The Cry of Oh Murder! - Why No Response?

[perrymason]

Hi again,

Actually Robert my version of "Clue" answers on Marys killing is...killed by Known Man, in her undies, who was not Jack, attacked while sleeping, with the Knife..

Im not stretching the truth much Suzi when I say that not only were the first 4 obviously much older and perhaps also much more downtrodden,.... especially if you add Martha, the first 3 look like they could be sisters. Its far more than a birth date, all these women were in different places in their life the night they are killed than Mary was the night she is. As for how many Lovers she had, we know of two, but if as you suggests she has been spreading sugar, then we just have a larger pool of men that know her that might be her killer.

Polly...Annie....Liz.....Kate. None have beds paid for the night they are killed. None are happily drunk and singing...unless it was Kate in jail, after sleeping it off... all are assuredly or assumed to be outdoors soliciting at the time they meet their killer, and none to my recollection, were in their underwear in bed asleep when attacked.

As I said earlier, surely its much more accurate to look at this as one of several unsolved murders that Fall, rather than seeing as done by a mad killer that had never killed a woman that young, or indoors, before. And its so unfair to the other street whore killers who killed street whores with knives before "Jacks Run", and after it.....maybe they deserve some notoriety too.

Like it or not, the official suspect as of November 16th, 1888 is still Blotchy Man, not Jack...not Joe 1 or 2...just the last man seen with Mary according to Mary Ann Cox...on November 8th, just before midnight. There is no trip out again....there is no precedent to even suggest she brings men in anyway, ...there is no believed Astrakan suspect, and there certainly is no evidence at all that Mary was anywhere but in her room when her killer comes to her.

So to believe she went out, to believe she ever brought clients home, to believe she escorted her killer into Millers Court, and to believe that Jack the Ripper was her Killer is just that and only that.....belief. Not one shred of evidence could be used to propose any of those notions, let alone buy into them.

What Im suggesting all along here is that there is a story right there on paper, as is, albeit without a witness we should be throwing out anyway since they obviously did 120 years ago. And it doesnt require Mary going out...something that is not on record as occurring,....it doesnt require Mary to have only started this particular week of all the weeks she has lived there to bring clients to her room....there is no such account ever......and most importantly, it doesnt require that a street whore we know has been thrown out of places for rent arrears, and has expressed no concern over her current situation, suddenly goes out to earn money....though not for food, shes eaten....or not for booze, she has already been hammered and the pubs are closed....and not to earn 4d for a bed...because she has one in her own room that she can use. Just because thats our Mary...thats what we can glean from the little weve been told about her.....if theres street work to be done, damn the torpedoes, screw the November rain, her full belly, and spinning head....she's at 'er.

Although I guess that doesnt explain the arrears in the first place, or her spending money given by Joes on anything but arrears.

My best regards all.

[Robert]

"especially if you add Martha"

But if you add Martha, Michael, then he had killed indoors before - and may even have believed that Martha was taking him to her room.

Robert

[perrymason]

"especially if you add Martha"

But if you add Martha, Michael, then he had killed indoors before - and may even have believed that Martha was taking him to her room.

Robert

Hi Robert,

I added that for dramatic license, to more dramatically show the resemblances of the two first Canonicals with each other, using a prior non-Canonical that was killed just before them, who had far more in common with the Canonicals than Mary. To start, she was without money, bed, she was middle-aged and she was outside soliciting.

As for Martha, if you call being killed on a staircase in a place where whores were known to take clients and service them in the open air "indoors"....then we'll never see eye to eye Im afraid.

Seriously though, what makes you think that assigning a 26 year old whore who was indoors sleeping in her room, to a killer known by the fact that he kills middle-aged whores outdoors while they are awake, any more incredible than Mary being killed by a lover or friend?

Truthfully, based on what we can count on, and that doesn't include Hutchinson, the likelihood that he came to her in her room in the court, and was allowed to stay without appreciable noise or loud resistance should be enough to squash sheer speculation that he was a man unknown to Mary, who kills whores while they work outdoors.

Best regards Robert.

[Robert]

But Michael, how precisely do you see this unfolding? Did they have a row? Or did Mary's lover, whoever he was, plan the whole thing?

Robert

[perrymason]

But Michael, how precisely do you see this unfolding? Did they have a row? Or did Mary's lover, whoever he was, plan the whole thing?

Robert

Thats a really good question Robert, and believe it or not, I haven't fleshed out the possible motivator beyond what I know is a possible catalyst....nor the culprit.

Mary was seeing two men at least, one of which will be declared insane and committed. Mary had just broken a live-in relationship with one, we don't know how strained that is. Maria Harvey suggested she stayed a minute when he arrived the evening of Nov 8th to be sure the two were "ok" before leaving. Mary also has a feature to her room that allows for men who have been there, to know how to access without a key. Mary has no record of ever bringing clients into the courtyard.

I think when you continue to explore "what is known' you will see that its very possible that it was someone capable of committing a murder using a knife in terrible fashion....like killers of street whores did to lesser extent with 1888 non-canonicals, or in 1889 with Alice McKenzie, or with female torso's.....and you add to it the circumstantial evidence which has Mary indoors after midnight, then add the fact that no-one hears anything more than "oh-murder" possibly coming from Marys room, then you add that her killer does things no Ripper kill ever had done, and leaves extracted organs no Ripper kill had left behind, and then sets the latch to lock the door when it closes.....

Mary fed, drunk, has a bed...indoors, never brought clients in before, raining hard,.. testimony has room dark and quiet from just before 1:30am until 3am and Mary Ann's return,... Mary found in bed, where attack started,...no sounds of struggles, fights, bed moving, feet scuffling, bed squeaking, ...no male voices heard, no obvious time of entry due to silence maintained throughout, ...Mary has only entertained Joe Flemming and Joe Barnett in that room to our knowledge, .....killer performs every act that the Ripper have previously been reported in the paper to have done, but doesn't take the organs Jack took, killer removes facial features completely....killer takes a heart, and leaves the uterus which is extracted and he has never left behind extracted uteri before, .....and unlike all other Ripper killings, this killer prevents access to the deceased by manually engaging the door lock himself.

My best Robert.

[c.d.]

Seriously though, what makes you think that assigning a 26 year old whore who was indoors sleeping in her room, to a killer known by the fact that he kills middle-aged whores outdoors while they are awake, any more incredible than Mary being killed by a lover or friend?

We might as well ask ourselves why he kills some women with bonnets and some without or some women with aprons and some without.

c.d.

[Robert]

Hi Michael

I think we see a simple escalation in the violence on each victim (except for Stride). By the time he got to Eddowes, he was into cutting the face. Given the privacy and extra time at Miller's Court, what we see isn't surprising.

Yes, he took a heart. But the killer of Eddowes took a kidney. Does that mean that Chapman and Eddowes were killed by two different men? You do have a point that he left the uterus behind, which is out of character for "Jack." But then, if we're dealing with a copycat killer here, leaving the uterus is out of character for a copycat killer. Surely if you're a copycat killer, you copy.

Robert

[Sam Flynn]

So... why was there no response to the cry of "Murder!"? ? ?

...sorry about the Doppler Effect, there. I was typing rather quickly in my keenness to keep the conversation relevant to the thread's topic.

[Robert]

Michael if you'd like to open another thread, I'll join you there, and leave Gareth screaming blue murder. It started off as red murder, but turned blue as it got nearer.

[Sam Flynn]

Michael if you'd like to open another thread, I'll join you there

Me too. I'll put the kettle on.

(Nice one, Rob! )

[perrymason]

Trying to take on each individual aspect in isolation can be tricky Sam....but point made.

Why?....because in this instance "oh-murder" was uttered without the volume and urgency that might indicate it was an actual life threatening moment...certainly the "ear" witnesses didn't take it that seriously. And once it was uttered, the source need not have said anything more, nor the "inspiration" for the faintish cry....because the way it was recorded as being said could easily have been an exchange of disappointment or unhappiness by the rooms occupant when she sees who was knocking on her window or door, and she utters it while the door is open and he is standing there. What more needs to be said, by either? It also would reveal a bit of tension perhaps with the arriving man, or the disturbance itself.

As for the new thread Robert, I'm at the folks for Good Friday, so maybe another time.

cd.....I would think that 4 out of 4 women that were Jacks first 4 victims were middle-aged, outdoors in vacant areas in the dark, without money or a bed that night, and are most probably soliciting to get those very things, and who are subdued without obvious resistance, are more powerful similarities than whether they wore scarves or bonnets.

But since you raised the bonnets, Mary rarely wore one.

Ok...thats enough sidetracking, Sam will hurt me.

Best regards all.

[perrymason]

So whats the deal...I finally try to answer the actual thread question and no-one wants to tear it down?

Must be a religious holiday.

Cheers all, best regards.

[Sam Flynn]

So whats the deal...I finally try to answer the actual thread question and no-one wants to tear it down?

Must be a religious holiday.

"Das ist Karfreitagszauber, Herr!"

- Wagner, Parsifal, Act III.

[Doctor X]

You have to wait until everyone crawls out from under their rocks Sunday. . . .

Yours truly,

--J.D.

[JSchmidt]

Been washing, cleaning the rooms and other stuff because an aunt visits tomorrow, so less Good Friday Magic for me, more dust and dirty clothing.
Grats on the fitting quote Sam!

I've been pondering the "oh murder" thing a while. It sounds a lot like a phrase from a penny dreadful. (Were there many penny dreadfuls after the ripper series? How much fictionalisation was already rampant during the spree?)
I wonder if it is a case of 20/20 hindsight. There may have been noise and crying, but the witness may have dramatised the whole thing after the fact.
I have no idea, I could speculate on it the whole day without getting much further, even the sentence being "oh mother!", when our victim cries out to her own mother in shock...
What I want to say with that is: It certainly makes for a good story and it shows how much information and abuse people in the East End had to filter through in their lives.
Could also have a been a case where the survival instincts told the listeners to not involve themselves as getting involved in any kind of trouble might have brought you to the rather fast attention of your maker.
Maybe the ignorance seemed not nice but prudent.