Blood spatter in the Tabram murder

[Fisherman]

Jon:

"I do admire your patience Christer, my brotherinlaw always say's, a good Fisherman must have infinite patience.
Sadly, there are those who will always refuse to conceed to logic."

Thanks, Jon! Yes, when I fail to catch anything, I tend to blame the fish ...

Harry:

"When we examine other cases where a penknife has been named as the weapon used,and to have pierced the breastbone,into the heart,an opinion can be formed that a penknife could,whatever medical opinion states,have made all the wounds to Tabram."

Not, Harry, if we take into account that Killeen DID say that the weapon that pierced the breastbone was a "long and strong instrument". Even if we were to make the rather odd assumption that Killeen would describe a penknife as a "strong" weapon, I think we may safely ditch the idea that he would also describe it as being long!
So, taken each by themselves, both qualities point away from a penknife - and if we put them together, it spells disaster for any suggestion of such a small weapon. Even if the killer had succeeded to find a penknife that WAS extremely strong, it defies belief that he would dig away with it to depths that made Killeen state that it was also long.

There is of course also the possibility that this weapon WAS a long, strong, daggerlike instrument, just like Killeen said. It would be the simplest explanation by far.


The best,
Fisherman

[harry]

The question in Tabram's killing is whether one weapon could have caused all wounds.While we can accept that there was,in Tabram's case,a marked difference in appearance regarding the sternum wound.we do not know what that difference was.Details were not specified.When we examine other cases where a penknife has been named as the weapon used,and to have pierced the breastbone,into the heart,an opinion can be formed that a penknife could,whatever medical opinion states,have made all the wounds to Tabram.So my opinion is not based on what Kileen or anyne else said,but on the established power of a certain type of weapon.

[Wickerman]

I do admire your patience Christer, my brotherinlaw always say's, a good Fisherman must have infinite patience.
Sadly, there are those who will always refuse to conceed to logic.

Regards, Jon S.

[Fisherman]

Ben:

"Me, I’m more than comfortable rejecting the nonsensical idea that an opinion must be accepted fact because it was a professional who said it, and nobody from the period contradicted that professional. "

I agree one hundred per cent, Ben. Such a thing would be nonsense indeed! It must NOT be accepted as fact at all.
But it applies that as long as no evidence at all exists to contradict Killeen, his information should be regarded at the better proposition by far compared to any guess that he was wrong, especially if the guess as such is provided by an uniformed poster of today who did not see the wounds, who could not make any comparison and who has no own professional ability to judge things like this.

That does not make Killeens opinion any "fact" as such, since we would not be having this discussion if it WAS a fact. It only makes it an informed opinion, formed by a professional, unchallenged at the time it was given and accepted by the police force that set out to look for the killer with a firm basis in Killeens findings.

Killeen and his contemporaries were in a far, far better position than you are to make the call about the wounds we speak of, and therefore it applies that your suggestion rests on a much inferior basis.
Now, that does not necessarily make it wrong. The only thing that would be wrong would be for you to claim that you are in any fashion on equal footing with Killeen and that your supposition carries equal weight to Killeens statement of two weapons. For that it does not.

And THIS is what I am speaking of - you may suggest as much as you like that Killeen could have been wrong, but however much effort you put into it, you remain at a huge disadvantage factually, relating to the wounds. You know very, very little about them, and what little you know, you know since Killeen told you about it.

An informed opinion by a professional is what you are battling, and you are doing so without the information he had on hand. You are also doing so in spite of the fact that we have no contemporary sources or voices giving you any support at all.

The best that can be said about it is that it may perhaps be mistaken for bravery.

So, now that I have told you that I am not saying that it is a fact that Killeen was correct - it only applies that his view is endlessly superiorly grounded in research than yours - we may perhaps conduct any further discussion of the topic as such without any accusations that I put to much faith in Killeen? After all, he IS the only real source and he IS a professional and he DID see the wounds and he DID do the post-mortem and he DID witness about it at the inquest, and he WAS unchallenged when doing so, so if one is to invest faith in any source at all, there is only one source to invest in.

The best,
Fisherman

[DVV]

Mike, is it off-thread to split my sides ?

[The Good Michael]

And just by way of balance. Those three? thugs who were accused of attacking Emma Smith. Suppose for a second the leader had brought his dagger, and the other two both carried clasp-knives.
How different would Smith's murder have been to Tabrams?

Yeah, and that's the status quo? Two lackeys and a leader, and of course the leader has the biggest knife.

Mike

[Ben]

Hi Jon,

“It is you who chose to assume they were imprecise in order to cast doubt on his determinations”

I don’t “choose to assume”. I know for a certainty that Kileen could not possibly have acquired the sort of “precise measurements” that would have determined the Tabram-wounding instruments beyond any doubt. Age most assuredly does have something to do with it. With age comes experience, and the less experience you have, the greater the chances of an error being made. Kileen cannot possibly have had the sort of experience that his older medical possessed. I doubt very much that he embarked on a weaponology course at the RCS. The idea that one must have medical “abilities” to challenge the opinions of the doctors from 1888 is obviously nonsense. If you apply that logic, Eddowes and Chapman were killed by different people, and the killer had no anatomical knowledge of any description...and surgical skill.

It is equally preposterous nonsense to argue that to raise a question is to “conspire to contort the historical record”. It is far worse to assume infallibility on the part of professional doctors, policeman etc than it is to accept that errors can easily be made.

“so the subsequent Whitechapel murders & mutilations which followed must make perfect sense to you?”

From a criminological perspective, yes they do, because we have examples of other mutilating serial killers, and they tend not to be “madmen” of the type you seem to be envisaging. The fact that they derive pleasure from this does not preclude them from applying logic, and the two-knife scenario isn’t very logical.

“Ada Wilson & Annie Millwood were both attacked by someone using a clasp-knife. So why so strange that this same weapon is used on Tabram?”

Not strange at all. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a clasp-knife was the weapon used on Millwood through to Kelly.

"We" can harbour all the doubts in the world, but where "we" differ is, you are drawing conclusions based, once again, on what "you" do not know.”

But we do know. We know the reason Kileen cited for his two weapon hypothesis, and it concerned the apparent length and strength of the weapon used for the sternum wound. Nothing more compelling than that, or else he’d have said so.

“More than "uneducated" supposition is required for anyone to take these arguments seriously. "If's, but's & maybe's" amount to nothing.”

Off you must trot then to debating pastures anew if that’s the way you feel. Me, I’m more than comfortable rejecting the nonsensical idea that an opinion must be accepted fact because it was a professional who said it, and nobody from the period contradicted that professional. That amounts to sticking one’s head in the sound like a hobbyist.

Regards,
Ben

[DVV]

Gang. Soldiers. Gang of soldiers. Army.

[Wickerman]

Absolutely doesn't apply to me. I believe one long knife did all the wounds, but that two knives may have been used. I don't think a clasp knife did the bigger wound, yet, I don't think it's impossible either. Where's my agenda?

Mike

And just by way of balance. Those three? thugs who were accused of attacking Emma Smith. Suppose for a second the leader had brought his dagger, and the other two both carried clasp-knives.
How different would Smith's murder have been to Tabrams?

There is a tendency to try to reduce the number of prepetrators down to "one man" (one knife), yet we know gangs did operate in Whitechapel. Did some of them carry weapons?

The issue is not so much "what is possible", but what the depleted evidence suggests as it stands without manipulating it further.

Regards, Jon S.

[DVV]

You have none. Some may have (Bayonet = soldier = Tabram isn't a JTR victim).

[The Good Michael]

In fact, the suggested errors are only proposed in order to support some personal theory, not any reasonable professional misconduct on the part of the named doctors.
This is the extent that people will go to in order to promote or substantiate some personal preference.

Absolutely doesn't apply to me. I believe one long knife did all the wounds, but that two knives may have been used. I don't think a clasp knife did the bigger wound, yet, I don't think it's impossible either. Where's my agenda?

Mike

[DVV]

Another case reported in the Jamaica Gleaner.Victim an adult.A vertical incised wound on the left side of the scalp,a little over half an inch long,it's lower limit about three inches above and behind the left ear,e xtending to the bone.The wound penetrated the entire thickness of the bone,and had lifted a flap of bone inside the cranium.The stab wound was continuous with one which had gone through the brain covering and into the brain substance.Extensive force must have been used.The wound could have been caused by a sharp cutting instrument,such as a PENKNIFE. There are several more killings involving penknives reported in the same paper.W itnesse s also describe the weapons as pocket knives.

Hi Harry, thanks. That was exactly the kind of examples Cornwell had in mind when she rejected the dagger-bayonet theory in her book.
Her suspect may be a non-starter, but she knows a bit about forensic.
A bit more than Killeen.

[Wickerman]

To ignorantly state that a doctor who you didn't speak with, who examined wounds you never saw, that were caused by weapons no one saw, must be correct in his conjecture, iss far too trusting for my tastes.

Hold it Mike.
The status quo is that Tabram was murdered by the use of two weapons. The specifics were detailed out at the autopsy, provided at the Inquest and accepted by the Coroner & police.

The "ignorant" argument is to suggest all these professionals & officials were either, incompetant, irresponsible or duped. This is the argument that originates in "ignorance".
To give the benefit of the doubt to all those concerned and trust in their abilities hardly constitutes a "fringe hypothesis".

Look at it this way, in the case of Rose Mylett, Dr. Bond, in his professional opinion, thought she had died of natural causes. He gave his reasons for his determination.
At odds with him were his peers, among them Phillips, Brownfield & Harris, who determined Mylett had been murdered.

We can, therefore, quite reasonably argue either case because we have professional opinions from both sides of the argument.

With Drs Killeen, or Llewellyn, we have only one side of the story. So the naysayers argument which suggests that these doctors erred in their conclusions has no "educated" support.

In fact, the suggested errors are only proposed in order to support some personal theory, not any reasonable professional misconduct on the part of the named doctors.
This is the extent that people will go to in order to promote or substantiate some personal preference.

There is simply no need for this, unless some contrary professional opinion can be found, as in the case of Rose Mylett.
Could Killeen have made any mistakes?, of course!, but what, where, and to what extent?
More than "uneducated" supposition is required for anyone to take these arguments seriously. "If's, but's & maybe's" amount to nothing.

Regards, Jon S.

[harry]

Another case reported in the Jamaica Gleaner.Victim an adult.A vertical incised wound on the left side of the scalp,a little over half an inch long,it's lower limit about three inches above and behind the left ear,e xtending to the bone.The wound penetrated the entire thickness of the bone,and had lifted a flap of bone inside the cranium.The stab wound was continuous with one which had gone through the brain covering and into the brain substance.Extensive force must have been used.The wound could have been caused by a sharp cutting instrument,such as a PENKNIFE. There are several more killings involving penknives reported in the same paper.W itnesse s also describe the weapons as pocket knives.

[Wickerman]

A number of factors oblige us to treat the “two weapon” hypothesis with extreme caution.

Hi Ben.
It isn't a number of factors though, it is "our" own ignorance of the details.
We don't know how precise Killeen's wound measurments were. It is you who chose to assume they were imprecise in order to cast doubt on his determinations, for your own benefit.

His age has nothing to do with his abilities, he had graduated as a Licenciate from the R. C. S., he was not an apprentice to anyone. Therefore his abilities are not under question.
However, what abilities do you have in order to even raise these questions?

People who conspire to distort the historical record tend to think that to raise a question is the same as providing an answer.
The more questions you raise, the more doubt you attempt to throw at the subject. Yet, the result is quite the opposite. The more questions you raise, the more apparent it is that the you are in no position to judge.
Questions are not solutions.

Because we do not have Killeen's autopsy report we cannot judge how meticulous Killeen was. As is often the case with someone fresh out of college, if anything, they would be extremely meticulous, proceeding "by the book".
The police saw no reason to question his abilities, neither did the Coroner. So why should we?, especially when we have no verbatim data to work with, but only paraphrase from the press.

Finally, there is the sheer oddity of hacking away with one supposedly inferior knife, before deciding after 37 stabs that it just wasn’t doing the trick, and that the bigger knife – the one that he could have used so easily from the outset! – might be a better bet.

Oddity?, so the subsequent Whitechapel murders & mutilations which followed must make perfect sense to you?

Ada Wilson & Annie Millwood were both attacked by someone using a clasp-knife. So why so strange that this same weapon is used on Tabram?
The fact he, or an accomplice, pulled out a larger weapon to finish the job, bears no reflection on Killeen.

An uncritical, unquestioning acceptance of the opinions of those "who were there at the time, is folly, in my view.

All the best,
Ben

Oh, no. There is a difference between "uncritical acceptance", and "critical rejection".
"We" can harbour all the doubts in the world, but where "we" differ is, you are drawing conclusions based, once again, on what "you" do not know.

I cannot "find" fault, not that there wasn't any. But it is important to "find it" before you start making judgements based assumptions.
Where "fault" cannot be found it is prudent to give benefit of the doubt to the professional, rather than use the unpredictable actions of a madman to cast aspersions.

Regards, Jon S.