MUCH more after viewing them. Any "romanticism" left my heart from Jack and went to the victims.

~ Wow, I can't remember all I said and I know that I'm now writing much more than originally trying to recapture my thoughts at the time. We were warned about the content of the post - just like with the MJK photos. It's up to us to make a decision. Also - pornography, by rule, is intended to provoke sexual/salacious thoughts and/or behaviours. I don't see any of that intention in those posts. Sorry to sully the thread any more with off topic posts but I feel that we need to speak up when these things arise. I really had some good thoughts in that original post....

Thanks for the ear,

Blues

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Blues, I see what you are saying and you make some fair points.However this subject can attract an awful lot of weirdos and sickos who enjoy looking at stuff like this and feeding these pervs with such pictures can be dangerous---some of these will have been inside for rape and other violent crimes dont forget.

[Blues]

I can dig that...but -

There are FAR more people who can reap benefits from knowing the true details about bad things than the 2% (random #) of people out there who might be murderers or rapists. To dilute or censor such information is letting a few bad apples and I don't care to be a part of that world. Protecting people from essentially their own thoughts is a game nobody can win. I'm not sure how it is where you live, but in the U.S., we have become so freakin' politically correct that it's dangerous. Everything seems rosy because no one will talk about the huge elephants in the room. In the 1970's "All in the Family" aired during prime on a major network. In the "liberated, educated" 2000's the show would never make in on air - unless it was on cable. They tackled social issues that were happening because of what occurred in our past as a country. It made people consider and think about tough issues - and take a stand on them. Today, we push those issues (and images) under the carpet and pretend they don't exist...or worse yet, we report them without the details. The details are the important part. Don't get me wrong - I don't think MJK or CE photos should be plastered up like handbills on the streets - but they should be available to give anyone interested a more complete view of the crimes and more importantly what a monster of a man is capable of. If you leave out any part of the whole, it greatly diminishes any truth that could have been represented by the whole. This is especially true when someone takes it upon his/herself to be the one to decide which part(s) should be ommitted. Who's has that right? Not I.

Blues

[Ryan_Miller]

"I believe any child viewing these images - as they can here - would carry away with them a disturbed and fractured conception of 'normality' and 'reality'; and these confused and jumbled messages we are sending them - as adults who really should know better - could indeed do them very real harm... or even, and eventually, cause them to do harm to others in the future."

I agree that these images are disturbing and can be used for all the wrong reasons but the fact of the matter is, that those pictures were on this site previously. As I said earlier, if you head over to the Photo Archive section you can find all the victim photos there. Regardless of the enhancements that have been done to the photos, anyone can view the originals here on this site.

The thing is... it's PART OF THE CASE!

If you decide to study or research Jack the Ripper you will eventually come across these images somewhere. It's terrible to look at and imagine what these poor ladies went through, but if we didn't have them... you know we'd be hunting for images of the ladies. If some sick perverts want to get their kicks from these pictures then they will find a way. Even if they weren't on this site they could simply search google and find a hundred images at their fingertips.

This site is a Jack the Ripper "Casebook" and these images are just as important to the site as the graphic letters that were sent. As long as we do not view and alter these images to celebrate gore then I believe enhancing the images is alright. I do, however, respect everyone's opinion on the matter, and see this as nothing more than an on-going argument with no end in sight. I feel its best that we just agree to disagree!

[Graham]

I haven't followed this thread (in fact, for reasons I won't go into I haven't really been too devout a Casebook follower at all in recent weeks) but I do believe it is important that the existing photos of the victims are made widely available, no matter how distressing they might be. The photos forcibly bring home to completely unromantic nature of the Whitechapel Murders. Too many movies have portrayed the victims as rosy-cheeked, happy-go-lucky harlots who appear to be well-dressed and well-fed - nothing could be further from the truth.

Years ago, I took a book from the library in which were (very) graphic images of World War One - like, rotting corpses in flooded trenches, dead horses, even (nasty!) body parts after a shell-burst, and that book hammered home to me for ever the fact that war is not romantic, that men didn't die courtesy of a neat bullet, that dead bodies were swiftly removed from the scene. Death in any form is dreadful, yet it happens and I don't think it should be shoved under some convenient carpet, as seems to be the case these days.
I sat and watched my father die, and although he was in a coma and totally out of it, it had a lasting effect on me, and I have to say not an altogether bad effect. We are all mortal, after all.

Finally, a quote by Josef Stalin that I've always found apposite: One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Cheers,

Graham

[Brenda]

They're not just available on the internet. Any child doing homework or a budding young rapist or murderer can head over to any library and check out the photos in almost any Ripper book. Just how far do we taking the censoring?

[Simon Wood]

Things I Wish I'd Said

Hi All,

"Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice." -- Holbrook Jackson

"Did you ever hear anyone say 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?" -- Joseph Henry Jackson

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship." -- George Bernard Shaw

Regards,

Simon