Why must the gory images always be exhibited?

[Heinrich]

....
I suppose the only point to make on what the photos are worth is that it is possible to maybe see something in them that adds a clue. ....

This is the one good reason for publishing the pictures. Students need as much information as possible as they are crime scene evidence.
Secondly, the pictures are a testimony to the horror of the crimes, worth more than a thousand words, as Rubyretro mentions above.
Finally, far from disrespecting the victims, the pictures help us empathize, seeing the victims as real people and not only a statistic. For this reason, no one denies the value of publishing photographs of Nazi death camps and brutal reprisals. Such images do not detract from the dignity and humanity of the victims but serve to commemorate them.

[kensei]

The pictures are the only ones that we have of the victims, and they give us a sense of time and place, but they also become familiar to us. I can see the photos of the other victims ( not Kelly) and look beyond their deaths to how they must of appeared alive. It was terribly interesting to compare the photos of the murdered Eddowes with photos of her descendants (was it a grand-daughter, in the '20s, who looked her spitting image ?) , in Neal Sheldon's book ; It brought Catherine alive, as a person, and no longer just a
description of a murder victim.

Ruby,
It was Kate's great granddaughter, Catherine Sarah Hall, on page 87 of Sheldon's book. I had the same reaction- my god, she looks just like her. Of all the Ripper victims Kate has the most descendants, and there is a general resemblance even in the faces of those alive today. I smile at that, and we would not know that were it not for pictures of her grisly outcome.

Some have mentioned the Black Dahlia, whose crime scene pictures were far more garish than any Ripper related photo, and the images of Nazi death camps which are so over the top there are no words to accurately convey it, yet those things are still historical images that make it clear the brutality that man is capable of. I have seen uncensored crime scene shots of Sharon Tate and Nicole Brown Simpson, and I will add the fact that in the old west it was common whenever an outlaw was shot or hung for his body to be propped up and photographed as a warning to others. We just marked the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley yesterday, and there was even a famous photo of him in his casket. Perhaps any image of a dead body can be regarded as either appropriate or not and there will always be debate about it.

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE][QUOTE=kensei;187595]Ruby,

It was Kate's great granddaughter, Catherine Sarah Hall, on page 87 of Sheldon's book. I had the same reaction- my god, she looks just like her. Of all the Ripper victims Kate has the most descendants, and there is a general resemblance even in the faces of those alive today. I smile at that, and we would not know that were it not for pictures of her grisly outcome.[/QUOTE

Thank you for that. Yes, obviously I agree with "I smile at that".

and the images of Nazi death camps which are so over the top there are no words to accurately convey it, yet those things are still historical images that make it clear the brutality that man is capable of.

I totally agree. Those pictures are unbearable, but they have to be seen.
It's too easy for sympathisers of the Far Right (I'm thinking of the Front National in France), to dismiss the nazis as a "detail of History" (Jean Marie Le Pen) and argue in slippery words their point of view -but those pictures of concentration camps show clearly where their thinking ultimately leads.

I hate voyeurism but I let my children watch documentaries with 'lurid pics' on nazi concentration camps, Hiroshima etc, mass graves in the Balkans
because I think that the pictures bring home like nothing else the realities
of "man's brutality".

And so it is with pictures from Crime scenes.

[Steven Russell]

I think it was The Greek philosopher Telly Savalas who first mentioned a picture painting a thousand words in his 70s hit "If".

Best wishes,
Steve.

PS I agree with many here that the victim photos help bring home to us the fact that these women were real people with hopes, dreams, fears and all the rest of it just like us. Jane Coram's renderings of how they may have looked in life have the same effect on me. Plus the Kelly photo in particular banished forever any idea of an almost swashbuckling antihero I might have had when first I saw it aged about twelve. That single image burned itself into my young brain and showed me instantly what an horrific series of crimes this was. Suddenly, it didn't seem like a big game of Cluedo any more.

[mariab]

Supposedly they pinned her to the wall by her hair?

By her hair and possibly from other body parts – kinda like a barbie doll in her box, I'd say. It's visible that her left foot hardly touches the ground.

Considering that I am the person offering the upcoming Short Course on the Whitechapel Murders on three evenings in late October into November at Roland Park Country School in Baltimore

I looked it up and it sounds like a fascinating course. I was expecting a medical course, but it sounds more historical. It'd be great if such courses were given more often at schools and Universities by qualified people. Lynn Cates is trying to organize such a course at his college in Austin, Texas. There was also such a course at a University in Oklahoma City, and there's a podcast about this on casebook.

[Tecs]

By her hair and possibly from other body parts – kinda like a barbie doll in her box, I'd say. It's visible that her left foot hardly touches the ground.

Just developing the point, but as I touched on before I can understand that a modern author might or might not censor the private areas in Catherine Eddowes's photo, but I wonder why the Police at the time didn't? A censored chest area might obscure the injuries and so make it of no use. But I'm sure, if they wanted to they could have covered her pubic area. The fact that they didn't, maybe shows that the Victorians were less prudish than we think? (But with our knowledge of Gin houses, opium dens, brothels we knew that already.) Or more likely, the photo was for the police and medics to use and they never expected it to be released to the public. Which raises an interesting point about when, if ever, they should be?


Regards,

[ChrisGeorge]

Considering that I am the person offering the upcoming Short Course on the Whitechapel Murders on three evenings in late October into November at Roland Park Country School in Baltimore,

I looked it up and it sounds like a fascinating course. I was expecting a medical course, but it sounds more historical. It'd be great if such courses were given more often at schools and Universities by qualified people. Lynn Cates is trying to organize such a course at his college in Austin, Texas. There was also such a course at a University in Oklahoma City, and there's a podcast about this on casebook.

Thanks, Maria. The students in the course, based on a previous lecture and tour I gave on Edgar Allan Poe also at Roland Park Country School, will probably be attended by older adults rather than young students. I suspect that the attendees will have a passing interest in the case rather than detailed knowledge, so the three nights will be designed to give them a greater perspective on the case and also, I should expect, to correct a number of misconceptions they may have. I have never been much interested in pursuing a particular suspect but am more concerned with the overall history of the case and the various personalities and characters that were touched by it. The course might not bring us any closer to know who Jack was but I hope it will be informative both for the students and myself as well.

All the best

Chris

[mariab]

To Chris George:
Both the Poe and the JTR course sound like a most interesting, informative venture. Both in the JTR lore and in what people think about Poe's death there are severe misconceptions to be corrected.
And I find it most cool that the courses can also be attended by older adults. We have that at the Uni. of Chicago too, for some beginners' courses.

To Tecs:
Censoring so-called “private parts“ in a medical photo would look truly ridiculous, and not only because it would cover the injuries. Obviously the police wasn't planning on having these photos on wide circulation.

[Tecs]

To Chris George:
Both the Poe and the JTR course sound like a most interesting, informative venture. Both in the JTR lore and in what people think about Poe's death there are severe misconceptions to be corrected.
And I find it most cool that the courses can also be attended by older adults. We have that at the Uni. of Chicago too, for some beginners' courses.

To Tecs:
Censoring so-called “private parts“ in a medical photo would look truly ridiculous, and not only because it would cover the injuries. Obviously the police wasn't planning on having these photos on wide circulation.

I know. If you want a confession, I mainly did the last post to get to 100 posts and get promoted!

regards,


PS, I'm intrigued by so called private parts? I don't know what goes on in your neck of the woods but we Englishmen have serious blood pressure issues on this subject!

[mariab]

Congrats on becoming a detective, and I'm reminded of a Beavis and Butthead episode where they almost joined the army while calling themselves Major Woody and Private Parts.
(Hope this doesn't sound disrespectful in relation to the thread's subject.)

[kensei]

Was just thinking- imagine the pictures we'd have of the Ripper's corpse if he'd been captured and hanged.

[K-453]

Then we would also have his brain in a jar. Sliced. Like the one of Haarmann.

[curious4]

Graphic photos

I must say that one photograph shocked me deeply when I first became interested in this subject and that was the one of poor Catherine Eddowes hanging from a hook on the wall by her hair. Obviously there must have been a good reason for her being treated in this way - perhaps to get a really clear record of her injuries, but it did (and still does) strike me as particularly callous, particularly as she was just left by her killer lying on the street "cut up like a pig at market" - showing his contempt for his victim. (Yes, he, I have it on good authority that a woman would not have been strong enough to inflict these injuries....)

C4

[Phil H]

(Yes, he, I have it on good authority that a woman would not have been strong enough to inflict these injuries....)

I thought the idea of "Jill" the Ripper had been dead in the water since the days of Conan Doyle and William Stewart? Why raise it again to dismiss it now, c4?

So far as Eddowes corpse is concerned, at least they had the grace to stitch her up first. Mind you, maybe they had to....! (P.S. For those without British sense of irony/humour that was meant to be a bad taste joke! )

On the way the bodies were handled for the phtographs, this thread has already detailed the reasons for them being photographed head on, as the camera could not easily be angled down.

But I suspect that the Victorian's were a bit clinical about such things and would never have expected the pictures to be public property. They were a record, evidence for medical and police use - that was all. I don't think they would have been squeamish about nudity in such cases, or been bothered about the "dignity" of the victim - not least given their class and occupation. Those would have been major determinants in 1888 - had the victim been "The Hon Lady Euphemia Gastropod-Fartworthy" they might have been more discrete and acted differently. But that was then...

Phil

[curious4]

True, Phil, but paranoid as I am I thought I might be hit with a thousand reasons for Jack being Jill.

"Stitched up" - yes, as were most, or many of the suspects - Druitt in particular in my opinion! Still, poor Kate, they could have combed her hair at least. Presumably the photo was kept in an envelope marked "not to be looked at by women or boys!"

Cheers,
C4