The increasing acceptance of Martha Tabram...

[fodsaks]

In many of the articles and books I have recently read, along with screen adaptations such as 'From Hell' and 'Whitechapel', there seems to be more and more of a feeling abroad that Martha Tabram is a very strong candidate for a ripper victim.

Do you think we might soon be referring to the canonical 6?

[Wickerman]

In many of the articles and books I have recently read, along with screen adaptations such as 'From Hell' and 'Whitechapel', there seems to be more and more of a feeling abroad that Martha Tabram is a very strong candidate for a ripper victim.

Do you think we might soon be referring to the canonical 6?

No, it may be necessary to come up with a different 'identifier' but 'Canon' will always be reserved for the five.

As it sits, theories already exist for as few as four, to as many as nine. Do you feel like suggesting an identifier for each?

[Phil H]

So far as I am concerned, going back 40 or more years, Tabram has ALWAYS featured in accounts of the Ripper killings, because her murder was so close in time; no one else was convicted or arrested for it; and it was PERCEIVED as part of a pattern that helped create the media/press storm after Polly and Annie died.

It would make no sense nor would it be truthful not to include Martha in the narrative. It would be equally unobjective not to include or mention Mckenzie and Coles at the other end of the sequence/time line.

BUT that does not mean she is, or is being more widely accepted as a Ripper victim IMHO.

Films will always want to beef up the number or horror of the murders. Tabram is useful in that. Equally, Kelly is usually made the last victim in films because it allows a crescendo of horror. By comparison, Mckenzie and Coles are anti-climaxes (excuse any possible perceptible puns!). I don't think films should be taken into account in any regard.

Nor do I see any indication on Casebook that Martha id being "increasingly accepted" as a JtR victim. There will always be trends and though I do not myself regard her as one of Jack's deeds, I do contemplate scenarios in which she MIGHT be - years ago I would not have done so. But that reflects a WEAKENING of my certainty that the canonical five were all by the same hand, and a willingness to play with ideas of more than one killer.

Phil

[lynn cates]

sauce for the gander

Hello Phil. Absolutely.

If Kate can be included with her differences, why not Martha? But if Martha, why not Alice and Frances? But if they are included, then one must retract the "rising level of violence" theory.

And then what are you left with except evidence but no theory?

Cheers.
LC

[Supe]

Count this as a strong vote against including Martha Tabram as a Ripper victim, for reasons I have elucidated many times and particularly in the August 2008 Ripperologist article "Did She or Didn't She?"

Don.

[Steve S]

Purely personally,she presents less problems than MacKenzie or Coles,ie no large gap separating her from the "core victims"....(See,got away without saying C5..)

[fodsaks]

Forgive me if this seems facile, but it's a bit like 'Pluto'.
Some experts get together, have a chat and decide whether it is or isn't a planet. Despite the fact that it IS what it always has been.

I know there are many who would discount Liz Stride and Mary Kelly, leaving us with just three... And if there are doubts regarding those, the whole figure of Jack the Ripper vanishes entirely.

[Phil H]

the whole figure of Jack the Ripper vanishes entirely

But "Jack the Ripper" was surely always an intellectual construct?

A name was taken from a letter (almost certainly a hoax penned by a journalist) and applied to a number of murders. There never seems to have been any formal agreement on the number of women killed by this "fiend" but Melville Macnaghten thought there were five and that became the canonical number.

As no murderer was ever convicted, there was no legal determination of details or any kind of confirmation of numbers - no killer saying "OK, I'll confess to these but not those". The identification of Jack's victims is based on somewhat flawed and inconsistent, not to say old, medical views, perceptions, gut feelings, incomplete data and interpretation. That has ALWAYS been the case.

BUT there were murders, almost certainly some were by the same hand, and the press frenzy and social phenomenon of 1888 and after remains.

So in re-evaluating the case, what do we lose - nothing.

Five deaths never made "Jack" a major serial killer. Not even in the premiere league - but he was among the first, if not the first, of an urban post-industrial kind of crime. So questioning the numbers of victims does not change that.

By the same token, Jack the murderer and Jack the myth can be easily separated and discussed separately. We do it all the time on Casebook. There is now, IMHO a third strand (at least0 which is the social milieu - the "victims", genealogical research; social background, uncovering hitherto forgotten contemporary suspects etc. One could also add "speculative" Ripperology - as evidenced by the current thread on Jack's secret - which was it appears a map showing an arrow.

I too was disconcerted initially when - some years back now - authors began to deconstruct the idea of "Jack" and the five victims. But once the new notion has sunk in, I found it liberating rather than disappointing.

Phil

[caz]

the whole figure of Jack the Ripper vanishes entirely

But "Jack the Ripper" was surely always an intellectual construct?

Hi Phil,

So nothing like the "Yorkshire Ripper" then? Or the "Suffolk Strangler"? Or the "Gay Slayer"? Or the "Moors Murderers"? Or "Dr. Death" (GP Harold Shipman)? Or the "Monster of Dusseldorf"?

They didn't create their own nicknames, but they were all a sight more than an intellectual construct. They were flesh and blood killers, the lot of them, and the first and last mentioned (Sutcliffe and Kurten) produced a series of assaults and murders with far more dissimilarities than we see with the Whitechapel cases from Smith to Coles.

Love,

Caz
X

[Simon Wood]

Hi Phil H,

"'Jack the Ripper' was surely always an intellectual construct?"

You didn't need the question mark.

I agree with you entirely, except for the hoax having been originated by a journalist.

Welcome aboard.

Regards,

Simon

[caz]

Hello Phil. Absolutely.

If Kate can be included with her differences, why not Martha? But if Martha, why not Alice and Frances? But if they are included, then one must retract the "rising level of violence" theory.

Why must one? How long could one expect any lone killer's "rising level of violence" to continue before fatigue, falling fitness levels, the natural ageing process or some other physical or mental factor caught up with him? How could one imagine the level of violence rising much further after MJK anyway? It doesn't follow that a lone killer would give up entirely if he couldn't maintain the violence or raise it to another level after giving it his best shot. I see Mylett, McKenzie and Coles as potential damp squibs following the firework display in Miller's Court.

If your suspect for Nichols and Chapman had been free to kill again and done so, how much longer could he have carried on producing victims like carbon copies? How many attacks do you suppose he could have notched up before his physical strength and capabilities began to desert him and showed in the injuries inflicted? Or do you think he would have stopped himself before it got to the point where he was beginning to go off the boil?

Love,

Caz
X

[ChrisGeorge]

In many of the articles and books I have recently read, along with screen adaptations such as 'From Hell' and 'Whitechapel', there seems to be more and more of a feeling abroad that Martha Tabram is a very strong candidate for a ripper victim.

Do you think we might soon be referring to the canonical 6?

Hi all

I actually see no reason whatsoever to include Tabram with the canonical murders. Tabram was more of a stabbing, messy murder with multiple wounds done with two different weapons. To include Tabram as a Ripper murder, we are expected to believe that the same man changed three weeks later from that style of killing to the clean, deep neck wound and the abdominal mutilations, of slicing and not stabbing. And then the subsequent murders were done in that style. I just don't buy it. I am more inclined to think that the Tabram murder was more akin to the Smith murder, more of a one-off, possibly done by more than one man.

Best regards

Chris

[Phil H]

I tend to see Martha best as a "one off" - a savage attack by someone with a grudge perhaps. Maybe a revenge attack by an aggrieved punter, most likely a soldier and his mate.

I don't think questions such as:

How long could one expect any lone killer's "rising level of violence" to continue before fatigue, falling fitness levels, the natural ageing process or some other physical or mental factor caught up with him?

help much, because we cannot fathom an answer. If we were able to go back and pin point the murderer, the anomalies might all be explained in the most odd but absolutely fitting ways - his mental state, his health, his family situation, incarceration (prison or secure hospital).

All the pieces of the "jigsaw puzzle" might well be in our hands now. We might have details of the mental patient; details of some other crimes elsewhere; the notes on a suspect arrested at the time - if only we could interpret them aright.

Just as the issue whether there were several murderers at work cannot be answered by LOGIC - there may have been, there could have been, though common sense suggests one hand is the simplest.... history is not always simple. The unexpected, the extraordinary happens all the time. If the details are lost or obscured it can be very difficult to reveal the truth (though not impossible). That is why every generation of historians reassesses the past and rewrites the views of tits predecessors, using new insights and methodologies; new information; scientfic advances etc.

Phil

[Ben]

Pop me down for a "yes" in favour of Tabram being one of Jack's.

When viewed in the context of other serial crimes and offenders, the transition from frenzied stabbing to more controlled cutting is not only very minor, it's precisely what one might expect from a serial killer starting out with a chaotic, untutored MO and then improving. A serial killer's first attack or murder will often bear little relation to later, more polished efforts. Even if it were proved beyond doubt that Tabram was a ripper victim, the killer's "MO" would still be considered extremely consistent in comparison to most. What would make the killer very unusual in comparison to his more modern counterparts is if Nichols was his first attack.

[Phil H]

I don't think EXCLUDING Tabram means, for a moment, that Polly was Jack's first victim. There are other women who were attacked in ways that appear more consistent with JtR's MO - attacks to the throat - or we may not have recognised them for what they are. (Could they have been in other places away from the East End? to make just one suggestion.)

In that regard it always amazes me that Emma Smith seems to have done nearly anything she could to avoid going to hospital or reporting her (eventually fatal) attack to the police. Might there have been other similar instances?

Martha seems to be so closely associated with JtR's "canonicals"because she is the last murder BEFORE the five; because the press at the time linked her to the "series"; and because I suspect we want to in some emotional way. Having Jack as Tabram's killer somehow makes her more significant, adds meaning to her awful death. But should any of these considerations sway our judgement.

I do not, of course, question the opinions of those who consider Tabram a Ripper victim on solid grounds.

Phil