Kate's Last Half Hour

[Leanne]

East London Observer
Saturday, 22 September 1888. THE MURDER MYSTERIES.


- After the evidence, a juryman asked. -Is there any chance of a reward being offered by the Home Secretary? - The Foreman: There is already a reward of £100 offered by Mr. Samuel Montagu, M.P. There is a committee getting up subscriptions, and they expect to get about £200. The coroner has already said that the Government are not prepared to offer a reward. - A Juror: There is more dignity about a Government reward, and I think one ought to be offered. - The Foreman of the Jury: There are several ideas of rewards, and it is supposed that about £300 will be got up. It will all be done by private individuals. - The Coroner: As far as we know, the case is complete. - The Foreman of the Jury: It seems to be a case of murder against some person or persons unknown. - It was then agreed to adjourn the inquiry until next Wednesday before deciding upon the terms of the verdict.

[Leanne]

Morning Advertiser - 21 September 1888 - Casebook: Jack the Ripper

https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/morning.../18880921.html

The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee have resolved to offer a reward of £50 for information leading to the apprehension of the perpetrator or perpetrators of the ...

St. James Budget - 22 September 1888 - Casebook: Jack the Ripper

https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/st._james.../sj880922.html

Since £300 or thereabouts has already been subscribed towards raising a reward, there can be no occasion to further stimulate the cupidity of the assassin's ...

[Leanne]

Morning Advertiser - 12 September 1888 - Casebook: Jack the Ripper

https://www.casebook.org/press_reports/morning.../18880912.html

Mr. Montagu, MP., has offered a reward of 100l for the capture of the person or persons who committed the crimes. Yesterday a woman's arm was found in the ...

[Leanne]

Penny Illustrated Paper September 22:

Mr. Montagu's offer of £100 reward for the discovery of the murderer of Annie Chapman holds good.

[Leanne]

When was this meeting arranged, why did they go hopping, how did the Ripper know what his instructions were without being approached, and how did he know Elizabeth Stride was in on it?

[DJA]

Hop harvesting was like a working holiday.
Kate and John had been away 5 to 6 weeks.

That tallies with Nichols moving from opposite Kate's sister in Thrawl Street to next door to Kate at Flower and Dean on 24th August before she left for Kent.
Tends to confirm they were Jack's inpatients from December 1867 and knew each other quite well.

Kate returned the same Thursday that Stride left Kidney at 38 Dorset Street and moved to 32 Flower and Dean which had 6 Fashion Street directly behind.

The uncanny timing in Mitre Square suggests to me that Jack had a home away from home at 6 Mitre Street which backs into the square behind the fence.

As you know,Chapman resided at 35 Dorset Street and Mary Kelly at 26.

Incidentally a card bearing the same name as an army sapper was found next to Kate's body.Good candidate for Stride's Broad Shouldered Man.

Stride died as if she was taken down the second she accepted the cashous,a gift from her medical officer for her bottom lip.

Also an attempt was made to remove Chapman's head. Her brain had TB.
Not to mention the likely hood a post-mortem knife had been used.

[seanr]

Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes all had Connections with Dorset Street.

CHAPMAN: lived at 30 Dorset Street in 1886 and frequently at Crossinghams Lodging House 35 Dorset Street in 1888. She intended to sleep there the night she died, telling the watchman of No35 "See that Jim keeps my doss for me."

STRIDE: Michael Kidney lived at 33 Dorset Street at the time of Elizabeth's murder.

EDDOWES: gave the name Jane Kelly of 6 Dorsett Street when she pawned the boots, so I'd say her and John Sometimes stayed there. I haven't been able to find what was at 6 Dorset Street, but one Website I read said this short Street had a lot of Lodging Houses and there was also furnished rooms that were used for immoral purposes.

I have to leave Mary JANE Kelly out of this because I suspect her lover, who lived on Dorset Street.

Can we guess at what information they may have had?

Don't forget NICHOLS, address on the death certificate given as 35 Dorset Street. The same 35 Dorset Street where Annie Chapman lived.

Anything which successfully proves a Eddowes living on Dorset Street shortly before September 1888 and you can collect the full set of canonical five as having a connection to the exact same street.

[seanr]

If anyone is wanting to link the Fenians into their understanding of the case, there is a suggestion of a connection between John McCarthy and the Fenians. Possibly even McCarthy acting as an informant on the Fenians.
Personally, I'd love to more about this if anyone has anything...

[Sam Flynn]

Don't forget NICHOLS, address on the death certificate given as 35 Dorset Street. The same 35 Dorset Street where Annie Chapman lived.

Dorset Street wasn't colloquially known as "Dossett" Street for nothing, and was home to some 800 dossers at any given time. To find a bunch of poor people who'd lived in one or other of its lodging-houses at various times would be no more remarkable than finding a bunch of down-and-outs who'd lived in different parts of Hooverville, Manhattan in the 1930s.

[Lipsky]

Hop harvesting was like a working holiday.
Kate and John had been away 5 to 6 weeks.

That tallies with Nichols moving from opposite Kate's sister in Thrawl Street to next door to Kate at Flower and Dean on 24th August before she left for Kent.
Tends to confirm they were Jack's inpatients from December 1867 and knew each other quite well.

Kate returned the same Thursday that Stride left Kidney at 38 Dorset Street and moved to 32 Flower and Dean which had 6 Fashion Street directly behind.

The uncanny timing in Mitre Square suggests to me that Jack had a home away from home at 6 Mitre Street which backs into the square behind the fence.

As you know,Chapman resided at 35 Dorset Street and Mary Kelly at 26.

Incidentally a card bearing the same name as an army sapper was found next to Kate's body.Good candidate for Stride's Broad Shouldered Man.

Stride died as if she was taken down the second she accepted the cashous,a gift from her medical officer for her bottom lip.

Also an attempt was made to remove Chapman's head. Her brain had TB.
Not to mention the likely hood a post-mortem knife had been used.

Excellent geoprofiling approach. Physical vicinity is (1) geographical vicinity of residencies (2) vicinity of actions, since these residences provided the hotbeds of blackmailing (a failed one, eventually).

Some points, dear Dave, I'd like to set forth for your commentary:

1. I prefer to label the perpetrator as "Noone", because that's what he was. Different witnesses saw "different" people, "different" accents, "different" possiblities. So our perpetrator was a chameleon? No. He didnt have "many" faces. He had none.

2. During the Reichstag trial, Dimitrov started painting the picture of the real guilty party: not necessarily the arsonist, the hand the lit the flame (it wasn't one, anyway), but the mind that thought it out. The figure of Goering began to form. IT could have been Goering with Goebbels, or acting as the sole president (pun intended). Himmler in those days was still way down the NS ladder. Was Goering alone in this? He represented the interest of Hitler who represented other, more powerful interests (some of them were put on the stand after the war).

Dimitrov's approach was successful in its legal, short-term aspect, and mostly in this long-term political aspect.

In our case, the short-term perspective is lost in the midst of time: the perpetrator and those guiding him are all deceased. So what we can do is draw conclusions/deductions of long-term usability and applicability, to understand the human condition and refine our engineering (pardon my self-indulgent wording) tools for future guidance against blood-thirst schemers, either truly lunatic or pretentiously so.

So I paint this figure as noone.

3. Actions of this Mr. Noone (you deem him a Dr.... please allow me to go one step at a time): choosing his victims as all prostitutes either they admited it or not. The targeting is limited. The time window is limited: 1888 to 1891. The space window is a comfort zone in Whitechapel slowly expanded to a broader secondary zone (broader compared to the first, it is still a handful of blocks all within convenient walking distance).

The series of attacks suggests the classic curve of economic statistics: a slow rise, (the early, sloppier attacks), the climax (autumn of terror), a pause and then the decrease of the scheme in 1889-1891.

4. The psychological profile of the killer: first provided in full by Dr. Forbes Winslow in 1910, a bold profiling given that the police scorned at the time (and they still do, dear god...). The Douglas 1988 profile hits the nail in some parts, and misses in some (understandable, the science is still young for perfect hits)... The theory for instance that animals were tortured at young age hit home with Dahmer but failed with our man: this is not a madman. HE is dangerous, vicious, deranged, but this is a perpetrator on a mission: this is cold, short-term, methodical, and the keyword: clinical. Even in the Kelly butchering, this is a person that neatly places the organs "here" and "there". In order, in clinical , doctor-like fashion. As if performing an autopsy. Speed, precision, without good lighting, alla shows steely strength.

Whereas all analogies have a natural limit (well Lenin said it better but the actual quote evades my mind now), this is more Ian Brady than Ted Bundy. This isn't self-incriminating bursting sex-frenzied-driven orgy of flesh and blood and necrophilia. this is method. Ian Brady professed "social experimentation". Our man here is a schemer. Blackmail was attempted on him twice: in Spring 1888 and in the Autumn by two groups in succession --- the second group in September had knowledge of the Spring attacks as wel as the prior info.

OF course, the target of the blackmail is not only the perpetrator. I think here we see eye-to-eye if this phrase can be said for *anything* on this case.

5. Narrowing down the actions:
a. Were both Stride and Eddowes deliberately located to the two JEwish sites (one for the working class, left-wingers, one for the entrepreneurs/bourgeois , for lack of better word)?
b. If so, was the second murder product of an interruption? (hint: this suggests the killer drew self-gratification from the killings, which i reject)
c. If b is false, then the second murder was not only unavoidable but pre-conceived and pre-designed way before the first one, or - dare it be said - simultaneously with the first one.
d. If c is true, both victims were not only guided there in prior time but also stalked to make sure they were there to perform a sweeping double kill in short windows of time/space.
e. OF course lair of the perpetrator was within minutes of both sites. You suggest a home away from home. This implies that the killer and the other parties blackmailed are one and the same? Here I beg to differ. Or, let us say, this is inconsistent that at least one of the parties involved in the killing (and being blackmailed by this amateur bunch of victims who were way over their head in what they got themselves into), was a local of this notorious part of the notorious East End.

And a last question --- what male was the link between the two blackmailing groups and possibly quite a gossiper on the blackmailing scheme?

Hint: at least three names occur, could be possible they worked in liaison..two of them "united forces" via "marriage of interest" of members of their families

[Lipsky]

Dorset Street wasn't colloquially known as "Dossett" Street for nothing, and was home to some 800 dossers at any given time. To find a bunch of poor people who'd lived in one or other of its lodging-houses at various times would be no more remarkable than finding a bunch of down-and-outs who'd lived in different parts of Hooverville, Manhattan in the 1930s.

Indeed. What is missing from this comment, dear Sam, is the correlating factor. A bunch of prostitutes living close to each other would only be natural, right?
And the reporter doing a "field story" on MJK in another infamous lodging house was met with the natural reply to his questions if the parties he was addressing knew MJK: "Who didn't??" followed by roaring laughter.

Yes everyone round the corner knew these chubby chappy gals. And they knew people.

The correlating factor is if they knew each other and secondly if they had woven (or tried to) a plan together.

Sticking to the victims actions prior to murder is critical for establishing this. And the double murder, not the MJK butchering, is the pinnacle where all this is brought together.

Kate's last 48 hours, or last 96 "half hours" speaks volumes -- and alias (twice).

[Sam Flynn]

Kate's last 48 hours, or last 96 "half hours" speaks volumes -- and alias (twice).

The alias namechecks the most famous/infamous street in Spitalfields, and the premise number was almost certainly plucked out of the air as a false address. The name given was Mary Anne Kelly, which uses not only two extremely common women's names, but a very common Irish surname which also happened to be shared by Eddowes' boyfriend. I don't think Eddowes' alias, or final hours, tell us anything that we don't know about her already - i.e. that she was a desperately poor middle-aged woman who occasionally got drunk.

The correlating factor is if they knew each other and secondly if they had woven (or tried to) a plan together.

That's for another "Did the victims know each other?" thread. Let's stick to Eddowes here, please.

[Lipsky]

I stand corrected, though it's hard not to "step another thread shoes" in this mess of a case, dear Sam!
I'll try to follow protocol, though, so apologies are in order.
My point was that Kate's half hour defies "common random course of action". Yes she was a raging alcoholic, and such a party wouldnt carry out elaborate blackmail all too succesfully. She tried her best, though (we all do, right?)
Her last half hour is the logical, tragical conclusion to a fixed trajectory towards a "noone" who made sure she went straight to meeting point.
Hasted pace and arrow-like direction proves fear on her part that her arrest would make her miss the "meeting" of the party.
That party made sure earlier that there was a party of pints and circus. What better way to disorient a drunk woman than to throw her in the abyss of her addiction?

And yes, that desperation of this middle-aged unfortunate woman was a critical motive in seeking out cash -- pawning boots of another pathetic alcoholic creature (who deserves a more thorough scrutiny, though that's yet another thread), and playing the wild card of blackmail.
Apologies again, but really, prodiving an alias that coincides with the name of the next canonical victim living way too close is too outrageous of a coincidence.
Statistics aknowledge random variables but never coincidences -- a recurring set/piece of data is de facto part of a curve/pattern.

So dear Sam, your thoughts on whether Kate's half hour demonstrates a hasty, sloppy attempt to "make it on time" (give-take a few pints) for a predesigned meeting?

And if so, does that imply a pre-conceived double hit?

This de facto excludes the second murder as a substitute for the ungratified, interrupted first hit.

[packers stem]

Dorset Street wasn't colloquially known as "Dossett" Street for nothing, and was home to some 800 dossers at any given time. To find a bunch of poor people who'd lived in one or other of its lodging-houses at various times would be no more remarkable than finding a bunch of down-and-outs who'd lived in different parts of Hooverville, Manhattan in the 1930s.

All within 11 doors of each other on the same side of the street and if we go with the 10th November telegraph report you can drop Eddowes in at the shed .
Sharing the same tiny pubs ,the same shop etc .

Believing these women didn't know each other is as daft as it gets

[Lipsky]

All within 11 doors of each other on the same side of the street and if we go with the 10th November telegraph report you can drop Eddowes in at the shed .
Sharing the same tiny pubs ,the same shop etc .

Believing these women didn't know each other is as daft as it gets

1. They knew each other alright, suggesting otherwise would be absurd from the geographical vicinity alone, as you point out, dear stem. (Kate's last 48 hours: alias)

2. Additional available (fragmented, but it is there) hard data proves that they were in on a scheme. (Pawning, agreeing on a meeting, Kelly's BS at the inquest --- you thought that Coroner was fool, aye?)

3. None of their last actions was random, or uncorrelated to their subsequent tragic ending. (Kate walking straight to a death trap)

4. Hush-up and double talking from both sides of the physical entities involved (killer and the interest he represents, and prostitutes with pimp/liaison(s)) substantiates a scheme originating quite a bit before the autumn, in spring, when the first attacks occured. Kate's meeting was part of that process, hence her direction after release from prison.