The Apron Again

[mariab]

I don't think I've ever heard of this sleeping arrangement outside and I'm not sure where you got that from. These so called 'tupenny hangs' were available for those who couldn't afford the full price of a bed. Some would have it that they are also an urban myth, but there you go...

By the by, yesterday I re-watched From Hell and indeed, that (very short) scene plays out inside of an overbooked doss house. It was my misunderstanding that this sort of sleeping arrangments on “hangs“ occurred outside.

[Chava]

I honestly doubt she was soliciting after she left the nick. I think it's more likely she was seen and accosted by the Ripper. She may well have agreed to sex with him for money, after he made the initial approach, but my belief is that she was heading into the City to find a quiet place to doss down for the rest of the night prior to going back to her man. She was still half-cut and tired.

As Lyn pointed out--at least I think it was Lyn--someone paid for her to get roaring drunk that afternoon and we don't know who that is. I think it's a long shot that it was the Ripper. I don't see him following her, hanging around outside the nick for 4 hours and then killing her. But someone gave her money. I think it's possible she did see her daughter but the daughter didn't want to say she'd given her mother money that was then used for alcohol. More respectable to say she hadn't seen her and had had nothing to do with her. Poor girl. It would have been hard to be called to the inquest like that to testify about her own mother dead in such circumstances. She was the only child of any of the victims to appear at the inquests I believe.

[Monty]

See Eddowes, see Stride.

See Stride, see Coles.

See Coles, see the majority of Streetwalking females.

Monty

[lynn cates]

random kill

Hello Chava.

"I think it's a long shot that it was the Ripper. I don't see him following her, hanging around outside the nick for 4 hours and then killing her."

Well, certainly not if he were looking for a random kill.

Cheers.
LC

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hello Mac.

"If the apron is used to carry the organs, then why stop, take the organs out of your pocket, thrown away the apron and then put the organs in your pocket?"

Right. I can live with 2 or 3 different views about the apron piece--but not for organ transportation.

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

I'm yet to see a theory with which I'm comfortable.

I don't really understand why Trevor's is dismissed out of hand when the others appear to be no more or less viable - shame she had some other bits and pieces on her that could have done the job.

[lynn cates]

math

Hello Mac. I know what you mean. I am not ENTIRELY comfortable with any of them. It just does not add up.

I could live with the hand/knife wiping use, but the piece needs to be at the end of St. James passage.

Cheers.
LC

[Chava]

So the popular theory is that he takes the apron and ditches it outside the Goulston Street tenements to implicate either (a) the Jews in general because they screwed up the Stride kill and because a couple of them saw him with Eddowes or (b) a Jew in particular who lived there. He also (maybe) took the time to scrawl some very obscure graffito that might suggest that he didn't like Jews. But he was very careful how he worded it so that no young person's eye might be offended.

Either way it didn't work. The cops spent next to no time with the inhabitants of the tenement. Why they didn't immediately consider someone there for the crime is beyond me. I'm sure they ran into a barrage of 'Me No Speak Englitsch' but they would have had interpreters who could speak Yiddish and translate for them. Yes, the immigrants had come from a place where the police flat-out couldn't be trusted, but they had to know that the British police were a different proposition and that they would have to co-operate if questioned.

I just don't believe in a fiendishly clever killer who took the time and trouble to prance around Whitechapel for who knows how long with the only piece of evidence in the entire case that definitively could have swung him. If they'd picked him up with human organs in his pocket he could still have claimed that they couldn't be sure the said organs came from the murder victim, and in those pre-CSI days they maybe couldn't have proved it. But that apron is definitive evidence of a link to the crime. No ifs ands or buts. It's Eddowes's apron. So why in hell does he hang on to it? No. I think he dropped it as fast as he was done with it and ran like hell. Either that or it fell out of his pocket on the way up to his home in the Goulston Street tenement.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chava,

Not in my opinion..simply because I cannot get it in my head that the SAME man, who butchered Kate Eddowes in all haste, escapes by minutes, possibly seconds, HANGS AROUND in the area and only gets 2 or 3 streets away in 35 mins.... with TWO loads of police forces searching high and low between the two murder sites.

The killer, in my opinion, didnt drop the rag. Someone else did. But thats just my opinion..pretty worthless in the long run.

bvest wishes

Phil

[lynn cates]

sleep?

Hello Chava.

"I just don't believe in a fiendishly clever killer who took the time and trouble to prance around Whitechapel for who knows how long with the only piece of evidence in the entire case that definitively could have swung him. If they'd picked him up with human organs in his pocket he could still have claimed that they couldn't be sure the said organs came from the murder victim, and in those pre-CSI days they maybe couldn't have proved it. But that apron is definitive evidence of a link to the crime. No ifs ands or buts. It's Eddowes's apron. So why in hell does he hang on to it?"

Welcome to some sleepless nights.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

vox clamantis in deserto

Hello Phil

"Not in my opinion..simply because I cannot get it in my head that the SAME man, who butchered Kate Eddowes in all haste, escapes by minutes, possibly seconds, HANGS AROUND in the area and only gets 2 or 3 streets away in 35 mins.... with TWO loads of police forces searching high and low between the two murder sites."

That is my take as well.

"The killer, in my opinion, didnt drop the rag. Someone else did."

Hmm, nice to know that I am not all alone here.

Cheers.
LC

[Phil Carter]

Hello Lynn,

"We are not alone.." lol

Let us presume, just for the sake of it, that there was just ONE JTR.
Why in heavens name would the killer of Stride and Eddowes WANT to walk straight back towards an area where the police were crawling all over the shop following the Stride murder? Thats not logical. To get home he'd be stopped more likely than not.
Far more logical for him to walk the other way.. into the heart of central London.He KNEW the murder scenes were being crawled over.. and where. He has the intelligence to avoid the police in his killings..why not apply the same common sense when fleeing the scene? Makes no sense.

Now if the killer wasn't Strides killer... we have a 50/50 chance that he did or didnt know of the previous murder. If he DID know of it.. same rules apply. But that depends on from which direction he came FROM to Mitre Square, as to likelyhood of knowing about Stride. Less chance if he came from the City to Mitre Square.

No..I believe the killer of Eddowes would have been out of there quicker than greased lightening..like he killed her. Logically therefore, either he had an accomplice, or Eddowes dropped the rag herself at some time.

Thats my honest opinion, for what it is worth.

best wishes

Phil

[lynn cates]

agreement

Hello Phil.

"Why in heavens name would the killer of Stride and Eddowes WANT to walk straight back towards an area where the police were crawling all over the shop following the Stride murder?"

You see, that is my concern.

And the direction from Mitre sq to Goulston caused me to abandon MJD a long time ago.

A conundrum, eh?

Cheers.
LC

[Chava]

And you guys all laughed at me and kept on laughing about the stray dog theory. Victorian London was rife with stray dogs and cats, the Battersea Dogs' Home notwithstanding. As well there was a very large and quite ferocious rat population. Any one of those animals would be attracted to blood and any one of them could have picked up a discarded piece of bloodied cloth and then dropped it again because it was unwieldy and difficult to cart around. I realize that The Great Rat Theory is a thigh-slapper, but I'm not quite sure why. Any woman who has had pet dogs will know that they are highly attracted to blood and this can lead to unfortunate events if steps are not taken to keep the animal out of the bedroom on certain days. I don't see what is so surprising about the theory that the cloth was picked up and dropped in this way. It is a lot more convincing to me that this happened than that an Evil Genius decided that he would take a piece of cloth and use it to implicate someone in order to avoid the police himself. It's not like he did this at any other time and he could have had a field day with identifiable stuff nicked from 13 Millers Court.

No, the only way I will believe that the apron was dropped on purpose by a killer bent on misdirecting the police would be if said killer thought for whatever reason the cops were onto him and wanted to deflect their attention. Nothing else makes any kind of sense at all. If the killer thinks he's gotten away with it, then when he's finished with the cloth he pitches it immediately or keeps it out of sight until he can shove it into a handy fire. All that 'leaving it there to incriminate the Jews' stuff? That's just not credible to me at all.

So no sleepless nights for me. Either the rag belongs to someone in Goulston Street or it was dropped there by an uncaring third party in my opinion.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Chava,

I did not laugh at your "dog" idea, I didn't even express an opinion.... and as regarding Miller's Court, you assume it was the same killer. I do not posess that certainty.

best wishes

Phil

[Phil Carter]

Hello Phil.

"Why in heavens name would the killer of Stride and Eddowes WANT to walk straight back towards an area where the police were crawling all over the shop following the Stride murder?"

You see, that is my concern.

And the direction from Mitre sq to Goulston caused me to abandon MJD a long time ago.

A conundrum, eh?

Cheers.
LC

Hello Lynn,

Which is one of the precise reasons for looking at the alternative, no matter how unpalatable it may be to others. There may well be reasons behind all this that we have no idea of at present. But I refuse to accept the time honoured explanation we have been dished up with, as indeed you also do not do. It just doesn't fit.

best wishes

PÅhil