JtR failed amputation. Torso killer was successful.

[Damaso Marte]

Don't forget that the v-shaped marks on Eddowes's face may have been the result of an attempt to cut off the nose. Which would be another failure.

[Fisherman]

What they are indicating here is that muscles, not the markings left by the knife, look as if an attempt had been made to separate the bones of the neck. That means it looks like they have been pulled upon.

Eddowes nose amputation isn't remarked upon at the time as the type of amputation associated with any surgical or medical procedure involving its removal. Seems to me it was crudely hacked off and the lip possibly cut in the process.

Even Kelly's right thigh denuded in front to the bone is just a hatchet job with a knife. Nothing to do with medicine or experience with amputations.

It's like this. The Torso Murders is capable of amputations. If JtR could amputate, he would amputate and even tries it with some success... nose, breasts, but Chapman's neck and Kelly's leg says it's not this experienced Torso Murderer who was well able to do all that.

Once more, there has never been any doctor saying that Jack the Ripper attempted to decapitate. What was said by Phillips was that the appearance of the neck wounds allowed for such an interpretation. No certainty whatsoever can be reached on the matter, though, and that´s what you must settle for: perhaps, perhaps not.

Saying if JtR could amputate, he would amputate, is nothing but a guess on your behalf, and guessing never produced any factual ground to work from.

Let´s begin by laying down that if the dismemberment carried out in the torso murders was always a question of practicality (for facilitating disposal of the bodies), then it must be accepted that there was never any such need at all for the Ripper victims to be dismembered. They were not going anywhere, and there was never any need to dump them any place else than where they were left.
So in that context, if we have the same killer, then why would JtR amputate at all? What possible need would there be for it?

Ergo, what you are trying to lead on with your guesswork, is that you would somehow have been magically informed that the Ripper nourished a wish to amputate, but that he was not able to do so. From this pure guesswork of yours, you then deduct that the two men cannot possibly have been one and the same.

It is an intellectual debacle.

Once we admit that the Ripper did not have any practical reason to dismember, it is only when we (from your magical well of wisdom) conclude that the torso killer dismembered, NOT on account of practicalities but on account of a deeply rooted urge, that we may move on to saying that the Ripper cannot have been the same man and that the lack of amputations in the Ripper cases shows this.

If we have a situation where the Torso killer did in fact NOT nourish a deep urge to amputate, then why would we conclude that he must have felt such an urge in the guise of the Ripper? Correct, we would not.

So which is it, and - more pertinently - can we know what applies? Did or did not the Torso killer nourish such an urge?
Well, of course we cannot be sure either way. My own guess (you see, when I guess, I say so) is that there was no such urge linked to what he did in general. I believe that he COULD sometimes amputate in order to reach an outcome that he wished to see, but I don´t think it was something that was always necessary. To my mind, many of the dismemberments were about body disposal in the torso cases. Not all, but many of them.

In the end, no matter how much we try to hide behind guesswork presented as fact, we must deal with the inherent similarities between the two series, and there is no getting around how they are with almost total certainty linked series of murders with one and the same originator. To deny this, we must once again dive deep into your magical well and come up with the idea that - for example - we can know that the Torso killer had a different reason for taking the uterus out of Jackson than the Ripper had for doing the same in the Kelly case. We must phantasize to make reality go away, it was always like that.

[Fisherman]

Very interesting fish. Care to expound?

Not really, no. I prefer to leave it for the future as it stands.

[Fisherman]

Don't forget that the v-shaped marks on Eddowes's face may have been the result of an attempt to cut off the nose. Which would be another failure.

The nose was gone, so he did not fail in that context. The initial cut seems to have hit bone structure, and so he moved the blade a bit further down before he cut a second time.

Are you saying that the torso killer would never have been able to make that kind of a mistake? Or am I misreading you?

[Sam Flynn]

we must once again dive deep into your magical well and come up with the idea that - for example - we can know that the Torso killer had a different reason for taking the uterus out of Jackson than the Ripper had for doing the same in the Kelly case. We must phantasize to make reality go away, it was always like that.

The reality is that Jackson was heavily pregnant, and it's surely not much of a fantasy to suppose that this factor had something to do with the removal of her uterus - a factor entirely absent in the case of every canonical Ripper victim.

[Fisherman]

The reality is that Jackson was heavily pregnant, and it's surely not much of a fantasy to suppose that this factor had something to do with the removal of her uterus - a factor entirely absent in the case of every canonical Ripper victim.

I´m afraid it is 100 per cent speculation, Gareth. Of course it MAY be that the pregnancy had something to do with it, but the whole point I am making is that we cannot allow ourselves to elevate our guesswork to fact.
All we know is that the killer took the uterus out, and all we know is that this was a conscious decision of his.

If we were to introduce fantasy and guesswork as useful parameters in our thinking, we may just as well say that the killer may have had a thing about motherhood that made him go for the uterus and that Jackson represented some sort of ultimate prize in the game of uterus-hunting.

That would fit entirely well with a common killer. But I am not going to press that point on account of how it would be just as much guesswork as yours, and accordingly it would be something that cannot be presented as evidence, let alone as fact.

In both series, uteri were taken out. Why, we don´t know. Full stop.

[Sam Flynn]

All we know is that the killer took the uterus out

He also took her baby out.

[Batman]

Don't forget that the v-shaped marks on Eddowes's face may have been the result of an attempt to cut off the nose. Which would be another failure.

Very good.

[Batman]

Saying if JtR could amputate, he would amputate, is nothing but a guess on your behalf, and guessing never produced any factual ground to work from.

So in that context, if we have the same killer, then why would JtR amputate at all? What possible need would there be for it?

Ergo, what you are trying to lead on with your guesswork, is that you would somehow have been magically informed that the Ripper nourished a wish to amputate, but that he was not able to do so. From this pure guesswork of yours, you then deduct that the two men cannot possibly have been one and the same.

It is an intellectual debacle.

JtR amputated. A fact. Eddowes has amputations. Kelly has amputations. This isn't guesswork. He was doing it.

The lobe and auricle of Eddowes right ear were cut obliquely through. Either he messed up cutting her neck and took off a piece of her ear with it, or he doesn't know how to remove an ear.

As pointed out it appears he has tried to amputate the nose several ways and failed before finally figuring out how to get it off.

Plus Dr. Bond saw the Whitehall Torso at the scene of the crime and carried out the medical examination. The same Dr. Bond saw the medical examination of Mary Jane Kelly and did a meta-review of all the murders. He didn't attribute the Torso to the same hand.

Chapter 18 of Philip Sugden's The Complete History of Jack the Ripper discusses the failed decapitations of Chapman and Kelly. Even Nick Warren, an expert in the field, notes that the attempt indicates anatomical knowledge, not that it didn't. So even some surgeons who think JtR had anatomical knowledge, put even the attempt down to anatomical knowledge.

They don't deny the attempt at all.

[Fisherman]

He also took her baby out.

That does not matter, Gareth. It still remains that we know that the victims had their uteri taken out and that we don´t know why this happened. It was a conscious decision on the killers behalf in each case, that´s all we can say.

As I said before, if the killer had a hang-up on maternity or something like that, a uterus containing a foetus can have represented an ultimate prize for the combined killer, and what he would do with that foetus would be something unrelated to how he extracted uteri in the first place.

It seems you absolutely need to believe that the uteri were taken out for different reasons and by different men, but when conducting an investigation the starting point must be based on facts only. Consequently, we must start from a point of accepting that there is an overwhelming likelihood of a common killer, and then we can put alternative theories to the test afterwards. But it is only when we can add factual evidence that points away from a common killer that such an exercise can alter the picture.

We should also keep in mind that it is not only about the uteri. When investigating these cases, the police would quickly arrive at the fact that there is also a matter of taking away the abdominal walls in sections, and that would seal the deal for any policeman worth his salt. It is top quality litmus paper, if ever there was such a thing.

To reason that there is a small possibility that these matters are simply coincidental is not 100 per cent off the charts, although closely so. But to work from such an assumption as if it was the more likely thing is to refuse to accept the facts and to invent an alternative truth, à la Donald Trump.

[Fisherman]

Batman: JtR amputated. A fact. Eddowes has amputations. Kelly has amputations. This isn't guesswork. He was doing it.

What I am referring to is the amputation of limbs and head, the way these things occur in dismemberment cases, nothing else. I know what the Ripper did.


Plus Dr. Bond saw the Whitehall Torso at the scene of the crime and carried out the medical examination. The same Dr. Bond saw the medical examination of Mary Jane Kelly and did a meta-review of all the murders. He didn't attribute the Torso to the same hand.

Most contemporary medicos didn´t. Then again, back then they thought ALL dismemberment murders were practical affairs. Note, however, how Phillips saw great likenesses inbetween how the torso killer and the Ripper did their cutting.
All of these matters must be put into historical perspective before we can evaluate them properly.

Chapter 18 of Philip Sugden's The Complete History of Jack the Ripper discusses the failed decapitations of Chapman and Kelly. Even Nick Warren, an expert in the field, notes that the attempt indicates anatomical knowledge, not that it didn't. So even some surgeons who think JtR had anatomical knowledge, put even the attempt down to anatomical knowledge.

They don't deny the attempt at all.

Do you hear anybody denying the possibility, Batman? If so, you need to listen harder:

These Ripper murders MAY have involved failed decapitations and they MAY not have.

That is not denying, is it? It seems to me that the only denial around here is on your uninformed behalf, trying to factify your guesswork.

Will it work out for you? Here´s my answer:

[Sam Flynn]

JtR amputated.

The removal of organs (strictly, evisceration) or severing of an ear/nose aren't amputation as such. The removal of a limb is, and none of the Ripper victims had their limbs removed.

[Batman]

The nose was gone, so he did not fail in that context. The initial cut seems to have hit bone structure, and so he moved the blade a bit further down before he cut a second time.

Are you saying that the torso killer would never have been able to make that kind of a mistake? Or am I misreading you?

Where is the evidence the torso killer made mistakes?

Where is the evidence the torso killer attempted something and failed?

The torso killer was well capable of amputations and also well capable of removing a skull from a head leaving the face and hair attached like a mask.

[Fisherman]

The removal of organs (strictly, evisceration) or severing of an ear/nose aren't amputation as such. The removal of a limb is, and none of the Ripper victims had their limbs removed.

Exactamundo, Gareth. Let´s see if our winged friend grasps it.

[Batman]

The removal of organs (strictly, evisceration) or severing of an ear/nose aren't amputation as such. The removal of a limb is, and none of the Ripper victims had their limbs removed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689568/

Nose amputation throughout history in that medical article.

Breast amputation was done to Kelly for example. The most obvious successful amputation he did. Not surprising since there were no bones to get in the way like many of his other amputation and mutilation attempts.