Stride Photo #2

[Bailey]

Some digitally manipulated drawing.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Gotta say, this was my first reaction - not necessarily a drawing, but certainly that there was digital imagery involved. It just has that look.

I certainly feel that while the resemblance to the accepted Stride image is great, the face shape is too different. I'll allow for the possibilty of some undertaking being involved re the waxiness, but unless she was the victim of a little taxidermy on the side to account for the change in face shape, I don't buy it.

B.

[Mitch Rowe]

If it were a waxwork and someone labeled the pic as Stride that person would be technically wrong but also right in a way.

[Jane Coram]

Hi,

It would have to be a fairly recent publication for it to be a digitally created image.

The ability to create 3D images digitally has only been around a comparitively few years. So it hangs on the age of the book really.

If I wanted to produce that image exactly as it is to get the same effect, I would make it in wax and then photograph it. I haven't got any sculpted portraits left that I did in wax, otherwise I'd photograph them on my daughters laptop and put them up, to show the reflective quality you only get with wax. All I've got left a couple of porcelain prototypes I did, which has the same reflective quality as real skin. So not much help!

I don't really think it can be anything else but a waxwork though, looking at it overall.


Hugs

Jane

xxxxx

[Dr. John Watson]

I'm still working on identifying the book in question, but I'm fairly certain it is not of recent vintage. My guess would be sometime between 1945 and 1985, based primarily on the "look" of the page and the photo of the British courtroom scene at the bottom, which appears dated to me.

About that "waxy" look: The face actually looks mottled to me, more like human skin and not smooth as wax would look. And the reflection just forward of the right ear could be bright sunshine coming from a nearby window. I found a recent photograph of a family member with a similar reflection on her face. She told me she was sitting near a window and the bright sun reflected off a glass vase onto her face; it nearly blinded her, so she turned her head a bit just before the picture was taken.

It's true that the throat wound looks a lot worse than on the known photo of Stride. However, isn't it possible that looseness or sagging of the skin of the neck might serve to hide the full extent of the wound, particularly if the body was in an upright position when photographed, as in the Eddowes photos? Mind you, I'm not offering an opinion that we're not looking at a wax figure, just trying to keep an open mind.

[Steven Russell]

Dr. Watson

Might "Severed" by John Gilmore be the book in question? I haven't seen it but it is about Elizabeth Short and the blurb mentions a photograph of Stride.

Best,

Steve.

[Stephen Thomas]

Might "Severed" by John Gilmore be the book in question? I haven't seen it but it is about Elizabeth Short and the blurb mentions a photograph of Stride.

Hi Steve

Thanks for your contributions to this thread that have all been excellent.

It's not a digital anything as any fool can see if they look at the first photograph on this thread which obviously has really low resolution. Unless some benighted soul created this after 1988 and then took a photo of it with an antique camera then this image has to be more than somewhat old.

[Jane Coram]

Hi Stephen,

I have to agree that the quality is very poor. Not wanting to sound unkind to the publishers, because it might well be that the book itself is a good one, but I'm afraid the artworking leaves a lot to be desired from the page that I've seen.

That photograph looks as if it's been reproduced a lot of times and is a copy of a copy of a copy. I'm pretty confident that it is an actual object in a photograph, rather than something created digitally, which would seem to agree totally with what you're saying.

Having said that, in defence of those suggesting that it could be a modern, digital image, it has to be said that it doesn't necessarily follow that a picture has to be old to be that poor quality. Every time a photograph is saved in something like Photoshop it can lose quality, and quite a lot of quality, if it isn't saved properly.

A photograph can literally be a few weeks old, and if it's copied enough in that time, it can end up looking just like that photograph. So, although I really don't think it at all likely that is a digitally produced image, to be fair, a new image could end up looking like that with bad handling


Hugs

Jane

xxxx

[Jane Coram]

Hi Dr Watson,

Just a point about the texture on the surface of the object in the photo.

I don't know if most people would know how wax figures are made, because it's not something that crops up a lot in the normal course of things.

One method is to make a plaster cast of the person's face and then pour the molten wax into it. The method of making the mould is the same whether the person is alive or dead more or less.

It's not a very nice process for the living, although the dead probably don't mind. If a person is still breathing, they put them on a table, stick a straw in their mouth, smack a load of grease on their face, shove a box around their head and pour a load of plaster of Paris or latex over them. When it's set, they have a perfect mould of the person's face. They then pour the hot melted wax into this.

The result is that you get a complete replica of the person's face, including pock marks, scars and even hair follicles.

If that object in the photo is a waxwork, then it definitely wasn't done from a death mask, because it's too dissimilar to Elizabeth in fine detail, although still a fair likeness generally. It would have to have been sculpted from sketches, modelled in clay and the mould made from that. The same thing applies though, the surface of the clay provides the skin texture for the wax. It's not quite as detailed as the texture from a life or death mask, but can still be very convincing.

I've cast my hand in wax but I left it in the sun accidentally, and you can guess what happened.

Hugs

Jane

xxx

[jmenges]

Madame Tussaud made the majority of her figures simply from measurements and sketches and just by looking at the subject and remembering what they looked like. It's not that difficult to sculpt a very good likeness of someone, just from sketches and memory, for a competent artist. If you look at some of Madame Tussaud's early works that were not taken from death masks, but sketches, they are absolutely superb. So I can't really see any problems with it being a contemporary waxwork.

In 1980 Madame Tussaud's wax museaum had an exhibit 'Jack the Ripper's Street'. It contained a wax work of MJK waiting at her door at Millers Court, as well as other wax figures.

JM

[Jane Coram]

Hi JM,

Yes, I almost lived at Madam Tussauds at one point. Lol. Some of the figures there are totally unbelievable. I always desperately wanted to work there in there modelling department, but no vacancies ever came up. The only way into those jobs is dead men's boots.

Here's the one of Mary Pearcey from the Chamber of Horrors. It's astonishingly good, but I don't recall if it was done from a mask or sketches. It does clearly show the texture of the skin though and shows just how life-like the models were, even back in the 19th century.

Much love

Jane

xxxx

[Steven Russell]

Dear all,

I may be missing something but surely there is one question which needs to be answered before all others and that is "Where did this image first appear?" We need to identify the book! Doctor Watson must be more frank about how he acquired this image. There has been much discussion on this thread regarding possible methods to generate the image but way too little of where it originated. Let's have some answers.

Dr. Watson: if I do you a disservice I apologise but having read through the thread, it seems to me that you may know more than you are letting on.

Best wishes,

Steve.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Steve,

I agree entirely. Provenance is of the utmost importance with all types of historic photographic and documentary "evidence".

best wishes

Phil

[Dr. John Watson]

Dear all,

I may be missing something but surely there is one question which needs to be answered before all others and that is "Where did this image first appear?" We need to identify the book! Doctor Watson must be more frank about how he acquired this image. There has been much discussion on this thread regarding possible methods to generate the image but way too little of where it originated. Let's have some answers.

Dr. Watson: if I do you a disservice I apologise but having read through the thread, it seems to me that you may know more than you are letting on.

Best wishes,

Steve.

Steve. You do me no disservice, but I think you do yourself one by being so blasted suspicious! Believe me, there is no conspiracy here to hide anything from you. The fact is, I stumbled across the image while searching for something on Elizabeth Short. The only reason I saved a copy was because of the photo of "Stride," which I'd never seen before. My mistake was in renaming the file, thereby losing the original file name which might have included the source. Properties data indicates the file was originally uploaded onto the Internet in 2005, and I downloaded it in 2007. When I posted the image, I was almost certain I'd seen it before on these boards, but apparently not. Since then, I've Googled every search term I can think of and read through all of the "hits" with no success. I sent the image to a bookdealer friend who has specialized in true crime titles for many years. He had never seen the image before, but he agreed with me that it did not appear in Roughead's book "Murder and More Murder." He did suggest that from what appears to be a wire in the gutter, the page in the image may have come from a softcover book or pamphlet, most likely of British origin, and probably published some years ago. He offered the opinion that the face in the photo did resemble that of a wax model. So there you have it. I have not given up and I'm sure that some day, one of us will track down the elusive book. One final thing: The image did NOT appear in the Gilmore book, "Severed," or in any other publication concerning the Dahlia case - I have them all.

[jmenges]

According to an old thread on this very site, the "Stride" photo in question is from the book "Unsolved Murders" by Kane Friday.

http://casebook.org/forum/messages/4921/5701.html

JM

[Chris Scott]

There is an archived message on Thomas Schacher's German JTR site which reads:
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Titel: Re: Elizabeth Stride, Opfer von Jack???
Beitrag von: academyfightsong am Februar 24, 2006, 09:59:32
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aloha,

das ist eine wachsnachbildung aus dem buch "unsolved murders" von kane friday. "wax reproduction" oder etwas ähnliches steht dort als fussnote... warum scanst du die seite nicht komplett ???

The thread is at

http://jacktheripper.de/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=697.0

Can anyone translate pls?