Why "Offically" Only Five?

[RavenDarkendale]

This may have been done before, and if so, point me in that direction.

What do you suppose lead the authorities to categorically state that JtR killed five victims (the canonical five), and five only, when Stride and MJK don't really fit with the other three?

[Hunter]

The "authorities" did not categorically state that 5 victims fell to the same hand. Their opinions varied.

[Wickerman]

The suggestion of "Five victims only" is modern in so far as, it was not a consensus at the time.

We read that there were Five victims because (if I'm not mistaken?) a letter apparently wrote in confidence about 1894, but was never published, surfaced in 1959 - the Macnaghten Memoranda.
Since this date we find this claim repeated time after time.

Looking back at the opinions of other officials, for instance, Edmund Reid thought there had been nine Ripper victims, whereas Thomas Arnold only speaks of four. Walter Dew indicates seven, from Smith to Kelly.

The idea of Five has been adopted, unofficially by modern writers, but still not universally accepted.

Regards, Jon S.

[RavenDarkendale]

the MacNaghten Memorandum is exactly where I found the emphatic statement that JtR killed 5 and only 5 and listed the canonical victims.

I think Smith is definitely out.

I'd go with Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Anne Chapman, Catherine Eddows, Alice McKenzie and perhaps Frances Coles as likely victims, and I concede the idea that others may never have been discovered.

[Tecs]

Hi all,

Adding to the above, 5 victims was not a common belief or consensus at the time. Only later did it take hold when the MM came to light.

He possibly/probably thought 5 simply because he thought Druitt was the Ripper and so if dead after MJK, no more could be Ripper killings. It is a chicken and egg argument that we will never solve though: Did MM believe Druitt to be the Ripper because his death fits with the end of the killings or did he think MJK was the end because he knew Druitt was the Ripper?

There is no doubt that the Police in general did not believe at the time that MJK was the last victim and as noted above, they all had different ideas.

So, that is why it is good practice to refer to the "Canonical five." These would be five that we can all agree on were murdered by the Ripper and then add more if you want. Saying that though, many people dismiss Stride and in more recent years MJK as well! And Stewart Evans pointed out that if you want a definitive M.O. and if that M.O. was: Throat cut, Abdomen opened, organs removed, then really only Chapman and Eddowes qualify.

I think the 5 have taken hold because it hung around unchallenged for so long. A senior Policeman reveals in a secret document that "the Ripper had 5 victims and 5 only." Saying it so clearly and sternly was almost challenging people to oppose him. Nobody did, so it took hold. But from subsequent research we know a lot more now. And anyway, he probably wrote so sternly in order to stop any nonsense about the killer having killed many more as some people did suggest.

regards,

[Bridewell]

A senior Policeman reveals in a secret document that "the Ripper had 5 victims and 5 only." Saying it so clearly and sternly was almost challenging people to oppose him. Nobody did, so it took hold. But from subsequent research we know a lot more now. And anyway, he probably wrote so sternly in order to stop any nonsense about the killer having killed many more as some people did suggest.

Hi Tecs,

A "secret" document wouldn't have stopped any such "nonsense" though, surely?

[Lechmere]

I think the senior police officials had a tendency to want to minimise jack the ripper victim numbers as it reflected badly on them.

[RivkahChaya]

And Stewart Evans pointed out that if you want a definitive M.O. and if that M.O. was: Throat cut, Abdomen opened, organs removed, then really only Chapman and Eddowes qualify.

If you add "facial mutilations," though, and body type, Eddowes & Kelly look more alike than they look like the other three, and Nichols and Chapman look more alike.

I'm not making it definitively myself, but I think there is a case to be made that one person killed both Eddowes and Kelly, and another Chapman and Nichols. If one of the two theoretical killers killed Stride, and was interrupted, I'd guess it was the Eddowes-Kelly killer, but I lean toward "Stride wasn't a JTR victim."

I do think that there are a few other facts which lent credence to a 5-victim/1-killer cluster, other than just "MacNaughten said so."

1) They were killed in a small geographic area, very close together in time, and with 2) what appeared to be the same weapon. If it wasn't exactly the same, it was very similar. They were cut, or sliced, not stabbed. Smith and Tabram were stabbed. I think this is why police initially considered a Smith-Tabram-Nichols progression, but dropped it.

Assuming that the Stride murder was interrupted, there was 3) a progression of savagery, which makes intuitive sense to most people. It may not be what happened-- that one person became progressively more savage-- but it makes psychological, and the killer of MJK doesn't come out of nowhere; someone has become progressively inured to violence and cruelty. I think that makes the horror of the MJK scene somehow a little easier for people to deal with. The person who killed MJK wasn't normal one day, and a monster the next. Someone, somewhere, saw it coming, and just failed to act. People can even take a little comfort in telling themselves they would be more heroic. It's even possible that this makes the Druit-as-killer theory attractive, because people can write a background story where his family, or employer, saw him deteriorating, but failed to take enough action. It returns a little control to people.

4) A least initially, police took the "double event" letter seriously, on the theory that someone else could not have found out about it, and posted the letter in time for it to arrive when it did, and this seemed to cinch the idea that one person killed both Stride and Eddowes.

[Wickerman]

There is another contributing factor, more subliminal for us perhaps in that we read it without taking in the implication.

On November 10th, Dr Bond wrote his important analysis of the wounds inflicted by this murderer. His report he begins, "All five murders were no doubt committed by the same hand...".
He was not actually saying the range of murders was limited to five, but for us today, the more we read it the more the number 'five' is impressed on our consciousness.

Also, this was a police document, and there can be little doubt the top brass would have become quite familiar with it at the time.
Bond's important report may have been the source of Macnaghten's, "...the Whitechapel murderer committed five murders, and - to give the devil his due - no more."

Regards, Jon S.

[RivkahChaya]

On November 10th, Dr Bond wrote his important analysis of the wounds inflicted by this murderer. His report he begins, "All five murders were no doubt committed by the same hand...".
He was not actually saying the range of murders was limited to five, but for us today, the more we read it the more the number 'five' is impressed on our consciousness.

You're right. I'm sure that's the original source of five, although it doesn't mean "five only." That part is MacNaughten's contribution, and probably has to do with his conviction that the killer was one of three people who could not have committed any more murders (Druitt was dead, Kosminski was essentially incarcerated, and Ostrog, IIRC, was well out of the jurisdiction). Perhaps MacNaughten assumes that by the time he was writing, any other murders in other jurisdictions shortly before the JTR murders would have come to his attention. The JTR murders were so notorious that it may have been inconceivable to him that if the same thing had happened in Paris or Rome in August or July, 1888, he wouldn't have known about it by the time of his writing. He may even assume that the killer would have popped up somewhere again, with another spate of killings, and word would have reached him, and the fact that it didn't means he didn't have any more victims.

The reasons I gave have more to do with why the story of the five sits well with people, and seems, if not frustratingly unsolved, at least all-told, and satisfying as a narrative.

Most people in the English-speaking world know about Jack the Ripper, enough that you can allude to him without explanation, but few people know a lot about it. Almost anyone can sat that JTR was a Victorian serial killer, but few know enough to even ask questions, and those who do take years to get to "those 5? really?"

I mean, in all the fictional accounts of the story where so much is changed, the C5 is one of the few things that storytellers keep.

Another thesis I don't really feel like writing is how many legendary elements have crept into the Ripper story that few people recognize, because they either seem to make so much sense, or there seems to be something backing it up, but really, there's a lot that could be stripped away as common to legend.