Could he have taken her blood?

[Defective Detective]

One of the many little mysteries surrounding the Ripper crimes is the peculiarly small amount of blood found around Polly Nichols' body - "a wine glass and a half", according to Dr. Llewellyn, or roughly ten ounces. One would expect far more blood from such a grievous throat wound, and indeed there was much more present in the subsequent murders.

The prevailing theory is that the excess blood seeped into Polly's clothing, but this doesn't satisfy me. There's no mention in any credible report of her clothing being soaked through with blood. And further, her abdominal wounds were as unusually bloodless as the throat injury. The absence of a great deal of it around those cuts would seem to argue against the idea that her clothing had absorbed the blood.

The idea that she was killed elsewhere and transported to the site, as per From Hell, is unsupported by any evidence. As an alternative, would it be possible that her murderer had some way to catch the blood? He was skilled enough to avoid arterial spray at the scene, but the blood would have gone somewhere nevertheless. What about a pail, or an especially large canteen?

We know that the killer collected other tissues from both this and other victims. Might he not have wanted blood on this particular night?

[Sam Flynn]

What an interesting thought, DD. Be careful with the Nichols evidence, though - very little of the official records have survived.

[Defective Detective]

What an interesting thought, DD. Be careful with the Nichols evidence, though - very little of the official records have survived.

It's something I had in a dream.

I'm going to tie this altogether now instead of beating around the bush. I'd like to begin by inviting you to think about a particular type of serial murderer - Jeffrey Dahmer is the most famous example of this subtype, but Ed Gein might also qualify, along with Bob Berdella and others. All of these were psychosexual killers enthused with the idea of making an eternal partner who would not ever leave them.

It seems worlds removed from the hit-and-run Ripper, does it not?

Well, maybe not.

Blood is a tissue, like other organs. He wanted body parts - a separate part from each victim. And I increasingly agree with Gian Quasar's view on the Eddowes murder - that he really only wanted her kidney in that instance, and deliberately hid evidence of his skill by working sloppily, and took her uterus only to play into Phillips' American uterine thief theory.

One tissue from each victim is what he wanted: blood, uterus, kidney, heart. Tabram was a trial run to test out his skill; Stride wasn't a Ripper victim.

And do you recall that one of the Torso victims was placed onto Percy Shelley's property? I wonder, if we went back through the Torso killings, we'd find two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head which were not accounted for.

I think it's conceivable that the Ripper wanted to make his own woman, like a homunculus from the ruins of other women. I think that he may have either been the Torso Murderer, on days when he had access to a cart, or may have worked in conjunction with, and probably subordinate to, whoever was directly responsible for those: one to build the external structure, the other to supply the internal organs. The aim was always to cobble together a woman from multiple women - that way one needn't worry about an independent personality or distinct will. And he or they might have believed in necromancy.

[Sam Flynn]

Blood is a tissue, like other organs.

True, DD, but it was only recently classified as a (connective) tissue; perhaps as late as the latter half of the 20th Century. The category "connective tissue" seems only to have been invented rather late in the 19th Century - but not, at that time, a category that included blood. In the 1880s it is defined thus:

"This stringy packing material... is called connective because it connects parts together. In the leg we have skin, fat, muscle, tendons, blood-vessels, nerves and bones, all packed together with connective [tissue] and covered with skin". M Foster, "Physiology", 1883

A little earlier, the more generic term "tissue" is classified in this manner:

"Every such constituent of the body, as epidermis, cartilage, or muscle, is called a 'tissue'...". Huxley, "Physiology", 1869

It appears that "tissues" were classified as solid sheets of cells or fibres back then, as opposed to fluids like blood. In fact, the earliest reference I can find to blood being classified a tissue (connective or otherwise) is as late as the 1960s.

But I'm nit-picking! Whether he classed her blood as a "tissue" or not, it doesn't detract from your interesting idea of a Frankensteinian (or Geinian) Jack collecting spare parts, liquid or otherwise, as he went along. Even if that does mean that Kidney #2 would have to be sourced from a separate victim

[Pcdunn]

Jack the Ripper revealed to be a medical vampire!
I like it.

[Errata]

There is actually an incredibly easy way for a killer to drink the blood of a victim killed in the manner Nichols was. Essentially the killer merely had to jam the knife in the throat once, and then fasten his mouth over the wound and start swallowing. Once he was done he could expand the throat wound and make the abdominal wounds, and since she would be pretty well exsanguinated at that point, there would be little extra blood.

And "vampires" usually do just that when they drink blood. Not the modern lifestyle types who have no desire to kill their victims, that's different. But vampire killers don't make neat little cuts. They jam a knife in the neck the way kids jam a straw into a juice box.

I don't think that's what happened. But it could have.

[RockySullivan]

Was it thought at first that Nichols might have been moved to the spot after death? I'm not sure how far one could move her if that was the case. Was it the Nichols murder where there was talk of blood stains being washed away or am I remembering wrong something I read on another thread

[Defective Detective]

There is actually an incredibly easy way for a killer to drink the blood of a victim killed in the manner Nichols was. Essentially the killer merely had to jam the knife in the throat once, and then fasten his mouth over the wound and start swallowing. Once he was done he could expand the throat wound and make the abdominal wounds, and since she would be pretty well exsanguinated at that point, there would be little extra blood.

And "vampires" usually do just that when they drink blood. Not the modern lifestyle types who have no desire to kill their victims, that's different. But vampire killers don't make neat little cuts. They jam a knife in the neck the way kids jam a straw into a juice box.

I don't think that's what happened. But it could have.

I'm thinking less of drinking it than taking it away (in my theory as the trophy from this particular kill, but you needn't necessarily agree with me for the blood to have been carried away). I don't believe that the end-goal here was ingestion, but the same purpose that the killer had in mind for the other bits of viscera he took - in my view putting it all together and building a composite female.

Now, it's true that cutting her throat whilst she's laying down will staunch much of the bleeding and prevent arterial spray, but there was much less blood at the scene than we might expect even taking this into account.

Was it thought at first that Nichols might have been moved to the spot after death?

Yes, it was speculated about in press reports at the time as a reason for the conspicuous absence of blood from the scene, but was dropped when none of Paul, Cross, or any of the constables on patrol reported hearing horses.

[RockySullivan]

I'm thinking less of drinking it than taking it away (in my theory as the trophy from this particular kill, but you needn't necessarily agree with me for the blood to have been carried away). I don't believe that the end-goal here was ingestion, but the same purpose that the killer had in mind for the other bits of viscera he took - in my view putting it all together and building a composite female.

Now, it's true that cutting her throat whilst she's laying down will staunch much of the bleeding and prevent arterial spray, but there was much less blood at the scene than we might expect even taking this into account.



Yes, it was speculated about in press reports at the time as a reason for the conspicuous absence of blood from the scene, but was dropped when none of Paul, Cross, or any of the constables on patrol reported hearing horses.

interesting don't need horses if she was killed on that street indoors

[Rosella]

Didn't PC Thain, one of the unfortunate policemen who had to place Polly in the handcart er ambulance, speak of her back being absolutely saturated with blood, though? He believed the blood had flowed down from neck to waist, so much so that his hands were mired in the stuff. She wore an ulster, an item of clothing that was usually made of wool and that would have absorbed much of it.

[GUT]

Didn't PC Thain, one of the unfortunate policemen who had to place Polly in the handcart er ambulance, speak of her back being absolutely saturated with blood, though? He believed the blood had flowed down from neck to waist, so much so that his hands were mired in the stuff. She wore an ulster, an item of clothing that was usually made of wool and that would have absorbed much of it.

Now you want to bring the contemporary reports into it? Don't you know that nowadays you just make stuff up and ignore evidence.

[Rosella]

I am very sorry about that, Gut, and will remember to do better in future.

[Defective Detective]

There was enough saturation for PC Thain to get blood on his hands when he lifted her. However, I've seen it suggested that this blood would have come from the pool around her head which had run beneath her. It wouldn't have come from the abdominal mutilations, which were almost bloodless.

Her back was bloody, and there was blood around the head, but not as much as one would expect. The real mystery is that the torso was so bloodless that her wounds weren't suspected until she was taken to the mortuary shed. Recall that Crossmere put hihis hands down into it to draw her skirts back down, and did not get any blood on his hands in doing so. (We may reasonably infer that he didn't, at any rate, or he'd have been detained and questioned, job or no job.)

Conversely, Sergeant Kirby made a sweep of the area as far as the tracks and found no blood, which militates against the view that Polly was killed on a slope at such an angle that it ran down and away from the body. The only significant quantities of blood present were pooled around her head and under her back, and my understanding is that the latter came from the former.

And it had rained several hours before Polly's murder. I haven't run across anything to confirm or refute it, but if the ground underneath her body were still damp, it could have increased the apparent amount of blood on her back.

Compared to Annie Chapman's murder, Nichols' was a remarkably bloodless affair, and it's this difference which makes me think that her killer must have taken away some of the blood somehow. Even if we set aside my (admittedly rather fanciful) idea of a Frankenstein-Jack, it would be in keeping with his trophy-collecting behavior.

What stands out to me in each event is what's missing: blood at the first; a uterus; a kidney; a heart. If he just wanted one thing, a uterus, as is often portrayed, why leave Mary Kelly's behind? And if he wanted different things from different women, then how can we explain that?

It's an inductive leap, I fully admit. But it's possible to explain what's present by what is absent. If we look at what I'd consider the Unquestionable Four - Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes and Kelly - Nichols is at first the odd woman out because nothing is missing from her body. Except for blood.

[Rosella]

It has to be remembered, of course, that Bucks Row was a public thoroughfare. It was an exceptionally quiet and dark one, but a public street, nevertheless. My guess is, (as I don't believe that Cross/Lechmere was the killer) that Jack heard Cross's hobnail boots coming closer and closer, just as he got started on Polly's abdomen in the stable gateway. We don't know what organs he would have taken from Polly had Cross and Paul not arrived.

I'm afraid I don't agree with you either that Stride isn't one of the C-5, but anyway, it does remind me of the appearance of Diemschutz spoiling Jack's fun in Dutfield's Yard.

I'm not a medically trained person so I have no explanation as to why the front of Polly's dress wasn't soaked in blood. Apparently there was some blood found but not much.

[Defective Detective]

The thing with that is that the wounds inflicted on Polly Nichols' abdomen look cosmetic. While it's true that her intestine protruded through one of the injuries once the body arrived at the mortuary, her wounds are not consistent with an attempt to open up her abdominal cavity as in subsequent murders. If anything they're like more extensive versions of the injuries later inflicted upon Alice McKenzie - four extremely deep cuts on the right-hand side of her torso which, while severe, do not parallel the excision of the navel and subsequent evisceration inflicted on Annie Chapman.

I don't think that the Ripper intended to take any abdominal organs from Polly Nichols. It's too much to call her abdominal injuries superficial, but they weren't conductive to any invasive exploration. I would say that they almost look like an afterthought, like some kind of doodle.

I also don't believe that the killer was interrupted by Crossmere. If we recall the McKenzie case again, PC Andrews heard someone approaching by their footfalls before they even turned into the alleyway, and as I recall something similar occurred with Frances Coles. These were deserted streets at dawn. Assuming he wasn't the murderer (and I don't think that he was), I have a difficult time believing that Crossmere or Paul wouldn't have heard someone walking away.

EDIT: I was right about the Coles thing.

2:15 AM: P.C. Ernest Thompson 240H was on his beat along Chamber Street, only minutes away from Leman Street Police Station. He had been on the police force less than two months, and this was his first night on the beat alone. Thomspon heard the retreating footsteps of a man in the distance, apparently heading toward Mansell Street. Only a few seconds later he turns his vision to the darkest corner of Swallow Gardens and shines his lamp upon the body of Frances Coles.

Granting that Chamber Street isn't Bucks Row, they're both abandoned sidestreets late at night or early in the morning.

It just seems that too often we tend to rely on the idea that the Ripper was interrupted, and multiple times, to explain differences between cases. I think we ought to instead look at ways to explain them without positing some outside motivation. If a street killer has two extremely close calls in the space of a few weeks, I think he'd probably take a very long break unless he were a raving maniac, which I don't believe that the Ripper was.