Was it really two blades?

Blimey, you must have started young!

Ironically, I did.

I have a sword bayonet that was almost as tall as I was at the time I got it. My father has a collection of weaponry, and that started the bug. His thing is rifles....mine is in hand to hand combat "tools".

Cheers Gareth

[Sam Flynn]

He... was giving an opinion based on nothing but holes.

I can sympathise with him there...

[Sam Flynn]

I have a knife and bayonet collection going as far back as the early 1800's

Blimey, you must have started young!

[Sam Flynn]

1. We have Killeen telling us quite adamantly that he was of the opinion that two blades HAD been used.

We don't actually, Fish - neither adamantly, nor that two blades HAD been used. Please see my earlier post about "mights", "coulds", etc.

Fish,

Many bayonets, especially older ones, are very narrow all the way up the blade. I will suggest that Killeen wouldn't have had enough experience with bayonet and pen knife murders to tell the difference between them if the bayonet wielder wanted to just make random puncture wounds at a 3 or 4 inch depth for whatever reason.

Why would someone want to make smaller wounds? Who knows. I;m just arguing for argument's sake.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I have a knife and bayonet collection going as far back as the early 1800's, and youre right that many were tapered to a point...some were basically spikes mounted to the rifle barrel. Some were also like short swords, broad most of the the length of the blade. Some were wide like trowels, and were used before folding shovels to dig trenches and foxholes. Some were tri-points. Some had sheaths, some were mounted to the weapon,...some were curved upwards, some were mounted horizontally, some vertically...most all were used as both an accessory to their weapon and as a utility blade for whatever needed cutting. Or stabbing...in this case.

I think what Im trying to show is that there are manufactured and structural differences in a pen knife vs a dagger that go beyond the basic width/length arguments. Some were Iron not steel, and might have left traces in the wound.

All types of bayonets were available to be purchased in antique or trinket shops throughout the East End in advance of Bank Holidays, perhaps counting on some posers who wanted to feign service in the military to get a local girls eye. So knowing which type of bayonet might be used is not limited to what the contemporary servicemen received in 1888 as arms issue....it could be from any prior age within reason. Or at least as far back as 1800-1810...they were and are not as rare as some would imagine.

I think had we had a more full description of his criteria for his remarks, a full description of the wound...specs and all...or perhaps the shape of the blade used, we would know why he said only one wound was caused by a dagger or bayonet.

But he did.

And unless someone can prove him a fool, prone to error or incapable of making that judgement, it should be respected.

Best regards

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"He had no blade to look at and was giving an opinion based on nothing but holes."

...which makes for a very complete and useful material, Mike, when you have nigh on forty of them! I have very little doubt that Killeen knew more or less exactly what measures the smaller blade represented - if we are dealing with propelled stabs (and reasonably we are), then the blade would time and time again have travelled to the same measurable depth within Tabram, and the same, very simple technique to measure the depth would reasonably have been about back in them days as is used today; you simply shove a measuring stick with a blunt edge in to where it is halted, and read the depth thus.
Different angling of the knife and possible movements of the body may have produced small differences, and there may of course have been stabs about that did not travel all the way in to the hilt (although a lot of them would reasonably have done just that, leaving a bruised area where the hilt or the hand hit the flesh - but we do not have it on record, admittedly. One should, though, reflect on the fact that a total lack of such bruising would have been a very uncommon thing, and the reasonable thing to surmise is that the marks were there).
The massive amount of material will have provided Killeen with all he could wish for when assessing the shape and size of the smaller blade. And once upon a time, there must have been a written protocol bearing this out.

The larger weapon is another thing altogether, since it had to be assessed from one stab only. Then again, that blade was shoved through the breast plate, and bone is a material that is much more useful than flesh when it comes to establishing the shape of a blade. I feel pretty conviced that the hole through that bone was what lay behind the "strong" in the expression "long and strong instrument". The very fact that it could pierce bone of course implicates strength, but the imprint in the bone itself would have been the clincher.

So yes, I rest my case somewhat with my conviction of Killeens professional knowledge, but I do not think it involves much of a risk to do so. There is no real problem involved in measuring the depth of a stab, and anybody could measure the entrance hole width of a reasonably clean stab. These were quite simple tasks, and something that actually takes more of a strong stomach than any medical education or experience.
And frankly, when this was completed, and Killeen knew that the smaller blade was approximately X by X millimetres, it was not rocket science to compare it to the larger and deeper hole in the chest, a hole that would have been produced by a dagger-pointed, long, strong instrument.

As it stands, you are correct in pointing out that we have no certainty about the magnitude of the difference Killeen reported about. But that does not change the fact that Killeen regarded the blades as incomparable.

"It was probably two blades. That much I'll give you, but it isn't even close to a sure thing."

Certainties are not abundant in the field of Ripperology, Mike! Therefore this, as well as many, many other things, must be subject to each and everybodys own interpretations. I respect your stance, but I will say that my own conviction is that the material puts it all beyond reasonable doubt - two blades were used AND they were very markedly different - in length, width and thickness.

As for my respect for 19:th century medicos, well, science moves on and it is only reasonable to deduct that they were not as well informed and exact as todays colleagues, nor did they have the equipment that is around today. But in the Tabram case, all Killeen needed was a measuring stick, and he would be fine. Of course, to this he later added his examination of Tabram at the slab, where he could look for confirmation of all the things of which he may have felt even slightly uncertain.

The very best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

It was all surmise. He had no blade to look at and was giving an opinion based on nothing but holes. Just like document examiners, doctors weren't and aren't infallible, and especially then. The more I read about what the doctors said, the more I lose respect for the 19th century medical profession.

It was probably two blades. That much I'll give you, but it isn't even close to a sure thing.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"Many bayonets, especially older ones, are very narrow all the way up the blade. I will suggest that Killeen wouldn't have had enough experience with bayonet and pen knife murders to tell the difference between them if the bayonet wielder wanted to just make random puncture wounds at a 3 or 4 inch depth for whatever reason.

Why would someone want to make smaller wounds? Who knows. I;m just arguing for argument's sake."

...and thatīs a good thing, Mike - since it is what the boards are all about!

And yes, there were bayonets around that were narrow all the way up the blade - although sword bayonets were normally between an inch and one and a half in width.
Regardless of this, letīs assume that we are dealing with a bayonet that WAS extremely narrow - in fact, pen-knife narrow, mind you - all the way up to the hilt. If this was the case, then why would Killeen assert that we were dealing with two blades?? He would have been faced with the exact same entrance size on the punctures, remember! And nobody ever issued a prohibition against showing a blade in to differing depths.
Moreover, why would he state categorically that if the smaller blade had been tried at the sternum, it would break, when he had clear evidence in front of him showing that the narrow blade HAD been tried at the sternum - and passed both the test and the bone???

The only way that we may throw forward that we could be dealing with one blade and one blade only, if we need to clear things with what Killeen testified about, is to go find ourselves a blade that was sturdy, broad and heavy from the hilt up to a place four inches from the top - where it had been ground down to a narrow, thin shape. To this we must add that the perpetrator must - if this was what he used - have succeeded never to shove the blade in beyond these four inches at any of the 37 "stabs". And frankly, the imprint of such a blade would probably have been "readable" to Killeen.

I make it virtually no chance at all that just the one blade was used. It does simply not tally with the evidence that - although it lacks in many a respect - leaves no credible opening at all for a one blade scenario. Whichever way we try to make such a suggestion work, we run into serious trouble.

The best,
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Fish,

Many bayonets, especially older ones, are very narrow all the way up the blade. I will suggest that Killeen wouldn't have had enough experience with bayonet and pen knife murders to tell the difference between them if the bayonet wielder wanted to just make random puncture wounds at a 3 or 4 inch depth for whatever reason.

Why would someone want to make smaller wounds? Who knows. I;m just arguing for argument's sake.

Mike

[Fisherman]

Mike writes:

"A case can be made that the same weapon was used to kill Tabram (breastbone stabbing), and then was used to poke at the body once she was down."

Yes, that is correct; a case CAN be made for this. But not a very good case, as far as Iīm concerned. Letīs list a few points that are of interest here:

1. We have Killeen telling us quite adamantly that he was of the opinion that two blades HAD been used. And he was the doctor who made the post-mortem, remember, so he was the one who assessed depth and width of the wounds to Tabrams body.

2. We know that he spoke of a blade that resembled a pen-knife in the case of the 37 lesser wounds. Why would he use such a terminology? Could it be because of the depth of the wounds? Well, they would have been perhaps three or four inch deep (at the least), since we know that they pierced numerous internal organs like spleen, liver and lungs.
As Sam has taught us before, that does not necessarily take a very long blade, but the necessary minimum of three or four inches applies to many types of knife blades, like for example those of leather knives or cork-cutters knives.
These types of knives were, however, not mentioned by Killeen, and the answer to why this never happened is obvious - the entrance holes did not display the width that blades like these produce. Instead, what Killeen saw, spoke to him of a thin, narrow blade, likely to break if tried at the sternum.
So there we are, with a blade that had travelled at the very least three or four inches into Tabrams body, but only produced entrance holes that allowed for an interpretation of a pen-knife.

Does it take three or four inches of the tip of the blade until a heavy dagger or sword bayonet gives away itīs being a larger weapon than a pen-knife? No, it does not - the tapering off towards the point normally surpasses the width of a pen-knife within the first inch - and Tabrams wounds went much deeper than that. Once again, keep in mind that Killeen had the opportunity at the slab to establish more or less exactly the size of blade number one; 37 samples is a very useful number in such a case.

3. Killeen also tells us that Tabram stayed alive throughout her ordeal, something he would have established by means of the bloodflow from the differing wounds. But the piercing of the heart would have been enough to ensure death, he adds! This means that the blood seized to be pumped through Tabrams arteries somewhere soon after the killing strike. Apparently, the heart may go on for some shortish time to pump blood although it has been fatally wounded, but to me Killeens words suggest that the breastplate wound was a lot more probable to be the LAST and not the first.

4. Any doctor who is told that he is going to examine a woman that has been exposed to 39 knife wounds will make the assumption that the wounds will have been produced by the same weapon. If there are small deviances in one of the wounds, the natural medical instinct will be to try and fit it in with the others just the same; wiggling, a sudden movement of the victim, a different angle, differing resistance of differing types of flesh, skidding of the blade - all such things will be taken into account, trying to explain the differing appearance of that single wound. I think we can rest assured that Killeen made those exact efforts too - only to adamantly remain at the stance that the blade COULD NOT have been one and the same in instance 39 as it was in instances 1-37. There is no "maybe just, if something completely extraordinary is weighed in" - there is just a plain statement of a certainty that two blades had been used.

5. If the 37 wounds were "playful" wounds, made by the tip of the weapon of the same "long, strong instrument" that pierced Tabrams heart - how did the killer manage to keep all 37 punctures (for if you are right, they were not stabs in the general meaning) of the same general depth, controlled enough to allow for Killeen to state that the may all well have been made by the same blade? Such a thing demands the same depth and the same width at the entrance, more or less. And we already know that it would also require a blade that was strong and heavy at the base, but pen-knife-like at the finishing four inches towards the top...

So nope, the same knife was NOT used, as far as I can see. I acknowledge the attraction in finding a simpler explanation, but warn against it for the reason that I find it very obviously wrong.

The very best, Mike!
Fisherman

[The Good Michael]

Remember that a big knife can make little wounds, but a pen knife isn't puncturing breastbone. A case can be made that the same weapon was used to kill Tabram (breastbone stabbing), and then was used to poke at the body once she was down. I'm saying, we don't know for sure what was used and if it was a pair of blades or just one and some playfulness.

Mike

[Barnaby]

I think that we can infer from the inquest report that two types of knives, not two knives per se, were used. Related to the gang theory, there is nothing to prevent a scenario where several gang members (38 of them ) used pen knives and one delivered the fatal blow with a longer knife. Not realistic, of course, but if two assailants are as plausible as one switching weapons, it isn't that much more of a stretch to postulate more assailants such as what might have befell Emma Smith.

[Sam Flynn]

That isnt quite the case Sam.

With respect, Mike, what I stated was quite correct in and of itself. However, things have moved on thanks to posts by Fish and Rob House.

Perhaps some dont feel he was correct. Id have to see some reason to question his credibility to go along with that conclusion.

Ah, but whatever conclusions Killeen might have made aren't recorded anywhere. The press preserves his tentative opinions, but none tell us what his conclusions were. Plenty of "apparentlys", "coulds", "mights" and "ors"... but not a "was" in sight.

To that "..." one could legitimately add "therefore it must have been a larger knife that produced all 39", and the sentence still makes perfect sense.

That isnt quite the case Sam.

The inference isnt that the wounds that were indeed measurably smaller than a single larger one could have been caused by the same, "dagger-like" blade. Nowhere in any quotation does Killeen suggest that all the wounds could have been made with a "dagger-like" blade.

That fact that he distinguishes the wounds by "pen-knife" and "dagger-like" seem to clearly suggest that he felt 2 weapons were used.

Perhaps some dont feel he was correct.

Id have to see some reason to question his credibility to go along with that conclusion.

All the best

[Sam Flynn]

So, apparently I stand corrected. Killen did apparently say he was of the opinion that 2 weapons were used.

Likewise, Rob. Thanks for drawing this to my/our attention, Fish.

Shows how you must read various versions of the inquest testimony, because some reports omit things.

Indeed. I couldn't agree more.