Martha Tabram--First In The Series

[Mitch Rowe]

I think one of the most credible theories that Martha was a victim is the Ripper drive by theory. The stairwell isnt a likely place for Martha to take the ripper. It doesnt seem like the soldiers were involved.

[harry]

Chava,
A correction.They were not then known as the Ripper crimes.They are referred to as the east end murders,that is,the first four are.The fifth is stated to be by the same person.

[harry]

Chava'
An article in an overseas newspaper,published on October8th 1888,received from a London source dated September 27 1888,states Chapman as the fourth Ripper murder,Nicholl's as the third,Tabram as the second,an unnamed as the first,and a woman in Gateshead,near Newcastle on Tyne,as the fifth.

[Chava]

Ah well, Gareth, you see I think Stride was an aborted Ripper killing. And I am not at all sure that Kelly is a Ripper killing. But I think, if you want to discuss Stride, it should be on a Stride thread...
xxxxChava

[Sam Flynn]

... the Kelly killing, show[s] significant departures from the other 4.

That's a funny way to spell "Stride", Chava

[CLK]

Yes I think he could have stabbed her and thought to himself "that feels good" so he strangled her and stabbed her 38 more times. He may have had demons for a long time and after Martha had the confidence to act on them, so he acted on the urge to kill on the 31st of August and killed Polly.

[Chava]

The Tabram killing, like the Kelly killing, show significant departures from the other 4. The main argument against Tabram is the stabbing. Does someone go from stabbing to ripping? And why does the Ripper rip at all? I suspect the cuts are made to get at the internal organs for some reason and to take trophies where possible. This doesn't happen in Tabram, and happens in a weird kind of a way in Kelly. I don't have a theory, in that I'm not sure Tabram is a Ripper victim. But it interests me that exactly the same kind of woman is killed in the same kind of circumstances and is possibly displayed after death. Plenty of people disagree, and point out the commonality of Tabram's appearance.

Same like Kelly, if she is a Ripper victim, I suspect she wasn't just a random kill, but had some personal connexion with the killer. Perhaps she'd tried to nick his wallet or whatever. I do think she did or said something inadvised, which brought all hell down on her.

[The Grave Maurice]

Like I've never made a mistake. Believe me, no apology is necessary.

I'd like to hear more of your current theory, though. Bill Beadle has just published a reiteration of his belief that Martha was a victim of JtR in the current issue of The Journal of the Whitechapel Society (Feb. 2009). The subject appears to be heating up again.

[Chava]

Sorry, Chava, you've lost me already. How could the PM take place at 3:00 a.m.? Reeves didn't find the body until 4:50.

Maurice, I"m sorry. I was checking the post-mortem time, which was 5.30 am, and I was thinking '3 hours before' and I wrote '3.00 am'. That was dumb, and I apologize.

[The Grave Maurice]

Sorry, Chava, you've lost me already. How could the PM take place at 3:00 a.m.? Reeves didn't find the body until 4:50.

[Chava]

So now let's review the facts:

Middle-aged destitute drunken East End prostitute is murdered with a knife or knives in George Yard Buildings, a mere stone's throw from the other victims. She was drunk on the night she died. And (my own little hobby horse) she was killed on a broader landing after going up a narrow stairwell. No one hears any kind of struggle. She is found laid out with her skirt pulled up and her legs akimbo just like the others.

She was estimated as having died 3-4 hours before the PM, which took place around 3.00 am. But someone walked past the landing where she was found at 1.50 am and saw nothing. So she was killed elsewhere and moved? Or she was killed later than the doctors believed.

A soldier was seen in the area at around 2.00 am. We know she went off to George Yard to have sex with a soldier she had picked up earlier. But that was around 11.45 pm. So either he spend a lot of time with her before he killed her. Or he didn't have anything to do with it.

If this was a Ripper killing, it's likely the first. Is it this killing that starts him off? Did Tabram do or say something to him that hurt and angered him so much that he killed her in a frenzy and then killed her--or women like her--over and over again? The attack is pretty sexual. Stab wounds rather than rips. Did he discover a potence he hadn't had before while he was doing it? Did he refine his technique a 'lover' and is that why his MO changes?