Could Jack have killed some of the torso victims?

[rjpalmer]

To you the Whitehall and Pinchin Street dumps don't scream FU to the authorities? Are you suggesting that the Whitehall dump was a coincidence; that he didn't know it was the New Scotland Yard HQ?

Well, as tempting as it might be think that the Whitehall case was an 'in your face' to the police, unless there was a sign out in front of the construction site reading "Future Home of the C.I.D." I think it is entirely plausible that those dumping the torso viewed the site as merely a convenient, uninhabited area at night rather than as a symbol of future authority.

That said, I'm afraid that I can't get behind Fisherman and the rest of the 'Torso' crowd. There was no torso killer. I think the world has simply forgotten what life was like before abortion was legal. One can find dozens of these botched cases, spread across every major city in the UK, America, and Europe in the years 1840-1940. There is no rational reason to think they are related to a series of street killings. Bodies were dismembered in order to smuggle them out of boarding houses or basements; abdomens were cut open to remove the fetus after bungling the 'illegal operation.' I know a case in New York where the two quacks used a length of rope to try to remove the unborn child. It was a hideous crimes scene, but was probably manslaughter and not murder. It wasn't particularly uncommon to further mutilate the body in order to dump it elsewhere. Solving one homicide is difficult enough (Eddowes, Nichols, take your pick). No point in making it more muddled by throwing in other unrelated cases. I suspect the Chief Inspector would throw you off the case and you'd be back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm if you tried to bring Liz Jackson into the frame.

[rjpalmer]

PS. And before Fish jumps in and asks why an abortion case would have head wounds or other signs of violence, let me answer. The quack and his midwife have set the woman up in some grim bedsit. They perform the ‘operation’ but bungle it, and over the next 24 hours the hapless woman is drifting in an out of consciousness, moaning, groaning, and screaming as she slowly dies an agonizing death from peritonitis. Fearing exposure and knowing she is dying anyway, they eventually club her over the head and then dump the body in the river/building site/railway tunnel. I know two cases in Detroit where this exact scenario played itself out. The victims were dumped in the Detroit River, still alive. Homicides, surely, but not ‘serial killings’ in the usual sense of the word. Life was grim in the 19th Century when you were a servant girl knocked up by your employer’s wastrel son, and to be unwed and pregnant was to be ‘ruined.’ These cases aren’t as uncommon as some here seem to believe and considering that London was a major world capital and the epicenter of class-distinctions it is hardly surprising that such cases occurred. Indeed, it should be expected.

[Trevor Marriott]

PS. And before Fish jumps in and asks why an abortion case would have head wounds or other signs of violence, let me answer. The quack and his midwife have set the woman up in some grim bedsit. They perform the ‘operation’ but bungle it, and over the next 24 hours the hapless woman is drifting in an out of consciousness, moaning, groaning, and screaming as she slowly dies an agonizing death from peritonitis. Fearing exposure and knowing she is dying anyway, they eventually club her over the head and then dump the body in the river/building site/railway tunnel. I know two cases in Detroit where this exact scenario played itself out. The victims were dumped in the Detroit River, still alive. Homicides, surely, but not ‘serial killings’ in the usual sense of the word. Life was grim in the 19th Century when you were a servant girl knocked up by your employer’s wastrel son, and to be unwed and pregnant was to be ‘ruined.’ These cases aren’t as uncommon as some here seem to believe and considering that London was a major world capital and the epicenter of class-distinctions it is hardly surprising that such cases occurred. Indeed, it should be expected.

I totally agree, with the exception of the banging on the head. But wait there will be those who will come back and want to prop up the torsos murder theory, and say this idea was negated by the doctors in 1888. But of course as has been pointed out to them much of what they opined in 1888 was as times nothing more than guess work, and body parts which had been in water for many days are even difficult to properly examine by modern day experts let alone doctors in 1888.

And in the case of Jackson the first doctors opinion was that she had died as a result of a failed medical procedure, then they changed their minds, reliable evidence or not ?

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

how many torso victims had a vertical gash to their midsection?

Ive got Rainham and pinchin definite, and I think Whitehall too?

Not that I know of - but Jackson did.

[Fisherman]

Well, as tempting as it might be think that the Whitehall case was an 'in your face' to the police, unless there was a sign out in front of the construction site reading "Future Home of the C.I.D." I think it is entirely plausible that those dumping the torso viewed the site as merely a convenient, uninhabited area at night rather than as a symbol of future authority.

That said, I'm afraid that I can't get behind Fisherman and the rest of the 'Torso' crowd. There was no torso killer. I think the world has simply forgotten what life was like before abortion was legal. One can find dozens of these botched cases, spread across every major city in the UK, America, and Europe in the years 1840-1940. There is no rational reason to think they are related to a series of street killings. Bodies were dismembered in order to smuggle them out of boarding houses or basements; abdomens were cut open to remove the fetus after bungling the 'illegal operation.' I know a case in New York where the two quacks used a length of rope to try to remove the unborn child. It was a hideous crimes scene, but was probably manslaughter and not murder. It wasn't particularly uncommon to further mutilate the body in order to dump it elsewhere. Solving one homicide is difficult enough (Eddowes, Nichols, take your pick). No point in making it more muddled by throwing in other unrelated cases. I suspect the Chief Inspector would throw you off the case and you'd be back to traffic duty in Chalk Farm if you tried to bring Liz Jackson into the frame.

More...muddled? So we are best served by forgetting that both of these series involved:
Uteri taken out
Hearts taken out
Cuts made from sternum to groin
Rings taken from victims hands
Abdominal wall taken away in sections
Prostitute victims
No torture inflicted

It would somehow muddle the affair if we recognized these facts as significant? We are dealing with one killer and a four botched abortions involving three women who were not pregnant? And it was the same abortionist in all cases, cutting in the same manner?

Sorry. Not gonna work.

[Sam Flynn]

Not that I know of - but Jackson did.

She had a hole cut out in the form of the famous two flaps. That's not a vertical gash.

[Fisherman]

PS. And before Fish jumps in and asks why an abortion case would have head wounds or other signs of violence, let me answer. The quack and his midwife have set the woman up in some grim bedsit. They perform the ‘operation’ but bungle it, and over the next 24 hours the hapless woman is drifting in an out of consciousness, moaning, groaning, and screaming as she slowly dies an agonizing death from peritonitis. Fearing exposure and knowing she is dying anyway, they eventually club her over the head and then dump the body in the river/building site/railway tunnel. I know two cases in Detroit where this exact scenario played itself out. The victims were dumped in the Detroit River, still alive. Homicides, surely, but not ‘serial killings’ in the usual sense of the word. Life was grim in the 19th Century when you were a servant girl knocked up by your employer’s wastrel son, and to be unwed and pregnant was to be ‘ruined.’ These cases aren’t as uncommon as some here seem to believe and considering that London was a major world capital and the epicenter of class-distinctions it is hardly surprising that such cases occurred. Indeed, it should be expected.

In your Detroit examples, R J, can you remember if the lungs and heart were taken out of the women? And did they have their abdominal walls cut away in large flaps? I understand that we should expect them to have been whacked over the heads so I will not bring that point up. Oh, and were their uteri plucked out from their bodies and cut open whereafter the foetus was taken out?

[Trevor Marriott]

Sam Flynn: She also lacked the entirety of her upper thorax, so no wonder her heart was missing.

She lacked the shoulder part, the uppermost part, and NOT the part where the heart is situated. The part recovered represented the part of the torso between the fifth dorsal vertebra down to the third lumbar vertebra, and Hebbert accordingly pointed out that the lungs, heart and other thoracic viscera were absent, while liver, stomach, both kidneys and spleen were present. This he did because those were the parts expected to be in that part of the trunk. Note how he does not account for the knee-caps, the uterus, the toes and the tongue in this section. Any guess why?

The "angle" the Ripper took was to burrow up between the lungs and remove the heart from there. Quite different to the Rainham torso.

How do you know how the heart was taken out in 1887? Please tell us how he did it in the Rainham case, and exactly how you have come across the information!

There are only so many sensible ways to cut open an abdomen, but there are many and varied reasons for doing so.

The Rainham victim was cut from Sternum to groin, and none of us can prove why. This means that any suggestion from your side that the reason was another one than the Rippers is just that: a suggestion. Nothing else. My suggestion that the reason was the exact same ids just as viable or non-viable as yours. What remains is that all we actually KNOW is that BOTH killers cut from sternum to groin on more than one occasion, and that this is a VERY clear similarity of a thing that is very, very, very, very, very rare. And it only becomes rarer if it is done to remove inner organs. And even rarer if both uteri and heart are taken, along with the abdominal wall.
Those are the facts, The Gareth Williams Show is another matter entirely.

Fish
The normal medical method of opening up an abdomen is to make an incision from the sternum to the pubic area.

Lets hypothesize and say that the majority of these torsos were not murdered, but died through some back street medical procedure that went wrong, and we know that many did. When that happened there would be a need to get rid of the body,for obvious reasons. So dismembering them was the way forward, to hide their identity, and to prevent them being traced back to the abortionist etc.

A likely outcome would be that perhaps the abortionist would know what a valuable commodity organs were for teaching schools etc, and so that person might then remove some of the vital internal organs, now to make access to the abdominal and chest cavity quick and easy, having regard to the patient being dead, the quickest and simplest way would be to simply cut panes/strips of flesh thus giving better access to the internal organs without the need to retract the already open incision.

The fact that no skulls were ever found might support this, as I have said before skulls were probably in as much demand as were other internal organs.

As to dismemberment there are only so many ways a body can be dismembered, cutting, chopping, of sawing. The latter two seem to have not been used, and perhaps you might have expected then to have been if they were the work of a killer, who wanted a quick and easy method of dismemberment. It seems from the medical reports that some medical skill was seen in some of the dismemberment's, which in itself points to different people, and not one lone killer as you suggest.

So you see Fish there is always another simpler and less complicated explanation whether you choose to consider it remains to be seen.

https://www.trevormarriott.co.uk

[Fisherman]

She had a hole cut out in the form of the famous two flaps. That's not a vertical gash.

Two flaps. One, two. Not one flap.

Both flaps extended over all more than one section of the trunk. And they fit together exactly in the middle. All three parts of the trunk had a midline cut through them. Do you think that one large flap was first cut, and then it was cut doen the middle and corresponding cuts added to the parts of the trunk the flaps did not cover?
Clearly, if you do not know what you are talking about, many will be at risk to think you are right. That would be a pity.
Do you want me to find the exact wording for you? Just say the word.

[Fisherman]

Fish
The normal medical method of opening up an abdomen is to make an incision from the sternum to the pubic area.

Lets hypothesize and say that the majority of these torsos were not murdered, but died through some back street medical procedure that went wrong, and we know that many did. When that happened there would be a need to get rid of the body,for obvious reasons. So dismembering them was the way forward, to hide their identity, and to prevent them being traced back to the abortionist etc.

A likely outcome would be that perhaps the abortionist would know what a valuable commodity organs were for teaching schools etc, and so that person might then remove some of the vital internal organs, now to make access to the abdominal and chest cavity quick and easy, having regard to the patient being dead, the quickest and simplest way would be to simply cut panes/strips of flesh thus giving better access to the internal organs without the need to retract the already open incision.

The fact that no skulls were ever found might support this, as I have said before skulls were probably in as much demand as were other internal organs.

As to dismemberment there are only so many ways a body can be dismembered, cutting, chopping, of sawing. The latter two seem to have not been used, and perhaps you might have expected then to have been if they were the work of a killer, who wanted a quick and easy method of dismemberment. It seems from the medical reports that some medical skill was seen in some of the dismemberment's, which in itself points to different people, and not one lone killer as you suggest.

So you see Fish there is always another simpler and less complicated explanation whether you choose to consider it remains to be seen.

www.trevormarriott.co.uk

Read up, and we may talk later. You are not even aware that a saw was used, it would seem...! And you think that only some dismemberments were skilled? All were. Hebbert is VERY clear in saying that it was a very skilled cutter who handled the 1887-89 victims and the same man.
Read up, read up, read up!

[jerryd]

Two of the four (Pinchin and Rainham) were found to have not been pregnant. Jackson was for sure and Whitehall couldn't be determined but by the appearance of her breasts the opinion was she had not suckled children.

I guess the doctors were all quacks, as Trevor points out.

[jerryd]

Well, as tempting as it might be think that the Whitehall case was an 'in your face' to the police, unless there was a sign out in front of the construction site reading "Future Home of the C.I.D." I think it is entirely plausible that those dumping the torso viewed the site as merely a convenient, uninhabited area at night rather than as a symbol of future authority.

Hardly a convienient place where the body was found, RJ.

[Sam Flynn]

Two flaps. One, two. Not one flap.

Both flaps extended over all more than one section of the trunk. And they fit together exactly in the middle. All three parts of the trunk had a midline cut through them. Do you think that one large flap was first cut, and then it was cut doen the middle and corresponding cuts added to the parts of the trunk the flaps did not cover?
Clearly, if you do not know what you are talking about, many will be at risk to think you are right. That would be a pity.
Do you want me to find the exact wording for you? Just say the word.

A hole comprising two flaps does not constitute a vertical gash, irrespective of whether one or more (more, actually) ran vertically. It's a hole in the abdomen, period. Likewise, Nichols, Chapman and Kelly did not have a vertical gash in their abdomens either, even though they sustained several vertical cuts, too. The key thing is that these women suffered horizontal cuts as well, which opened their abdominal walls. No mere gashes these.

I'd go so far as to exclude Eddowes too because, whilst she sustained a single, largely vertical incision (albeit one that swept horizontally towards the bottom), it could scarcely be called a mere "vertical gash" either, as it penetrated right through the abdominal wall and laid it open. Which was emphatically not the case with the single vertical gash sustained by the Pinchin Street torso.

[Fisherman]

A hole comprising two flaps does not constitute a vertical gash, irrespective of whether one or more (more, actually) ran vertically. It's a hole in the abdomen, period. Likewise, Nichols, Chapman and Kelly did not have a vertical gash in their abdomens either, even though they sustained several vertical cuts, too. The key thing is that these women suffered horizontal cuts as well, which opened their abdominal walls. No mere gashes these.

I'd go so far as to exclude Eddowes too because, whilst she sustained a single, largely vertical incision (albeit one that swept horizontally towards the bottom), it could scarcely be called a mere "vertical gash" either, as it penetrated right through the abdominal wall and laid it open. Which was emphatically not the case with the single vertical gash sustained by the Pinchin Street torso.

BEFORE the flaps were cut, there was a vertical cut inflicted on Jacksons abdomen, running from sternum to groin. It even went INTO the sternum.

The reason that for example Chapman had horisontal cuts to her abdomen too was of course because the killer cut flaps from her abdominal wall - EXACTLY like what happened to Jackson. Please, PLEASE don´t obfuscate and mislead!

Once more, do you want me to point you to the conclusive proof that Jackson suffered a long, vertical cut from sternum to groin, or don´t you? All you have to do is ask and I will provide it! True factual knowledge never hurt any research. Just don´t claim I am wrong, for that I am NOT!

[Fisherman]

Hardly a convienient place where the body was found, RJ.

You can say that again, Jerry!