6d. Did Liz spend it, or die for it?

[Observer]

Hi Rivkah,

In fact we can be pretty sure that 2 Canonicals were soliciting at the time they meet their murderers, Polly AND Annie. Both claimed to be attempting to earn money on the streets to secure their doss for the night.

That is not clear with Liz, its not enough of an explanation for Kates behavior, and its not at all in the known and accepted evidence for Mary Kelly.

The claim that Jack the Ripper stalked the streets late at night looking for weak and susceptible prey, ......homeless prostitutes, strangers,.... to fulfill his dark desires has always fallen short of explaining why perhaps 3 of the Canonical Five were not within that group of women on those respective nights.

Had Liz told her landlady she needed to work that night, had Kate been heard to be negotiating a fee or closing a deal with her sailor man, and had Mary actually picked up someone off the streets after midnight, then I could see that hype.

But its pretty clear only 2 of the women were soliciting at the time.

Best regards

Hi Mike

So just because Lawende and co couldn't hear waht Eddowes and sailor man were discussing Eddowes was not soliciting?

I'm not a proponent of the "what if" method, but what if Polly Nichols had not met Emily Holland, and subsequently informed Holland that she would soon earn her doss money? What if Annie Chapman had not informed Donovan to keep her bed implying of course that she would be going out into the streets to earn her doss money? With no evidence of prostitutation for Nichols , and Chapman would you be arguing (as you are regarding Stride Eddowes, and Kelly)that they were not soliciting at the time of their murders?

I believe some posters put far far too much worth on what John Kelly said regarding Eddowes and prostitution, the phrase "never speak ill of the dead" comes to mind. Lets face it, what was the man to say ? His partner in life is murdered by an individual who has murdered two prostitutes prior to her death. Do you honestly think he's going to admit that he's living on the procedes of Catherine Eddowes earnings ?

Lets not be under any illusion here, the police at the time knew what was going on. They knew those women were soliciting when they met their killer.

Regards

Observer

[caz]

I think she meant "Jewish neighborhood," particularly on Shabbes. This one club might be open, but in general, everything will be closed by sundown.

Which is another question. Just how Jewish was this neighborhood? If all the nearby merchants were Jewish, then she didn't buy the cachous nearby, and had walked a while after buying them; in other words, she wasn't strolling aimlessly, but had a definite destination in mind.

Matthew Packer? He was open for business, selling fruit and sweetmeats and wotnot.

Love,

Caz
X

[Phil H]

Whatever their class - whatever their occupation - all the women lived and "worked" in the Whitechapel/Spitalfields area and were about on the streets for various reasons late at night.

But there could be a number of reason why they died.

Let me try something I have not argued before - that there was an internal dynamic within this series of crimes.

Tabram is killed in a random attack. BUT

It triggers another man (let's call him "Jack" )to kill - Polly and Annie.

Then another hand kills Stride... but on the same night...

Kate confronts a man she thinks is the killer ("Jack") and he kills her to silence her.

[Alternatively for the DE: Jack kills Stride, and then kills Kate because she threatens that she will reveal his identity.]

Fleeing London, because his identity is clearly suspected by some he knows, MJK is killed by another hand, seeking to emulate what he has read of "Jack's" work. Later, "Jack" returns (now sick) and kills Alice Mckenzie as he did Polly and Annie.

PLEASE NOTE: I do not claim this as a thoey or as accurate.

What I am seeking to illustrate is that whatever the women might have been, is not necessarily relevant to their deaths, nor should we seek consistency across all victims.

Liz Stride MIGHT have been seeking to "out" "Jack", rather than Kate, but that murder would not be relevent to whether she had been or was a prostitute. She would have died because of what she intended to do, because she was a THREAT to the killer. The only common denominator then is where she lived that gave her an opportunity to know or suspect who the killer might be.

On a separate but related tack. In a small area, if a killer was seeking a Mary Kelly, Kate's giving a false name might have resulted in her death. If so her lifestyle or occupation would be irrelevant - she would have died because she coincidentally and fatally used another name.

Neither can we rule out, it seems to me, that MJK's actions in the days/weeks before her death may reflect the fact that someone was seeking her.

If MJK was not her real name, could she have fled her old locality and shed her real name, so as to escape someone seeking her? Then someone appears seeking a Mary Kelly....

I see nothing inherently illogical or unrealistic (though there is no evidence to support it, or very little) that two series of events "crossed" paths in the east End that autumn - a mundane and ordinary serial killer and an assassin seeking a specific victim. IF THAT WERE THE CASE: how would we separate out the two "paths" at this remove and given the available evidence.

Yet me know that it is likely that two OTHER paths did intersect in the East End at the time. The man we call JtR and the Torso Murderer.

Just some of the things I have been reflecting on while away from Casebook.

Phil

[Observer]

Stop looking at the obvious, Caz. That no longer has a place here... Got to be more complex and convoluted.

You said it brother! But all harmless fun at the end of the day.

Regards

Observer

[Observer]

just to add. Heres a quote from Joseph Hyam Levy from Catherine Eddowes inquest

"Look there, I don't like going home by myself when I see those characters about,"

Levy knew what was going down when he sighted Eddowes and sailor man standing at the entrance to Church Passaage.

Regards

Observer

[caz]

The more important question has always been why was Liz where she was at 12:30, with cashous a flower and fern, and sober. The meeting had ended, most of the people had gone home and the only people left onsite were inside. No street traffic other than the young couple.

So....Soliciting is not a logical answer.

Cheers all

It may have been one of the few places left where she thought she might be able to beg her doss money, assuming she no longer had the sixpence and would shortly be needing to get her head down for a few hours.

She could have spent all her money early on at the Queen's Head, and was expecting - like Nichols before her - to get it back during the evening from the various men she met. If she got no cash or drinks out of them it would explain why she was sober by 1am, and the flower and cachous could have been token gestures to keep her sweet (pun not intended but gratefully received). She may even have had a reputation for trying to con money out of men without 'doing the business' ("not tonight, maybe some other night") which could have put her in considerable danger.

All we can say for sure is that she would shortly have been in desperate need of funds, either for a bed or to supply her next meal. Would anyone have paid her to spend the night cleaning for them by candle light? Seems doubtful.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Whatever their class - whatever their occupation - all the women lived and "worked" in the Whitechapel/Spitalfields area and were about on the streets for various reasons late at night.

But there could be a number of reason why they died.

Let me try something I have not argued before - that there was an internal dynamic within this series of crimes.

Tabram is killed in a random attack. BUT

It triggers another man (let's call him "Jack" )to kill - Polly and Annie.

Then another hand kills Stride... but on the same night...

Kate confronts a man she thinks is the killer ("Jack") and he kills her to silence her.

[Alternatively for the DE: Jack kills Stride, and then kills Kate because she threatens that she will reveal his identity.]

Fleeing London, because his identity is clearly suspected by some he knows, MJK is killed by another hand, seeking to emulate what he has read of "Jack's" work. Later, "Jack" returns (now sick) and kills Alice Mckenzie as he did Polly and Annie.

PLEASE NOTE: I do not claim this as a thoey or as accurate.

What I am seeking to illustrate is that whatever the women might have been, is not necessarily relevant to their deaths, nor should we seek consistency across all victims.

Liz Stride MIGHT have been seeking to "out" "Jack", rather than Kate, but that murder would not be relevent to whether she had been or was a prostitute. She would have died because of what she intended to do, because she was a THREAT to the killer. The only common denominator then is where she lived that gave her an opportunity to know or suspect who the killer might be.

On a separate but related tack. In a small area, if a killer was seeking a Mary Kelly, Kate's giving a false name might have resulted in her death. If so her lifestyle or occupation would be irrelevant - she would have died because she coincidentally and fatally used another name.

Neither can we rule out, it seems to me, that MJK's actions in the days/weeks before her death may reflect the fact that someone was seeking her.

If MJK was not her real name, could she have fled her old locality and shed her real name, so as to escape someone seeking her? Then someone appears seeking a Mary Kelly....

I see nothing inherently illogical or unrealistic (though there is no evidence to support it, or very little) that two series of events "crossed" paths in the east End that autumn - a mundane and ordinary serial killer and an assassin seeking a specific victim. IF THAT WERE THE CASE: how would we separate out the two "paths" at this remove and given the available evidence.

Yet me know that it is likely that two OTHER paths did intersect in the East End at the time. The man we call JtR and the Torso Murderer.

Just some of the things I have been reflecting on while away from Casebook.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Your ideas are all very interesting, but try applying them to the Yorkshire Ripper series, for just one example, while imagining that Sutcliffe was never caught or identified, and you might see why some of us prefer a much simpler explanation for the Whitechapel series - one which is in line with so many other cases; not one that would make it unique in the history of crime.

Or imagine an episode of Midsomer Murders, where the crimes turn out to involve several different killers, unknown to each other and all with different motives, but where the victims all died in similar, but unusually horrific ways. It would send the already far-fetched storylines into a completely new level of unbelievable.

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

I believe some posters put far far too much worth on what John Kelly said regarding Eddowes and prostitution, the phrase "never speak ill of the dead" comes to mind.

This is probably true, but the belief that Stride wasn't soliciting comes from her behavior beforehand-- getting dressed in her best, buying breath-fresheners-- things which were not apparently what she typically did before going out to solicit, and suggest a "special" night of some kind, where she was planning to enjoy herself, not a night where she was going to work.

RE: MJK. Tess Gerritsen, who writes the Rizzoli & Isles novels, used the historic circumstances of the Whitechapel murders, and the C5, as a kind of outline for one of her books, The Surgeon. It's not terribly obvious, until one of the coroner's uses the term "medical knowledge," and one of the murders gets interrupted before the mutilations begin. Anyway, what was interesting was the reason for the special savagery in attacking the MJK character. He didn't have any highly personal connection to her, but he had tried to victimize her once before, and she had gotten away; when he went after her again, there was a lot of personal anger on top of his usual reasons for attacking women.

I'm not saying that is what happened to MJK. It is just interesting that it's a rather simple idea, and a simple sort of previous meeting, compared to fantastic stories of her having given JTR's son syphilis, thereby "murdering" him. The idea that JTR could just be a shlub targeting easy marks, and still have a special rage against MJK is not a contradiction, as the personal rage could be over some fairly small slight.

[Wickerman]

Lets not be under any illusion here, the police at the time knew what was going on. They knew those women were soliciting when they met their killer.

And Mary's death certificate even listed 'prostitute' as her occupation, it appears she knew nothing else.

Regards, Jon S.

[Wickerman]

Hi Phil,

Your ideas are all very interesting, but try applying them to the Yorkshire Ripper series, for just one example, while imagining that Sutcliffe was never caught or identified, and you might see why some of us prefer a much simpler explanation for the Whitechapel series - one which is in line with so many other cases; not one that would make it unique in the history of crime.

Ah, geographical range of murders, different classes of women, different methods used, age range of victims, indoors/outdoors, different weapons used, a perfect example of how one killer is not limited by the constraints the reader imposes on him.
The Yorkshire Ripper is the 'wake-up call' for all those multi-murderer hypotheses permeating the original Ripper murder case.

Regards, Jon S.

[Phil H]

you might see why some of us prefer a much simpler explanation for the Whitechapel series

The Yorkshire Ripper is the 'wake-up call' for all those multi-murderer hypotheses permeating the original Ripper murder case.

So the message from the two of you is "never think outside the box" I take it?

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

So the message from the two of you is "never think outside the box" I take it?

Phil

It's more like "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

The time for thinking outside the box is when you already looked inside, and the solution wasn't there. You do not start looking outside, when you haven't even checked the inside first.

[c.d.]

Hello Rivkah,

The point that I was making was that these women didn't need to be actively soliciting to end up interacting with their killer if he approached them with an offer of money for their services. Simple enough.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Wasn't one of the theories put forth at the time that it was an escaped Gorilla doing the killings? Now that's thinking outside of the box. Just because it is outside of the box it does not necessarily follow that it is good,clear thinking worth pursuing. I think that notion sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

c.d.

[Wickerman]

you might see why some of us prefer a much simpler explanation for the Whitechapel series

The Yorkshire Ripper is the 'wake-up call' for all those multi-murderer hypotheses permeating the original Ripper murder case.

So the message from the two of you is "never think outside the box" I take it?

Phil

Well Phil, I think the more people familiarize themselves with the Yorkshire Ripper murders, the less "multi-Ripper" theories we would have.

The modern reader, and to a degree also modern Profilers, put constraints on these Serial Killers which don't really exist.

It's more like "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

The time for thinking outside the box is when you already looked inside, and the solution wasn't there. You do not start looking outside, when you haven't even checked the inside first.

Oh, I do like that my dear.... well done!

All the best, Jon S.