Who was killed by Jack the Ripper?

[Fiver]

The majority of votes, by far, favour including Martha Tabram on the list of Jack the Ripper's victims.

However, there was no evidence of the kind of mutilation (e.g., disembowelment, organ removal, deliberate post-mortem cutting) that characterised the next Ripper murders.

I include Tabram because.
* The majority of wounds were after the fatal wound.
* The amount of damage done to the corpse and the areas targeted.
* Posing of the body, flat on the back with the skirts raised.
* The timing of the murders. All occurred on overcast days with very little moonlight.

[Fiver]

The murder of Tabram appeared to be a wild uncontrolled stabbing frenzy. Two different weapons may have been used, and one of them might have been a dagger or bayonet. She was with soldiers all evening. The murders of the canonical five seem to have been comparatively cold efficient executions by someone who knew exactly what he was doing, as he quickly and silently slit their throats. I am inclined to exclude Tabram, and admit to reservations about Stride (maybe, but not clearly proven), and a bigger reservation with Kelly, as it is difficult to be certain what he was doing. Was it some form of profound vengeance, was he just crazy, or was he making such an appalling mess of her that the body couldn't be positively identified, as some suggest, because it wasn't Kelly? I really cannot decide what the killer was doing.

The C5 murders were much better than Tabram's for quickly killing the victims, which I think was due to evolving technique. The mutilations clearly had a strong emotional component, like Tabram being stabbed a few dozen times.

[Marcel Prost]

I am inclined to exclude Tabram, and admit to reservations about Stride (maybe, but not clearly proven), and a bigger reservation with Kelly, as it is difficult to be certain what he was doing.

Hi Doctored Whatsit,

That was also my reasoning when voting. I can only firmly believe that Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes were killed by the same man.

Tabram, Stride, and Kelly are different and cannot be attributed to the same murderer with the same degree of certainty.

I may, of course, be completely wrong.

Almost everything about Jack the Ripper is deeply mysterious, but Mary Jane Kelly is truly, as Churchill would say, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

[Lewis C]

Hi all,

The majority of votes, by far, favour including Martha Tabram on the list of Jack the Ripper's victims.

However, there was no evidence of the kind of mutilation (e.g., disembowelment, organ removal, deliberate post-mortem cutting) that characterised the next Ripper murders.

The most recent posts in this thread discuss whether or not the Ripper had anatomical or even surgical knowledge.

I don't have a definitive opinion on this issue (even doctors at the time were divided), nor on Tabram's inclusion, but I am left with this question: if the killer had great anatomical knowledge, why did he ‘only’ stab Tabram? Why not put his knife skills to use?

I am not trying to defend any particular theory, just curious about the absence of deeper mutilations on Martha Tabram, if she was indeed the victim of a killer with anatomical knowledge.

Hi Marcel,

It could be that Tabram's killer had anatomical knowledge, but didn't choose to utilize it on that occasion.

[Lewis C]

Hi Doctored Whatsit,

That was also my reasoning when voting. I can only firmly believe that Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes were killed by the same man.

Tabram, Stride, and Kelly are different and cannot be attributed to the same murderer with the same degree of certainty.

I may, of course, be completely wrong.

Almost everything about Jack the Ripper is deeply mysterious, but Mary Jane Kelly is truly, as Churchill would say, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

I can't say that I'm certain about Tabram, Stride, or Kelly, but I voted C6 because I thought that all 3 more likely than not were Ripper murders.

[Marcel Prost]

Hi Marcel,

It could be that Tabram's killer had anatomical knowledge, but didn't choose to utilize it on that occasion.

Hi Lewis C,

Certainly, Tabram's killer could have had anatomical knowledge and not applied it because it could have been his first kill and he had not yet decided on his definitive MO. It is an intriguing possibility.

But when it comes to finding out who killed whom, we always come up against the question of whether or not such anatomical knowledge existed in the first place.

Like the doctors of the time, several members of this forum have definitive opinions in one field or another.

I read the arguments for and against with great interest, but remain undecided.

If we could reach a consensus on the question of anatomical knowledge, we could certainly narrow down the list of suspects.

[GBinOz]

Nope, none of the doctors spoke of any medical skill whatever. They talked about anatomical knowledge and skill, and someone accustomed to cutting up animals was given as an example, and also someone accustomed to removing innards with one sweep of a knife. These are deliberate pointers to butcher/slaughterers and not medically trained people.

Beg to differ Doc, although I do agree that the removing of innards with one sweep of a knife is a pointer to butcher/slaughterers, but that comment was directed towards the Chapman case.

This is from Brown's testimony at the Eddowes inquest:
[Coroner] Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed anatomical skill? - He must have had a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs, and the way to remove them.

Knowing where Eddowes organs were located and how to remove them amounts to anatomical knowledge and surgical dissection skills.

Here is Prosector's opinion:

Bond was a curious character. Although he was described as a surgeon he was in fact appointed as Surgeon to the Out Patients Department of the Westminster Hospital which meant that he hardly got to do any operative surgery himself. He committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1901 ostensibly because he was having trouble sleeping but he was also suffering from a urinary stricture almost certainly the result of gonorrhoea.

Although he was adamant that Jack did not possess surgical skill or anatomical knowledge don't forget that the only victim that he saw was Mary Jane and I don't think anyone could have deduced anything from that killing. She certainly was butchered and very little evidence of skill or otherwise was left although the way he extracted her heart from below through the abdominal cavity did, in my opinion, show some evidence of anatomical expertise. It's not an easy approach to the heart (he couldn't get at it through the chest although he did try because he had no rib retractors).

I have studied all the post mortem reports in detail and those of Phillips and Brown stand out as models of their kind. Detailed, accurate and thoughtful as you'd expect from two experienced police surgeons in one of the most busy crime and accident ridden areas in 19th century Britain. They both though that the Ripper had anatomical knowledge and some degree of surgical skill but that he wasn't a fully fledged doctor. I would entirely agree with that. There is clear evidence that his technique improved from Polly Nichols to Kate Eddowes - he was on a learning curve.

I believe that his motive was to make the killings all have the same 'signature' so that people would connect them, not to carry out perfect surgical operations. There simply wasn't time for that even if he had been the best surgeon in the world.

Cheers, George

[GBinOz]

The murder of Tabram appeared to be a wild uncontrolled stabbing frenzy. Two different weapons may have been used, and one of them might have been a dagger or bayonet. She was with soldiers all evening. The murders of the canonical five seem to have been comparatively cold efficient executions by someone who knew exactly what he was doing, as he quickly and silently slit their throats. I am inclined to exclude Tabram, and admit to reservations about Stride (maybe, but not clearly proven), and a bigger reservation with Kelly, as it is difficult to be certain what he was doing. Was it some form of profound vengeance, was he just crazy, or was he making such an appalling mess of her that the body couldn't be positively identified, as some suggest, because it wasn't Kelly? I really cannot decide what the killer was doing.

Hi Doc,

Largely agree. I do note that Eddowes and Kelly were the only two victims that had their faces attacked. There is a very good dissertation by Sam Flynn here:

https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rip-accident-or-design.html

Looking at the diagram of the facial injuries in Sam's dissertation we see the eyelids slit and arrow cuts pointing to those slits. The nose is cut off and the mouth has been cut, again with arrow pointer cuts. Is there some symbolism being expressed? You have seen too much, and poked your nose into my business and you're not going to tell anyone? Same with Kelly.

Cheers, George